Murphy raw is better than the well-done ego served up in Beverly Hills Cop II. But he's become a brilliant wise guy, unlike his hero Richard Pryor, who can turn profanity into poetry and hipness into humanity. [11 Jan 1988, p.57]

Urgent, gritty, sometimes weirdly funny, The Fighter might be considered his first feel-good movie. But Russell's too honest and acute an observer to serve up affirmation without leaving a subversive aftertaste of ambivalence and unease.

Rabbit Hole deftly sidesteps sentimentality and still wrenches your heart.

Affleck directed, stars in, and co-wrote The Town, a suspenseful, fiercely paced movie about bank robbers that is also about love, brotherhood, and the desperate need to escape a crooked life. It proves that "Gone Baby Gone," his accomplished directing debut, was no fluke.

Crazy Heart gets to you like a good country song--not because it tells you something new, but because it tells it well. It's the singer, not the song.

The wonder of Invictus is that it actually went down this way.

A Single Man's sleek surface may go against Isherwood's crisp, understated prose, yet the story's beating, wounded heart and its spiky intelligence still come through, personified in Firth's moving, eloquently internalized performance.

There hasn't been a studio movie as unapologetically adult, sophisticated, and nuanced as Up in the Air in some time.

Slides gracefully between comedy and pathos (it aims for tragedy, but doesn't quite get there).

Hilarious, satirical and melancholy, Rudo y Cursi may not go as deep as "Y Tu Mamá También," but it has a similar vivacity. It turns this tale of brotherly bonds and sibling rivalry--a veiled allegory of the Cuarón boys themselves?--into one of the year's most memorable offerings.

An extraordinary documentary.

Though there was little surprise by the end--how could there be?--Notorious,' a movie about the life and death of rapper Christopher Wallace (a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G., a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, a.k.a. Biggie), still managed to stun, unsettle and move me.

Instead of losing myself in the story, I often felt on the outside looking in, appreciating the craftsmanship, but one step removed from the agony on display. Revolutionary Road is impressive, but it feels like a classic encased in amber.

Lyrical, original, misshapen and deeply felt, this is one flawed beauty of a movie.

The images of war that Folman and his chief illustrator, David Polonsky, conjure up have a feverish, infernal beauty. Dreams and reality jumble together.

Frost/Nixon works even better on screen. Director Ron Howard and Morgan, adapting his own play, have both opened up the tale and, with the power of close-ups, made this duel of wits even more intimate and suspenseful.

How you feel about Milk may depend on whether you've seen Rob Epstein's great, Oscar-winning 1984 documentary "The Times of Harvey Milk." Van Sant's movie lacks that film's shattering emotional impact. (Rage is not a color in the director's palette.) For those coming to Milk's story for the first time, however, this will be a rousing experience.

Australia is a shameless—and shamelessly entertaining--pastiche. It works because Luhrmann, a true believer in movie-movie magic, stamps it all with the force of his own extravagant, generous personality.

Desplechin is an inspired impurist. His Christmas Tale is untidy, overstuffed and delicious: a genuine holiday feast.

Eastwood tells his haunting, sorrowful saga with such a sure, steady hand, only a very hardened cynic could fail to be moved.

Let the Right One In unfolds with quiet, masterly assurance.

If we must have teen movies, let them all be as sweet and seductive as Sollett's smartly observed romance.

Most of the time, Demme's deliberately unstable mixture of moods and genres produces electric results. Rachel Getting Married takes a familiar subject--the raw nerves of American family life with--and draws fresh blood.

For a number of reasons The Duchess isn't all it could have been. It's fun, but falls short of fabulous.

That's the paradox that makes this parade of folly so much fun: it feels as if everyone involved is having a high old time, and their enthusiasm is contagious.

Tropic Thunder is the funniest movie of the summer--so funny, in fact, that you start laughing before the film itself has begun.

The remarkable thing about Jarrold's movie is how much of the book it manages to capture.

You may emerge more exhausted than elated. Nolan wants to prove that a superhero movie needn't be disposable, effects-ridden junk food, and you have to admire his ambition. But this is Batman, not "Hamlet." Call me shallow, but I wish it were a little more fun.

Once again, the Pixar wizards have pushed the animation envelope in unexpected directions and come up with a winner. Wondrously inventive, funny and poignant, WALL*E is part sci-fi adventure, part cautionary fable, part satire and part love story, which may be the best and most improbable part of all.

Intimate, moving and playful.

Perfectly reflects the range of this funny, disturbing and complex tale.

Schygulla's heartbreaking performance--like the movie itself--will stay with you long after the film's quietly devastating final frame.

Speed Racer creates a timeless, visually seductive world suspended somewhere between the pop '60s and the sci-fi future.

Downey and Favreau give the movie a quirky flavor it can call its own. For that we can be grateful.

Thanks to Ejiofor's wonderful performance--his easy, commanding body language wordlessly convinces you of his character's nobility--and Mamet's knowing take on the arcane world of Brazilian jiujitsu, Redbelt never loses its muscular hold on your attention.

If Forgetting Sarah Marshall doesn't reach the inspired heights of "Knocked Up" or "Superbad," it runs a very respectable second.

This movie is about giving us a privileged glimpse of the Stones in action. It's a record of an astonishing musical chemistry that has been evolving, with no signs of calcification, for nearly five decades. As a bonus, there are delicious guest appearances by Buddy Guy and Jack White.

A great horror movie is like a good shrink--and a lot cheaper, too. It purges us through petrification. That horror movie, thankfully, has arrived. It's called The Orphanage," and it is seriously scary.

There Will Be Blood is ferocious, and it will be championed and attacked with an equal ferocity. When the dust settles, we may look back on it as some kind of obsessed classic.

Wouldn't it have been more fascinating if, just once, they had to argue, as all debate teams must, against their own beliefs? That would have really tested these amazing kids' mettle--and the movie's too.

It's not to be missed in any language. In a year that has given us such marvelous animated movies as "Ratatouille" and "Paprika," this vibrant, sly and moving personal odyssey takes pride of place.

Of course, hanging over this ironic tale is the deeper historical irony--that many of the "good guy" rebels Charlie is funding (and we're cheering) will become our mortal enemies...It's as if "Titanic" ended with a celebratory shipboard banquet, followed by a postscript: by the way, it sank.

Depp is such a soulful presence he gives you a glimpse of this maniac's pain and pathos. Bonham Carter is extraordinary. She reinvents Mrs. Lovett from the inside out.

Forster's solid, unpretentious movie hits its marks squarely, and isn't afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve. Only a mighty tough viewer could fail to be moved.

No two-hour film could ever capture all the riches of McEwan's masterly novel. But Wright and Hampton's Atonement comes tantalizingly close, while adding sensual delights all its own.

Schnabel, screenwriter Ronald Harwood and Spielberg's great cinematographer Janusz Kaminski have found a way to take us inside Bauby's mind--his memories, his fantasies, his loves and lusts--transforming a story of physical entrapment and spiritual renewal into exhilarating images.

It sounds grimmer than it plays, thanks to Jenkins's sardonic, deadpan humor and the superb cast, who invest these damaged characters with rich, flawed, hilarious humanity. This bittersweet X-ray of American family dynamics may not be a Hallmark-card notion of a holiday movie, but it's one any son or daughter can take to heart.

Like most of this refreshingly subtle film, it's not what you expect, and it's not something you've seen before.

Brilliantly strange, often funny and ultimately heartbreaking film.

The cruelly funny Margot at the Wedding shares many of the virtues of "Squid"--it's psychologically astute, sociologically dead on, refreshingly unformulaic--but it's a considerably tougher, less ingratiating movie. People who insist on likable, "sympathetic" protagonists may find it a bitter pill to swallow.

Intelligent, deadly serious, made in a spirit of patriotism and protest, Redford's movie is more civics lesson than drama and doesn't pretend otherwise. It is what it is: a call to action.

There's a great story here, but it feels like American Gangster hasn't been mined for all its riches.

I'm not sure what kids are going to make of Bee Movie. The shiny, vivid computer-animated images pop off the screen with the vibrancy of the Pixar movies, but the understated, throwaway humor is pure Seinfeld: adult, observational, feasting on the small ironies of human (make that "beeish") behavior.

Gillespie’s movie walks a delicate line through a minefield of potential bad taste. Directed with patient, low-key sensitivity, it never goes for a cheap laugh at its protagonist’s expense.

A return to form after the flat "Life Aquatic," Darjeeling has a lightweight, coloring-book charm that deepens and darkens after these odd, privileged ducks are thrown off the train.

As a genre movie, The Kingdom delivers atmosphere, heroic American derring-do and some decent thrills, though director Peter Berg's approximation of a jerky documentary style suffers from its proximity to the more textured "Bourne Ultimatum."

It's the casting of Iraq vet and non-professional Jake McLaughlin as Specialist Bonner, who fought alongside Deerfield's son in Iraq, that strikes a deeper emotional chord. His scenes with Jones, fraught with a complicated mix of bitterness, concern and guilt, are the best things in the movie.

What this version offers is the chance to watch Russell Crowe and Christian Bale—two of the more charismatic, macho leading men around--duke it out psychologically, while another fine but less well-known intensity artist, Ben Foster, steals

As we watch the astonishing NASA footage, they eloquently evoke the optimism, anxiety and excitement of those voyages.

To blends sentimentality, shoot-outs and cool humor into a bewitchingly entertaining brew.

As a "Revenge of the Nerds" redux, Superbad isn't perfect. But it's super close.

For action junkies, The Bourne Ultimatum will be like a hit of pure meth. It's bravura filmmaking in the jittery, handheld, frenetically edited Paul Greengrass style.

It has the feel of a classic coming-of-age story. It's the sleeper of the summer.

Shankman and his screenwriter, Leslie Dixon, prove you can make a lightweight Broadway musical into big movie fun.

A vital entertainment that struts confidently between comedy and drama.

As taut and exciting as many edge-of-your-seat Hollywood escape movies.

The simplicity of Sicko's argument is also its power.

A film as rich as a sauce béarnaise, as refreshing as a raspberry sorbet.

Like many of Winterbottom's movies, it falls a step short of its full potential. Its tact is both its strength and its weakness. The climax feels rushed: it's the rare movie these days that feels too short.

This one is all about the boys. But as glad as we are to see them, watching the third installment is like attending a college reunion too soon after the last one: after the initial welcome, there's not all that much to say.

Judd Apatow is making the freshest, most honest mainstream comedies in Hollywood.

It happens to be one of the most wildly (and disturbingly) inventive animated films I've seen.

Where the original gave you something to chew on, the sequel is more interested in chewing on you.

For anyone who grew up worshiping at the shrine of Julie Christie, the notion that she could be playing a white-haired woman drifting into senility is a jolt to the system. But her radiance, beauty and talent are undiminished: she's hauntingly, heartbreakingly good.

The juiciest battle here is Spidey vs. Spidey, or, if you prefer, superego vs. id. When Peter starts to go seriously bad, the movie becomes seriously fun.

Wise, humble and effortlessly funny.

Summer hasn't arrived, but the funniest riff on a summer movie genre has already landed.

Kasdan has made a winning if overly pat first feature notable for its keen ear, its preference for character over plot and its refreshing modesty.

Comedy and suspense, satire and shame are all mashed together--with breezy confidence.

The nutty thing is, by the end of this jolly, oddly compelling and genuinely suspenseful documentary, the ridiculousness of such notions seems open to genuine debate.

Loach hurls us into the fracas, circa 1920, and creates such a vivid sense of the nuts and bolts of guerilla war you almost forget you are watching a period piece. Unlike the epic sweep of Neil Jordan's "Billy Collins," which spoke in a syntax closer to Hollywood's, "The Wind" doesn't paint over its political arguments with a patina of nostalgia.

There are times when you wish the movie was a mini-series. This is meant both as a tribute, for the Ganguli family is so engaging you'd be happy spending much more time with them, and an acknowledgment that a tale this expansive doesn't always fit comfortably within the constraints of a feature-length frame.

The movie holds you in its grip from start to finish.

A wonderfully taut cat-and-mouse thriller.

Suspended between the brutally graphic and flights of lyrical fancy, Pan's Labyrinth unfolds with the confidence of a classical fable, one that paradoxically feels both timeless and startlingly new.

A wicked delight. Adapted by playwright Patrick Marber from Zoe Heller's acclaimed novel, it's at once a comedy of cluelessness and class, a melodrama of two women in the grips of wildly inappropriate obsessions, and a "Fatal Attraction"-style thriller.

Children of Men leaves too many questions unanswered, yet it has a stunning visceral impact. You can forgive a lot in the face of filmmaking this dazzling.

Still, even if the movie's vast reach exceeds its grasp, it's a spellbinding history lesson. The Good Shepherd demands you watch it like a spy: alert, paranoid, never knowing whom you can trust, or who will stab you in the back.

A heartbreaking comedy that is simultaneously funny and sad, raunchy and sweet, funky and elegiac. These fresh, unexpected juxtapositions are a specialty of the writer Hanif Kureishi ("My Beautiful Laundrette"), a sworn enemy of cliché.

It's unprecedented, a sorrowful and savagely beautiful elegy that can stand in the company of the greatest antiwar movies.

The movie belongs to Hudson as the proud, self-destructive Effie. When she's center stage, Dreamgirls transports you to movie musical heaven.

Blood Diamond only skims the surface of many important subjects--the script doesn't begin to explain what the civil war was about. But if it opens a few eyes, it will have done its job.

The film is mostly successful in transporting the viewer to another age: the costumes, the body markings, the fierce Mayan masks, all feel right. And keeping the dialogue in subtitles was a smart move. Even better are the faces, which never fail to fascinate. But for all the anthropological research that went into the movie, what is Apocalypto trying to say?

It's hard to believe this is von Donnersmarck's first feature. His storytelling gifts have the novelistic richness of a seasoned master. The accelerating plot twists are more than just clever surprises; they reverberate with deep and painful ironies, creating both suspense and an emotional impact all the more powerful because it creeps up so quietly.

It's preposterous, but never dull: Scott whips the action into a taut, tasty lather.

This is comedy from the danger zone, and it will genuinely offend some folks who feel certain subjects are not to be laughed at. They'd best stay at home. Fans should be warned as well: Borat can make you laugh so hard it hurts.

Though it lacks "Wallace and Gromit"'s charm, its mile-a-minute inventiveness is impressive.

The great Spanish director's fourth triumph in a row--following "All About My Mother," "Talk to Her" and "Bad Education"--Volver (which means "coming back") flows effortlessly between peril and poignancy, the real and the surreal, even life and death.