If there's a soft spot in your heart for the sword-&-sandal epic -- and from the star rating above, I think you can guess where I stand -- then you'll swoon with giddy delight over Gladiator.

What keeps the film from becoming obnoxiously redundant is the conviviality of the comedians. These are funny people even when they're not telling the joke.

An amazingly self-assured movie, it percolates with themes and ideas, all held together by the gift of the bull's parts.

Perversely funny.

Built from a perfect story-telling collaboration.

Pegg and Wright are armed with an endlessly impressive arsenal of attention grabbers, from witty editing tricks to a wry soundtrack and a joke-packed script that demands multiple viewings.

The memories recalled here aren't epic tales, just moments that make life worth living. Like seeing a good movie. [12 May 1999, p.44]

Works on every level. The humor and language are as crude as an R rating allows, but Carell and Apatow's script is so hip, funny and - yes - innocent that it's never offensive.

A pleasure, chock full of creatively choreographed fight scenes.

Arguably Lumet's best film in 20 years.

Written, acted and directed so intelligently that it stands out from the pack, and is guaranteed to give you the warm glow of holiday movies past -- the kind that celebrated faith in human potential and the value of hard work.

The power of the arts to transcend cultural differences is presumably what moves the German to spare Szpilman, and, perhaps, is the key to Polanski's salvation as well.

Locks in on its self-destructive subjects so precisely, it's almost unbearable to watch.

Every once in a while, a performance pops out of a Hollywood movie that is so brilliant and unique to the matching of actor to role that it's impossible to imagine anyone else achieving it.

Given the near total absence of intellectually ambitious American movies today, a critic's first impulse after seeing Francis Ford Coppola's reedited Apocalypse Now may be to treat it as the new, improved version he says it is and proclaim it a masterpiece - if not in 1979, then now. But it's not that simple: Apocalypse Now Redux is not a new movie, and neither is it necessarily improved.

Exhibiting the same sort of patience as his sensible hero, Philibert has created an extraordinarily humane portrait of a partnership between one adult and his very fortunate charges.

Irma Vep is a glorious mishmash, like the medium it celebrates.

The performances are all terrific, but Gene Hackman is close to a career best as the family patriarch Royal, the most useless man you can't help loving.

A slick, fast-paced production with first-rate performances and an emotional punch you won't soon forget.

The movie is an actors' paradise, and absolutely no one disappoints.

Represents the year's biggest gamble - and it delivers the year's biggest and most ambitious fantasy.

It's not as clever, or as consistently funny, or as well-cast as "Shakespeare in Love," but Richard Eyre's Stage Beauty is the most fun I've had with the Bard since that 1998 Oscar winner.

Riveting update of George Bizet's "Carmen."

Darkly hilarious.

It's a slice of life, with all the trimmings, and one of the strongest films of the year.

28 Weeks Later has a stronger story line, equally fine performances, greater tension, enough gore to satisfy the most hard-core zombie fan, and a narrative pace that flings us from the opening scenes to the very last image.

A two-hour, one-joke comedy that never gets old, Stuck on You is the most mature, consistently funny and satisfyingly sweet movie in the rollicking careers of brother filmmakers Bobby and Peter Farrelly.

Except for Hempf, every character is under incredible duress, and the performances are exceptional. With his first feature, an Oscar nominee for foreign-language film, von Donnersmarck has certainly left his mark.