Steamy and solidly entertaining.

One of the year's most consistently entertaining and ingratiating movies, building to an inspirational climax that's as rousing as it is predictable.

[McCarthy] marries beautifully spare compositions with comically abbreviated dialogue to craft something magnificent from a vaguely precious premise that could easily be the foundation for a parody.

The problem is that there's not a sympathetic character among the nasty, brutish males. And the women, except for a flashy cameo by a swimsuit-clad Paris Hilton, are given short shrift.

It's a credit to the actors, particularly the superb Campbell, that completely preposterous material can be made strangely touching.

Duplex, a shoddily constructed and alarmingly unfunny dark comedy that squanders the talents of Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore, is one real-estate deal you should walk away from.

The Rock deserves better than The Rundown, a brisk, good- hearted but predictable and uninspired - not to mention bone-crunchingly violent - action comedy.

The emotional honesty of [Lane's] performance provides a foundation that supports this shaky and often unbelievable Italian-set hybrid of "Shirley Valentine" and "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House."

An unholy mess.

Becomes almost laughably melodramatic and wields just about every rock-movie cliché in the book.

Who needs a big budget when you have a quirky script, an energetic cast and a soundtrack that features Union 13, the Blondes, Future Pigeon and Omega Man?

This contemplative drama manages to dodge mawkish potholes to emerge as a strangely life-affirming work.

Green's odd little movie is clever -- too clever, as it turns out.

The lazy story takes on a passion and urgency that peaks in an emotional finale.

I've seen Demonlover twice and still find the plot a challenge. I'd try again if I thought it would help.

This relentlessly mediocre romantic comedy is basically a pretty arthritic third-generation Xerox of "Annie Hall," with Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci in the old Allen and Keaton parts in a probably quixotic attempt to court the youth market.

Richard Jeffries' script tosses together bits of plot borrowed from such "bad things happen when you leave the city" classics as "Straw Dogs" and "Deliverance" without any awareness of how or why genre conventions work.

Diva du jour Beyoncé Knowles may be the draw, but the real star of The Fighting Temptations is the sensational gospel soundtrack.

Osment, playing a fatherless 14-year-old, has entered the sort of awkward adolescence that afflicts so many male child stars - and seems utterly intimidated by his esteemed co-stars.

Though it sometimes feels as if it's four hours long, Underworld has going for it an intriguing fantasy premise, an eventful plot and a look that is diverting, if finally a bit monotonous.

A typically well-acted, if ultimately minor, effort by John Sayles, the socially conscious indie icon who's unafraid to take on unfashionable subjects.

Thanks to the amateurish, spectacularly talent-free quality of its cinematography, direction, writing and acting, Emerald Cowboy is simply impossible to sit through.

Winterbottom's bold film, its gritty visuals offset by Dario Marianelli's lavish score, makes real the desperate lengths that refugees -- those running from poverty as well as dange -- will go to.

You don't have to be gay or Italian or live in Canada to enjoy Mambo Italiano, but a tolerance for ethnic mugging helps.

Part political thriller, part National Geographic travelogue, Tom Peosay's documentary is a distressing look at China's 50-year repression of the people of Tibet.

One of the year's most engaging films.

Anyone who regularly watches caper flicks will likely quickly figure out what's wrong with this picture, though the twist ending is likely to be a surprise for the less jaded.

It's the addition of Depp's corrupt CIA agent, Sands, that really makes this violent, over-the-top action film, with its maze-like plot, sing.