Soars gloriously into fluency and magic.

Michal Clayton shares a number of affinities with Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet's "Network." Wilkinson's got the so-mad-he's-sane Peter Finch position; while Swinton embodies a sexless, neurotic, overstressed variant of Faye Dunaway's character. Which leaves Clooney as the (considerably younger) William Holden of the piece. And, yes, he makes the most of it.

This is as wonderfully realized an observation of female affinity as 1999’s great "The Dreamlife of Angels."

Unfortunately, the reach of The Return exceeds its grasp, and so this film of gruffly beautiful images didn't put a hook in me the way Zvyagintsev so ardently seems to want it to. [March 2003, p. 27]

While Bartley and O'Briain flat-out lucked out with this felicitous endeavor, their fearlessness, unobtrusive narration, and lack of Michael Moore man-and-microphone pandering is to be saluted.

It's churlish, especially these days, to try to split the difference between an immortal comedy classic and a mere laugh riot.

If a woman had not in fact certifiably written the picture, I might have thought that Lester Bangs had come back from the dead to pen an account of the teen years of his ideal mate.

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

Though the movie is predictable, it's also honest; Fin emerges from his struggles a better person but not A Better Person, if you catch my drift. And in any case all of the actors are a great pleasure to watch.

Deeply nuts and exhaustingly hilarious.

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.