Naturally, Pitt and Blanchett are outstanding. Fincher's meticulous attention to detail is unerring, down to the light fixtures.

One of the funniest, smartest, most moving pictures of the year.

Garden State gets it. Not since "The Graduate" has a movie nailed the beautiful terror of standing on the brink of adulthood with such satisfying precision.

Lee and company handle the particulars of the tale with the requisite meticulousness and exquisite taste that marks all the director's films.

Fantastic news, true believers: Spider-Man 2 is smarter, hipper, faster, funnier, and flat-out more electrifying than the original, swinging to new summer-movie heights as the greatest comic-book adaptation yet made.

The slapstick-comic set pieces involving Remy and Linguini's cooking struggles might solicit the admiration of Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati.

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.

A remarkably engrossing and thoughtful picture, beautifully rendered in an artful mode of realism.

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.

Woody's a master wordsmith, and here he's crafted a bit of audience-friendly fare that's smart without feeling exclusionary. It's a portrait of elite society--and the hangers-on who wish to penetrate it--made in an surprisingly accessible way.

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

Jarecki does a remarkable job with this easily exploitable material.

Weir consistently proves that he can take any kind of material and adeptly make it his own.

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.

The result is a kind of very faux documentary style, which, along with the subject matter, has suggested to some the influence of the BBC television series "The Office." Von Trier says he's never seen an episode, and I believe him.

Smaller kids might find the movie too intense at times, especially when DJ, Chowder, and Jenny find themselves literally in the belly of the beast. But everyone else should enjoy a good, goosebumpy scare.

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.

The credits may be silly, but the last scene is a definite tear-jerker.

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

It’s a 21st-century version of "The Sting" for these so far rather unkind and ungentle times.

On the surface, each of these characters fits a familiar Latino stereotype--teen harlot, "el bandido" and male buffoon--yet the movie insists on giving each person dimension.

What the film lacks in freshness, it makes up for in great characters, fun vocal performances, and a script with some genuine emotional heft.

A truly remarkable and compassionate debut from a savvy, self-confident filmmaker. No bull.

The movie belongs to Wood, who creates a unique portrait of a girl hesitating at the threshold of womanhood; she's smarter, more attuned, and more spiritually ambitious than those around her, but also too decent and loyal to break from the world she knows-and too unformed to have a grasp of what she wants outside of that world. It's fantastic work.

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.

The genuine article, a hard-core horror picture from start to finish... Prepare to get seriously stresed.

Open Water may not be a pristine or complex suspense thriller, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anything else as terrifyingly potent in such a tiny package.

If The Painted Veil ultimately lacks some of the novelty and ambition of the year's best pictures, it still ranks as one of 2006's quiet gems.