It's screamingly, hysterically, laugh-through-the-next-joke, laugh-for-the-next-week funny. It's so inventive…This is a film by an original and significant comic intelligence.

For a movie that takes place mostly in the bowels of a sewer, Flushed Away has some surprisingly charming moments.

Plodding and unfunny.

Lower your expectations going into Volver and accept it for what it is: a ridiculously entertaining melodrama with loud echoes of "Mildred Pierce" that provides Penelope Cruz with a vehicle for her multifaceted talents.

A gentle fable, full of wit and charm.

Black Bear Ranch's legacy of environmentalism (the residents were on the forefront of the anti-deforestation movement), and the endearing long-term relationships it engendered, endure.

Despite a clever script and top-notch cast, whose commitment to doing service in the indie branch of the industry is commendable, Unknown falls apart just when it should be coming together.

An amusing melodrama.

A modest documentary, small in scope and ambition, but it achieves one of the higher callings of art in that it forces viewers to look at a something in a newer, deeper and more humane way.

It's a film of unquestioned visual artistry, and the filmmakers' empathy and human understanding are apparent moment to moment, scene by scene. But despite sensitive performances, it's an experiment that fizzles.

This deeply moving and disturbing film derives power from being based on the true story of a black South African who does everything possible, no matter how degrading, to get by within an immoral system, but becomes radicalized almost despite himself.

While "Saw" and "Saw II" were pretty good splatter films hampered by spectacularly unbelievable endings, Saw III is annoying for almost the duration of the movie.

This is contemplative moviemaking, with its deliberate pace, often static scenes and emphasis on direct sound. The director keeps the dialogue pared to the bone.

The movie appears to be a contrived, poorly produced attempt to sell more of the author's books.

Documentary filmmakers pray for something to happen to their subjects when the cameras are rolling, and two-time Academy Award-winning documentarian Kopple struck gold when Maines told a crowd on the opening night of the band's first European tour that she was "ashamed" that President Bush was from Texas.

Depictions of an aide talking about her hospital vigil and her words of comfort to a distraught Laura Bush are creepy and exploitative -- and borderline disgusting.

This is an ugly film, but with an undeniable allure.

Befuddling.

The real item under consideration here is the movie itself, and the bottom line is that it lands in a humane place. True, any viewer will go in with a certain curiosity, ghoulish or otherwise, about what it's like to jump off a bridge, and yet the overall effect of the film is broadening. To see it is to dread the bridge jumps and to come away with a feeling of compassion and empathy.

Coppola has no trouble convincing viewers that Marie Antoinette is an interesting historical subject, but there's a big distance between that and creating a fascinating personality or fashioning a compelling narrative.

A wildly erratic, often annoying but never boring endeavor.

As painstaking as a documentary but without the satisfaction of a documentary or the impact of a drama.

There are some nice moments and beautiful scenery, but the film is often slow and the dialogue is overwrought.

Thus, we find ourselves watching an ice-cold movie about competition that contains not a shred of rooting interest.

Lacks the marquee names and production values of big studio romantic comedies, but it connects on an emotional level most of them fail to do.

One of the year's most important documentaries, a real must-see.

An unusual look at love and how it can unexpectedly develop. Those for whom the concept of an arranged marriage is foreign will get a little history lesson on the immigrant experience watching this sweetly engrossing film.

Block's hypnotic documentary, among the finest of the year.