Imbued with infectious pluck. It's also a lucid, competent, titanically entertaining movie loaded with workable gags.

Madhouse satire manages to disarm the second you realize it's laughing with you - and sometimes harder.

I'm not sure all of this works out as convincingly as Anderson intends in the movie's somewhat unsatisfying ending, but getting there is a wickedly enjoyable journey.

Staggering, gorgeously ambiguous.

If there's a granddaddy of breezy situationalism, it's probably Buñuel.

No-fat filmmaking aided by Berri's muscular formalism that, here, occasionally assumes the gritty focus of a taut, action thriller.

The Coens haven't been this sharp, focused and fluid since their first film. This is "Blood Simple's" promise fulfilled.

A 140-minute film masterpiece.

Jingoistic politics are not proper or prudent in the pluralistic human society of the 1990s. It's much easier to assuage these baser urges by facing a real nonhuman enemy that just wants to kill you. War is gore. You or them. That message is the real strength of "Starship Troopers," although many may find it morally flawed. No matter, this is powerful entertainment that appeals to our most basic instincts.

Austin is funny, extremely funny, because he is so ridiculous, and because Myers is a brilliant mimic who, like Martin Short, knows how to do ridiculous.

One of the qualities that makes "12 Monkeys" so good is the fact that it is almost too complicated to explain.

Superbly acted by its young cast, written and directed with great sophistication, Wild Reeds moves with a sad assurance through that domain that most American filmmakers explore only clumsily: the mysteries of the human heart.

Like laughing into a mirror for 113 minutes.

Shelton has a talent for using the specific to illustrate the universal. Avowed baseball haters loved "Bull Durham." And if watching golf sounds like an excellent insomnia cure, you will probably still enjoy Tin Cup.

Fly Away Home" is directed by Carroll Ballard, who made "The Black Stallion" and "Never Cry Wolf." In other words, it was directed by a filmmaker with talent, taste and subtlety, working from an understated script by Robert Rodat and Vince McKewin.

May be the funniest movie about parental and spousal abuse ever made.

Foster has whipped the actors into the sort of comic frenzy usually reserved for farce, and the ready-for-anything energy serves the material well.

Tennant and company do a fine job of retaining the otherworldliness of a fairy tale while at the same time explaining all the archaisms for a modern audience.

Dalmatians proves an apt playground for Hughes as one could surmise that his inspiration for treating comic bad guys in his movies so violently comes from a cartoon sensibility.

An army of rolled abs and their owners give the state of American race relations a beginner's workout.

A movie that features rich Mexican American characters and an uncompromising story line is always timely.

The End of the Affair's masterfully heartbroken final scene is scarier in its nightmarishly wry suggestion of ill fate than anything that ever happened on Elm Street.

Death doesn't knock in Theo Angelopoulos' Eternity and a Day; it raps softly, sitting patiently in the waiting room of its terminally ill poet's life until he's ready to let it in.

With all that has happened to the Soviet Union, and to the dreams of the Cuban revolution, in the years since "I Am Cuba" was made, the film can't help feeling like a relic of a discarded era. But it still has power to surprise and, occasionally, to enchant.

Priceless enough to flush "Metro," "Dr. Dolittle" and "Holy Man" from memory.

One of Lee's unsung gifts as a filmmaker is his discovery of that place between eye-popping surrealism and wrenching Greek tragedy.

After more than an hour of fun, the film turns dark as Solanas' mental state worsens. Not only does the brilliant kook wear out her welcome with Warhol, but the portrayal also grates on the viewer.

Eastwood is perfect as the bad guy (a thief) you root for.