Past, an inestimable collaboration by Tourneur and Mitchum, is not just one fine noir film among many. It has been a guage for the genre, even a template, over the last 50 years.

Todd Solondz's grand prize winner at this year's Sundance Film Festival lapses into satire, but its parodistic slant only exaggerates what is truthful, making the unpleasantness of that awkward age all the more disturbing and hilarious. It's a horror film starring reality in the monster role.

So phenomenal that Bill Murray can't even steal it. And he tries. So excellent that Murray's MTV progeny Tom Green can't sink it.

The sexual tension and humorous byplay between Leigh and co-star Clark Gable, in the role of gentleman rogue Rhett Butler, was riveting. And so was Leigh's portrayal of a viper trying to consume the good-hearted Ashley Wilkes, embodied by the fine-boned Hungarian-turned-British actor, Leslie Howard.

This movie is a pleasure, an entertainment and an admirable artistic achievement.

Turns into something like a screwball farce, an intimate, self-aware one.

With Election, Payne announces himself as one of the keenest purveyors of the scattered pieces that once was an American morality.

Meanders around Holly Springs, Mississippi, with the fuzzy benevolence of a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation.

Big Night's beauty is the fact that it is about passion.

Timeless, and as fine a depiction of human folly as you're likely to see at the movies.

A sweaty-browed exercise in precision filmmaking, but one that doesn't cheat you with wisps of tension and the pretense of attitude.

The scenes with Stalin and his frightened underlings, his giddy yes-men tip-toeing around him, are written and directed by Duncan with a grace, agility and comic deftness one rarely is treated to at the movies these days.

It's that rare movie with a sense of timeliness that is eternal, and a protagonist whose soul-crushed angst, even at its most fatal, speaks to the little boy/girl lost in everyone.

Gets diagnosably schizo.

The film's premise is totally implausible yet great performances, directing and script allow us to transcend the concept of believability and enjoy nevertheless.

Unlike so many other movies of literary provenance, it is clear from the start that this one is going to be entertainment, not homework. Lee serves up this sweetmeat without fuss, without the super-seriousness of filmmakers awed by their literary material.

A marvelous child of Star Wars technology, the advanced sound design makes a celebratory re-viewing of George Lucas' legendary, 20-year-old space opera a thrilling experience. [Special Edition]

Ethereal.

Makes a term like neo-noir seem like a fatuous catch phrase.

This movie has everything but Humphrey Bogart, and I'm sure he's sorry he was unavailable.

It's the film we leave most movie theaters wishing we'd seen instead.

Part aerobics workout, part self-styled dreamscape, Sense is a hyperactive piece of performance art that begins as the stripped-down dress rehearsal of a garage band and builds into a mighty, exhausting spectacle that shakes as much ass as it kicks. [Review of re-release]

Leigh has a gift for demonstrating character from the outside in.

There isn't a whole lot of fancy subplotting, just a potpourri of funny and engaging characters.

The script by Ed Solomon is tight, well-paced and lighthearted. If this were a musical, Fred Astaire could have played the Jones role, although somewhat more dashingly.

Classic in feel and loaded with sumptuous performances.

A monumentally graceful union of two extremely dissimilar stars, one inspired cinematographer and an exceptionally patient, curious, independent-minded director.

A triptych whirling on a Lazy Susan of revolving character perspectives.