Like Sorkin's D.C.-set TV series, "West Wing," his script for Charlie Wilson's War is full of rapid-fire badinage, with movers and shakers moving smart and shaking snappy as a squad of aides trot along behind, briefcases and coffee cups in tow. A decade - not to mention a war - never went by so quickly.

Mendes nonetheless works this screenplay like a jazz virtuoso plays with a familiar theme such as "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

What's not to like?

Would Backbeat be as compelling a story if it were about, say, Freddie and the Dreamers? Probably not. But despite mostly undistinguished acting and some directorial gracelessness, Backbeat is potent because it tells this emotionally complex and musically exuberant story from every angle conceivable. [22 Apr 1994, p.03]

Though not as great as "Toy Story 2" and "Monsters, Inc.," Pixar movies that are the gold standard for family movies, Finding Nemo is visually entrancing.

It's a documentary that is ostensibly a profile of a man, but is really about the vibrant city he inhabits, beyond the Hollywood sheen and the grit of Compton.

At its heart, there's Blanchett, an actress whose instincts are unerring, and dead-on.

Ambiguous in a satisfying, puzzling sort of way, November offers a triptych of scenarios revolving around a grim moment.

It's the lysergic soap opera going on among Kesey, Neal Cassady, and various pals, scribes, spouses, and hangers-on piled onto the rainbow-hued school bus that's at the heart of this rollicking road pic.

Taut entertainment that juggles brainy ideas about perception, predetermination and free will - and drops things in a messy third act where the vintage noir gets bathed in a bit too much Spielbergian glow.

You get faux feelings -- but faux of the highest, giddiest order.

It's totally down-to-earth, as real as a trip to the supermarket.

Engaging, though certainly not groundbreaking, I Went Down manages to quote from Plato and deploy a cheap joke about masturbation (twice). As gangster movies go, it's a charmer. [3 July 1998, p.3]

If Edel's Oscar-nominated film drags in its final 40 minutes, it's a function of the director's fidelity to the facts - and the fact that the founding trio (and the film's stars) have become prisoners of the state, confined and confused.

Smart, curious and brave.

A heartfelt project, scrappy and engaging, The Way has its way with audiences despite, not because of, its sentimental excess.

A charmingly off-the-wall little tale. Black doesn't do anything he hasn't done before (in fact, he's already done his remake of King Kong!).

Scott's reimagining of the legend of Robin Hood has more heft than it does humor, more soulful brooding than snappy thrust-and-parry retorts.

Rize shows how clowning led to krumping, and argues that its practitioners' fierce dedication to dance has saved countless kids from drugs, crime and gangs.

Happy Accidents is romantic perversity in reverse.

There are laughs here aplenty, and sexy, goofy, off-the-cuff charm.

An inspiring, educational, highly enjoyable documentary.

Directed by Fred Zinnemann with a feel for heartland values and belief in the need for community that Rodgers and Hammerstein urged so strongly, Oklahoma! is a hugely enjoyable film. [14 Sep 2002, p.D01]

Saving Mr. Banks, set in 1961, is smart, delightful.

Laceratingly funny Hollywood comedy.

In this it succeeds. Like the Bard said, better witty foolishness than foolish wit.

Parker has honored the core of the work and in the process turned a great memoir into a memorable movie.

It is earsplitting, crowd-pleasing, and, no doubt, 'bot-pleasing, too. If you told me I would get emotionally and viscerally involved in two machines punching the hard drives out of each other, I would tell you you were crazy. I would be wrong.