A date film with a hook for men.

It's a reductive moral to a story full of fascinating contradictions, but Bailey and Barbato draw a convincing line between the social and political atmosphere of the film and the culture wars of today. The issues are still very much alive.

It's messy and unsettled, but Bellocchio's distaste for the cynicism and mendacity is potent and sincere.

It's a special, strangely soothing movie experience that wonderfully celebrates the intricate diversity of life on Earth and the profound emotional bond that can exist between man and beast.

This nifty little addition to the Winnie the Pooh franchise boasts some nice touches.

Kilner's light touch keeps the romantic pair dancing around their romance without tripping, but as the film reaches the inevitable happy ending, the steps look all too familiar.

Beautiful, elevating and achingly sad.

A cross between David Bowie and Maria Callas, the German singer took androgyny to an unearthly level.

Director Uwe Boll ("House of the Dead") has made a cottage industry out of this kind of junk. Maybe it's time for him to close up shop.

Takes itself seriously enough to pull off a clever bit of sleight of hand, but doesn't have much to offer once the twist comes out of hiding.

A film of minor pleasures.

Sour slapstick assault with a tin heart and counterfeit sentimentality.

Rich with insight and cinematic style and beauty, the film tells a uniquely moving and inspiring story. Unfortunately, it takes some stamina to distill its message from its overly long, overindulgent love affair with itself.

Winner of the top prize at the last Berlin Film Festival, the film is sporadically powerful, sensitively acted and full of music, used with imagination and flair.

This remake is considerably different and, for once, the changes have not hurt the film.

Machuca is a quiet film, moving sadly toward its inevitable climax, the final scenes a lesson in the methods by which the military restores order to a divided country.

While the movie may border on teen exploitation in many scenes, its heart and values are mostly in the right place, and it qualifies its thrill of victory with a very sober message: few high school athletes become NBA millionaires, many are cheated out of an education.

A poorly written collection of comic-book movie cliches that offers nothing new to the genre, generates very little in the way of action thrills and plays like a self-important, humorless rip-off of "Kill Bill."

Racing Stripes is oddly torn in tone: is it an old-fashioned family drama, a coming-of-age story or a crass comedy? Live action or animation? Unlike "Babe," it fails to integrate its conflicting personalities.

A movie you've seen many times before, but the setting is different, its characters are well drawn and it delivers its uplifting message with succinctness, sincerity and skill.

A not-bad ghost story that marks a comeback of sorts for its star, Michael Keaton, who hasn't top-billed a movie for almost a decade.

A smart, savvy and satisfying Hollywood comedy.

Pacino has done more Shakespeare than any other currently bankable movie star, he has a feel for the language and he lends a genuine grandeur to Shylock's big speech of self-defense.

Travolta has dusted off his folksy Southern character from "Primary Colors" (one of his most acclaimed roles) and he has his moments with it.

Re-creates the era convincingly, and, as usual, Penn is mesmerizing: a consummate movie actor at the peak of his game.

Fat Albert's originality is lost on the big screen.

It's a tough movie with a fearless performance by Bacon and brave filmgoers will be rewarded with a bracing experience.

It's both innocent and bizarre, with a mischievous sense of fantasy marked by simple but striking cinematic magic.

Many regular moviegoers will be appalled by its gleeful crudity and saddened by the spectacle of three icon stars mugging through a farce that's not that many notches above "Jackass: The Movie."

The cast is good, the score is sublime, the visuals are sumptuous and it speeds along with a delirious romantic power that, if you let it, can sweep you away.

Several times, Hotel Rwanda teeters on the edge of making a unique, visionary statement about our times, but can't quite do it. Too bad. If it could have pulled itself together in one brilliant scene, this may have been a great movie, instead of just a very good one.

It's not his (Scorsese) best film, but it's his most accessible and most thoroughly entertaining.

I walked out of it feeling much the same way I did after "The Cat in the Hat" and "The Polar Express" -- jarred by its excess, undernourished by its lack of heart and bored by its lack of originality.

Much of it is funny and endearing, and its toned-down star, Adam Sandler, is as winning as he's ever been.

It's a botched job...the new "Phoenix" lacks the very things that made the old one special.

It fails to persuade us that its subject is significant enough to be worth a movie.

The film is a melancholy but poetic meditation on the fragility of the gift of life.

Weaver was half-heartedly pushed as an underdog Oscar choice. If the film was worthy of her performance, Weaver may have had a shot.

It's an emotionally gripping, daringly genre-twisting, consummately crafted piece of filmmaking.

As a caper movie, it's a travesty that's impossible to understand or follow, but it's quite funny and clicks along nicely as a giddy, self-deprecating showcase for its gaggle of stars.

None of it is truly inspired, but Murray's deadpan presence holds it all together.

This is full of talk in the European art cinema tradition: intellectual conversations (often in multiple languages at once), gentile dinner conversation with an international all-star guest list.

It makes for one of the best and most haunting of the recent Asian horror films.

Dracula, who, as played by Dominic Purcell, has all the dark charisma and burning threat of a baked potato.

While its execution is fine, the movie is almost shockingly vapid.

It's exuberant, exhilarating, poetic and -- intentionally and not -- rather silly.

The movie works amazingly well as a historical epic.

It all feels pretty empty.

There are no fresh revelations and the film can't touch Paul Schrader's 1988 drama, "Patty Hearst," as an inside account.

Rich with emotional turmoil and searing beauty, but it could have used a little more time in the editing room to make sense of it all.

It's boldly acted, absorbing and satisfying as a history lesson and chock-full of extravagantly brutal battle sequences.

Above all, Kranks lacks that basic kernel of credibility that even a goofy farce needs to work.

Where other documentarians look for a charismatic personality to enliven their films, Berlin and Fab focus on the community as a whole.

Too dumb and improbable to even go into.

Works best when it devotes itself to the small group of main characters featured on the show.

A big change of pace for the bad-boy Spanish director. Like his other work, it's kinky and proudly gay, but this time it's not a comedy. It's a serious neo-film-noir, and a pretty darn good one at that.

Doyle's handheld camerawork is intimate and curious and his hazy colors radiate off the screen.

The movie is a misfire.

It's a real pleasure to find a movie as calm, measured and dead-on in its impact as Finding Neverland.

Absurdly over the top and not especially funny.

Condon's direction is steady and fearless, Neeson and Linney are individually excellent and together they create an inspiring chemistry for a truly adventurous marriage.

A slow, sometimes difficult film, Bright Future offers little immediate payoff to the patient viewer.

For most of the way, it's indeed quite a ride: a cumulatively exhilarating, visually mouth-dropping, somberly stylish odyssey crammed full of virtuoso animation sequences.

More than simply a raw-nerve success-gone-sour story. It's a revenge tale, and the directors come out on top.

Ultimately though, this remake doesn't stand up to the original. And it's precisely because this new Alfie is more likeable and thus less challenging.

Her (Ardant's) diva-in-decline is funny, lightly campy and dead-on in the way it encapsulates the sadness at the end of a selfish life lived only for art.

In a movie era when brand names mean very little, it shows once again that Pixar is a stamp of quality.

An extraordinary piece of biography.

The filmmakers piece it together with almost clockwork perfection and deliver it with masterful misdirection, creating the most ingenious, eccentric and brazenly jaundiced psycho-thriller to come along in years.

Kidman's performance is the best thing in the movie, but it's not at all appealing.

There's something flat and obscure about this well-acted stalker movie.

Wise, entertaining and often very funny.

There is no "why" in The Grudge, at least not an explanation that provides comfort or cure. It simply is. That's what makes it really scary.

This is pseudo-cynical comedy, however, not social satire. All the sharp corners are smoothed over and what's left is little more than a big screen sitcom.

Despite some iffy moments, Lighting is the closest one to get to the music from which, as Hubert Sumlin notes, "there is no retiring. You stay with it until the end."

Bale is totally convincing, if not especially endearing.

Despite picturesque episodes and nicely observed characters, the film lacks suspense.

An acid movie flashback a la Oliver Stone.

It feels too self-satisfied, but the prickly personalities and relationships have the ring of experience.

The first hour of the movie struck me as being truly inspired, and I haven't laughed so hard all year.

A warm-hearted and understated entertainment that's blissfully free of the heavy-handed crudity and other elements that have ravaged 21st-century Hollywood comedy.

The supporting performers all shine, especially Irons in the thankless role of the clueless cuckold husband.

Wanders off on story tangents that can't be called anything other than bizarre, but nevertheless oddly engages.

As empowering and triumphant a film as you'll see this or any year.

It's no earthshaker, but the indie film is refreshingly different from the current movie norm, it's won more than 15 awards on the festival circuit, and war-movie aficionados will find it well worth the journey.

One of the year's few sci-fi films that actually takes itself seriously, and a movie that goes a long way on the strength of its unique premise, steady performances and impressive visual style.

What it lacks in melodramatic punch it makes up for in unexpected shadings in the characters, predator and victim alike.

There's nothing harder for an actor to play than a thoroughly good character, and Staunton does it with a dowdy, sublime originality.

The film goes for a grainy, fast-cut, documentary look that is both a blessing and a curse.

An awkward and sometimes confused thing fraught with overwrought emotions and misguided ideals.

Writer/director Jordan Roberts aims for heartwarming drama and settles for tepid entertainment.

Every frame of the way, it's eminently clear that Primer is the work of an engineer, not a film- maker.

Whether Mann's film will make a difference, however, is another question. He devotes little time to really exploring the issues, leaving the film a patchwork of assertions that, while they may be true, have to be taken on faith.

There's an enjoyably literate style here and some humorous moments.

In its best moments, the film works as both an exciting and formula-breaking action-adventure and as an enjoyably sappy tearjerker.

It's overblown and greedy and feels like more of a merchandizing scheme than a movie.

Despite a consistent tone of all-out absurdity, it's a very demanding movie, and its goofiness is never inspired or laugh-out-loud funny enough to carry us along on its leap of imagination.

Captures the infantile fantasies of rock 'n' roll's self-made messiahs with an honesty that is rare in today's MTV world of promotional entertainment.