Newell puts his own stamp on the franchise and delivers the best Potter movie yet filmed.

Paprika ain't no kiddie 'toon, even if its thumpin' techno-pop and bubble-gum thrills have the same splashy palette as an episode of "Pokémon" or "Dragon Ball Z."

This Hairspray really is a lot of fun -- colorful, sassy, and brisk.

I say this as someone for whom the very idea of a Kong remake is sacrilege, Jackson's straitened conception yields up a pretty damn good popcorn movie.

A great-looking and smart film. It has enough action, wonder, depth, and action to keep any fan of the genre happy. The sociological undertones here are fascinating as well.

Almodóvar has created a dense, audacious film in which layers of cinematic artifice lovingly camouflage (at least for a while) its characters’ dark, damaged heart.

Rourke is getting tons of press and award nominations, but Marisa Tomei kicks ass too. Not only does the one-time Oscar winner look amazing and perform her own pole tricks, but she effectively humanizes what could be just another naked chick in a movie.

That rare kind of movie that contrasts "cultured" big-city characters with devout, "simple" folk without being condescending or judgmental of either camp.

Surprisingly light on fab gadgets, there are, of course, double crosses, fast cars, and lots of gunplay.

While it may be excruciating to watch a speller miss a word by a letter, it's just as exciting to watch another kid jump the hurdle.

If this is in fact merely a longer Simpsons episode, it's a damn good Simpsons episode.

The movie biz inside jokes eventually yield to fairly merciless plumbings about the construction of the self, resulting in a kind of philosophical discomfort that's much different from the run-of-the-mill humiliations this sort of thing usually trucks in.

David Strathairn, playing Murrow, follows his writers' lead beautifully, delivering a performance that's all understatement on the surface and searing fire underneath.

The story is creepy fun and 100-percent different than whatever other crap is flooding the February market.

Diverting and often funny enough, largely thanks (as is not unusual in cases like this) to its cast.

A totally mesmerizing battle of the wills between the occasionally charming yet wily Nixon and the increasingly desperate Frost.

If anything, it's the degree to which the animals differ from us that makes March of the Penguins so fascinating.

A conventional but genuinely heartrending exposé of the Indiana boy who grew to be a powerful religious cult leader, director Stanley Nelson's thoroughly researched doc is not a posthumous character assassination, which would be all too easy and unnecessary.

By turns harrowing and stirring, it’s a shame-inducing history lesson that never feels like a lecture.

Those who aren't inclined to lambaste will surely have some stimulating conversations after the film is over.

This is not a perfect picture, but it’s a soulful one that offers a lot of pleasure and even a kind of wisdom.

Flags of our Fathers really loses its way in the final half-hour, when the point-of-view abruptly shifts to James Bradley (played here by Tom McCarthy), who takes on the role of narrator, informing us of what happened to each of these men after the war ended and their names became yesterday's news. It's a jarring switch.

Iron Man is the first Marvel Comics superhero movie I would willingly sit through a second time. This is the result not just of what the movie does, but what the movie doesn't do.

Marker's even-handedness and playful spirit tries to show that innocent art and activist politics are two sides of the same culture, even if deviant government duplicity threatens the balance between them.

At its best, it throbs with immediacy, just as Strummer did.

It makes for a daringly different kind of thriller -- cerebral, meticulous, haunting.

Just like the final performance by its deeply disturbed heroine, Black Swan is perfect.

A gruelingly tense, deftly plotted, and slyly intelligent piece of work. And also it's really really disgusting.

With My Flesh and Blood, Karsh finds a worthy subject in the constant day-to-day challenges facing a truly extraordinary family.

It's also that he's really, honest-to-God, got one of those movie faces that doesn't even come along once every generation. It's astonishing.

Starting Out never builds to the explosive climax it seems to be heading for, which I suppose is a good thing for its overall integrity, but maybe not so good for its motion-picture value.

It's in the script, however, that del Toro the writer falls a wee bit short of del Toro the visionary.

Once the picture gets into Hollywood's bloodstream, it could well prove to be as influential as John Woo's 1989 crime thriller, "The Killer."

I'm glad that 2046 is different from "Mood" even while being strangely of a piece with it. Like "Mood," it’s a movie of utter wonder and ravishment. But the key here is different.

Guaranteed to deliver more innovative eye candy and smarter fun-per-second than most of this summer's fare, and that one-two punch ought to knock you off your seat.

So breathtaking is the action.

This is filmmaking that's as rousing as it is strange.

It's a movie that keeps flirting with greatness, but settles for being above average.

At its most simplified, Sucker punches its way to the top of the Italian-western mountains, but never reaches the peak of its immortalized trilogy brethren.

Resnais employs all the tools of studio-bound moviemaking, silent-era to post-modern, in a way that is not only is consistently dazzling in a purely visual sense, but contains an empathy that lifts the picture to tragic heights even at those points at which it seems practically weightless.

We actually had the urge to dodge the sea snakes swimming right at us.

One thing not open to question is that the real heroes of this movie are Johnston's family, particularly his aging parents, who for all their heartbreak are palpably full of love and forbearance for their disturbed and, yes, talented boy.

The result is a film that's almost unremittingly bleak, but also consistently compelling.

As much as I enjoyed much of it, I hope Grindhouse doesn't start any trends. Exploitation cinema is combustible stuff that only highly trained professionals should be permitted to play with.

Three Burials is beautiful, authentic and brutally observant of human nature. With real Tex-Mex backdrops instead of the usual Monument Valley vistas and characters too complex to withstand simple white-hat/black-hat reductionism, Three Burials is a visionary portrait of the New West. This is the terrain of Eastwood and Peckinpah, saddled with the concerns of 21st-century life.

Dullaghan's film is a bit too straightforward and introductory to be declared a definitive portraiture. The gold nuggets worth sifting for lie in the anecdotal minutiae.

DiG! never delves deep enough to act as a true cautionary tale. It's an amusingly drunken PBS-worthy human-interest doc, unless you're too old or not cool enough to have played in the embarrassing hipster zoo, in which case DiG! may be the closest you'll ever get to the uncaged animals.

On the surface, this might look like a typical teen movie, but Adventureland’s talented cast perfectly portrays the self-loathing and strong-minded characters in that transient post-college stage of life.

The script's flaws are most keenly felt in the Jodie Foster storyline, to the point where her character seems more like a bumbling screw-up than a supposedly sought-after facilitator. Whenever Lee turns the camera back to Denzel and Clive though, the movie works.

Has a warmth that’s utterly enchanting, and a tenderness that’s genuinely touching. This is a real gem.

In the battle of the leading men, Crowe's character has a slight edge, and the actor really makes the most of it, showing us how boyishly mischievous charm and utter venality can exist without seeming contradiction in the same being. But Bale builds to a pretty impressive boil himself after laying back for about three quarters of the film.

Whatever you want to label this quick-paced crowd-pleaser, it is definitely one of the year's must-sees.

Syriana depicts a system so thoroughly and intractably rotten that the standard liberal how-you-can-make-a-difference solutions--being more conscientious about using electricity, getting a hybrid car, and so on--only look like so much spit in the face of an atomic fireball.

The reason to see Dreamgirls is what hasn't been advertised - a film that in spite of its shiny veneer actually hits all the high notes through its underlying rawness.

Moncrieff’s overriding theme here isn’t empowerment but survival. The movie crams a hell of a lot of dysfunction into its 88 minutes.

An epic treatment of epic themes that doesn't soft-soap its audience, but at the same time provides a terrifically satisfying entertainment.

It's kind of amusing to see slinky Christina Aguilera sing the "Live With Me" line about a score of harebrained children, as she clearly hasn't got the faintest idea of what that means.

It's rare that a picture that deals with as much tragedy as this one also manages to convey as much warmth to its characters.

Brothers takes a scenario as old as Genesis – two jealous siblings spar over the affections of the same woman – and renders it fresh and immediate, by virtue of the warm, almost maternal, generosity director Susanne Bier shows her characters.

Through a haze of opium smoke and Molotov cocktails igniting, Regular Lovers plays out like the heavier politicized and unsentimentalized counterpoint to Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Dreamers."

Much like the actual summer (the season, not the character), we never wanted it to end.

Every so often, a movie blindsides you, leaving you feeling different, enlightened, possibly even improved. Me and You and Everyone We Know is such a movie.

Intelligently written and beautifully acted throughout, it’s a good, and rare, example of what we used to refer to as a movie for adults. Adults, be advised.

The new perspective Scott and Zaillian want to bring to this material never gels convincingly, and despite some effective set pieces, a cast of memorable faces and attitudes, and evocative cinematography by Harris Savides, this would-be epic feels tired and rote.

Superbad is just a great time, plain and simple.

Demme here shows off both the mastery of suspense that made "The Silence of the Lambs" a classic, and the humane understanding and appreciation of character that not just deepens but energizes this film.

The movie is a leaden, slow-moving beast.

At opening night, with every seat in the cafeteria filled, you realize that the students have not only carved out a fledgling drama department in this sports-mad place, they’ve updated Grover’s Corners to Compton.

The true sensory delight is when the two men share screen time, and the palette is bombarded with their contrasting hues, the score (by Pascal Esteve) even meticulously interlacing their two musical personalities.

Bergman wants the viewer to empathize more with the characters’ perseverance than their pain, and he pulls it off, thanks to his sharp eye, compassion, and humor, and of course to the performances. [March 2004, p. 26]

It's a fascinating portrait, but it's also choppy and rushed and lopsided.

A superb effort by a first-rank director, and manna from heaven for Cheung fans.

This is a real grabber.

As long as Guggenheim keeps his cameras trained on Gore's presentation, An Inconvenient Truth is an engaging film. Less successful are the scenes where Gore is seen off-stage, traveling around the world and visiting his childhood home.

The humor is so satisfying in its moment-to-moment pleasures that it's almost unsportsmanlike to criticize the bigger picture.

Those last thirty minutes are worth the price of admission.

The movie isn't a send-up or a takedown of fairy tales -- it's a fairy tale.

It may most aptly sum up the who the hell Ralph Nader is and why he insists on creating such a ruckus.

Some might not even notice what's going on when director Walter Salles finally shows his hand, and ends the film with documentary footage of the real-life Granado, now aged 81, romping in the earthly paradise that is present-day Cuba.

In the end, it's not the answer to the kitchen mystery that matters but the revelation that there's ultimately no difference between this bachelor scientist and his bachelor subject.

As for this film's esteemed director, I don't remember getting such sheer pleasure out of an Altman movie since . . . hmm, lemme look at the filmo . . . hmm—"The Player"? Not so much . . . "O.C. and Stiggs"? I wish . . . Um, "Popeye"? More likely, but . . . Ah-"A Wedding." Yeah, that’s it, "A Wedding." Whoa. That was, like, almost 30 years ago.

The mood never droops, however, saved by Mario’s well-studied ability to channel his father, a performance as delicately nuanced and polished as the film is frenetic and raw.

Raises some probing questions about the secrecy of ratings decisions in a way that entertains and educates audiences with or without agendas to protect film integrity.

What On the Run has going for it: solid acting, taut editing, smartly economical dialogue, an elevatingly reverberant score, and a rousing vitality that left me salivating for The Trilogy in full.

It's an awful shame that Shelly will not be making any more films, but all the more reason to celebrate Waitress now.

This is a movie, not a position paper, and Moore aims to entertain as he informs.

Proves more irksome than moving.

This film, a raw howl of outrage and pain, is proudly one-sided, allowing a generation of wounded men and women to scream their betrayal.

In the way that water can heal and harm, this film balances moments of dreamy spirituality with the salty harshness of family disputes.

Though Flushed Away certainly aims to please viewers of all ages, it’s the anglophiles of all ages who are going to get the most out of the film.

Some viewers will wonder what exactly it is they are supposed to be laughing at, but those that do find themselves on the movie's wavelength will enjoy its observational approach to comedy.

Inception is one of the best sci-fi movies of the new century, a mind-bender about dreams as public spaces.

Serenity may not be the next "Star Wars," but it's the best we've seen since the original trilogy, and if Wheedon is planning Serenity trilogy (the door is left open), it would certainly be welcome.

Whitaker's Amin is the kind of raging lunatic that only an actor who has made a specialty of quiet caginess could pull off so convincingly. It's great, and scary, to see Whitaker turn it up to 11 for once.

The Orphanage's joys come from the experiential: Bayona's cultured technical skills, including some phenomenal sound design, and sustained anxiety. It's about as healthy as junk food gets.

Exceptionally strong performances from the entire cast draw you into the movie's deliberately provocative world, a "Lord of the Flies"–like realm where parents are noticeably absent.

This lengthy, nuance-filled story about how eye-for-an-eye stuff differs from theory to practice is one of the most considered, thoughtful, and involving movies of its kind.

It's the kind of smart, stylish, entertaining and grown-up movie that the studios are making less and less of these days.