Warmhearted lesson in tolerance.

It's a fresh-hearted film that only frustrates when you sense how close it is to being exceptional.

It is a pure, streamlined delight, the advent of a talent with no exact equal in modern film.

It's a film for those people -- and they are legion -- who recoil in horror from the very notion of Christmas cheer. If you're in that crowd, and you know who you are, you'll love it.

Does nothing right and, blessedly, vanishes swiftly like the aroma of a nasty belch.

Compare it with the book, and it stinks. Look at the film on its own, and it still stinks.

The highlights of The Cooler -- the portrait of Bernie-as-schlub, the ecstatic union of two losers, the depiction of shadowy old Vegas confronted with its sanitized corporate future -- are superb. You can easily live with the rest to get to them.

While a splendidly acted and worthily grown-up movie, too often has the feel of a potboiling soap opera, with twists and turns that range from the grimly ironic to the absurdly sensational.

Myers' Cat, with a voice that crosses Bert Lahr's Cowardly Lion with Mel Blanc's Bugs Bunny, is generally fun, possessed of an anarchic playfulness that balances his sometimes bawdy tendencies.

Kassovitz can't control the ridiculous script and messy tone. And though it's not exactly hard to watch Berry run around in a hospital robe (Cruz and Berry: That's one good-looking mental ward), it's not particularly profound.

The combination of ideas and wit, lively characterizations, believable human dilemmas and a climax that both melts and braces you makes for a fine blend. A movie about ideas may sound like a drag, but this one packages them in well-earned emotions.

Judging by the beautiful photography of Salvatore Totino, Howard knows what a Western should look like. But the thrills suggested by the trailers, in which the picture is presented almost like a frightening supernatural horror story, are nowhere to be seen.

It's a wonderfully crafted work, handsome, lively, stirring and utterly convincing in its depiction of the perils and thrills of sea life. But I'm not sure that my personal enthusiasm for it will translate entirely for viewers whose favorite movie about the high seas is, for perfectly good reasons, "Pirates of the Caribbean."

Has many puff-piece moments to it and barely touches the controversy surrounding Tupac's death or that of rival hip-hop impresario Biggie Smalls. But it's engaging nonetheless.

The most telling moment comes when his mother reveals that, despite all the subterfuge and false promises, she wouldn't have had it any other way.

If you're one of those fussy filmgoers who demands that a movie engage somewhat higher body parts -- the heart, say, and the brain -- you'll find only intermittent comfort and joy in this high-concept, low-wattage film.

Sometimes complicated, sometimes incredibly simple, the film explicates or fawns over the human condition with occasional charm and poignancy but too often it's just cloying.

It's old-fashioned, sometimes accomplished, syrupy and, at its intermittent best, absorbing.

Now The Matrix Revolutions is here, and a verdict is justified. The death penalty seems a little strong, but can we lock this franchise up and forget where we put the key?

A suffocating quality stifles it, a sense that we're watching artistic excellence and important ideas being enacted rather than realized.

Franju conjures images -- sometimes gory, sometimes poetic, sometimes fantastical -- that genuinely haunt: the essence of the cinema distilled.

Hilarious mixture of Greek tragedy and Aaron Spelling soap opera that spews nasty one-liners and winking '60 signifiers like a slot machine that's paying out.

The issues the film raises are truly profound and discomfiting whether you work in the media or just consume it.

Such a staggering, start-to-finish disaster that you don't know how to begin detailing its outrages and failings.

That the film rises above that level to the merely mediocre is an accomplishment of almost heroic proportions.

One of the funniest things in Scary Movie 3 is Pamela Anderson. She makes us laugh. And not just at her (though she's game to poke fun at her image) but with her.

The exquisitely exact photography and sound design represent the highest level of craft of Van Sant's career.

In a way, the film is a kind of experiment: Can you lop off the bulk of a classic work and still have something worth seeing? On this evidence, the answer is, despite the best intentions and some fine work, sadly no.