So deadpan a film is Napoleon Dynamite, the story and the name of a gangly high school misfit in Preston, Idaho, that I can't say whether it was intended as a character study or a comedy.

The film's save-the-world scenario may be the stuff of crusty cliff-hangers, its imagery may be borrowed, and its jaunty dialogue anything but deep, but there's something exhilarating going on here. It's darn sublime.

A gorgeous confection, packed with gargantuan gowns and pornographic displays of pastrystuffs, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette is also a sharp, smart look at the isolation, ennui and supercilious affairs of the rich, famous and famously pampered.

If we now take a woman's right to vote and to hold public office for granted, Suffragette reminds us that it wasn't that long ago when things were different.

The film is enjoyable as a performance piece, an eminently watchable contest between two actors at the top of their games.

Sunshine can be seen as a story about science and religion, about the rational mind and the mad. But at a certain point, like a dying star about to pop into eternal nothingness, the movie can't be seen as anything - it just implodes.

While on its face, Mother and Child is about the impact of adoption, in its heart Garcia's movie reckons how consequential motherhood is in the calculus of womanhood. The fine actors show how we bond to those not related to us by blood - and also how we love. Bring Kleenex.

Loses itself in melodrama, caricature and narrative missteps.

Disconnect is an Eleanor Rigby movie. Look at all the lonely people. A "Crash" for the Internet age, Alex Henry Rubin's topical opus swoops down like an alien spaceship to investigate a disparate group of Earthlings living in close proximity in the suburbs of New York City.

An honest, plainspoken and unsentimental movie.

Blood-curdling stuff.

May not plumb the depths of the female psyche, but it's stylish and frivolous in the most profound ways.

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.

Wanted is head-spinning stuff, and it's easy to get caught up in its masterfully manipulated mayhem. Visually, and viscerally, it's pretty awesome.

Often ingenious, funny and unnerving. [14 Oct 1994, p.14]

Adoration, Egoyan's most affecting film since "The Sweet Hereafter."

No amount of accomplished acting and directorial skill can conceal the fundamental silliness of Outbreak's storyline, its inconsistencies, and the miraculous coincidences necessitated by its plot. [10 Mar 1995, p.3]

JCVD juggles humor with whomping martial-arts moves and a kind of melancholy star turn from the melancholy, muscular star.

Between the earnest boy, his playful mammal, the film from actor-turned-director Charles Martin Smith is a winning family entertainment.

Its deceptive simplicity makes A Better Life so emotionally profound.

In the odd, and oddly compelling, biopic The Notorious Bettie Page, Gretchen Mol is a delight as the saucy brunette.

More on-the-money than Nine to Five and a refreshing change from the Armani-clad piranhas of Wall Street, Clockwatchers contrives the rare feat of being both funny and depressing. [12 Jun 1998, p.14]

The humor and chops are there, but the story isn't quite.

The movie isn't as deep as it pretends to be, but it does have several nicely unexpected twists going for it. And it has Williams - memorably creepy, chillingly sad.

And that, in the end, is what Quartet is about: determined engagement, embracing music and theater and the arts, and embracing the friends and loved ones you have around you.

It is Rapace, the Swedish actress who gained worldwide recognition as Lisbeth Salander in the original adaptation of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," who ends up the true heroine of Prometheus.

Touching and inspiring.

The movie has a musical rather than a cinematic shape, defined by songs played in their entirety.

A crafty, suspenseful, violent horror film that touches on the inner lives of sexual predators, the question of guilt and remorse in the human soul, and the practice of torture.

The relationship between Chris and his diminutive namesake is at the core of the film - the determination to be there for his son, no matter what; the mentoring, the pair's goofy, lovely banter. And Smith and his bright-eyed boy pull it off brilliantly.

An elusive and profoundly moving essay about the stages of amour and of age. Like the best of Godard's movies -- and I haven't been sucked into one since "Passion" (1982) -- it is visually ravishing, penetrating, impenetrable.

"March of the Penguins" - phooey! Those smelly little birds are built to survive in the frozen tundra, and nobody's asking them to pull a sled.

Belle, with its country manors and its city slums, its snooty nobles and its fiery idealists, its ballroom dances and barroom conspiracies, brings these themes to a dramatic head: romance and race, privilege and justice.

Has a breezy, Altmanesque air, as it tracks the mini-dramas of its crisscrossing characters.

An entertainingly hairy paranormal affair.

Best of all, though, is Northam, whose sable hair and polished poise put one in mind of the young Cary Grant. In this no-sweat performance, he's an actor who conveys how restorative it is to think.

Defiantly different, a movie that carefully checks the pulse of its characters rather than trying to get the blood rushing.

By turns wry, rueful and explosively funny.

An unnerving and astonishing thriller.

The twist of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, a laugh-out-loud if not-exactly-good stoner comedy, is that its heroes, an entry-level investment banker and a brainiac pre-med student, are not dimwits.

Swiss Army Man is a quest movie of sorts, and also a sort of modern-day piece of absurdist theater. Samuel Beckett by way of Monty Python, it is a story that is at once rooted in the fixations of adolescence (sex, the idea of sex, bodily functions, more sex) and in the loftier firmaments of the mind.

With the exception of a few stakes and crosses jumping from the screen, some bloody sprays here and there, and one creepy, claustrophobic car ride, the 3-D glasses are a hindrance, not an enhancement.

What this slow-moving but fascinating two-part portrait does do is hunker down in the jungles and mountains of Cuba and (in the second part) Bolivia, capturing in keen, almost Zen-like detail the trudging and trekking, the recruiting and strategizing, the fighting and the philosophizing.

Symphonic and cinematic, full of melancholy and hushed magic.

There's something optimistic in the filmmaker's clear-eyed, straightforward storytelling style.

All Muppet capers, whether they involve low comedy or high seas, require the romantic conflict of Kermit and Piggy. Fortunately, the frog and the pig are worth waiting for. And like all great thespians, they leave you wanting more. [16 Feb 1996, p.3]

The meaning - and irony - of Kaboom's title doesn't become clear until a beat or two before the end credits roll, and even then it's hard to say what exactly Araki is getting at.

A pink-collar "Sex and the City" made urgent by the performance of Nathalie Baye.

Cusack is especially good in a role that's got more (and less) going on under the surface, while Peet offers up another coltish, trash-mouthed vamp.

A high-end version of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" set in the rarefied bistros, boites and brokerages of Yuppie Manhattan in the 1980s.

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.

The puppets are anatomically correct and politically incorrect. They provide 45 of the funniest minutes I've spent at the movies this year.

They're not exactly Richard Linklater's "Before" trilogy, but French filmmaker Cédric Klapisch's "Spanish Apartment" movies - 2002's "L'Auberge Espagnole," 2005's "Russian Dolls," and now, Chinese Puzzle - have their devotees, too.

Jolting, suspenseful, full of twisted sympathy for its goons' row of characters, and wickedly amusing to boot, Killing Them Softly summons up the ghosts of "Goodfellas" and a whole nasty tradition of crime pics. And then it lets its ghosts go, whacking and thwacking away.

The film is plush and passionate and graced with elegant performances. Best is that of Emma Thompson as Brideshead's matriarch, Lady Marchmain, who resembles a cross between Helen Mirren's Queen Elizabeth II and Pope Benedict.

Deeply personal and filled with love, Maya Forbes' Infinitely Polar Bear is nonetheless a hard movie to watch - hard to watch comfortably.

Much scampering, yelling, quaking and crying is required of the actors, and they acquit themselves well enough, even with oozing fake wounds and prop rebars piercing their shoulder blades.

Miles Ahead is more a provocative character sketch than a meaty portrait, but it's a film that should be applauded for its daring, and for Cheadle's shape-shifting, soul-baring work.

Although it's pretty much impossible to avoid the cliches and constructs of a war movie, Ayer pushes his actors to find the adrenalized fear, and fire, in their guts. Pitt brings "Wardaddy" alive in ways that put his cartoonish "Inglourious Basterds" Army lieutenant to shame. Lerman's rabbity dread is palpable.

If the film itself isn't brilliant, its star most definitely is.

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.

Not only are LaBeouf and Bridges terrific, but Jon Heder is hilarious as surfing fowl Chicken Joe. And Zooey Deschanel is saucy fun as penguin lifeguard Lani.

A disquieting and ultimately disappointing political thriller.

Falls short of being totally absorbing and compelling.

A story of obsession and honor, deception and self-deception set against a sharply etched landscape of political upheaval and intrigue. Malkovich orchestrates all this with assuredness, and Bardem, looking weary and worn, inhabits his character with a realness, a truth, that's downright spooky. And beautiful.

Lacks the gimmicky hook that made "Run Lola Run" an arthouse hit, but it doesn't lack for ideas, nor for images that will sweep you up in their boldness and have the resonance of dreams.

Offers a diverting tale of erstwhile indie filmmaking and the power of porn to generate change - both at the box office and in the bedroom.

Since the film does not include the testimony of U.S. military or neutral human-rights observers, it gives viewers no way to test the subjects' reliability as narrators.

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

Some movies skate by fast on slick action. Others snap with crisp dialogue. Nick and Norah springs high on the bounce of its hugely likable leads, Michael Cera and Kat Dennings.

Although its origin-story machinations get the better of it, Ant-Man isn't a bust.

If Mockingjay - Part 1 is quieter and less flashy than its predecessors, that doesn't make it less satisfying.

It's not a critique but a rather graceful, witty, and stylish film that offers possible solutions to the problems Moore believes plague the United States.

Elle Macpherson? Not much of an actress, but nobody who goes to see Sirens is likely to notice her thespian endowments. [3 March 1994, p.05]

Too bad Chocolat isn't as seductive as its leading lady.

A spirited, smart-alecky look at the ongoing conflict between a government that wants to eliminate pot and a public that wants to smoke it.

Dumb with a capital D, Blades of Glory takes its (almost) fleshed-out sketch-comedy idea as far as an ice-skating buddy movie with we're-not-gay jokes and a psycho stalker can go.

The Hedgehog is full of heart, passion, and human longing - but also a good dose of existentialism. Think of it as Sartre's "Being and Nothingness"-meets-Dr. Seuss.

Dazzling and delirious, The Fall is a celebration of cinema, of old-fashioned storytelling and globe-hopping spectacle.

Acting-wise, the showstopper is Jason Bateman, with a diabolically entertaining turn as a smarmy PR man remarkably free with confidential information.

It's more of a character study, insightful and nuanced, about a man grappling with a profound sense of inadequacy, questioning himself. In many ways, We Have a Pope recalls last year's Oscar winner, "The King's Speech": Someone who doesn't feel up to the job fate has handed him, and then struggling to come to terms with it.

In Little Odessa, Gray proves that you can go down what looks like a familiar road and make it seem much less traveled. [30 June 1995, p.06]

The movie's too long - and the violence and mayhem are unexpectedly harsh and heavy - but Franco's inspired, looped performance is right up there in the annals of reefer filmdom with Jeff Bridges' the Dude in "The Big Lebowski."

Lieberher, a Philly native transplanted to L.A., is a reed-thin, wide-eyed wonder. There's none of that precocious Hollywood child-actor stuff going on; he's seriously thinking about what he has to say, assessing his words and their implications. It's rare to see any actor - let alone a novice, barely out of the single digits - so readily and naturally displaying inner thought in front of the camera.

Unusually gripping.

An ambitious effort that fails as satire and as history, although it probably succeeds as a cautionary tale.

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.

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

Doesn't match up against the new millennium martial artistry of "The Matrix," nor do the special effects - but he knows how to establish characters and relationships.

Fry's film has the frantic energy and kaleidoscopic style of Waugh's feverish prose.

Over-orchestrated and underdeveloped interpretation of Jeffrey Hatcher's play.

Hopelessly raunchy, helplessly romantic, and wickedly, wickedly funny.

It's earnest, but it feels beside the point. Blood Diamond's real point: box office.

There's a fine line between stupid comedy that's actually pretty smart and stupid comedy that's just dumb, and The Other Guys crosses the line - into realms of unredeeming dunderheadedness - more often than it should.

Supermensch is one of those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction tales.

For all its frank sexual language, Kelly & Cal is hardly revolutionary or shocking. It drags in the second act and has an ending so obvious, you can smell it from the opening scene.

Kenya and Bryan are both victims of racism and also guilty of it. But the colorful mosaic of their courtship is no downer like "Crash," but rather an upbeat account of expanding social and romantic possibilities in a world where women wear the suits and men speak the language of flowers.

The constant flipping between stagecraft and reality creates a dissonant static that prevents any satisfying connection with the film.