The film offers something unusual, a tragic spectacle of normal, recognizable and utterly sympathetic people condemning themselves.

Prada just feels authentic, from its glossy look to the specific and sometimes curious behavior of the secondary and tertiary characters. To watch it is like being entertained while getting an anthropological crash course.

The movie consistently delivers in lots of little ways, but in a big way only once, in a spectacular sequence that begins with a series of earthquakes and culminates in an airline catastrophe.

Pleasant and surprisingly hard-edged coming-of-age indie film.

The best thing about Strangers With Candy is its relentlessness. It doesn't back off on its absurd humor, doesn't try to make sense and doesn't soft-pedal the characters.

A balanced examination of the reasons for the electric car's disappearance, reasons that include corporate collusion and greed, governmental spinelessness and oil company propaganda -- but also consumer indifference and the limitations of the vehicles themselves.

The result is a well-intentioned mess -- a dishonest fantasy that begins with promise and gets more frustrating with every scene.

One of the best American films of the year so far.

Sometimes excessiveness and implausibility are virtues in disguise. Movies this enjoyable don't come about by accident.

An overwrought weepie, it may be inspired by the recent dramas of Pedro Almodóvar, but it comes off as Almodóvar Lite -- muy lite.

Deeply affecting, "Blade'' portrays an oddly elegant way of life that will soon be like the era in that other movie, "Gone With the Wind."

A film that must be seen to understand the sad truths of our times. It's been made with a sensitivity and creativity that's come to exemplify Winterbottom's work.

In some cases, the songs themselves shine most brightly.

Lucas Black, who looks as much like a high school kid as George Bernard Shaw, speaks in a thick Southern accent that hasn't been heard on any leading man since the second act of "Our American Cousin."

Children will enjoy the physical humor, but discerning adults are advised to pawn their sons and daughters off on some other unsuspecting chaperone -- preferably one who doesn't read movie reviews.

The measure of this kind of movie is its seductiveness, not its logic, nor the ways in which it exploits the supernatural angle, and The Lake House is seductive.

The comedy is hit and miss, with good bits interrupted by dead patches. It's a movie to root for more than to enjoy.

Two guys panting over the same babe leads to tedium, despite a near-record number of overheated sex scenes.

With words streaming out of their mouths instead of into bubbles, Ethan and his gang of past, present and future lovers sound laughingly unbelievable. They're on the road to inanity.

There's a manic quality to the film that may wear you down. But at least you won't be bored.

Opens up a world of words.

Curiously and unexpectedly, the movie brings on a suffocating feeling of constraint. It's a consequence of seeing characters with such terribly limited mobility.

This is not one of the good Altmans. This isn't even one of the mediocre Altmans.

Has two main flaws: the emphasis it puts on German bassist Alexander Hacke, the film's ostensible narrator, who shows up in too many scenes, and the fact that it doesn't identify many of the film's performers until the very end. Even so, Crossing the Bridge is satisfying to watch.

The end result is an interesting documentary that is as unpolished and gutsy as the championship-caliber high school hoop stars at the other end of his camera.

For all the precision shooting, Autumn is a colossal misfire, a tedious film noir wannabe. It doesn't even qualify as film gris.

The remake is a solidly crafted movie with a lot of good scares, but it also raises the question: Why even bother with an update?

Imagine watching Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage," except without good scenes, without a marriage (legal or spiritual) and without people worthy of anybody's attention, even each other's. Now imagine something even worse.