Both Fellini and Woody Allen have remarked that casting is 90 percent of directing--and Citizen Ruth bears witness to that notion. While this is primarily Dern's show, the casting is perfect all around.

Tigers are such rare and beautiful creatures that you could just film them running around an enclosure for an hour or so and many would pay to see it. Annaud adds much more, and has made a compelling story that's truly for the whole family, without being overly sentimental.

At its best it plays like modern-day Marx Brothers in which every single thing that happens makes no sense and serves no purpose and nothing happens for any reason at all. It exists solely to get a laugh, not to make a point.

Biblically classical, tastefully vintage with aerial shots of wet umbrellas and Homburg hats and not a little staid considering its sensational source material, Changeling isn't so much dull as it is an open book.

I love it, but much in the way I managed to love "The Phantom Menace" -- in spite of its bloat, swaggering self-importance and largely neutered characters.

Penn's lead performance is the main attraction here, and it's a fine piece of work--far superior to his overly showy Oscar-winning role last year.

It's definitely an enchanting spectacular for Potter fans anxious to ride the Hogwarts Express toward a new year of magic and mischief.

To call Undertow a '70s-style revenge movie is accurate, but those unfamiliar with Green who expect a typical genre picture may wonder why it takes so long to get to the action.

It's moderately compelling drama, but also fairly static stuff, image-wise.

It's a slow and laborious persona piece.

Funny, sad, moving and, above all, astute, making I Capture the Castle a fabulous film. Even the cars are tasty.

As a result, the film doesn't seem to know what sort of comedy it wants to be -- it comes across as more confused than funny.

If Allen owns The Upside of Anger, she is generous enough to loan it to Costner, who, despite the dim, glazed eyes, is more alive here than he's been in years.

The Dreamers is a real humdinger, at once an intimate romance, a glimpse into a rather unconventional friendship and a beautifully focused celebration of cinema itself.

What's weird about subUrbia is that Linklater's zoned-out technique is wedded to Bogosian's in-your-face power-rant oratory. The result is like local anesthesia--you can see the incisions, but you can't feel them.

This pitch-perfect, richly detailed portrait of raw greed works very well.

Bubble is a strong film with a gorgeously minimal script by Coleman Hough. Soderbergh has directed his actors to perfection, rendering them indistinguishable from their roles. And, though the story resorts to sensationalism for its conflict, the film is eloquent in its portrayal of silence, depression, repression, denial and the woes of the Midwestern white working class.

The movie is stirringly, thrillingly animated; Stander, as some say around Johannesburg, lives.

Sugar Town's tunes are terrific, and the writing is sharp. But the typecasting is a work of genius.

Screwball mistaken-identity crapfest...it's just utterly plain, a confection so bland you don't even care that it doesn't really make any sense at the end.

From a fan's perspective, though, one might wish for a smaller budget and a truly uncompromising vision.

A romantic adventure-movie slapstick that's too screwy for the action crowd and too old-fashioned for the Home Alone contingent.

Weaver is able to take a schlock conception and turn it into a tour de force. Sky-high and straight-backed, she's imperiously graceful in this film; at times she resembles Martha Graham in the swooping, lyrical severity of her movements.

Smith has fashioned a complex, contemporary Bible epic on his own terms. By turns crafty and clunky, pious and profane, it's clearly a labor of love.

Except for a few of his trademark time-sequence zig-zags, Tarantino's storytelling is boringly linear. At a running time of two hours and 35 minutes, it often feels like we're slogging through a B-movie that got too big for its sprockets.

Surprisingly tender and resolutely unpostmodern.

The movie features several political themes for adults and is mostly delightful for kids. Just consider yourself warned about the live-action Carly Simon video at its tail end.

It's this moralizing, this slamming down of a stop sign every time the movie wants to rev its engines, that keeps Lord of War from being great. But it's three-fourths of a great movie, if nothing else, it has more brains and balls than most studio releases, for which it's to be commended and recommended.

The Dying Gaul becomes so overwrought in the last act that it ends up as pure histrionics.

One of the most schizoid films in recent memory. It opens with crystalline originality, a shimmering comedy with meticulous timing and sharply drawn characters. Then it careens carelessly into syrup. How could he (Martin) not have noticed?

In short, Just Say Yes.

Be forewarned: The rural Irish accents may be incomprehensible to viewers who aren't accustomed to them.

The bottom line, however, is that cheap and unoriginal as The Gift may be, it sucks you in.

Though it does cheapen itself with some dreadful moments of product placement, it doesn't instantly date itself with cheap pop-culture gags; it will play to our kids' kids tomorrow just as it does today, like something made for children who don't know to expect more from their cartoons than just pleasant, nostalgic mediocrities.

In the hands of lesser mortals, this would add up to perhaps the worst movie of the year. In the hands of Denzel Washington, it manages to work magic on some who might not tolerate such shenanigans from, say, Chris Columbus.

Fails dramatically as well as ideologically.

The cynical should be warned that, as in "Blair Witch," most of the scares depend upon sound and editing rather than elaborate effects, but young director Ti West gets a lot of bang for his meager bucks.

What we're left with is half a movie about a cocky up-and-comer, and half a movie that could be one of those MTV Diary of... specials on Jerry Seinfeld.

Just might be Jim Carrey's finest screen role...The rest of the movie, however, isn't quite up to Carrey's level.

Wacky, hodgepodge and decidedly homemade, CSA nevertheless is worth seeing. Sure, it veers off into nonsense, and there are times when the film loses its center. But the premise, the passion and the scathing political commentary ultimately keep CSA afloat.

G.I. Jane is liberated, all right--from good acting and a good story.

The Wachowskis still hold the current franchise on intellectually engaging action films. It's not like I won't be heading back for a second (or even third) look.

When the action sequences work, they work well; the climax cribs heavily from 1989's "Batman," but improves on Tim Burton's finale.

Not bad at all.

The movie is facile, but mostly sweet and entertaining.

The supporting cast is strong, featuring Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce Campbell, Lynda Carter, and Cloris Leachman.

For anyone who believes in the gorgeously messy truth of French social drama, it's a grave disappointment.

That sweet streak has grown, like a cancer, and gradually killed off any of the edge their (Farrellys) humor may have once had.

A lovely little comedy that--like its predecessor--will, one hopes, buck the odds and find its audience.

Comes straight out of the Forrest Gump School of Interpersonal Magic, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

Far superior to either "Life Is Beautiful" or "Jakob the Liar."

Willis gives a remarkable, wrenching performance: He is the most fragile indestructible man ever created.

The resulting project matters much and should be seen, but how much it'll be FELT depends on your specific level of patience for a director who presumes audience comprehension to be at about a fourth-grade level (at least he's a shoo-in for Hollywood).

The more technically proficient Anderson gets as a filmmaker, the more emotionally barren his movies become, till at last The Life Aquatic drowns in a sea of self-indulgent touches that delight the filmmaker but distance the filmgoer who wants to love the director and his characters but just can't, not anymore.

Handily in a league with its predecessor...as good a follow-up as one can imagine, given the built-in difficulties of sequels.

It's a dark lark, no more and no less, a caper comedy full of enough kinky jokes to remind the audience that, indeed, you're supposed to laugh at it every now and again.

The Interpreter dashes the suspense by talking the audience to death.

Lestat, like all vampires, is a bad boy frozen in time; because the role is emotionally static and one-note, it can't hold our attention unless it's played by an actor with deep reserves of mystery, elegance, and sexual power. Cruise has no such qualities.

Instead of the cat-and-mouse cogitations and psych-outs one might rightly expect from this high concept, we're fobbed off with a lot of sub-Die Hard theatrics and stinko plotting.

Contact sure is pretentious. It doesn't deliver on the deepthink, and it lacks the charge of good, honest pulp. It's schlock without the schlock.

More "Pretty Woman" than "Working Girl," The Devil Wears Prada really lives to give its angel a high-class makeover.

One of the best of the many delights of director Michael Hoffman's new film -- is that he manages to have it both ways -- the gauzy fantasy and the bacchanal.

Hackman, playing it gleefully amoral, walks away with the film, for what that's worth...which is a video rental for fans of the actors involved. Yes, that's video, not DVD -- four bucks at Blockbuster is more than you ought to be paying.

If you have a chance to see the 3-D IMAX version of the movie ignore any objections. But if your only choice is a regular 2-D screen, The Polar Express is still three-fourths of a great movie.

Björk appears to have been a good influence on Barney: The soundtrack, which she supervised and participates in, is well worth the time for fans of experimental music. As to what the whole thing means, you're on your own.

Has plenty of dark horror style, but it lacks the weird charm of the 1971 original starring Bruce Davison...It's a nice homage.

No matter how restrained the direction or unsentimental the performances -- and White Oleander scores points for both -- there is no escaping the semi-trashy but oh-so-life-affirming ring of the plot.

That's where the movie falters: It tries to give Garcia's book a heart and conscience it didn't need and never demanded.

You'd better be in the mood for a blitz of bumper-sticker philosophy, a major machismo transfusion and 94 minutes' worth of mind-numbing repetition, complete with a musical score seemingly lifted from reality TV.

Forces its snuggly weirdo upon us and instructs us from the get-go to love him.

Far more than a mere visual feast.

Berri's film lacks both suspense and a heroine who actually breaks a sweat while hurling herself in the path of one of the 20th century's most merciless juggernauts.

The bulk of the film showcases some of the best direction of actors this year.

The film is rich with real feeling. And Dench's performance is a heartbreaker.

The Weather Man is not the wacky movie Paramount is selling, nor is it cynical Oscar bait. It's just a little movie about little people trying not to get wet or freeze to death or get burned when they walk outside, and good luck with all that.

It's excessively quirky and a little underconfident in its delivery, but otherwise this is the best "old neighborhood" project since Christopher Walken kinda romanced Cyndi Lauper in "The Opportunists."

Laurel Canyon lacks the sense of risk that "High Art" had, and in doing so, emasculates its apparent protagonist in Sam.

The jokes in Extract play almost like afterthoughts, the last-second add-ons of a former animator who, until now, has always treated his flesh-and-blood characters a bit like cartoon caricatures and vice versa.

This plodding mediocrity displays none of the flair or the compelling trickery that enlivened its 2002 prototype.

A loud and ghastly movie to sit through and not short on gratuitous hideousness, but Darabont has also done his best to baste it with humanity and sweetness.

The film looks great, but Wargnier is so heavy-handed in his portrayal of postwar Russia that it casts suspicions on the film's reliability as history.

Particularly unsuitable for cinematic adaptation, but when has that ever stopped anyone.

The result is creepy and unpleasant.

Lee's pace is slow enough to try viewers' patience.

Lars von Trier's latest thingamabob is a large, pretentious blob of coulda-been. As in, it coulda been deep and insightful. It coulda been sociologically challenging. It coulda been formalistically thrilling. But it isn't.

One of the strongest--and sure to be controversial--films of the year, The War Within goes places that other films wouldn't dare go.

Director Brad Anderson (Session 9) is usually really good at humanizing ambiguous characters, and he ultimately succeeds, but he has to fight against Scott Kosar's script.

Cube is essentially a glossy, beautifully designed 90-minute Twilight Zone episode.

As satisfying as much of the film is, there are a few missteps, large and small, that may require indulgence on the part of viewers.

The Guys is less a tearing open of old wounds than a balm to be applied over them. It doesn't wallow. It doesn't weep.

Competent if unremarkable tragedy.

Viewers with a low tolerance for sentiment may balk, but the emotions are so true and the characters so appealing that the film should completely win you over.

Director Pieter Jan Brugge makes us feel their impatience and frustration even as they do. He's aided greatly in this by the casting of the wonderful Helen Mirren as Mrs. Hayes.

This intriguing jigsaw puzzle is visually arresting, narratively inventive, and psychologically enigmatic.

This romantic tragedy has the measured gentility of the M.I. classics, but its sheen of crass melodrama is startling, and its many metaphors run amok in a tangle.

Banal sit-comedy masquerading as religious deepthink dolled up as boy-meets-goy love story.

It's possible that Gloomy Sunday is more "significant" than it is compelling.

Unfocused. We feel cut adrift amid the various plot threads. This is exacerbated by some murky exposition. Characters, events, and the passage of time are not always clearly established.