Attenborough's underrated 1977 epic A Bridge Too Far fashioned an antiwar statement from the foolhardiness that stranded 35,000 paratroopers behind German lines in an attempt to take key bridges. [02 Feb 2002, p.C01]

An enjoyably sudsy romance starring a moody Keanu Reeves, a broody Sandra Bullock, and the titular structure - a jewel box of glass and steel perched on stilts over Lake Michigan.

The result is something both fluid and stark, cinematic and comic book-y, and incredible.

The film underscores the power of reading, and applying what we read to problem-solving. The story suggests that we don't really see the natural world around us, and if we did our lives, like Jared's and his siblings', would be immeasurably richer.

Deadpool is, on the whole, a big bowl of fun filled with great stunts, gory fight scenes, and sexy poses.

Also quite fine is the film's musical score from David Byrne, as unsettling and edgy as the story.

Sobering and wildly entertaining.

Americans seem uncommonly uncomfortable discussing our own class struggles. But, boy, do we love to watch the Brits do it. I think that's one reason the inspiring and joyful Dark Horse is such an appealing film.

It's not often that Chinese cinema tackles same-sex relationships, and rarer still to see a film of such stark, muted emotion coming from mainland China.

This delicious adventure of crude betrayal and elegant revenge is yummy even when reheated by director Kevin Reynolds.

John Dies at the End isn't deep. But it is deeply amusing, in the sickest possible way.

Darren Aronofsky's Noah is the Old Testament on acid. It's the movie equivalent of Christian death metal. It's an antediluvian Lord of the Rings, fist-pumping, ferocious, apocalyptic, and wet - very wet.

A funny, freaky, often profound animated adventure that is certainly the best movie ever made about a spork.

While the impulse for his concert may have been confession and atonement, the cumulative effect is one of a guy struggling mightily to reconcile his divided self.

As efficient and zippy as its subject.

It's half hilarious, half serious; all poignant.

The Paperboy is over-the-top every which way you look.

The Signal has its share of things to say about urban paranoia, road rage, addiction - whether to sex, drugs or, more dangerously, consumerism. But it stands apart from other pictures of the same ilk by using its apocalypse as a backdrop to a bitter-sweet love story.

First and last, Appaloosa is the slow-but-sure story of the friendship between Virgil and Everett, one a man of action surprised by emotion, the other a man of emotion surprised by action.

Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis' Lemon Tree is a lively deadpan comedy which, like his prior film "The Syrian Bride," satirizes Israel's bureaucrats while remaining sympathetic to citizens who live within and adjacent to Israel's disputed borders.

Based on reports of a real 2005 incident, it is a film that asks its viewer to consider the nature of good and evil, love and trust - and trust that turns into something like blind faith.

In the end, Bellocchio suggests in this spiritual thriller that perhaps faith is the dream from which we do not awaken.

I'd say the movie does a fine job of completing the trilogy, but I wouldn't be surprised if Demme and Young have more in them yet.

I'm not sure if leavening is the right word, but Brolin, as an enigmatic U.S. agent with a world-weary cynicism and a black-ops vibe, provides at least a dose of (very) dark humor to the proceedings.

It's bloody carnage - or it's ketchup, or bolognese sauce, at the very least.

Albert Nobbs is a quiet, minor-key work. The period finery is Masterpiece Classics-y, the parade of upper-crust and lower-tier eccentrics predictable. But Close's performance as this poor, wounded fellow resonates with depth and poignancy.

Shulman photographed buildings as if they were movie stars: He found their best angles and immortalized them.

As always, Freeman is a one-man charm offensive.

A naughtily funny, skin-deep satire.

Black Book doesn't let the grim facts of the Holocaust get in the way of some ripping pulp.

Thanks to a witty script and the recognizably goofy but absolutely earnest delivery of Black, Kung Fu Panda has a human soul, too.

There are no good guys in Miss Bala, just bad guys of different stripes.

The truth is left for the audience to decide. And while the conclusion isn't necessarily clear, it is unsettling.

Here, love and violence are random, everyone's a fool for love, and tomfoolery often has a shocking twist. And every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Easily one of the loosest, most satisfying comedies to hail from the prolific writer/director in a while.

Although a voice-over prologue rumbles ominously in English, most of Night Watch is in the mother tongue, but even the subtitles do weird things - flying around in different sizes and fonts, punctuating the action.

A rewarding exploration of the knotty and often contentious relationship between teacher and protege.

If Weitz's Golden Compass feels, at times, too crammed with exposition and big set pieces, the film nonetheless works far more successfully than the first Potter pic - the leaden "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" - did translating its source material.

The resulting drama is more deeply felt than it is deep. But I can't think of another film so frankly dealing with what we expect from friendship, so tenderly showing how friends can fail in one area, yet be there in another.

Craig's film is well-served by solid writing, brilliantly executed slapstick comedy, and nicely choreographed scenes of ultraviolence - not to mention amazing chemistry between Tudyk and Labine.

Brazen shocker is never less than compelling -- even when you feel compelled to shut your eyes.

Ramsay's child actors are nonprofessionals who can only express what they feel — which gives her film an unusual degree of emotional authenticity.

Siegel, in his debut as director, shot the low-budget Big Fan on a digital camera and achieves an appropriately grimy, gritty look. He has an eye for the telling detail and for the comedy in tragedy.

It's all very Hitchcockian, at least for a while. And clever and exciting, too, even if the convergences begin to strain credulity, and, when you think about it, defy logic, too.

A really satisfying suspenser, but also really, really fun.

Davis, with a nicely turned and witty screenplay from Bucatinsky, freshens up the familiar predicament by having her two lovers recount the affair to a stranger.

While it won't do much for those into cutting-edge computer animation, it won't disappoint parents looking for wholesome high-quality entertainment for preschoolers.

The overall tone of the film is sunny, with Ramona and Beezus resiliently turning life's lemons into lemonade.

While the film pivots around Nazneen, perhaps at the expense of other characters, it doesn't sell her short. This is a rich, revealing and elegant portrait, and one well worth spending time with.

For a movie loaded with ear-scorching profanity, oceans of booze, and illegal drugs enough to keep all of Cedar Rapids in high spirits for a month, there is something fundamentally decent about the film.

Apart from Khodchenkova, who displays the acting acumen of a runway model and gives new meaning to the term Russian mole (she's the villainous vixen of the tale, suited up in high heels and slinky, scaly couture), the cast of The Wolverine is uniformly good.

Together's mix of classical gems and composer Zhao Lin's plaintive score is stirring, soaring stuff.

In its first half, Honeydripper trickles. In its second, it really flows.

Possession, humiliation, jealousy, revelation . . . they're all painted in light, swift strokes by the veteran director and his two stars.

While the film grows increasingly preposterous in its final act, the enigmatic performances of Youn and Jeon carry the day.

As an exploration of a man who really did take the road less traveled, the film is fascinating.

Like the Jerry Seinfeld documentary "Comedian," Conan offers a glimpse of the host's restlessness and creative process.

The Equalizer, which reteams Washington with his Training Day director, Fuqua, is an origin story, like the birth of Batman, or Daredevil. If audiences and star are so inclined, it's easy to see this premise and this character - a tough, taciturn gent burdened with regret and a very special skill set - going into Roman numerals.

There are extraordinary collisions of image and music here that make for some breathtaking sequences, but when that portentous, Gregorian-chanting chorus kicks in with its repetitive mantra of the film's title, it sure sounds a whole lot like they're saying "narcolepsy," not "naqoyqatsi."

It looks lovely in an art-directed way, and Eddie Redmayne, who won his Oscar earlier in the year for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, looks lovely, too.

A gripping French-Algerian coproduction that makes Algeria's epic struggle for independence from France look like a gangster movie.

Mixes its high and low comedy with surprising success.

Startlingly original film.

Russian Dolls isn't quite the gem that its precursor was. It rambles. It's less of an ensemble effort. There's more of Xavier's moping self-centeredness. But Duris is terrific as the confused cusp-of-30 protagonist, and the rest of the cast is bright and beaming.

During its two hours-plus running time, Field's movie veers from dark comedy to melodrama, not always gracefully. But tonal inconsistencies don't blunt the keenness of its satire, so sharp that I walked out with emotional razor burn.

If Macbeth comes off at times like a Classics Illustrated comic-book adaptation (there is one, from 1955), it can also be quite moving, quite troubling, haunting, even.

This is no-nonsense, let's-get-to-it business, and will probably be less satisfying, and less clear, to viewers unfamiliar with the source material.

A taut, German-made thriller, Jerichow adds a bit of European xenophobia to the pulp traditions of passion and betrayal.

It's wondrously unreal. [25 May 1994, p.F02]

A complicated, multi-segmented narrative that's much longer, more elaborate, more dramatic, and more packed with chilling moments and hair-raising visuals than one could anticipate, even from Wan.

Anyone with a casual interest in gospel music stands to learn a lot by seeing Rejoice & Shout; a true fan won't want to miss it.

The idea of knowing your place may be offensive, but the idea of having a place is appealing.

The To Do List is sex-obsessed, to be sure, but it's a chick flick, too. And in what it says about women (or girls) and men (or boys) and what they want, maybe it's a movie for us all.

It's indescribable fun.

It's a study in human behavior, describing how a self-confessed "emotional wreck," through accident and ambition, talent and temperament, became a star.

A goofy screwball romp that affords a gaggle of A-listers the chance to hambone around in antic style.

Violence ignites her passion, dividing her Belfast family.

Holds the audience captive and unusually vulnerable to psycho- and viscero-terror.

Encourages viewers to think outside the big box of super stores such as Wal-Mart.

A light and extremely likable comedy -- just what the doctor ordered right now.

MacDowell brings an absolutely riveting conviction to her role. She's strong stuff in a movie that is likewise gripping and powerful.

There is one scene in The Legend of 1900 that is easily worth the price of admission. It finds the ship heeling in an Atlantic storm. In the ballroom Roth plays the piano as it moves and slides in an eerie waltz around the floor.

It's an action movie that's also an intellectual-action flick.

Sparkle is a solid entertainment with a winning debut by Jordin Sparks in the title role.

Smartly acted, achingly simple love story.

What's frustrating for the viewer who wants to support the Jamaican economy is that "Life and Debt" does not suggest how Jamaica-lovers can help the island's citizens.

Fly Away Home falls a little short of classic status, but it is easily one of the more appealing family films to come flying this way in quite some time. [13 Sep 1996, p.03]

Simple, sweet family fare, and a picture that extols the virtues of comradeship and community in a spunky, spirited fashion.

The performances are uniformly strong - nuanced, realistic, lacking any wild, flailing emoting.

Almost absurdly quiet and observant, The Limits of Control is about the space between the action, the steps along the way.

The Road isn't a masterpiece...But I cannot think of another film this year that has stayed with me, its images of dread and fear - and yes, perhaps hope - kicking around like such a terrible dream.

Directed in steady fashion by Redford, The Company You Keep manages to keep its multiple strands of plot - and the people caught in them - from collapsing in a jumble of confusion. This alone, given the whirl of personal and political history going on, is an accomplishment.

Compelling, kinetic, fast and furious.

Gunnarsson crams his movie with subplots from the novel and then abandons them for lack of room but Seth calibrates the stages of Gustad's journey with infallible judgement and conviction.

Its portrait of an artist hungry for experience is as timely today as when it was written.

Luke, who had the title role in Denzel Washington's directorial debut, "Antwone Fisher," is that rare actor who can convey profound inner conflict with just a look in his eye; his performance is attuned, astute and remarkable.

The scenery is majestic, the goats adorable, the characters alternately gruff and tender. Like the best storytellers, Carion delays vital information about his characters that makes their dynamic increasingly interesting.

Represents a brave undertaking on Jolie's part. It's impressively steady filmmaking for a first-timer, and a powerful, powerfully disturbing subject to take on.