A big gob of fun.

Fast-paced, riveting and affecting.

The songs are actually quite good--if also hideously embarrassing--but these comedians take their roles far too seriously, to their peril and our puzzlement.

One of this year's best films--a classic, even, like a C.S. Forester "Hornblower" story on steroids.

Thanks to the performances and McCarthy's understated script and direction, the film walked off with both the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.

Exceptionally smart and charming.

Nathaniel will sometimes take it too far. It's particularly distracting, and even a little distancing, when he waits till the end of a lengthy interview to tell one of his father's former collaborators and friends that he is Louis' son.

In the grand scheme of things, Goblet of Fire is perhaps closest to the original "Sorcerer's Stone."

Devotees of the comedienne presumably will think they have died and gone to heaven, while Cho virgins may laugh aloud a half-dozen times but probably won't become converts.

The singing and dancing in this Chicago are uniformly splendid, right down to Gere's tap dancing. The high wit and dark eroticism Marshall brings to the famous "Cell Block Tango" number are matchless.

Jackson is merely indulging himself here, too, doing a thing not because he should but because he can. And maybe that's a good reason but not good enough. The girl still cries, the ape still dies and all you're left with is a ringing in your ears.

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

Begins as comedy, morphs into drama and only belatedly introduces the noir requisites of subterfuge, cunning and death--none of which, by that time, is necessary or even welcome. There is a great deal of life in this movie, and also promise, but its creepy ending betrays its sincere and painful core.

It's a noble work, an elegant work, a compassionate work -- and a somewhat tedious and glaringly self-important work.

Combining the tragic and the comic, this drama is amateurish in places, but it's a triumph of atmosphere (the makers are both North Carolinians) and the acting is first-rate.

Mostly, Wild Parrots is a great, important, and unforgettable movie.

A beautiful film from Iran explores beauty both physical and spiritual.

This uneven new film, a series of dialogues from the legendary Ingmar Bergman, is assembled like movements of a concerto.

Five or six lives might have felt more concise; nine test the patience a bit, though it is impressive that each is composed of a single Steadicam shot.

Easily the scariest horror picture of the '90s, a movie that can take a place among the most potent and inexorable of modern shockers.

Consider it an athletic contest of the mind--ESPN does, as the sports network regularly televises the finals.

The story itself is absolutely amazing, and the sense of outrage it evokes is universal, but director Noyce faces a difficult task in that once the story is set in motion there is very little action, other than walking shots of the girls, and almost no dialogue.

Once in a while a film comes along that is as sound, smart, sweet and significant as can be, and Whale Rider is such a film.

Stacy Peralta may think otherwise, but this 101-minute homage to the heroes of surfing is nothing if not a monument to their self-absorption--and to his own. That's probably inevitable.

Dead Man Walking drops a massive, writhing knot of sorrow in your lap and then doesn't tell you what to do with it. If that doesn't sound like entertainment to you, you're right. It does something far more profound: It finds the tragic universal core of a contentious issue.

Christopher Guest only wishes he could nail a parody/homage as smart and deadpan as this, but while his ensemble improvisation movies are increasingly full of mighty wind, Winterbottom's is consistently smart and silly without becoming caricature.

A riveting movie that's as entertaining as it is socially and politically important.

Part of the problem may be the use of non-actors in most of the roles. They look like real people, and they are entirely believable, but none has any kind of star charisma.