Pure joy to watch -- and an invaluable documentary record of a bygone era.

In the Harry Potter film series thus far, The Sorcerer's Stone remains the strongest, perhaps because the first look at any rich new world is almost always going to be more groundbreaking than its sequels. But Prisoner of Azkaban is a worthy and stylistically different follow-up, where Chamber of Secrets often felt like an unimaginative retread.

The result is a vivid anthropological document suffused with plenty of emotion and a touch of ancient magic.

As a clear, exhaustive and highly intelligent discussion of one of the most pressing issues of our time, it's a success. As a work of documentary, however, it's flawed by its failure to limit its scope (or at least pare down its material), by its strangely stylized narration and by its lack of a story.

While it's marvelously refreshing to observe Mother Nature obliterating L.A. and New York along with caricatures of ghastly world leaders, almost everything good is in the trailer, save perhaps brief run-ins with malevolent wolves and Ian Holm.

A scattershot "urban" take on "Airplane!," Soul Plane misfires with its jokes at least as often as it hits (and less often than Snoop Dogg hits a joint), but when it works, laughs are generated.

As frantic and frenzied as its source material.

A remarkable movie, because, like "Crumb" or even "American Splendor," it adores the very people most of us might ignore if they passed us on the street. It's a love letter to someone who desperately needs one, even 10 years after his death.

The first exceptional drama of 2004, The Mother feels like life itself, sharpened to its finest points.

The movie is facile, but mostly sweet and entertaining.

Sitting through Raising Helen is an exercise in frustration, because somewhere inside this big heap of Hollywood nothing is a something (someone, actually) worth saving and savoring. Her name is Joan Cusack.

Doesn't even play fairly by its own rules. What emerges isn't a romantic comedy at all, but rather--very much like "The War of the Roses" a few years back--a cleverly disguised monster movie.

It puts us in the shoes of men and women for whom the war is not something distant and intangible but a bloodbath in their own back yard, which makes them the very definition of embedded journalists.

This Shrek is both funnier and warmer than its predecessor; it's better-looking, too, no longer as clunky and junky as video-game graphics.

Writer-director Daniel Taplitz seems to be trying to invoke classic screwball with this convoluted setup, but it plays like mediocre sitcom.

Homer would be hard-pressed to find any remaining shred of "The Iliad" in this over-the-top entertainment. It has a lot of loud passion but not much poetry, and that's appropriate for a movie that could well be subtitled My Big Fat Greek Bloodletting.

The film splits the difference between the brutal reality of the cable-TV prison series "Oz" and the romanticized fantasy of "The Shawshank Redemption" and provides a vivid, well-rounded gallery of inmate portraits.

It's a movie about discomfort and distance, like an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" or "The Larry Sanders Show" shot in deadpan black-and-white.

Using humor to make a serious point, Arau suggests that without the millions of Hispanics...life in the Golden State would screech to a halt.

Taylor and Pearce just aren't believable.

The setup's a bit reminiscent of "The English Patient" -- except that Beart's much easier on the eyes and ears than Ralph Fiennes is -- but Strayed is even slower moving, if you can believe it.

Essentially this is a pale imitation of "My Life as a Dog" or "Cinema Paradiso." It means well, but it's only a "feel-good" experience if your concept of that term involves being jerked around and doused in sap.

Overly broad and silly at times, the film also has an "important" message to pass along to its young viewers.

This beast is as subtle as a Red Bull enema, but it succeeds magnificently as compulsively watchable spectacle.

The original retains its dark tone and deadly serious anti-war message. For today's moviegoing audiences, this may not be your daddy's Godzilla movie, but chances are your granddaddy could teach you a thing or two about the context.

What results ultimately plays like a feature-length episode of an HBO comedy series like Sex and the City -- gratuitous nudity and all.

As enormously entertaining as it is appalling.

Nothing about Laws of Attraction is remotely original; even its title has the dull ring of the generic, like "Opposites Attract" or "He Said, She Said." See it or don't. You will never notice the difference.