The love and attention Oshii poured into animating Batou's pet basset hound proves that the human instinct dominates even in a movie dependent on technology.

Inordinately clever, sprightly romantic comedy.

Harris convincingly creates one "Pollock" after another over the course of the movie.

Critics are already comparing the two movies and largely agreeing that Tarantino?s story about a psychopathic stuntman who targets women for highway carnage is the best. I disagree.

In making such an appealing movie about characters who are usually swept under the Hollywood rug, Binder does us all a service.

For Hobbitués and adventure fans of all other ages, it's the year's best thrill ride -- maybe the best film.

When it comes to sports movies, there's nothing like the real thing, and there's never been anything quite as real as the documentary Murderball.

This powerful, compact trilogy speaks volumes about women in Iran.

First-time filmmaker Edet Belzberg may be the first person to assign any value to the lives of the homeless Romanian youngsters featured in her harrowing documentary.

A droll gem that celebrates movie love with feeling and deadpan humor.

The sniper's life is a lonely one, full of shallow breathing and delayed gratification. Solitary as it is, Jude Law manages to get a little action in the bunkers of wartime Stalingrad in the ambitious but sometimes inadvertently silly Enemy at the Gates.

This is likely the fastest-moving intentionally funny action movie ever made. It's as if the 21 Bond movies and four "Die Hards" had been distilled to remove their body fat (that is, character development, buildup, rest stops, etc.) and left us with only the killing and the punch lines.

Fascinating, amusing and ultimately disturbing.

This winning documentary about fifth-graders who learn ballroom dancing is one of those movies that make the world a brighter place.

Each man winds up owing the other -- and the enormity of the sacrifices they make on one another's behalf are quite moving and have not been duplicated in the movies since.

This is the film that fulfills whatever promise Kristen Stewart has shown for more than a decade.

If there is any justice in the world, Farnsworth will be remembered at Oscar time.

The darkest, most thrilling entry yet in the movie franchise.

As tawdry as this may seem, Bertolucci is not trying to one-up himself. He was 27 when the student riots occurred and very much a participant in a revolution that was both complex in its implications and naive in much of the behavior. He has caught that perfectly

Based on the true story of the first emperor of unified China, could be downsized and told as an American Western.

The film is too sprawling in extent, too noisy as to background music and voices and much too obvious in the application of its social significance notes. But while it isn’t the best picture to come out of Hollywood this year, nor is it Capra’s masterpiece, it tells a good story and its conclusion has a heart-warming effect on the audience.

Goldfine discover so many fascinating themes within their seemingly narrow subject that anyone with the slightest interest in history or human nature will find it absorbing.

It's as harrowing as moviegoing gets.

The strength of McKay's film is not in identifying a cultural period, but in giving voice to so many great theater people. Their passion is infectious, their stories are priceless and their humor is boundless.

A beautifully rich performance by Meryl Streep, [18 September 1998, p. 57]

As strong on action as it is weak on the interpersonal stuff. If Bond can get a new car for each episode, how about some new pickup lines?

The naturalistic dialogue is a masterful bit of writing, credited to Linklater and his "Sunrise" co-writer Kim Krizan, as well as to the two stars.

Makes hoops look like the sexiest game in town.

"Chocolat" was just a warmup for the stunning display of the male form against National Geographic settings in her new Beau Travail.

Gripping documentary.

I wouldn't recommend the movie to anyone, but if the families of the victims take something positive from it, as their cooperation with Greengrass suggests they do, that's justification enough.

When boy meets girl in Steven Soderbergh's jaunty, sexy Out of Sight, it happens with a bang.

The inexplicably terrifying ending is good for a month's worth of nightmares -- no small thing for a movie in such a saturated field.

Gives moviegoers a funny, observant, evanescent approach to the mysteries of human desire.

Bernie Mac gives surprising wisdom and heart - along with the laughs - to what could have been just another generic baseball comedy.

Linklater's ravishing new movie represents a bold leap into the possibilities of technology.

In this cross between film noir and melodrama, there's lust, need, camp and betrayal.

It's not just a movie about an underdog who fights the odds, it's about following one's heart -- despite the obstacles.

A powerful movie that should win all the year's ensemble acting awards. Pitt has never done better dramatic work, Blanchett is as convincing as always, and - in introducing themselves to American audiences - veteran Mexican actress Barraza and Japan's Kikuchi are revelations.

Man on Fire, with a best-ever Denzel Washington, is the first (nonreligious) sure thing to hit the multiplex this year.

The performance of the movie is Liev Schreiber as Shaw, a man howlingly uncomfortable in his own skin.

The plot is intricate and tight. The preamble is a bit challenging to sort out. But the movie's engine is the relationships and the characters' inner lives, all of it boiling with emotional intensity.

Clever, buoyant and surprisingly human.

The feel-good movie of the summer. And the song this pimp works up, about how hard it is to manage a stable of ho's, is catchy and moving.

For a black comedy whose tangled sequence of events is completely improbable, Pedro Almodóvar's Volver feels absolutely authentic. So, think of everything as metaphor and enjoy one of the year's most delectably twisted treats.

Spider-Man is an almost-perfect extension of the experience of reading comic-book adventures.

Once Were Warriors has more to say than the traditional TV-movie about spousal abuse. But some viewers will have to pay a price: This is a movie that requires strength and fortitude to sit through.

No matter which floor you're on, the huge cast is extraordinary, and Altman gives the actors free rein to bring their characters to life despite such close quarters.

A sublimely uplifting movie.

Harris brings into focus a nearly forgotten success story, filling in another blank in the ultimate mosaic of the 20th century's greatest tragedy.

A brilliant if slow-paced movie about one man's unwitting journey into adulthood.

Overwhelmingly powerful.

Whether Adam Sandler can actually act is not actually answered in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love. But he's great in it.

A pitch-perfect gem.

It's a sensation - both a milestone in computer-animation and a likely Christmas classic.

Beautifully shot, both in darkened homes and on the misty green Irish landscape by Loach's frequent cinematographer Barry Aykroyd, "Wind" has a you-are-there intensity and intimacy about it that make it nearly overwhelming. But for all its violence and subsequent sadness, it's a movie of extraordinary importance.

Noir has never been this bright.

If you're at all curious about what it feels like to be inside a race car going 200 miles per hour at Daytona International Speedway, I don't think there's a better, quicker or safer way to find out than Simon Wincer's documentary.

But there were few, if any, better performances in 2000 than the one Blanchett gives here, and Raimi's crafty blend of dramatic realism and supernatural knowledge is one of the year's best directing con jobs.

A great divorce movie. It's also one of the canniest comedies ever made about a certain kind of literary pretension.

Life-affirming story of love, kinship and sacrifice.

This quiet yet jolting meditation on love, obsession, loneliness, friendship and fate has the quality to entrance you through a first viewing, and compel you to take its themes and characters home with you for further consideration.

The whole system was sadistic and indefensible, and the church, looking the other way as long as profits rolled in from the laundries, deserves the scorn that Mullan and his fine cast heap on it.

The story is compelling, but Metropolis is such a visual masterpiece, it's easy to get lost within its seemingly endless layers of graphic complexity.

A riveting rock documentary.

One of the most inventive, funny and ultimately tragic coming-of-age movies in years.

Haneke has made a masterly, disturbing movie.

An audacious, snappy visual and emotional feast of dishes both familiar and fresh. It's the first really good movie of 2001.

The action is tightly focused and well-paced.

The same audience that loves "March of the Penguins" will eat up this beautifully told, gorgeously shot story of a grieving boy trying to return his pet cheetah to the wilds of South Africa.

This is Guest's fourth ensemble parody of showbiz subjects, and though his sketch-comedy style and acting troupe are now familiar, this is his most accomplished movie.

The effects in "T3" are spectacular, and the action sequences -- particularly the fights between the good and bad terminators -- are exhilarating.

A movie that is pure escape and good, clean, unadulterated fun.

Feels like an old-fashioned movie in the way it deals with bold sacrifices made in the name of love, while its setting and chary view of the era's political machinations mark it as distinctly modern.

Gently hilarious comedy.

It has the most beautiful ending of any American film in years, a coda of reconciliation and remembrance set in a gentle L.A. rain.

This mercilessly intense movie is definitely not for the faint of heart. The atmosphere remains highly charged from beginning to end. There’s no letup, nary a suggestion of humor to break the tension. The viewer remains as stunned and repelled by the action as the movie’s well-bred narrator, an idealistic young volunteer (played effectively by Charlie Sheen) who naively expects to find himself by sharing the mud with the mostly poor and uneducated grunts.

It's a deceptively simple tale that tackles, serenely and with surprising humor, issues of gender, power, custom and change.

"I write 19th-century stories; they're supposed to affect you emotionally," says Irving, explaining why Tinseltown keeps knocking at his door.

What follows is an extreme case of reverse courtship, which begins at conception and works backward toward getting to know each other, and then moves forward to one of the funniest birthing scenes ever filmed.

If the structure is a tad out of whack, "No Country" does not lack for action or suspense. Some of the scenes of Chigurh's stalking of Moss are nearly unbearably tense. Bring your worry beads.

A small miracle of comic social portraiture, a sometimes affectionate, sometimes ironic study of a specific group at a specific moment. His work is deeply evocative and enjoyable.

A delightful and endearing romantic comedy with the shape and resonance of a Jane Austen novel.

In Wide Blue Road, his (Montand) character and the wages of desperation are much more complex. Here is the real lost Atlantis.

This stirring children's movie about separation anxiety is swimming with comic references only adults will catch, thus greatly expanding the potential audience.

Seeing the splendid new version of Pride & Prejudice can be hazardous to your health: There's a very real danger of swooning.

Passes like an evening spent with friends.

School of Rock may be to Black what "The Nutty Professor" was to Jerry Lewis, or "Groundhog Day" was to Bill Murray - that rare, perfectly tailored opportunity to play against one's broadest impulses. Not to neutralize them, necessarily, but to tame them and turn them into something very human and charming.

A rare blend of comedy and tenderness whose point is not the horrors of war but the lengths a parent will go to protect his child's innocence.

One of the most honest and harrowing depictions of female adolescence ever put to film.

Tony Gilroy, co-author of the superb Jason Bourne film trilogy, makes a stunning directorial debut with Michael Clayton, an out-of-courtroom drama that helps solidify George Clooney's acting bona fides.

Kempner demonstrates how the star's success and dignified bearing inspired a generation of Jews to fight through the ethnic barriers in all fields.

Though made 31 years after D-Day, the dramatic scenes have the period look of a '40s movie, which links them perfectly with the stunning archival footage.

Rarely do adaptations of stage plays work on screen, and almost never do they work as well as this one does. Most remarkably, the dryly comic "Moon" is virtually a one-man show.

Bar-Lev has created a film remarkable in its ability to capture both the worst and best of human nature.

There is a little of all of us in their awkwardness, fears and neuroses, and we root for their success in the mundane as if they were ascending Everest. Elling is still in the running for 2002's most uplifting movie.

A love story told from the point of impact, at the heart, and no conventional resolution could be more profound.

Less bloody than its predecessors, Lady Vengeance wraps up with a killer (literally) finale that calls into question the killer instinct. It's one of the reasons Park's brutal films are so emotionally rewarding.