A lot more enjoyable if you can leave your cognitive skills at the door.

Taken as a whole, these films constitute one of the greatest uses of cinema a documentary filmmaker has ever devised. Like the other films in the series, 49 Up is alternately touching and mundane, part soap opera, part reality show and part anthropological study.

A film of stark and galling contrasts.

Mitchell may be another Russ Meyer -- a dubious honor -- but he's no Tony Kushner.

A canny piece of filmmaking, sure to absorb both audiences familiar with Kushner's plays and those who know little or nothing about him.

An absolute delight, combining the cheap thrills of a biopic with the gentler, but more lasting, pleasures of a brilliant character study.

When Costner is good, as he is here, his acting has a purity to it, an unspoken moral dimension. Underneath the sensitive, stoic facade is a loquacious, intellectually alert actor with an encyclopedic understanding of the film tradition he occupies: the rugged, humble movie hero, embodied by the likes of Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda.

This is the animated children's film equivalent of "Another 48 Hours."

It would require a near-lethal injection of nitrous oxide to induce laughter.

Compelling.

Fortunately, there are many concert sequences to keep the film from being more than one awkward silence after another, and onstage the Pixies still sound great. But watching the movie is not as much fun as listening to the old records.

A 2-hour, 20-minute bore-de-force of virtually dialogue-free angst.

Unlike Sean Penn's demagogue in "All the King's Men," you're able to forget that Whitaker is acting. He embodies the role. When clips of the real Amin are shown at the end, it's almost shocking to realize the extent to which Whitaker has become him.

Recalling the earthiness Broderick Crawford brought to the original, I couldn't help thinking Gandolfini should have been cast as Willie.

This is the "Godfather II" of tasteless prank films.

The movie is an enjoyable but flawed attempt at an epic story, with too much of the best action concentrated in the beginning.

Kind of a bore.

At heart, all documentaries aim to be important films. Few actually pull it off. Minor flaws and all, Jesus Camp is among the year's most important films, if only because it forces us to learn about an America we seldom see and seldom want to see.

There's a lot of interesting material here, but Rachman doesn't offer any real analysis of his own, and the film suffers from a lack of narrative focus.

The biggest mystery of all is why director Marc Rosenbush, whose background is in theater, bothered putting this story on film when it's so obviously meant for a stage.

The title is all that's boring about director Michel Gondry's latest mind bender, as trippy as LSD.

Although intriguing to look at, Renaissance -- the latest animated film geared to adult audiences -- is undone by a plot that is ridiculously hard to follow and hackneyed.

The film is ultimately as much an indictment of liberal apathy as of conservative dirty dealing, and a canonization of McKinney for her continued refusal to follow any party's party line.

Director Shosuke Murakami efficiently packages the material, deftly weaving in the individual stories of Train Man's chat-room buddies and how his success also gives them courage.

The result is a film that fails to completely involve you, even as you admire its artistry.

The world of The Black Dahlia is beyond bleak, beyond film noir.

A strange film, because it seems designed specifically for extremely old moviegoers to see with their great-great-grandchildren.

Gridiron Gang gives you a lot more to think about during the ride home.