Final is one big hunh? barely worth the effort; just because it doesn't make any sense doesn't mean it's art.

Vera's technical prowess ends up selling his film short; he smoothes over hard truths even as he uncovers them.

If the performances are the prime reason the film is as engaging as it is, it must also be said that Majidi's visual style seems far more sophisticated than in "Children of Heaven."

It's odd for a film to be both dramatically conventional yet emotionally bizarre at the same time, as this one is.

The film's biggest strength is the same characteristic that may cause people to underrate it: that the group of friends we watch onscreen feel not like England's greatest actors showing off, but rather a group of friends who have indeed known each other for years through life's little triumphs and large tragedies.

Tanovic describes it as "a very serious film with a sense of humor." It is an apt description for a very remarkable film, one of the best of the year.

Too bad it commits the crime of being so intensely average, because what could have been sensational turns out to be merely this week's heist movie.

It's always risky to characterize a new film as "unique," but Tuvalu, the debut feature from German director Veit Helmer, has as good a shot as any at claiming that label.

It's a pleasure to watch these two superb actresses circle and attack, conspire and conflict in the corporate shark tank, and it's just as profound a pleasure to behold a talented new filmmaker who's managed to succeed his first time out.

It's beautiful and obvious, a dubious combination that may nonetheless ensure its success.

The film desperately wants to play like "Three Kings," a war film with a guilty conscience, but it's too pat and familiar to earn its high-minded stripes.

Demy's films are often described in terms of music; this one is more like a tango in which one person leads and refuses to forfeit the position.

In the end, Code Unknown is a puzzle with no obvious solution.

If only good intentions were enough to redeem a picture, perhaps ABCD would be worth a look.

May display an energetic and promising talent, but it is also uncomfortably close to being a 105-minute music video, with all the problems that suggests.

If Dubus' work always resembled some sort of literary therapy session, as has often been said, then Field's version requires grief counseling. It is, at times, that devastating.

Too bad it isn't quite funny enough to be mistaken for "Jackass."

The sensitive art-house viewer should be warned: Though slow-moving at first, the film ends in explosions and violent death, with a level of sadism that will undoubtedly prove too intense for some viewers.

Beautifully made and performed, this is a film of considerable insight into both the life of the impoverished and the mystery of human personality.

A mess, but it's a rousing mess, with ample humor and action to satisfy the discerning dullard within.

Goes by relatively swiftly and painlessly, despite the completely ragtag nature of its construction, but there is not an inspired moment in it.

The new documentary Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy shows, all is not quite as it seems.

Atkins has trouble keeping the tension high and the jokes rolling. Halfway through he begins tripping over the noir genre's dark rules, and in the end he veers off into a haze of romantic redemption that Billy Wilder and Nicholas Ray would have scoffed at.

Since we know most of this cast is capable of acting, one must assume they received little instruction. Even if they did, who could blame them for not listening? After all, they are dealing with a script that tries to play scenes featuring drunken ghosts with silly accents for tragedy.

Happily, then, the first movie of the Harry Potter series casts a splendid spell, as screenwriter Steve Kloves has transcribed J.K. Rowling's novel nearly to a T, with precious little tweaked or trimmed.

In the end, The Fluffer is a film for the chastened romantic in us all -- gay, straight or "for pay."

If it had anything that even approached the vaguest vicinity of a plot, The Wash might be a cool diversion for a Saturday afternoon at the mall.

You'll feel fatigued watching it, but more out of empathy than boredom.

Inventive and richly researched, it's worth admission just to see Der Führer bickering with Mick Fleetwood as a feisty Pablo Picasso.

Morrow the actor tries too -- but he's a stylish director with a steady hand and a shaky eye (the scenes from Lyle's tortured point of view are dazzling, if not a bit unsettling). It'd make one hell of a TV movie.

Fortunately for the brothers, when your protagonist is personified as Jack Black, you can get away with a lot.

With a movie like this, there's no risk of spoiling the ending, because the entire plot is merely a formality trudging toward a foregone conclusion. The viewer's biggest challenge is to survive fits of yawning so violent they could disrupt ornithic migratory patterns.

Leguizamo is all twitches and spasms; there's not a bit of subtlety in his high-wire performance. By the time you get past it, the film bogs down in dime-store potboiling.

A film bereft of emotion, characters and words with more than two syllables.

Roberto Schaefer's cinematography keeps things visually interesting, but spending an hour and a half with a gloomy, static lunatic hardly makes for a scintillating evening out, no matter how pretty she may be.

Viewers expecting another enchanting, whimsical tale of high energy and mischievous spirits will be sorely disappointed.

For those partial to sublimely happy endings there won't be a peep of complaint. Only us recalcitrant souls will be left wishing Punks had just a tad more spunk.

As giddy and antic as any great Warner Bros. cartoon of the 1930s and '40s -- it bears seeing more than once, if only to allow for the sight gags that play second fiddle to the plot, a rarity in animation -- but also resonant and real. In other words, it's the perfect movie.

Not a film for everyone, but if you're in the mood for a little sensory overload, some spirited intellectual gymnastics and an introduction to the most intriguing new actress Europe has produced in years, get in line with the rest of the thrill-seekers.

The whole thing is best enjoyed while really drunk.

For three jerks bitching in a box, Tape makes the most of its minimalism. At its best, it's Betrayal for the Breakfast Club set.

Travolta is stuck giving a remarkable performance in a film so trivial and offensive its mere existence is as loathsome as it is laughable.

For all its long shadows and ominous atmosphere, this is a very funny movie -- as funny as the Coens' masterful "Fargo."

Isn't quite as offensive as it sounds, nor is it in any way rousing; Spacey and Bridges are watchable, but nothing more.

This movie is every bit the mess its title makes it sound.

This pallid little ditty, like the rest of Lance Bass and pals' oeuvre, is soulless, banal and derivative.

The challenge faced here by writer-director Robert Guédiguian (Charge!) is to keep his cheap melodrama from curdling his insightful societal appraisal.

Like hundreds of doomed movie protagonists before him, the hero of Life as a House doesn't have long to live. By the second reel, you may find yourself wishing his time on the planet was even shorter.

Neither sensuously sizzling nor daftly off-beat, Better Than Sex occasionally rises to its own modest occasion by gently reversing our expectations.

This bloody stab at William Castle's 1960 gimmick flick substitutes chaos for chills.

Like gathering storm clouds, Donnie Darko creates an atmosphere of eerie calm and mounting menace -- stands as one of the most exceptional movies of 2001.

Full of fits and starts, it never really gets going, stalling at every turn without even giving us enough of what we paid to see -- Snoop Dogg and gore.

Deeply moving and exceptionally gracious piece of documentary filmmaking.

Not to be missed.

A lacerating study of sexual alienation.

Yes, the movie is obvious at time, banging you over the head with its message, and the use of shadows on a wall can seem overly broad. But these are small complaints when compared to the film's many strengths.

This isn't entertainment for the faint of heart.

Of all the various low-budget documentaries chronicling the Star Wars phenomenon, Tariq Jalil's is certainly the most recent. There's not a whole lot else to say about it.

A visionary breakthrough for the young directors, a darkly alluring and largely successful attempt to crowd the territory of Roman Polanski and Dario Argento.

Lurie's politics aside, it's astonishing that a man who once reviewed films keeps churning out movies full of cinema's most hollow clichés; indeed, he turns out stuff that's even more disjointed and improbable than the most mediocre fare.

An overlong compendium of Oprah moments meant to move and inspire, even if, by the end, it's too exhausted with itself to offer up a single authentic tear or revelation.

While much of the film is as scattershot as life itself, there are a few superb sequences involving lucid dreaming that really get down to business.

For most people, four hours pushes the outer comfort limits for theatrical viewing. My Voyage to Italy is well worth the time, but bringing along a thermos of espresso isn't a bad idea either.

All the ladies get repeatedly naked, which, after all, is why you're going to go see it. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Pustules, puberty and pregnancy...seven stories tall! Mostly grand but occasionally grody

Delightful almost in spite of itself.

Swept Israel's version of the Oscars two years ago, and though it won't do as well here, it's an accomplished debut with heart, war and sex. In the age of paranoia, it just might be the perfect date movie.

Simply, the worst movie of a wretched year.

The best way to watch it is with a loaded bong, the volume turned down and the Orb cranked up on your stereo.

It's funny, heroic, exaggerated and, most of all, energetic; the film speeds along as though afraid to lose the audience's attention for even a moment.

While this road may contain too many potholes -- and plotholes -- to sustain an even ride, there are moments of greatness scattered throughout to remind us why Lynch is vital and why the French think he's so nifty.

As it stands, it's cute, occasionally poignant and outrageously implausible.

The pacing is slow, but the film is entrancing and earns a permanent place in the viewer's mind.

In the end, leaves you feeling both violated and startlingly informed, as if a mugger had whacked you in a dark alley.

While some of Max's pranks are exhilarating and funny -- the movie takes too long setting things up and, once the pranks are over, dawdles to its inevitable conclusion.

The movie's all flash and formula, as original as the letter A, especially when it collapses in a dung heap of gunfire and corpses.

With no aspects of the personalities represented outside of their music, Grateful Dawg ends up feeling dry and incomplete; its two subjects are stripped of all other characteristics and come across as not very interesting.

Weber uses Faye as base from which to branch out in bizarre directions.

Manages to be both astoundingly derivative and reasonably entertaining at the same time.

Out of prison, Milani is still not allowed to leave Iran. Whether she will ever get the chance to make another film there is doubtful, all the more reason not to miss this one.

The cast is uniformly excellent; all involved seem keyed into the subtextual subtleties of a story that, while simple on the surface, is exceedingly rich underneath.

Washington creates an indelibly charming and terrifying character whose volatile blend of dedication and horrible expediency keeps us off balance.

Serendipity already feels archaic, like some dusty relic that's been unearthed from an antique store's attic and polished off for display.

For better or worse, the filmmaker says nothing directly political about the cruel fate suffered by her people, but the dark poetry of her allusions is powerful.

The film could be subtitled "Six Characters in Search of an Ending:" When they find that ending, it is gently, delightfully uplifting.

Though perhaps too mainstream for the art-house crowd and too foreign for the multiplex, Born Romantic is a natural crowd-pleaser, and deserves to be more successful than its limited engagement may permit it to be.

Awesome! Bravura! Captivating! Dazzling!

A thoughtful, well-acted and well-observed (though bleak) look at what some people have to put up with to get through life.

Amid a rather routine plot and standard cop-show stylings -- just doesn't add up to much entertainment value.

Like all films constructed out of pop-culture effluvia, Zoolander runs the risk of being so last month; this is a movie that treats Fabio as the ultimate punch line and regards David Bowie as the prince of style.

As stirring as it is slight, as effective as it is familiar.

The lack of profanity or even alcohol (when in Mexico, the gang downs shots of hot sauce, not tequila) makes the film suitable for all ages, except for those old enough to want actual content in their movies.

Some of the finest ensemble acting this year.

OK, so you can't afford women who'll bare flesh for what you're paying. Then don't make an exploitation film!

Doesn't quite scale the heights it could and should, often because of its inappropriate humor, which could be blamed on cultural mistranslation.

It's an amazing story, but, in addition to its intrinsic interest, the Shackleton expedition has another remarkable draw: Crewman Frank Hurley had brought along not only still cameras, but a movie camera as well, providing us with an extraordinary record of the ship's voyage.

Though the film came out a year ago in the U.K., the timing here is unfortunate, and one has to wish that, like so many bigger productions, Liam could have migrated to a more-distant release date.

Worst movie of the year.