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

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

Come Undone is the quintessential gay date at the art house.

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

A preachy, monotonous failure hyped as a follow-up to his incendiary 1991 debut, "Boyz N the Hood."

An absurdist semi-romance between two traumatized somnambulists.

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

Strictly where the boys are: posing, posturing, and talking engine envy.

Murphy's second outing as the M.D. who talks to the animals is surprisingly engaging.

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.

For the most part, it's when the women do the singing -- that Songcatcher really comes alive.

Game boys and girls will be disappointed by this fast-paced but shockingly dull adaptation.

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

Demonstrates that even if you live in a country intimately familiar with fascist occupation, you might still not have the least clue how to communicate that experience on film.

Swordfish is exactly the kind of nominally high-octane actioner that breeds legions of apologists who will encourage you to "check your brain at the door" before seeing it.

Reitman has truly lost his gift for comic rhythms, cluttering up the film with running yuks that aren't that funny the first time and certainly don't improve with repetition.

The overlapping dialogue and the comedy of famous people playing self-variations is pure Altman (Leigh, not surprisingly, has worked in three Altman films).

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

Slow as a funeral dirge, the movie's all talk about art and passion and obsession without anything to show for it.

The worst thing about The Animal -- is how frequently it becomes boring.

Struggles for any kind of movement and cohesion -- and most of all for any kind of humor.

The naked, artless display of nerve and rebellious bile is altogether unique in modern movies.

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

The cast is largely nonprofessional, and the story has the simplicity of myth.

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

What comes before and after the sound and fury of the bombing raid are reams of banal dialogue.

The film's a vacuous bore.

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.

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

But it's Lopez's movie, and its limitations are hers: Both actress and movie tackle emotional turmoil with a minimum of insight.

What sells Shrek is ultimately the full-bodied personality of its characters.

It's the kind of flourish that makes you smile -- that makes you believe in the power of movies.

The film ends with a surprisingly upbeat coda. But Startup.com leaves us with a sense that our heroes' idealism will be forever lost.

A clumsy, witless cartoon version of E.B. White's rather uncelebrated children's story.

The film is never less than a satisfying mix of compelling entertainment and social critique. The performances are uniformly superb.

The most obvious casualty ends up being Jennifer Jason Leigh, an actress known for her fearless choices, who is literally pissed on for her trouble.

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

Simply a pleasant diversion rather the paean to crazy-in-love classics it would so like to be.

The backdrop of exotic pagodas and wartime woe isn't nearly potent enough to buoy the feeble drama that plays out in the foreground.

One of the year's best films, and certainly its most challenging so far: At more than three hours, watching it is less like consuming entertainment and more like living.

Makes for compulsive viewing even though its noirish plot doesn't make a lick of sense.

Ozon -- has finally hit a home run, and Rampling is his most remarkable RBI.

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

Like "Pollock," Nora is a convincing portrait of the intersection between creative genius and crazy, all-consuming love.

The Forsaken discourages one from caring in the least how its breed of vein-tappers came to be, or even what will happen if they take over the world.

As its plot is entirely negligible, whether or not you enjoy One Night at McCool's probably depends on how funny you think the performances are.

It's "Shampoo," 30 years after. What a surprise, then, that this effort ranks lower even than the Steve Martin remake of "The Out-of-Towners."

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

A slick, simplistic, and laughable effort that's reminiscent of a bad Jerry Bruckheimer film. A really bad Bruckheimer film.

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

Wincer keeps the insubstantial story moving and the comedy light.

A punishing tragedy that could best be described as the anti-"Shine."

Almost nothing happens for most of the movie.

It's a gleefully unfettered gross-a-thon first --also second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth -- and a movie perhaps seventh.

Offers nothing but tired "Red Shoe" Diaries-style sexploitation for the art-house crowd.

Moviegoers of any (or no) religious persuasion can share in the simple satisfaction of his tense, well-spun murder mystery.

What's right as rain with Diary is the casting.

This talky, self-important flick is a bore of biblical proportions.

Naturalistic, gritty, and unrelenting.

A full-throated shout-out to the lowest common denominator.

Dippy, funny, and fast-paced enough to be a guilty pleasure.

The characters and their dilemmas are never convincing.

This fictionalized, frequently stomach-churning biography of Australian criminal Mark Chopper Read features the most bloody ear-severing scene since "Reservoir Dogs."

A watchable mediocrity at best.

With the dependably compelling Freeman present, even its worst moments are not unwatchable.

The only constant is the violence, which assaults rather than amuses.

So breathtakingly textural, so empathic in its images, that it transcends its context and achieves timelessness.

The dialogue is trite and tinnily recorded, and the actresses have the chops of high-school drama students.

The voyage is never less than interesting, even when you have no idea where it could possibly go.

One more attempt to pass off chopped liver as foie gras.

If you can overlook its condescending wholesomeness and static, visually drab, endlessly repetitious animation, then you have a more forgiving soul than I do.

Plays like a Chinese "Cinema Paradiso," full of feeling without succumbing to sentimentality.

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

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

Rodriguez has made a movie for kids, and the most and least that can be said about it is that parents, while hardly being catered to, will experience profound relief that the movie knows how to entertain and does so.

There aren't even any naked chicks in it. What the hell is up with that?

Starts as light, fluffy fun but becomes so blithely preposterous that it ceases to exist.

For a modest film, however, Too Much Sleep is a modest surprise.

No matter how quotable the one-liners, the movie remains a far stretch from truth or insight.

Folks who are desperate to ogle Hewitt and Weaver probably can't be warned off this turkey.

A thoroughgoing mediocrity that musters up just enough low-down chuckles to remind you that you're not watching another Freddie Prinze Jr. yawner.

The movie is more or less competent for being what it is. Of course, I could say the same of most brick walls -- but I'd hardly recommend that you pay eight bucks to sit in front of one for two hours.

Gay jungle sex (gasp!), gone-native intellectuals, tribal rituals (gulp!), cannibalism (none of which the film shows, by the way) -- it sounds like a "Weekly World News" front page, not the thematic fodder of a highbrow non-fiction film.

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

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.

A disarming helping of Capra-esque corn served up by writer-director Rob Sitch.

McDonald makes for an appealingly befuddled bloke, and the sprightly Montgomery would turn any blighter's head. In a better movie, we'd care about what happened to them.

An elegant, haunting folktale.

Deserves to be applauded for not casting Freddie Prinze Jr., but this sloppy, somnolent, strung-together flick pales when compared to such other teenage riffs on classic literature as "Clueless" and "10 Things I Hate About You."

Boasts a fine cast and makes enough cogent points that it rises above standard cop fare.

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.

Shows its roots early on: Mixing the high camp of "Strictly Ballroom" with Monty's gritty milieu, the film comes off as little more than a contrived composite, despite the best efforts of pros Rickman, Richardson, and Griffiths.

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."

Provocative but lame-brained polygamy comedy.

Oak-stiff and witless, but a few scenes muster up embarrassed chuckles.

Duller-than-a-Vitalife-convention compilation of talking heads.

Hits the wall and runs off the rails. They should've stuck to shtick.

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