Undiluted Jackie Chan, not the watered-down stuff he's been doing stateside.

Like the political turmoil which inspired it, Shadow Dancer is fueled by the fire to do the right thing and the sacrifice that must follow, and for 100 minutes, it’s a crackerjack ordeal to behold.

Despite the frivolous feel, it's clear the director intends for Bossa Nova to be a love letter to his two passions: Brazil and his leading lady (who's also his real-life wife). Neither lets him down.

Like other aspects of this film, the image may be a little too perfect, a little too careful.

A wry, rambling, smart comedy.

Quite a spicy brew.

You'll feel moved and uplifted after watching this well-written, funny movie.

Even though it delivers on frights and special effects, and is well-acted and gorgeous to look at, never really surprises us.

Simple but charming.

Has moments that are haunting, and it stays with you long after the lights have come back up.

Unbreakable shows Shyamalan as a rapidly maturing filmmaker, taking risks and making them pay off.

The textures are detailed, the movements are realistic and the three-dimensional feel even improves on the humor -- you may think you've seen every good "Matrix" parody, but you haven't until you see this.

It's Lathan -- with her passionate performance, physical grace and drop-dead-gorgeous looks -- who makes Love and Basketball so entertaining.

Richard Farnsworth shines as Alvin Straight, a role, one gets the feeling, that he has been preparing for all his life.

A tiny slice of bleak, black near-perfection.

In a sterling ensemble cast, (Elfman) just about walks off with the movie.

A quiet film, certainly, but it's filled with small touches that manage to get deeply under your skin by the time the final credits roll.

Script, setting, attitude, and especially casting add up to a smart exercise in dark comedy that's never over-the-top funny, but always engaging for its clever details.

A huge surprise: a startlingly resonant yet unabashedly entertaining slice of American history, a popcorn movie with complex observations about, of all things, racism.

The design of the film is wonderful, the animation everything one comes to expect from a Disney picture, and the jokes fly by so fast.

A heartfelt documentary.

If Her is ultimately better at considering the future than it is at taking us there, it resonates as an insightful reminder that love isn’t obsolete quite yet.

A sleeper that's well worth hunting down. Its rewards sneak up on you, but then linger long afterwards.

It's not a profound film, but it is heartfelt, and Burns has done his best to keep it clear and emotionally direct.

It's epic in every sense of the word, and like most of Chen's historical dramas, not easy to follow.

It gives the audience something serious to ponder. That's rare these days.

The animation is beautiful, the music is catchy and the lyrics are clever.

A surprisingly vital film.

A gripping, fascinating and visually arresting memoir.

A terrific feature-length cartoon.

With Muppets Most Wanted, the vaudevillian pandaemonium is alive and well.

It is one of the better dumbass sci-fi action movies to come down the pike in quite some time.

Held together by strong writing, insightful direction, and a stunning turn by newcomer Rodriguez, who is not only a gorgeous young woman but a fiercely charismatic screen presence.

Strangely enough, this movie provides a lot of the James Bond veneer that has been missing from recent James Bond movies.

The insider's view of celebrity in The Insider grabs the spotlight from the real story of Wigand's courage.

Stays with you, though, not because of its political content, but because of the unexpected emotional punch that's thrown near the end.

This is independent acting (and movie-making) at its best -- true, tight, anything but trite.

It's got both the sweeping spectacle and the keen, tactile sense of human intimacy.

This is a story told in shards; Wong is so obsessed with visual details – faces refracted as if in a broken mirror, or fragile arcs of blood being traced out on the pavement by the feet of two feuding kung fu masters – that the story he’s trying to tell is partly obscured by them.

An exceptionally intense movie whose sheer filmmaking power ultimately transcends all its (many) limitations.

Highly enjoyable.

A smart, engaging movie.

As a writer, LaBute is capable of creating long dialogue scenes that never seem stagey or artificial. As a director, he has the confidence to stay with those words.

Wan has marshaled his crack sense of supernatural menace into making his most satisfying scare story yet.

A very moving and surprisingly funny experience.

I was so taken by the film's sublime visual poetry, its telling silences, its finely orchestrated editing rhythms.

Grass is often closer to the sobering tone of the PBS show than it is to the silly "Weed," with its stoned, barely literate potheads discussing the quality of their dope.

The kind of college movie people will be quoting for years.

Most important, the film is suffused with a light touch and a kind of begrudged humor that feels perfectly natural and unforced and that keeps you involved in the characters' plight.

Stick with the film, accept the rules of the time and the meditative rhythm of the language that Davies has woven into his story, and you won't be disappointed. Then read the novel. It's even better.

Has the edge of black comedy that defines Maclean's sensibility, but it also has a mature new sweetness. And it's certainly one of the best films about the life of an addict since "Drugstore Cowboy."

Its series of quiet but moving realizations of the utter ubiquity of the Nazi horror in every single aspect of life, even something as hidden as a sexual sub-culture, is powerful indeed.

The picture has an appropriately grungy sense of place.

It's a testimony to Tammy Faye's own integrity and enormous charisma that the film holds our attention as tightly as it does, and doesn't become an insufferable exercise in weak filmmaking.

Lots of laughs, lots of fisticuffs, lots of cool toys, lots of stuff getting blown up: Who could ask for anything more from a summer movie?

Darabont follows King's book fairly closely, allowing the audience to steep itself in the setting and characters slowly, like reading a good novel.

This is a film like no other this year, and on that grounds alone you should see it.

A fitting tribute to an era, a writer, and an unapologetic eccentric.

Mehta's latest release, combines a similarly intoxicating visual immediacy and delight with a sobering outsider's long view.

A breathless, exciting family movie with a couple of truly memorable sequences, and just enough in the way of story and character to keep the franchise going for another 20 years.

It plays lots of cool mind games with the audience -- if in an occasionally incoherent way -- and ends up providing a surprising amount of fun.

Lets Jackie Chan have some fun, ride a horse and frolic in the American West. And when Jackie's having fun, at least some of it trickles down to us.

Part of the appeal of John Irving's writing is its sense of bounty, the way the world is offered up as a horn of plenty. The Cider House Rules movie, by contrast, feels narrowed down to small slices of experience.

It's a high-wire act without a net, and Benigni pulls it off with astounding grace and sensitivity.

What director Aviva Kempner has done is shine a light into the past and recover a classic American hero, one with all the integrity, decency and largeness of spirit that we have been taught makes up the American character.

A careful, intelligent, and seamless design that makes room for a couple of unexpected twists.

An imaginative and disturbing work; well worth a look.

The film is very theatrical and admittedly "staged," but always purposefully.

Works so beautifully because Davis doesn't try to turn Eads and his friends into walking soapboxes for transgendered people.

Definitely worth a chance: although everyone in this fog-shrouded setting makes grand sacrifices, all you'll lose are a few tears.

It's witty, entertaining, often funny as hell and even, at times, surprisingly wise about the human condition.

There are some cheap shots, and there's an argument to be made about whether the film is sending up stereotypes or simply perpetuating them. But for every dubious moment, there are plenty that connect.

Drama, swift action, and low-key, character-driven comedy.

This is a franchise entirely comfortable with what it is, what it’s not, and what it has to offer. It has a whole mess of “Fast” for us all, and woe be the souls who enter this film hoping to go slow.

Its final scenes and sublimely framed last, lingering shot are extraordinary.

A wonderfully witty homage to the very king of disco movies -- "Saturday Night Fever."

A satisfying love story about two very different people with a common cause, people who endure trials of trust and faith in each other.

A highly recommended treat.

The script also happens to be quite literate and laceratingly funny, and Damon -- no big surprise here -- turns out to be the perfect actor to deliver Will's zingers.

The first live-action endeavor from director Brad Bird (The Incredibles, The Iron Giant), Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is filled with the verve and clarity of his animated action sequences while lending just enough gravity and remote plausibility to the stunts and gadgetry to keep it from becoming a glorified cartoon in and of itself.

An unusually clear, compassionate, and grownup satire about a rare subject: the true psychological underpinnings of young manhood.

The Taste of Others takes regular (but not ordinary) people and knocks them out of their usual zones of activity. The resulting collisions leave behind a very pleasing flavor.

Battling back with droll seriousness, Murray imbues his sad-sack loner with a touching, funny dignity, and comes up with his best work in a very long time.

Don't let Croupier go by without a look.

A hilariously entertaining movie.

Accomplished, ambitious, and great-looking.

A gorgeous and enduring piece of work.

Despite a cheap, Hollywood ending and despite Kaye's kooky campaign, X is a killer.

It's a very funny film, one of the most enjoyable of the summer.

To watch Sevigny's Lana slowly thaw to Brandon is to see the transformative, heartbreaking power of romance in a way that Hollywood is rarely able to capture anymore.

An exhilarating piece of popular entertainment.

Horror presented without restraint or apology, as a full-bore, blood-soaked load of nomad nastiness caught in constant forward motion.

The point of this film is the spell it weaves and, by and large, it is successful. It’s the music, it’s the cinematography, it’s the score, it’s Casey Affleck’s hollow speaking voice — they all add up to something that resembles a fever dream facsimile of an eventful movie.

Hilarious and often moving.

A Melancholy Delight. Its pacing will undoubtedly seem too deliberate to some, but I found first-time director Deborah Warner's The Last September a delight from beginning to end.

Unlikely to draw the audience it deserves, but those who do see it will have a hard time shaking its gentle, ghostly echoes.

An insistent, insinuating film -- both in terms of its plot and characters, and in its impact on the viewer -- Harry's effects are small-scale but so perfectly pitched that they never seem small.

Armitage, Cusack and his Evanston chums have their work cut out for them to turn a stone killer into a sympathetic romantic character. That they succeed in such a shrewdly funny way is downright amazing.