Elusive and compelling.

It blends an intriguing concept with a suspenseful plot, and the result is a gripping 103 minutes at the movies.

An excellent film noir.

What we have here isn't a disaster, exactly, but a very handsomely produced let-down.

A domestic melodrama with weak dialogue and biopic cliches.

A sometimes interesting remake that doesn't compare to the brilliant original.

Dreary.

Leigh doesn't sentimentalize these tragic, dead-end lives but allows his characters to be ugly and stupid, to make horrendous mistakes. Sometimes they're laughable, and yet there's never the sense that Leigh is mocking them.

Clever, exceptionally well-written film.

Stupid, derivative horror film that substitutes extreme gore for suspense.

Nicely photographed and beautifully scored.

A big, gorgeous, sprawling swashbuckler that delivers its diversions in grand, uncomplicated fashion.

Offers a quixotic array of characters and flashbacks that tests patience, but once the viewer understand the movie's cadence and rhythm, the story gets better and better until it builds into a crescendo that's emotional, dramatic and -- best of all, perhaps -- fitting.

Passionate visual indictment of the perilous state of our high-tech world.

A warm, funny family story that defies popular notions about immigrant families.

A disjointed movie with uneven acting and too many scenes that defy belief.

Nelson's work is relentless, grueling and courageous. He makes a large blunder in having American actors (David Arquette, Steve Buscemi) play Hungarian Jews with American accents, while Harvey Keitel plays a Nazi officer with a German accent.

Nicely performed by a quintet of actresses, but nonetheless it drags.

A compelling, sympathetic portrait.

So good it's scary.

It isn't simple bad taste that Formula 51 deals in, but a total vacuum of feeling.

Entertaining.

Delightful love story.

Earnest, heartrending look at the divide between religious fundamentalists and their gay relatives. It's also heavy-handed and devotes too much time to bigoted views.

At best this is a film for the under-7 crowd. But it would be better to wait for the video. And a very rainy day.

Lackluster mob picture.

The dialogue, heavy on sarcasm and puncturing insults, never captures the World War II period but sounds ridiculously anachronistic.

Nearly every bodily fluid makes an appearance in "Rules," a mean-spirited paean to hedonism set at an East Coast college where students attend class only occasionally, and then only to perform oral sex on instructors.