An exhilarating and at times operatic film.

Complaints? None, except perhaps a wish for more length, and a little more depth.

Tucci has crafted a poignant remembrance of a bygone era, and a touching examination of the responsibilities of creativity.

Dumont's movie has virtually nothing wrong with it -- aside from the fact that it drives people crazy. Take the leap, but expect no answers. Just like life, as they say.

An explosive experience...and you have to love the movie's rabid energy and lust.

Might be the most original film of the year.

Combining a seething physicality with enough weary nobility and tightly checked rage for a dozen wronged heroes, (Crowe) provides the movie's vital center of gravity without looming over his co-stars.

It's funny. Really funny.

The man (Apted) behind the excellent "7 Up" series has put a human face to science, making the seemingly abstruse both accessible and easily relatable.

This is certainly the best studio movie of the new year to date, and Douglas might even be remembered at next year's Oscars.

A smart, sometimes pissingly funny romantic comedy that is also oddly unmoving and predictable in spots.

The plot that propels them (Pitt, Roberts) along separate story lines is both unusually character-driven and a hoot.

Lacks scope and doesn't resonate grandly as a portrait of an American underbelly like Morris' earlier works do. But it still packs a wallop.

Has such perfect pitch in small matters that, as it builds, it proves no less capable in tackling bigger issues--and what begin as chuckles become deep belly laughs.

Topsy-Turvy is flawless, borne along by a savagely witty screenplay that Leigh directs like the gears of a clock.

Easily the best millennial movie, Don McKellar's Last Night is also the only one to use the idea of apocalyptic end-time as a vehicle to explore the absurdity of human desire.

A gritty, well-acted urban drama with lots of humanity.

Rises instantly above its genre merely by taking the time to develop its characters and scenario.

Never takes off, and much of the time Pool seems lost herself, resorting to clichés, redundancy, and dead-end allegory.

Allen's good with the material, but Hunt sparkles, repeatedly razoring her diminutive antagonist to shreds.

Like being jacked directly into Linklater's alpha waves, and the experience is bracingly new to movies.

Confident, mature, deeply conceived, and convincingly inhabited, it's a surprisingly humane film -- despite the close-range shotgun spray.

It's Zahn's heartbreaking performance that drives Riding in Cars with Boys.

Something of a featherweight, but it's also a positively divine comedy.

What matters is that the movie's a blast, right up until its protracted climax.

A teenage movie that trusts its audience -- it sounds crazy, but it's actually quite beautiful.

A wide-eyed, action-adventure throwback to the era of Disney's magnificent adaptation of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."

The results are both savagely funny and poignant for anyone who's ever had a friendship that felt like their only connection to the outside world.

Mesmerizing entertainment, but it's also a cop-out.

High drama this ain't. And yet, anyone looking for a hearty banquet of gymnastic, kung-fu tomfoolery won't walk away hungry.

Oy, it's such a pleasure that you'll be begging for Rush Hour 3.

The casting is sublime.

The results are far more real than MTV's The Real World.

The bubble-kid moms can whine all they want, but Bubble Boy is a liberated movie --liberated from tastefulness, of course, but also from logic, suffering, consequence, and temperance.

Marred by an unconvincing love triangle and an insincere dénouement, it's a story that nonetheless resonates as much as "Saving Private Ryan does."

Best of all is the supporting performance of The Jackie Robinson Steppers Marching Band, a real group of high-school musicians in which the three girls all perform.

The Spy Who Shagged Me is impossible-to-resist summer fun that left me feeling, dare I say, randy for more? Oh, behave.

The real revelation, however, is Keanu Reeves. His character is something of a caricature — a violent, white-trash wife-beater — but Reeves' portrayal is joltingly authentic.

Dares to substitute wit and warmth for the standard gay indie tropes in tackling its tale of an unconventional couple.

Liam is mostly an emotionally devastating chronicle of the disintegration of a family. The entire cast is superb, but Frears has cast two screen naturals in the lead roles.

It's such a sensory experience; in its best moments, the film washes over you like a fever dream.

Nolan's engrossing, backwards-ticking noir will run you so thoroughly in circles that you'll need to see it at least twice for maximum enjoyment.

"Trek"-heads will laugh hardest, but there are plenty of yuks for the uninitiated as well.

The politicizing is intense, but the actual game footage is even more engrossing; Carlson uses both digital video and 16mm film to put us squarely in the midst of the gridiron brouhaha.

This isn't a crowd-pleaser in terms of subject matter -- you've got a convict and a nun, with no love scenes -- but Robbins keeps it interesting.

In spirit, 101 Reykjavík is so Almodóvar that it could melt the polar icecap.

Optimistically explores how vastly different people can come together, and how any journey is more about what happens along the way than simply getting from one place to another.

It's a pleasure to watch these unhurried, character-driven vignettes when such great actors are anchoring them.

Brilliant, mind-boggling.

Never less than riveting.

Emblematic of the man's (Oshima) career: ironic, ambiguous, sublime.

Whenever Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon resorts to flying fists or soaring sword battles, the Force is definitely with it.

A bully good romp, and it thumbs its nose at the bloated blockbusters towering over it at the multiplexes by ending the moment it arrives at its raucous, richly deserved climax.

In a season of mechanized spectacle and brain-dead comedies, Bulworth is a brave and bracing exception.

A sentimental slice of 1950s Italian-American life that doesn't soft-pedal its characters' simmering prejudices within their insulated community, or pander to their dreams of getting out.

The film's technical brilliance and sentimental kick seduced many viewers unsuspecting of its polemical intent.

A riveting, unsentimental tragedy of unrequited love.

Hallström, a past master at cockeyed coming-of-age chronicles ("My Life as a Dog," "What's Eating Gilbert Grape"), has a near-genius for unpatronizing tolerance, and for seeing beauty in the world and nature and seasons without turning them into postcards.

This one's still worth checking out -- especially for the naturalistic performances by the feisty Touly and the rest of the young cast.

Smith and Fitzgerald are funny, feisty, poignant, and altogether realistic. Will they end up lovers, friends, side-by-side corpses? Their sharp performances make Series 7 as frighteningly addictive as crack, or even "Survivor."

Offers effortless charm, wit, and originality in spades.

Impeccably produced.

Basically one elaborate joke about male modeling and all the vanity, emasculation, and fatuousness that attend it. Fortunately, it's a good joke.

A literate, dialogue-driven treat delivered by a cast that truly savors the script's wicked wit.

As talented as Polley proved herself in "The Sweet Hereafter" and "Go," this is her best work yet.

This is such seductive entertainment that you might as well stop grousing and give in.

A delicacy for mature filmgoers who are able to derive as much pleasure from a perfectly, sympathetically crafted essay as from a well-spun yarn.

Not all of the jokes hit, but enough of them do that anyone who's ever filed, collated, or played Mixmaster DJ with the transcribing machine will find cathartic giggles in this breakout debut.

The nerviest, oddest, most outlandish and idiosyncratic American indie debut since "Buffalo 66," Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko defies description.

An outrageously silly movie that makes me laugh.

Myers has hit upon a genuinely original schtick, and that fact alone is immeasurably groovy.

Pie has some nice surprises and is enjoyable in a smutty, sitcom way. It offers up the outrageousness of "There's Something About Mary" without wallowing in cruelty.

May not quite be more than the sum of its creepy parts, but as a reality-is-fear launch into workaday darkness, it clearly points toward the horror genre's best destiny.

Though similar thematically to "Anywhere But Here," Tumbleweeds is a breath of fresh air that busts the cliches of dysfunctional mother-daughter sagas.

Some moviegoers are bound to take issue with the trick, "Sixth Sense"-style ending (or cynically see it coming), but The Others is mostly spooky fun, and a strong calling card for Amenabar.

Agnes Browne hums along as a series of pleasant vignettes, only frantically shifting to a single narrative track in its third act for the sake of an unbelievably upbeat ending.

Though unflinching in its savagery, Amores Perros is always compulsive viewing.

A 25-minute third act is far too short to suffice, especially when the previous two hours are as astute and technically impressive as they are here.

While both leads are appealing enough, it's the stuff on the sidelines that keeps All Over the Guy entertaining.

American History X is a crash course on how to make a message movie that resonates with crackling power.

A meticulously mounted film that retains the author's ambiguous characterizations yet is still emotionally accessible.

Too poignant and funny to be dismissed.

Actually, it's a childhood "A Clockwork Orange," a reverent realization of the late Stanley Kubrick's final obsession.

There's nothing more incendiary than the reopening of a forgotten chapter of history --nothing more incendiary than telling the truth.

Actually lighter, wittier, and more original than it has a right to be.

So packed with knowingly dreadful puns, wily sight gags, and self-referential cheek that it's impossible not to be charmed.

It's so easy to be mesmerized by Chocolat's brilliant indulgences that one abandons reason altogether.

The flutes soar a little too often, but Yimou's film is genuinely moving.

Goran Visnjic is such a sensitive, non-menacing gentleman that any woman would want him as her own personal blackmailer.

Most tenderly, the film deciphers the true meaning of its corporate-speak title in Franck and his father's impassioned struggle to ensure each other's welfare.

A cross between a Hogarth painting and an MTV video, Plunkett & Macleane cuts quite a swath.

Lynch's faith in the kindness of human nature has been renewed, yet thankfully he's never maudlin. Instead, he wins over our emotions with the film's understated beauty.

A fast, funny film that goes down like a cyanide-spiked piña colada.

There's lots of sweet music to savor in this snide industry satire.

Formally astute, visually arresting, and fearlessly horrifying.

Croupier should please people who take their noir straight up -- with plenty of twists.

Yields beguiling nectar.

It's got enough hilarious moments that, all in all, the film's bite is as toothsome as its bark.