Soberly and responsibly, a small but significant film called Inhale, starring the underrated, charismatic and terrifically accomplished Dermot Mulroney, has arrived without fanfare or big-budget ad campaigns to capture some well-deserved attention.

Filled with nuance, intricate emotion and a refreshing absence of melodramatics, Conviction is a moving exploration of light and love shining through the darkness of despair. Its impact cannot easily be shaken.

There is plenty of excitement and pulse in Hereafter, as well as a reluctance to provide easy answers to life's great mysteries. I'm happy to see a great director take on the challenge of new and different material with his customary grace and impressive two-fisted technique intact.

The filmmaking works in and of itself, but that Lakewood feels so emotionally in tune with its lead actress is a feat all on its own.

This is one terrific movie about one terrific horse. It enthralls on so many levels-emotional, cinematic, historic.

This film transcends its trendy, obvious limitations with enough vitality and vitriol to make it as informative and breathless as it is entertaining.

Kristin Scott Thomas breathes new life into a woman who was invented by Flaubert and copied by Francoise Sagan.

I found Howl a fascinating and imaginative evocation of mid-20th-century liberation, a mere and merciful 90 minutes long.

A movie only a hedge fund manager could love.

The effect is genuinely creepy, but do not even think of seeing Buried if you suffer from claustrophobia.

It's still worth seeing for its two dazzling centerpieces.

Instead of originality, The Romantics recycles the same material with a lot of noise masquerading as style, and no substance whatsoever, producing a grotesquerie of caricatures from central casting that are dead on arrival.

Legendary is a soap opera with steroids.

This first-cabin director returns to top form, with this revelatory film his best in years. More than that, Mao's Last Dancer is a masterpiece.

What will happen to the man-boy when he's all man and can no longer slouch about in baggy pants and hoodie sweatshirts with perpetually flushed cheeks?

Among the most gripping, well-paced, acted and directed, and generally thrilling of anything that I've seen (yet) this year.

A grim, toxic, psychological British thriller, brimming with surprises, that always manages to be quite a bit more than it appears on the surface.

What emerges is time pleasantly spent with a slice of life that examines a romantic détente between two cultures. Like smoke from an Egyptian hookah, the melancholia lingers.

One thing that defies debate: Zac Efron is going places as an actor of value. But he deserves better movies than Charlie St. Cloud.

Resonating with warmth and sardonic wit and containing a majestic performance by Robert Duvall.

The film knocks itself unconscious trying to be whimsical and offbeat, but is so contrived that it is as embarrassing as it is unfunny.

Salt is about as believable as a secret training program for military pilots consisting entirely of kangaroos in flight helmets. But it must be said that the star carries her load admirably.

What some critics praise as astute and compelling, I find juvenile and fraught with hysteria. There's no arc here, no real pathos, and the direction is like watching snow melt on the side of a road.

The movie is about how he learns to show what's in his heart even when he can't find the spoken words to express his feelings aloud. Under the careful guidance of Mr. Nunez, Mr. Becker does both, in ways that reminded me of a Hispanic James Dean.

I'd like to tell you just how bad Inception really is, but since it is barely even remotely lucid, no sane description is possible.

The kids make stunning debuts, but their accents are thicker than porridge, rendering a good 90 percent of the dialogue so unintelligible that it might as well be in Swahili. Some subtitles are provided out of necessity, but not enough.

Valhalla Rising is nothing more than an updated version of the kind of time-honored Hollywood Viking movie Kirk Douglas used to do in his sleep, which means lots of inhuman, bone-crunching violence and no plot.

Some people might blindly and inaccurately accuse this movie of attacking family values, but it has exactly the opposite effect. Touching and funny in their upheaval, the people in The Kids Are All Right open the door to a brand new examination of family values that leaves you charged and cheering.

Even Helen Mirren on a bad day is better than nine out of ten American film queens polluting movie screens on any given Sunday, but really, this is one time she should have stayed in bed.

A documentary so real and unflinching (and at times deeply frightening) that it's hard to watch, but it is one of those film experiences that you'll feel glad about getting through.

This movie will undoubtedly be compared to the Brangelina mashup Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and with good reason-it has the same combo of quips and physical tricks, the same somewhat overwhelming chemistry between its two leads.

It still has a long way to go before the term Mumblecore (which sounds like a Harry Potter major at Hogwart's) can be confused with the term Class Act.

I Am Love fuses the past with the changing future in a marvelous traditional narrative without a shred of the sloppy trends of contemporary filmmaking.

Everything works miraculously here, making Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky one of the most bountiful experiences of the year.

It's all about personality and Joan's inimitable style, which fills every second of its 84 minutes.

Young Mr. Eisenberg and a fine cast give Holy Rollers the ballast it otherwise lacks, but we've been down this road so often that there are times when I could only wonder why I was watching it at all.

Solitary Man comes on the heels of last year's "A Serious Man" and "A Single Man," so it's small wonder that confusion reigns. But this film, co-directed by David Levien and Brian Koppelman (who also wrote the screenplay), is the best of the three.

Letters to Juliet comes off as just another movie that makes you long for a trip to Northern Italy-but not with any of these people.

It's uneven, but its optimistic message-lost causes can find strength through friendship and bonding-is contagious.

The story behind Touching Home is more inspiring than the film itself, but don't let that deter you. It's the kind of can-do miracle that reminds us all that anything can happen and everything is possible.

It is all very-very-very entertaining.

As the film builds to a feverish hysteria, you have to work hard to keep from laughing.

A flawless film of heartrending realism about the eternal chord that binds parents and children and the emptiness when they are separated.

One of the least likable characters (Cox) in recent memory--irascible, but with moments of real tenderness--he’s the reason this strange movie takes on a perverse charm that is uniquely its own.

Michael Caine is such a consummate actor that it's a major cause of concern to see him in Harry Brown, another hateful vigilante flick the wags in England have already labeled Dirty Harry Brown for reasons that are immediately obvious.

At a time when every penny counts, where do they come up with the money to finance a movie this boring?

Staying awake during this ordeal of incompetent, incomprehensible stupidity is not difficult. It’s so noisy that you can hear it in the next town. Staying interested is something else entirely.

Instead of the feel-good comedy they intended, you are left with the suspicion that the movie is really about a man suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness for which there is no cure.

Every complex member of the writer’s legacy has an agenda, with varying gains and losses, and the power of the film rests in the way it captures so many tangled lives as they cross and intersect at curious angles. The camera is literal, so the film sometimes fails to escape its roots of literary inspiration. This did not bother me. How many times do you get the chance to curl up with a good movie?

It’s rare to see a film directed by a woman who knows more about men than they themselves do. With Handsome Harry, the widely respected independent filmmaker Bette Gordon has hit a bull’s eye.

Surprising, inventive and crisply, merrily written and directed by Derrick Borte, The Joneses is a brisk, captivating entertainment. Think Ozzie and Harriet on speed.

After.Life, with a pretentious point between the two words in the title for no explainable reason, is a horror film with a macabre style but few of the creepy chills of cheaper, cliché-riddled thrillers that are a dime a dozen these days.

La Mission, carefully directed by Peter Bratt and beautifully photographed by award-winning cinematographer Hiro Narita (Never Cry Wolf), explores the human side of a culture we know almost nothing about, in a world usually exploited on film to depict drugs and danger.

For the Edgerton brothers and for their protagonists, The Square works on several levels, as it shows how far two people will go for love and profit--in more ways than one.

A ludicrously pretentious train wreck masquerading as a movie.

A film of maturity and courage, one that kept me consistently engaged. Quite an accomplishment, really, for a new filmmaker on her first date with a camera.

Don’t be misled by the title Leaves of Grass. Do not expect literacy, either. This stoner comedy has nothing whatsoever to do with Walt Whitman or poetry of any kind.

With a different cast and director, this movie would be just another fuzzily lit made-for-TV movie. But because of the performances and the rather gorgeous cinematography, one is left wishing that it just could have been something more.

Mr. Baumbach has a knack for capturing real-life dialogue--particularly and hilariously how people tend not to listen to the person on the other side of the conversation.

It's when the music stops that we run into problems. For starters, there are so many questions left unanswered.

Shot by Barry Ackroyd, the same cinematographer who filmed "The Hurt Locker," and using the same camera techniques, this movie looks like outtakes from a much better film.

There is no hope on the horizon for movies as leaden as The Exploding Girl.

Not a masterpiece, perhaps, but technically polished, with inspired performances and enough suspense that by the time Mr. Hamm found the redemption that freed him from his own demons, I was so wired I needed a Valium.

It might be time for Johnny Depp and Tim Burton to start thinking about seeing other people. Alice in Wonderland, their seventh film together, is so thoroughly soul-deadening and laborious that the prospect of an eighth collaboration feels like the sword of Damocles.

Mr. Gere is miscast as Eddie, too naturally regal in bearing to be the screw-up he’s supposed to be, and for a broken man, he still moves with the same confidence as his younger self did in "An Officer and a Gentleman."

With so much junk littering the screen these days, the movie business looks like a garbage strike, and it’s beginning to smell, too. The latest pollution from the celluloid dumpster is sub-mental horror called Cop Out.

Wonderful, honest and low-key performances inform and enhance The Yellow Handkerchief, an otherwise unexceptional little drama.

This gruesome thriller set in a fogbound insane asylum is incomprehensible and fatally flawed, but having said all of that, I will also say this: It never seems anything less than the work of a skillful film buff. Mr. Scorsese may be a smart aleck, but he’s a professional smart aleck.

Has moments of heart-pounding suspense and brief glimmers of greatness, thanks to fine performances by Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan and Olivia Williams, but overall feels uneven, sprawling and strangely incomplete.

A vulgar, happy-as-cancer aberration that takes the dysfunctional family idea to a new low. Whimsical, yes. Happy, never.

But the direction by Joe Johnston (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids) sacrifices originality for computer graphics and stop-motion camera tricks, and the script, by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self, bulges with real howlers: “I didn’t know you hunted monsters.” “Sometimes monsters hunt you!”

It’s a romantic piffle stuffed with so much candy that your skin could break out.

We all know how rotten today’s movies can be, but even at the bottom of the slag pit, you won’t find a load of garbage any smellier than From Paris With Love.

The best kind of horror film, about innocent people plunged into mind-boggling circumstances beyond their control.

What is truly amazing, especially in this age of Ponzi schemes and the misappropriation of people’s life savings, is the fact that Herb and Dorothy have never sold a single piece in their collection.

There is no way I would call this a good movie. But! I was indeed entertained the whole way through, and there were enough genuinely interesting scenes to almost make up for the incredibly clunky moments provided by a very wooden screenplay.

That Bond so convincingly retains his composure and sang-froid throughout all the horrors that ensue is a testament to Mr. Craig’s abilities as an actor, and to Mr. Campbell’s astuteness as a director.

In many ways, Days of Being Wild anticipated the overall pattern of its writer-director-auteur's haunting career, with this genuinely wild story of casual sexual encounters and obsessions across East Asian locales traversed by rootless characters crammed up in Hong Kong's dream factories. [29 Nov 2004, p.27]

Die Another Day is the most thrilling, lavishly designed and imaginative Bond picture in years. It is also the most preposterous.

In my own very humble opinion, In Praise of Love lacks even the most fragmented charms I have found in almost all of his previous works. [9 Sep 2002, p.25]

There is much violence in The Devil’s Backbone , but there is also catharsis and redemption. As ghost movies go, The Devil’s Backbone is much less self-indulgent than the wildly overrated The Others.

Late August, Early September comes closer than any movie I can remember to capturing the nuances of relationships between overarticulate characters who can't figure out where they really stand with each other. [12 Jul 1999]

There are moments here and there with potentially eloquent points of departure, but they dissolve in the mists of the director's ultimately aimless estheticism. [21 May 1999]

It roars and ignites and hits the ground running.

Saving Private Ryan is a masterpiece. It cements Steven Spielberg’s reputation as one of the seminal filmmakers of the era. It tells a gallant story of honor and duty and courage under fire. It shows you things about war that have never been seen on a motion picture screen.

The writing (by Todd Stephens) and direction (by David Moreton) are untidy, but the film gets along on its own sweetness and sincerity before everyone removes the masks and realizes it's O.K. to be who and what you are in life. [10 May 1999]

You have to see all 10 not because they add up to a coherent whole, but because each is excellent in a distinctive way. I don’t want to go into each of the plots in any detail because one of the joys of Decalogue is its flair for storytelling in the most enjoyable way imaginable.

For all Mr. Schlesinger's misapplied conventionality, these characters remain too abstract in the film, and the violent climax feels bombastic and preposterous rather than meaningful. [21 Jun 2004, p.27]

Writer-director Milius's brilliant directorial debut presents the Depression era gangster and 'Public Enemy Number One' John Dillinger (Warren Oates) as a social outsider and self-made legend. Oates is at the top of his form... Ben Johnson is equally good as his nemesis, FBI Agent Melvin Purvis, and Harry Dean Stanton and Richard Dreyfuss lead a fine supporting cast. [12 Oct 2003, p.9]

Ozu never moves his camera but invariably moves us. [05 Dec 2004, p.13]

Such relaxed filmmaking combined with artistic rigor is no longer feasible. [27 Aug 2001, p.15]

Baby Doll doesn't go as deep as A Streetcar Named Desire or even On the Waterfront. But it's the most seamless melding of Kazan's abilities as an actor's director and a filmmaker. [12 Jun 2006]

Minnelli's direction never lets the farcical aspects get out of hand, walking a perfect line between comedy and sentiment that's sometimes heartwarming without ever becoming mawkish -- a delicate balance to achieve and maintain. [28 Jun 1999]

The Asphalt Jungle is the greatest, most influential heist movie, and has a superb performance from Sam Jaffe as the middle-aged German-born criminal mastermind behind a million-dollar jewel robbery in an unidentified American city. [12 Feb 2006, p.17]

Wholly delightful, utterly inconsequential comedy. [07 Aug 2005, p.87]

The best of four sound versions of Dickens's wonderful novel.

Notorious is a flawlessly executed espionage adventure that combines romance and suspense in a smooth blend of mystery and action without a single violent sequence. [22 June 1997, p.62]

A paradox in City Lights is the virtually equal weight given the theme of courtly love and male camaraderie. Indeed, one of the most interesting characters in the Chaplin canon is the rich man (Harry Myers) who embraces the tramp during their nocturnal revels, but who invariably forgets their association by the dawn’s ugly light when they have sobered up.