Overall a well-played chess match of a movie.

It's a testament to what happens when all the right ingredients come together. Wag the Dog is the best political satire in years.

A sobering documentary.

A warm-hearted valentine to old traditions in China that are being obliterated by modern - and admittedly more efficient - technology.

At its best the film serves as a music appreciation class taught by embattled artists whose cloudy livelihoods grow increasingly uncertain with each bittersweet symphony.

It's a gas, dude!

A featherweight parlor-room French farce in need of an anchor to keep it from being blown away by the summer blockbuster gales.

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

POSITIVE vibes aside, Down in the Delta is fairly simple stuff, with acting that at times sinks to the dialogue-of-agreement level of those after-school specials a network used to run a while back. But it will go down in history as the first film to be directed by Maya Angelou, and it isn't a bad one at that.

Through it all, Ozon supplies a sense of pathos that makes fun of its own soullessness, transforming a self-serious suicide note into an existential love letter.

Quickly degenerates into a grueling piece of unpleasantness.

Softley and Amini say they consciously viewed Kate as a film noir kind of heroine, a beauty leading a good man astray. And that, added to the setting of the second half of the movie in canal-riven Venice, gives the story the kind of moral haziness that verges on Thomas Mann territory.

What begins as unassumingly dull wanders into disarming chaos.

Where most effects-laden extravanganzas aspire to be nothing more than a live-action comic book, The Matrix sees things with the venturesome clarity of a graphic novel.

A document of vexing (and vexed) immediacy.

An excellent human-interest documentary that unlike so many others has a genuine appeal beyond someone already interested in the subject matter.

Cholodenko's strategy of having the actors, in every scene -- whether it involves Lucy, the boyfriend or the Frame editors -- perform with an intonational flatness approaching monotone pretentiously undermines the effectiveness of her subject matter.

There is something nicely matter-of-fact about Greg Mottola's family comedy-trauma, The Daytrippers. This first-time writer-director has a breezy way of persuading us that seemingly unrealistic behavior is the most natural in the world.

Trouble is, it's too close-up.

Capably made but simplistic story.

Like a Sally Field movie by Vittorio De Sica: Zhang wants to affect you with the subtle sting of his politics.

From both sides of the camera, Eastwood works the crowd better than he has in years.

Loose and funny with verve.

That's not to say the entertaining Antz" was made by Woody, just that it's full of his personality.

Despite the occasional uneven patch, the emotional punch of Slam leaves you wrung out as the credits unexpectedly start to roll. You want a happy ending, you realize the deck is stacked against it, but - thanks to the redemptive power of the spoken word - you have reason to hope.

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

Crassly funny passages.

Prince-Bythewood's movie is an occasionally clunky, mostly engaging coming out party for herself.