Howard redeems this lumpy fantasy. Soft-spoken and mysterious, he presides over the movie with a dangerous, feline grace.

A hauntingly beautiful tone poem.

Builds dread masterfully, but don't expect solace or "fun." This is not for those who like mysteries neatly resolved.

With Saraband, the great writer-director has stepped back into the ring for one last epic wrestle with his demons. There is, as always, no easy outcome. But no one ever fought for higher emotional and spiritual stakes.

As long as it stays focused on showbiz, Bewitched is light, frothy fun. But Ephron insists on turning Bewitched into a love story, and that's when the fun starts to seep out of the movie.

Jacquet's movie is as visually ravishing as "Winged Migration," and more gripping.

Has a flavor all its own-sweet, whimsical, homegrown. A quirky romantic for the 21st century, July finds humor and magic in places where no one has looked before.

Press and Blunt are major discoveries: in this sly and wonderfully atmospheric gem, they conjure up the role-playing raptures of youth with perfect poetic pitch.

A mostly successful attempt to resuscitate a series soiled by silliness, sloppiness and Joel Schumacher.

Imagine "The War of the Roses" remade as a James Bond fantasy, with appropriately high-tech weaponry, and you have some idea of what Doug Liman's heavily armed comedy has in store.

Howl's Moving Castle has the logic of a dream: behind every door lie multiple realities, one more astonishing than the next.

As a history lesson (Depression 101), Cinderella Man feels a bit secondhand. As a true-grit tale of redemption, however, it lands one solid body punch after another.

It's one of those juicy stories that have the added virtue of being true.

Lucas manages to turn the audience's familiarity to his advantage: like a jigsaw puzzle whose final form has always been known, the fun is in discovering how the last pieces fit.

It's all kept light and funny, but underlying the broad sight gags is a movie that actually has something to say about competition, fathers and sons, machismo and caffeine.

What Mad Hot Ballroom lacks in depth, it more than makesup for in charm and vibrancy.

Fails to rouse any passion. A potentially great subject is frittered away, though this being a Scott movie, there's style to spare.

Explores both prepubescent and teen sexuality with an honesty that may make some people uncomfortable, which is a sign of its potency, and a badge of honor.

Gripping from start to finish.

An ambitious, intense, but overdetermined exploration of the varieties of ethnic intolerance.

Defies all laws of gravity in its pursuit of thrills and laughs—and it's so disarmingly eager to please that only a stone-faced kung fu purist could object.

It's gory stuff, but it's also a visually arresting blitzkrieg with action so bare-knuckled you'll leave the theater spitting out teeth.

Day-Lewis, who imbues Jack with a ravaged, Keith Richards charisma, is once again extraordinary.

Defies any expectations you bring to it. There are sights in Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's eye-opening documentary that will confirm and confound both right and left.

Smart, generous, as subtle as it is expansive, this is storytelling of a rare order. Six hours may seem like a big investment, but the emotional pay-back is beyond price.

Peaks early, then descends into portentous nonsense.

A meticulous, spellbinding, provocative depiction of the final days of the Third Reich.

Powerful images hook you immediately.

The storytelling is cheesy, but action fans won't want to miss the debut of the Next Big Thing in martial arts.

This clumsy attempt to merge Jane Austen's classic with Bollywood musical conventions falls painfully flat.

Andy Tennant's flimsy but generally likeable comedy is tailor-made for Smith's cheerfully suave comic style, and the movie goes out of its way to avoid any hint of sleaziness.

Inside Deep Throat is more scattershot than deep, but it vividly evokes the days when the "sexual revolution" was supposed to liberate the American libido.

Akin's raw, powerful, multileveled movie takes us places we never expected to go.

A smooth mixture of satire and sentiment that owes an obvious debt to "The Apartment," not to mention "Jerry Maguire."

It's sometimes hard to tell the characters from the candelabra. This lavish screen version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical is so chockablock with decorative detail the human figures are often competing with the decor for attention.

Ultimately, one's reservations are overwhelmed by the story's urgency; it's impossible not to be shattered.

DiCaprio is astonishing.

Pretty charming. Audiences may like it more than critics, but everyone should agree it's one of the most wickedly stylish movies of the year.

Spanglish feels hemmed in, visually monotonous. There are signs that a lot has been cut, and in trimming his film Brooks may have squeezed too tight: his movie needs breathing space.

It's a testament to his (Amenabar's) cinematic flair that he has taken as daunting a subject as euthanasia and turned it into a crowd-pleasing movie. It's also an indication of what feels wrong here. I can't deny that I was moved, but it all goes down a bit TOO easy.

Harris leavens the familiar suburban angst with dark humor, rich characterizations and a terrific cast.

Eastwood takes the audience to raw, profoundly moving places. If you fear strong emotions, this is not for you. But if you want to see Hollywood filmmaking at its most potent, Eastwood has delivered the real deal.

Busier, messier and thinner than its predecessor...the studied hipness can get so pleased with itself it borders on the smug.

Here's a surprise: of the four actors in Closer, Clive Owen is the least famous, but he delivers the most memorable performance.

Sometimes stunning, ultimately stupefying epic .

Mingling reality and fantasy, Forster has given us a luminous, touching meditation on life and art.

The vocal performances are a blast, Hunter's and Lee's in particular. The animation of the villain's tropical isle is stunning.

It's hobbled by the too-familiar conventions of the musical biopic: with so many chapters of Charles's life to cover, Hackford's movie never finds a rhythm, a groove, to settle into. It wins its battles without winning the war.

Ridiculous, and oddly unforgettable.

A meditation on love, faith and science in the guise of a thriller, the movie's a tad schematic, but thoroughly gripping.

In Sideways, Payne has created four of the most lived-in, indelible characters in recent American movies. This deliciously bittersweet movie makes magic out of the quotidian.

The folks who served up this formulaic swill seem to think comedy grants you a free pass from credibility. Our lonely hero's artificial Yuletide enthusiasm is more than odd: it's not recognizably human.

Films about great theatrical divas (so temperamental! So divine!) all strike familiar notes. This Somerset Maugham adaptation is no exception. But Annette Bening, playing the queen of the '30s London stage, makes it worth another go-round.

Few films have shown so powerfully the slashing double edge of sports fever.

It's a marvelous premise, and Crudup's serpentine performance has a venomous grace. But Jeffrey Hatcher's screenplay too often sacrifices psychological insight for bogus theatricality.

Full of invention, but under the colorful icing is a slightly stale cake.

Ultimately, Huckabees doesn't work. But it sure does stimulate. This is just the kind of "failure" we could use plenty more of.

It's like a spectacular roadside accident: you can't turn away.

It's hard not to be impressed by Kerry's courage and calm leadership--and to wonder if that guy will show up again.

Expect to be confused for 10 minutes. Then sit back and enjoy the ride.

Takes the prize. It's a bloody hoot.

It's poppycock, but well directed: Ruben delivers two or three guaranteed jolts, which almost make up for the copout of an ending.

It's a picturesque tale that, hobbled by its episodic structure, never achieves full steam.

Never mean-spirited, A Dirty Shame has some big laughs, but it's a one-joke movie that shows its strain well before the finish line.

A paint-by-numbers old-fashioned romantic epic, Head in the Clouds is neither romantic nor epic, but it does succeed at old-fashioned.

Nair and Witherspoon pull back from the ferocity of Thackeray's portrait: they're afraid we won't find Becky Sharp likable enough. Yes, she's the most brilliant, bold and vibrant creature in this social panorama, but she should also be chilling.

Mann vividly captures the nocturnal pulse of East L.A. in this taut, confined game of cat and mouse. In the homestretch the thrills get too generic and farfetched for their own good. But the first two thirds are a knockout.

A hugely entertaining thriller shot through with dark shards of agony and paranoia. It takes nothing away from the original while delivering pleasures all its own.

The entire solemn, portentous edifice that is The Village collapses of its own fake weight. Just about everything that makes Shyamalan special misfires here.

A mix-and-match crowd-pleaser that shouldn't add up, but delightfully does.

Packs an irresistible emotional punch.

The movie puts us in Maria's shoes, taking us step by suspenseful step through her physical and spiritual ordeal.

This hothouse tale of grief, sex and betrayal is told with a cool detachment that renders it commendably unsentimental--and slightly remote.

Unfortunately, none of this is very much fun. The cinematography is dark and depressing. The dialogue is stilted. And for some reason, director Antoine Fuqua has even ditched the Arthur/Guinevere/ Lancelot love triangle.

Amazingly, it's not all the visual splendor or killer action sequences that elevate Spider-Man 2 above its predecessor and almost every superhero movie that has come before.

That's the real problem with Fahrenheit 9/11: not the message, but the method… Moore’s default mode is overkill: he even notes that on the night before the attacks Bush slept on "fine French linen." Surely scratchy muslin wouldn't have stopped the evildoers.

Twohy knows how to shoot tense, bare-knuckle action, and his towering, gunmetal gray world is a fun sandbox to play in for two hours.

Glenn Close, Bette Midler and Roger Bart (who plays one half of a gay couple slated for Stepfordizing) are hilarious, and even Nicole Kidman flashes comedic gifts not seen since "To Die For."

This achingly funny film is a string of vignettes with no real plot, so it has periods of pointlessness--come to think of it, it's all pointless. But it has "cult classic" written all over it.

The result is a film that's really moving--and really moves.

Smart, informative and lively polemic.

Troy is a fun, energizing piece of summer entertainment, even if it doesn't have the depth or the sustained intensity of "Gladiator."

Hilariously odd and prodigiously inventive.

A piece of spectacular silliness, but that's not meant with disrespect. The key word is spectacular.

Along the way, not just the storytelling but the original intention has gotten muddled. You leave The Alamo uncertain of what you're meant to feel: is this a celebration of patriotic sacrifice or an illustration of war's futility?

Von Trier, however, undercuts the universality of his own message with his meretricious closing credits, set to David Bowie's "Young Americans," which explicitly turns Dogville into an anti-American screed.

There are no ideas, just repartee. Snoop Dogg, as a superfly snitch, and Vince Vaughn, as a drug lord, are wasted in obvious supporting roles. It's harmless fun--and too lazy to be more.

This sweet, sometimes clunky chick flick is a likable teen romance, but not likely to arouse the giddy swoons Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey generated back in ’87.

Sarah Thorp’s lazy script lurches from the lame to the ludicrous.

Instead of being moved by Christ's suffering, or awed by his sacrifice, I felt abused by a filmmaker intent on punishing an audience, for who knows what sins.

Hamer, a meticulous observer himself, is a minimalist with heart.

The creepy subtext of his (Sandler's) behavior is something this crude, mirthless comedy tries not to notice.

The rage and sadness behind this film -- the first from Afghanistan since the Taliban's fall -- is matched by its artistry.

The tale is a bit too insular and claustrophobic for its own good: in the end these characters lack the depth and complexity to resonate deeply. The pleasures of The Dreamers stay mostly on the surface. But when the surface is as stylish and sexy as this, it's hard to complain.

By the end of this white-knuckle movie, you stand in awe at the depth of man's will to survive. Touching the Void leaves you emotionally and physically spent, and grateful it was only a movie, not a mountain, you had to endure.

As he did in “The English Patient,” Minghella artfully weds movie-movie romanticism with a dark historical vision. The man knows how to cast a spell.

Newell, no hack, tries not to milk the cliches shamelessly, and that may be the movie's final undoing. Lacking the courage of its own vulgarity, Mona Lisa Smile is as tepid as old bathwater.

Novelist Andre Dubus's plotting may be too much for a two-hour movie. But the story's details feel fresh. The vivid clarity of the images, the compressed fury of the tale, are impossible to get out of your head.