A harmless and mildly amusing family comedy.

Quickly devolves into a violent thriller that resolves itself in sadomasochistic romance.

Slackers is, well, consummately cheesy. Ugh.

Although Solondz's view is omniscient, as a filmmaker here he condescends to his characters' innocence, ignorance and bigotry, making him guilty of the same narrative crimes.

We feel it, in our hearts. And therein lies the great power of this small, wise film.

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

Wang's young actors are impressively natural, and his documentary-style camerawork captures the rhythms and cacophony of the big city, all its crazy-quilt comings and goings.

Watching the film is like getting hooked by a fearful angler who can't successfully reel you in.

It's wholesome as a glass of milk, and as refreshing.

Snow Dogs? "Snow Job" is more like it.

The movie is hipper than its L.A. establishment credentials would suggest.

The perfect film for anyone who likes their headbutting and kickboxing dressed up in gold brocade, frilly collars, and tri-cornered caps. And isn't that all of us?

While its careful pace and seemingly opaque story may not satisfy every moviegoer's appetite, the film's final scene is soaringly, transparently moving.

Plays around with some interesting notions, such as the nature of reality, the nature of humanity, and the nature of spiffy apartments with sleek bathroom fixtures.

Throw in the music -- a wall-to-wall whorl of Eastern modal dirges, thumping rock and Celtic-y skirl -- and you've got a veritable cinematic rhapsody of war.

Not a movie, it's a museum catalog of gorgeously rendered portraits and landscapes. What a crashing disappointment.

The film's one realistic performance is that of Dakota Fanning as Lucy, whose child's shame, fear and resourcefulness ground the movie in recognizable behavior. She breathes air into this suffocating enterprise.

Dark Blue World is "Pearl Harbor" without the product placements, without the Hollywood bombast, and certainly without the $100-million-plus budget.

Hate, love, bigotry, empathy and chance are the uninvited guests at Monster's Ball.

At its best it is one of the most dynamic movies from a most dynamic filmmaker, now 76.

While Smith gets into Ali's head and under his skin, the movie around him has more footwork than punch.

Despite its haunting artistry and its winning eccentricities, The Shipping News is a vehicle that's still very much at sea.

For the first half-hour I, too, demurred. And then the irresistible force that is Hugh Jackman -- or was it his swoony Leopold? -- swept me off my seat and into the movie.

What began as a bold and thrilling story descends into Hollywood cliché. But Crowe and Connelly's work rises above the mush. They make A Beautiful Mind go.

If only I liked The Majestic half as much as I liked Carrey in it.

Rife with dark humor, Little Otik presents a cautionary variation of the creation myth, and a warning that tampering with the natural order of things may not be such a wise idea.

But moving across this tableau is Frodo and his gang, and here the trouble lies...Not a one seems believable as conveyed by Wood, who forever looks to be on the brink of a good sob. Likewise, his hobbit sidekick Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin) is a real wuss.

A story with a beginning and end but without a middle. Two slices of bread without the sandwich meat, I wrote in my notes.

Steeped in quiet despair, Lantana is a psychological thriller that emphasizes the psychology over the thrills. It's a smart, heart-twisting picture.

A devastatingly funny portrait of a wildly dysfunctional clan, Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums is a movie about how people never really mature in ways that matter.

Pazira, whose sapphire eyes blaze through the lattice of her slate-gray burqa, isn't much of an actress, as her singsong narration attests. But when not speaking, she has a commanding presence and is an effective witness to the ravages of war.

A raunchy romp through the peeping-Tomism, potty humor, raging hormones and social humiliation that are standard issue in the Hollywood high-school sex comedy.

Visually dazzling but ultimately dizzying ride, a trippy suspenser that gets tripped up on its own deja vu voodoo.

A compelling existential tableau: sweating bodies, creaking mills turned by numbed oxen, people facing the daily and seasonal cycles of life with little hope of breaking free. Behind the Sun is forceful stuff.

A superb film that begins with death, ends in renewal, and finds almost as much to laugh about as to cry for.

Like this diabolically designed weapon of war, Tanovic's film is coil-sprung to explode on the unsuspecting.

In her byplay with Clooney, Roberts only occasionally strikes a spark. Clooney, on the other hand, generates heat.

In The Business of Strangers the right words are hard to come by, but the truth of them -- and the lies -- cut to the quick.

The miscast (or misdirected) Hilary Swank's Jeanne takes so little pleasure in coquetry and manipulation.

Simplistic and jingoistic. But it's also explosively fun.

One of the finest pieces of screen acting in the career of Juliette Binoche -- the actress playing the actress in this extraordinary film.

Deadpan, dead-on parody of a schlockmeister at work and play.

Involving study of sibling and interpersonal relationships.

When it comes to the realistic portrayal of the complex process of grief, most actresses are at a loss. Sissy Spacek is decidedly not most actresses.

Burns' movie shows a Woody.esque affection for a certain slice of New York and its denizens (with the angst and neuroses quieted down a notch or two).

Creepy and compelling and beautifully shot, The Devil's Backbone is a tale of the supernatural that feels completely natural. Its realness is what makes it so scary.

Fans of swooping helicopter shots, alleys filled with backlit geysers of steam, and jump-cut editing that makes MTV look like Ingmar Bergman will relish the intercontinental intrigue and huggermugger that is Spy Game.

Though the humor of Black Knight never quite achieves the giddiness of a Monty Python comedy, Lawrence creates a character more lovable than either Bill or Ted on either of their excellent adventures.

Now in his late 40s and hairier than ever, Jeremy seems a simple enough, likable guy, and he has no pretensions about what he does. And no apologies either.

One moment it's farcical comedy, the next it's gruesome melodrama. The movie never finds the right tone.

At its best, the film's visual dazzle equals the tasty wordplay of the novel. But it is overlong, overscored, and curiously misshapen.

Several notches above the usual gay-themed indie, and mostly manages to avoid -- or at least legitimately deploy -- the gratuitous throbbing beefcake scenes that are part and parcel of the genre.

In the end, you just feel good about these people, and that's a nice sensation these days.

Suffers from "Bridget Jones" Syndrome but without that movie's charms.

Hackman's in it a lot, and he is, as almost always, great fun.

A stunt that fails.

Mild but engaging romance.

"Shrek" is a scintilla funnier, "Toy Story 2" a hair's breadth more poignant, but "MI" is every bit as imaginative and lovable as these other contemporary animation classics.

A feel-good movie, in the absolute best sense.

It's sick. It's stupid. But it also is undeniably adept at skewering social hypocrisy, lancing the boils of political self-righteousness, and poking fun where others fear to tread.

A super-taut and superbly acted three-character piece.

Travolta, a bit portly (or is it starboardly?), phones in his performance from his place in Maine; Vaughn is ice-cool but not especially convincing; the kid is OK, and Polo is a blank.

To be sure, there are goofy flourishes here, the in-jokey, left-field rummies that are the Brothers Coen's stock-in-trade. But this is altogether a quieter, more philosophical sort of endeavor.

Both consoling and confounding.

Peppy, painless and -- happily -- not altogether brainless.

Elevated beyond its cutesy contrivances and mawkishness by some extraordinarily good performances.

Unpretentious fun.

13 Ghosts is the type of project that all parties concerned will have to live down for the rest of their lives.

An unexpectedly moving family portrait of cousins we didn't know we had.

Ranging in age from 30 to 96, the Berlevag men clearly enjoy being on camera and are unusually candid about their various pasts as Casanovas and hashish addicts.

A disconcerting experience.

Feels somehow incomplete. It may be that its visual metaphor is more effective in literature than in film.

Feels stagy, stiff and entirely unnecessary.

If this melodrama has that haven't-we-met-before look, it's because it combines elements of "The Caine Mutiny" (Gandolfini's Winter is Queeg-like) with those of "Stalag 17."

It's the kind of film -- like Diane Keaton's "Hanging Up" -- that even as it dissolves narratively, still makes you dissolve emotionally.

A smart, sensuous and sensory mind trip that caroms around a universe of thought.

Billy Bob Thornton, wearing a succession of toupees, wigs, fake facial hair, and funny hats, and twitching more than a horse's behind, is the best reason to see Bandits.

It's indescribable fun.

It's a lush, lovely dreamscape of a movie, steeped in familiar vernacular (film noir), yet capable of shooting off in totally unfamiliar, surreal directions.

A human-scale comedy that reaches across generations to tickle, connect and embrace.

A spare document featuring one talking head. But what a talking head and what a story!

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

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

Training Day has the best performances and worst third act of any movie you're likely to see this year.

Contrived and schematic, Peter Chelsom's film is a mechanical bird that never takes wing.

On a Paris rooftop about an hour into this 2-hour film, the tone shifts and the atmosphere lightens into giddy farce.

A witty, winning inversion of the famous Arthur Miller play.

I left the film wondering where at the Bellevue-like psychiatric facility that schizophrenic teenager obtained such a becoming brick-red lipstick.

What Zoolander does have, and this was enough for me, is a sublime comic performance by Owen Wilson, as the supermodel Hansel, positively radiant in its dimness.

A film with many redeeming qualities. Its heart is certainly in the right place, but its head makes some misjudgments.

A genre pastiche that's fun to watch, although it's also frustrating.

Makes for the most thrilling action movie of the year.

While there are similarities to the hardscrabble saga of "Angela's Ashes," Frears' film avoids the mawkish pitfalls of Alan Parker's screen adaptation.

"Zis is not verking! Zee glitter cannot overpower zee artist!" That, in a sentence, sums up what is wrong with this picture.

However refreshing it is to see a movie about the secretary rather than the lawyer -- there is a long wait for the light at the end of the Haiku Tunnel.

A snappily fun Mantrap Movie, as films about husband-hunting gals are known, is that rare hybrid of romantic comedy and Super Bowl.

What a stupefying thing it is.

A goofy sports inspirational.