Ultimately, this jingo-bingo action thriller squarely hits its target, then delivers a delayed-action message contrary to everything that has preceded it. Berg heroizes the plucky Americans, but in the closing scenes of his ripping action flick, sucker-punches them. It's as if this populist Syriana frags itself.

A rich, beautifully detailed espionage thriller that captures the bygone days of Shanghai - and 1940s Hollywood noirs' romantic evocations of same - Lust, Caution is also one of those rare movie experiences: Its scenes of the trysts between Yee and Mak, from their rough-stuff first encounter to the long, tangled love-making sessions of subsequent meetings, are truly erotic.

Succeeds royally at building a sense of apocalyptic dread. It isn't quite so successful at sustaining that mood, and Fessenden resorts to blurry images of totemic spirit forces and stampeding moose specters to get where he's going. And where exactly is that? To a place designed to scare the bejesus out of us planet-pillaging consumers.

They are the only misstep in Penn's otherwise sure-footed journey to what he reveals as the heart of lightness.

Those who know Austen novels will recognize how much each character resembles a figure in one of them. Those who do not will enjoy the amusing types. Men, this means you.

A bizarre counterculture jukebox musical.

The movie would pour nicely onto a thick stack of pancakes.

The violence here is never in the service of spectacle, always of the story.

Haggis' earnest and eloquent film about the impact of the war in Iraq on U.S. soldiers, and by extension, their nation, is human-scaled. And as deep and harrowed as Jones' crevassed face.

Works its way under your skin, and then into your heart.

The treasure of the film is the unearthing of the family bond, magically played by Douglas and Wood.

At the film's inconclusive conclusion, the filmmakers strand Erica and Sean in the moral twilight.

Throughout the film its makers pose the question of whether saving a work of art is as important as saving a human life. The question is not answered, and perhaps ultimately unanswerable. Yet Europa movingly shows how for many, art and artifacts are living things.

A riveting remake of a pretty terrific 1957 western about manhood, fatherhood and honor.

Quite simply, a revelation.

Romance and Cigarettes is lewd and it's lurid and looks to be a lost pop opera, but it has more vitality than anything else out there.

For sheer audacity and adrenaline-fueled carnage, Shoot 'Em Up hits its target pretty much dead on.

Throw in some business with the CIA, add a small army of Serbian thugs and a mysterious Croatian beauty, and The Hunting Party picks up speed, careening through the forests where the Fox may or may not be hiding out. Whatever fate awaits, it can't be good. But it can be fun.

Death Sentence's message - that vengeance is ultimately futile, spinning out a vicious circle of rage and hate - may be commendable, but there's nothing noteworthy about the way Wan, Bacon and their troops go about delivering it.

Even at just 90 minutes, Balls of Fury - with its caricatures of the Asian underworld, with its G-man malarkey and gay jokes (Feng keeps an all-boy bevy of sex slaves) - begins to outstay its welcome.

Dedication works anyway, thanks to Theroux's jumping visuals and Crudup's jumpy performance.

The story of Donald Crowhurst is not one of remarkable courage or remarkable endurance. But it is remarkable.

A former Bean hater, I've been converted by Holiday, Atkinson's second, and far superior film version of his TV hit.

Satire should be knife-sharp and whip-smart, and The Nanny Diaries never is.

Struggles to get off the ropes and never quite establishes its rhythm. The film takes place in eternal moral twilight, dark enough to make faces look photogenically poignant, light enough to see the white lies.

At a lean - and decidedly mean - 77 minutes, the suspense-horror hybrid Them by French writer-directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud is nothing short of revelatory.

The mostly British ensemble can do this stuff in their sleep, but Macfadyen and Donovan and Graves, especially, work up the necessary antic angst and silliness.

Intermittently hilarious if also interminable.

Mostly about delivering thrills, and chills, and this it does with moderate success and a bunch of fast, no-nonsense edits.

Delpy's manic energy shoots through this meet-the-parents comedy like electroshock, resulting in a movie that is as acutely painful as it is acutely funny.

Blitz captures the melancholy, the rage, the wackiness and drama of adolescence, and he gets winning performances out of his young stars.

By no means is it a great movie, but it is great slapstick fun, one of summer's guilty pleasures.

Brings too much of EVERYTHING to the table: It's the cinema equivalent of a long, winding, run-on sentence.

Gretchen Mol stars as a 35-year-old virgin deflowered in lusty romance-novel fashion on a trip to Mexico. Her hunky lover-boy's name? Jesus Christ (played by Justin Theroux). The segment? "Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain."

With so many good Austen adaptations out there (the Keira Knightley Pride & Prejudice, the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice, Emma Thompson and Ang Lee's splendid Sense and Sensibility), Becoming Jane seems a bit flimsy by comparison.

Unstoppable fun.

It's a soaring, crashing, blazing affair with pyrotechnic performances by real-life spouses Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez as Lavoe and his wife, Puchi. Like a plane disaster, it holds you in thrall of ¡ay, Dios mio! drama.

Hot Rod never establishes its own personality.

Though it might be Moliere for Dummies, it's infinitely more fun than French director Ariane Mnouchkine's tedious 1978 film portrait, a Moliere for Smarties that ran four hours plus and, like Tirard's movie, explored the comedy of tragedy.

Lucid, concise and devastating account of what went wrong in Iraq, patiently counts those 500 ways.

Alas, not even Eckhart and Breslin can get Zeta-Jones to simmer.

The Simpsons Movie is finally here. And guess what? It's funny. But not that funny.

A sleek little meditation on beauty, desire, love and time. Now and then, it's fairly sophisticated stuff.

There is so little emotionally or intellectually at stake in most popular entertainment that Goya's Ghosts, Milos Forman's challenging, compelling and wildly uneven film, shoots like a cannonball into the solar plexus. I can't remember when I've been so physically and mentally shattered.

A rocking, rollicking crowd-pleaser.

The moral of this crude, intermittently funny Adam Sandler comedy costarring the reliable Kevin James is that: It's OK to be gay, it's not OK to call someone a faggot, and it takes a real man to admit he loves his man pal.

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.

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

My Best Friend, not surprisingly, is about what it means to have friends - and not to have them, to be alone. It's about connection, about trust and vulnerability. That Leconte's little film is a mild-mannered farce, makes the heartache funny, but really, this is serious stuff.

As Greene, Don Cheadle - explosive because you've never before seen this model of actorly restraint - is a one-man fireworks show in Talk to Me, Kasi Lemmons' rollicking, resonant portrait of the real-life ex-con who improbably became a civic icon.

Standouts are Gary Oldman as Sirius Black, Harry's sly father-surrogate, and Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge.

Bale is extraordinary, grinning like a kid, displaying wily intelligence, sinewy resolve and spirit - and a bit of craziness, too.

It's a heavy-metal opera with humor.

It is not a polemic but a plea.

Remy, the little rat who stars in the big, beautiful, funny Ratatouille, isn't gross at all. In fact, he's adorable.

Evening might be the most shocking waste of natural resources since the despoiling of the Amazon rain forest.

A gentle fable about how the young boy from Zurich struggles to fit in rather than stand out, Vitus is both a cautionary tale for pushy parents and an endearing, if eccentric, empowerment fantasy for precocious children.

Directed in workmanlike style by Underworld: Evolution's Len Wiseman, has its share of wild stunts and spectacular carnage, but it feels pokey and predictable, too.

An entertainingly hairy paranormal affair.

Ultimately, Evan Almighty is too sappy, too sanctimonious.

For the most part, Michael Winterbottom's well-intended film, the true story of an idealistic journalist and his gallant wife disinvites emotion by focusing on process at the expense of passion.

As a director, Cassavetes is a keen observer of character and social interaction but not yet much of a visual stylist (which might also describe the improvisational dramas made by her actor/director father, John).

A heartbreaking story of true love.

The closest FF:ROTSS gets to wit is when Johnny convinces a reluctant Reed to attend a bachelor party, after promising the uptight groom-to-be that there won't be any "exotic dancers."

What's not to like about a girl detective who is a good citizen and better student, a leader rather than a follower, a resourceful seamstress who won't cut her clothes to fit this year's fashions?

A Kiwi nerd love story and loopy portrait of Down Under underachievers, Eagle vs. Shark offers a deadpan take on family, friendship, obsession and self-delusion.

Overplayed by a toupeed'n'tucked Pacino, Bank is made up to resemble Hollywood mogul Robert Evans, who produced Pacino in The Godfather. It's an inside joke for outsiders. As are the many references to the Corleone family saga.

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.

For Piaf fans, La Vie en Rose is a must-see. For fans yet-to-be, Dahan and Cotillard's film is an opportunity rich with discovery.

Guggenheim doesn't bring much visual style to the game. But he brings heart (and some Bruce Springsteen on the soundtrack) to the story of a lost Jersey girl redeemed by sport. Yeah, I cried. And cheered. You will too.

Heigl, a double-dip of praline with caramel, is so beautiful that initially you don't notice her comic chops.

Entertainingly creepy.

After nearly three decades of misfires, major and minor, William Friedkin, the creator of "The French Connection," "The Exorcist" and "Sorcerer," is back in true form with Bug. And heaven help us for it.

Ultimately the voyage is so choppy and long (2 hours, 48 minutes) that into the third hour I found myself yawning, "Yo-ho-hum and a very sore bum."

What's maddening about Angel-A is that Besson is so brilliant with his visuals - and so in love with his two leads and the city they're parading around - that you desperately want the story, and the characters, to make some kind of emotional sense. This, however, does not happen.

The Golden Door feels, at points, like a silent film - a silent film with CinemaScope vistas and dazzling, saturated color.

While I liked the film's aesthetics and its futurist imaginings, its most important attraction is how it engages. Some movies massage you; others tickle you. This one jacks you into cyberspace, involving you psychically and physically.

Suffice to say it's got plenty to do with corporate karma. And the word severance is more than just a double play on words - it's a triple whammy.

Shrek the Third isn't a movie, it's the extension of a brand.

It's not that Fay Grim isn't amusing. It is, in that deadpan, skewed way that indie auteur Hartley's pics always are. But there's not much else going on here.

This simple story of a Guy and a Girl and their music is very appealing.

Some of the most tasteless and un-PC comedy in the film is also the funniest - Farrelly Brothers-style humor that plays off the Bateman character's physical limitations.

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

The American public likes nothing better than a tragedy with a happy ending, William Dean Howells observed. But Marshall so cautiously downplays the tragic elements of his plot that the sweetness and light left a sour taste in my mouth.

The Hip Hop Project, a documentary about Kazi and the young men and women he mentors, isn't quite as successful as Kazi himself - a Bahamian orphan and teenage street hustler who turned his life around, and got folks like Queen Latifah, Russell Simmons and Bruce Willis to help out him and his project.

Despite all the stock characters and scenarios, Fox and company manage to bring things to life. And cut some hair.

A feverishly imaginative Freudian vampire film from Guy Maddin, is like a silent-movie serial by Louis Feuillade or an improbable collaboration between writer Oscar Wilde and photographer Man Ray.

I watched this movie thinking that it used the idea of taking a chance on cards as a metaphor for taking a chance on love. I was dead wrong.

A heartbreaking elegy to mature love that honors the lovers and the long, neurodegenerative tango that is their last.

It's not dull, exactly, but neither is it much fun.

It is possible to bring substance, as well as poetry, to the vignette form, but more often Paris, Je T'Aime is merely mundane.

Shelly left her daughter - and her audience - a wonderful gift, this movie about the transforming effects of motherhood. Waitress shows how, in giving birth, a woman gives birth to herself - as artist and mother.

Deliberately paced, with an eerie, country-ish score from the Australian singer/songwriter Paul Kelly, Jindabyne is definitely a mystery. But it's not about who killed the woman - audiences know that practically from the outset.

The wrestler carries himself with decency and without self-seriousness, the qualities that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star. Austin deserves better material than this. So do we.

Wildly ridiculous and thoroughly entertaining thriller.

This seriously funny group portrait of third-generation clam diggers (and their wives and sisters) is fresh as today's catch and about as tasty. Its '70s soundtrack positively swaggers.

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

Vacancy, in the end, simply offers a particularly aggressive brand of couples counseling.