En route, we also get a chance to examine the nature of the self and the responsibilities of science. Das Experiment has all this and more, excitingly packaged as a prison movie featuring superb performances and high emotional tension.

Not only is Undercover Brother the funniest spy-thriller since "The Nude Bomb" (oh, behave), it feels like the proper sequel to "The Blues Brothers," crossing all kinds of lines between cartoonish buffoonery and genuine compassion for its characters.

This nearly perfect confection never takes its action more seriously than its comedy.

Signs blessedly displays a sense of giddy dark humor absent from Shyamalan's previous outings. It appears for much of the film he's merely having fun with the genre, goofing on its paranoid roots.

In elevating bawdy teen farce to political metaphor without squeezing the fun out, Alfonso Cuarón has pulled off a nice little miracle.

Captures David Bowie's meticulous identity quest with all the frenetic energy (read: slop) of a wildlife documentary on drugs.

A beautifully acted, carefully written meditation on one woman's grief, the enigma of imagination, the persistence of desire and -- let's face it -- the power of denial.

In the realm of B-movies about messing with nature, it's as enjoyable as "Frankenstein Unbound," and unlike, say, "A.I." it's intentionally creepy. It's also occasionally masterful.

Has a lot to offer as grand entertainment, from surprising battle sequences (plenty of terror, virtually no gore, brief and tasteful digital enhancement) to fine performances.

It's pretty safe to say that claustrophobic, gay-themed murder mysteries haven't been this much fun since "Deathtrap."

Not only an exceptional thriller, but a transcendent summer movie: It assumes, for two hours, you've brain and heart enough to stick with a film that doesn't condescend, doesn't beat you up and doesn't dumb you to death.

There's just no arguing with 12 centuries of flamenco, and, in this sensuous movie, no resisting it.

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

In tampering with history, these storytellers present to us a rare and wonderful case of enlightenment beyond the accepted truth.

Surprisingly manages never to grow boring -- which proves that Rohmer still has a sense of his audience.

While you think you're watching just another in a series of British gangster films, you may suddenly realize that you're watching what is, thus far, the year's best horror movie.

The story sustains a strong, hypnotic appeal well deserving of its many awards.

Ritchie's showmanship--half macho braggadocio, half emotion-tinged bravura--slaps and tickles the viewer into submission. He takes a group of not-so-goodfellas, whose idea of fun is setting farts afire, and, against all odds, makes them lively and engaging.

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

If there's any justice in moviedom, this summer's feel-good hit will be an unassuming Dutch comedy called Everybody's Famous!

It's a killing comedy for people who have learned to stop worrying and love their iden-tity crisis.

The movie's essentially a series of high-speed, dizzying rocket chases that should keep the young'uns perfectly quiet.

A happily self-aware body-count flick that's as brutally funny as it is plain-old brutal. A broad slash of scary, sci-fi fun, the project leapfrogs all the Scream and Last Summer junk to carve itself a new, high-tech niche.

This is a highly original film blessed with fetching complications all its own and some hair-raising turns of plot.

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.

There are a couple of technical rough spots, but this daring film challenges most widely held notions about religious conviction while providing a complex portrait of an identity crisis that's run amok and a good mind that's jumped the tracks.

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.

On one level, Together is a countercultural soap opera, though played more as bittersweet comedy than as drama.