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

We marvel at the almost perfect realization of a character whom we're not necessarily meant to like.

As a primer on the arcana surrounding the profession of personal injury lawyer (more familiarly known as ambulance chaser), A Civil Action is deeply, and even passionately, informative. As a drama and character study, though, it mostly misses the mark.

What makes A Simple Plan an exciting, thoughtful thriller isn't the plot twists, but the twists and turns of Hank's tortured conscience as one lie leads to bigger and deadlier deceits.

Stoppard's luxuriant, richly comic language cascades and washes over you, and, for once, more than keeps pace with the sprightly pictures.

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.

Little Voice is that rarity, a filmed adaptation of a stage play that actually works.

It's blatantly manipulative pairing of an adorable young boy and a selfish, honesty-challenged older woman [is] so calculating that I could never get emotionally involved.

What's best about the film is not the hot romance, but the coldness that lies at its heart.

A strange and lovely combination of cinematic nostalgia and offbeat (gay) love story.

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

The story moves beyond the limitations of its setting, transforming itself into an affecting parable about the lengths to which parents will go to protect their children from trauma, cruelty and knowledge of evil.

Eventually falls into the same candy-coated trap it's trying to expose. But the fact that a movie can acknowledge the trap exists is a step in the right direction.

One of the most troubling views of the human race I've seen in years. Luckily for us, its depressing, almost pathologically ironic vision is redeemed by the sublimity of Solondz' filmmaking. I first saw the film at Cannes last May and it's haunted me, both for its nastiness and its brilliance, ever since.

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.

It's "The Hustler with poker and without soul...For all its flash and occasional sizzle, "Rounders" is a disappointment.

A pulsing, wooshing, visceral experience that amounts to great fun and an entirely disposable movie.

In striving to duplicate reality, Spielberg has gone reality one better -- he's playing war, but it's a game no one would ever willingly join in.

This reprehensible and deeply unfunny film is obviously critic-proof.

Quite a spicy brew.

A brilliant and daring film.

For all the cynicism on the soundtrack and the occasional lapses in tone, this is a remarkably generous comedy.

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.

As with Bill Clinton himself, Primary Colors forces one to take the disappointing with the good, the letdown with the promise, the compromises with the hope.

It may be a very good, very Brooksian sitcom, but it's accomplished entirely with the broad strokes and resolutely flat surfaces of television.

Like it or hate it, Titanic lives and breathes as a piece of pure cinema.

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.

So campy that it almost plays like a sendup of the series. It is to Alien what "The Bride of Frankenstein" was to other 1930s Frankenstein movies, and it even shares some of the same themes.