It becomes clear that all this man-child craves is to be loved and, thus, saved.

Performance after performance -- by Kim Stanley, Marlon Brando, Laurette Taylor . . . Never heard of her? That’s reason enough not to miss this movie.

It's something of a family affair -- only this time, instead of casting his relatives in the leading roles, Ceylan has cast himself and his real-life wife, Ebru, as Isa and Bahar. And if, in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, such a decision might foster a mood of lurid home-movie voyeurism, both Ceylans are such commanding and subtly expressive performers that any charges of nepotism here are as erroneous as in the storied collaborations of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands.

Overall, Whitely's debut film may just fill you with an unexpectedly deep elation.

The first half of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a brilliant blend of the best of Burton and Dahl, with some unexpected input from Charles Dickens. In the second half, the contraptions take over, drowning whatever story remains...But it falls frustratingly short of the masterpiece it might have been.

Comes as close as perhaps any film has gotten to approximating the inner life of an artist.

It seems to have been made to delight European intellectuals and anyone else who believes that America is a land of bloodthirsty yet comical barbarians.

To explore seriously the question of Kissinger's crimes wouldn't merely take hours, it would require the patient, unblinking vision of a Frederick Wiseman or Marcel Ophuls. Gibney and Jarecki just want to string the bastard up.

To anyone whose soul lives or dies by reading or writing or both, the movie is a total thrill, and not just as a debate on the nature of the one-shot writer or the decline of publishing.

It's a strangely stirring experience that finds warmth in the coldest environment and makes each crumb of emotional comfort feel like a 10-course banquet.

Jean-Luc Godard famously declared that all it takes to make a movie is a girl and a gun. Both turn up in Millennium Mambo, a ravishing bauble about la dolce vita in Taiwan, but frankly, the gun's an afterthought. This is a movie about the girl.

In a boom time for movies about the scars of the battlefield, Half Moon reminds that the unending strife and religious fundamentalism of the Middle East kills not just people but culture too.

Webber spins a slight but considerably enchanting tale of impossible romance and artistic discovery.

An improvement on the original, but that isn't saying much.

These women are smart, funny and wonderfully real, traits that one might safely attribute to Westfeldt and Juergensen, who also wrote the screenplay.

A sophisticated and beautiful feature debut.

Two-thirds of the way through, Seabiscuit awakes to its duties as a perfectly presentable race movie, rising to a crescendo of satisfying --- if somewhat gaga -- inspiration.

As repellent and repellently opportunistic a piece of work as the various shock-horror provocations (The Isle, The Coast Guard) that helped to launch this worrisome career (Kim Ki-Duk).

State-of-the-art camera equipment captures images of startling clarity and proximity. There isn't one frame of CGI.

Superman Returns is a lush and enthralling piece of adventure storytelling that's both revisionist AND reverential, putting a timely spin on a timeless character without violating his primal appeal.

A great goof of a film...However daftly amusing, and periodically inspired, Men in Black is distinctly short on character and plot, even for a cartoon.

A triumph of low-end production design, shot in sizzling, solarized black and white, and driven by a propulsive, insinuating score, Pi is a horror movie that makes you think and an indie film that makes you squirm.

Recut and reassembled at just a little over two hours, the new version of the film is a staggering and bracing object, stylistically bold and hypnotically captivating.

In their feature debut, co-writers/directors Juuso Laatio and Jukka Vidgren and co-writers Aleksi Puranen and Jari Olavi Rantala reach for absurdist comedy — the reindeer-blood accident, the projectile-vomit bit, the grave-robbing incident — with a touch so light that the general nuttiness comes to seem a central (and essential) component of Finnish rural life.

Director Roland Suso Richter gives a raw, frank but sophisticated account of the excruciating logistics of this great escape, and the appalling, inspiring blend of betrayal and courage that attended the group's herculean efforts.

One of the sturdier superhero movies of the last couple of years, with monsters and effects and diabolical baddies to spare, a heart as big as a house and a love story that actually gets its hooks in you.

Culkin, a revelation here, mines every last nuance of the confusion and anger that results. Bursting with grenadelike one-liners and full-bodied performances, particularly from Sarandon (batty) and Goldblum (creepy) -- Igby Goes Down inaugurates a career that should be well worth following closely.

Yet Waiting for Guffman is never mean-spirited. Its weird warmth is perfectly embodied by Guest himself, whose flamboyant, stagestruck choreographer, Corky St. Clair, could have (in less ingenious hands) been a cruel, gay-bashing caricature, but instead becomes a hallucinatory Everyman.