If Campion has a message in all this -- something about the eternal battle of the sexes -- it is far from clear.

It is engaging, touching, and frequently funny. Maybe because his hero is inarticulate and his heroine is mute, Allen relies far more than usual on physical comedy than on the verbal jokes that are his strongest comic suit.

The most liberating thing about this funny, touching, heartfelt little movie is the way it defies the rules and, in the end, begins to set its heroines free. They've earned it.

In this, Lee's most ambitious and successful work yet, his celebrated gift for psychological shading and complexity is on proud display.

Nothing worse than a silly movie that takes itself seriously, that bores us to death while we wait for the finale that comes too late.

The story is just as funny and touching. The only problem is the inevitable one: The freshness -- the novel delight -- is a little faded now.

One of the season's biggest delights.

Whatever its flaws -- and it has some lulus -- it's a textbook model for how to structure action of this kind.

Hasty pacing makes for a rich and exciting movie, but not an especially spooky or spellbinding one.

The unfettered comedy of life bubbling up from the Spanish unconscious continues to be proudly liberationist, gloriously extreme, and achingly human.

O'Connor as Fanny is irresistibly appealing.

A disarmingly funny, clear-eyed, and affectionate memory piece.

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.

As far from crowd-pleasing as you're going to get these days.

Slick, glossy, and artificial.

The ludicrous casting of Hoffman is just the fatal bit of kindling on this Joan's fire.

The real find-- is Rosario Dawson, who has appeared to good effect in previous smaller roles ("Kids," "He Got Game") and just about walks off with the movie.

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

An engaging preapocalyptic fantasy.

The final product is great populist entertainment and may even leave audiences with a feeling of comfort, however fleeting, in the knowledge that corrupt corporations don't always win

Touching, frequently hilarious.

On one level it is highly intimate, yet it is also universal, a modern metaphor for the human condition and the precariousness of life itself.

A blender full of all the juicy nuggets that define Troma films: monsters, mayhem, syrupy bloodletting and gooey head-squishing, transgender mutilations, loads of bad acting by complete freaks, and even more pointless nudity by attractive and unattractive people alike.

So utterly awful, you're tempted to build a time machine, then go back in history and try to make sure Ward's parents never meet.

So uplifting, it's almost...gross.

While Mononoke is often gorgeous to look at and has a far more sophisticated story than most Japanese animated features, it still feels overlong and dramatically unengaging.

Smart people will relish its temerariousness, average people will smile awkwardly and comment that it's "kinda different," and dimly lit people may mistake it for the Elmo movie and drool quietly in the back rows. It's a movie for everyone.

Unhampered by imagination and driven solely by libido.