Moormann's reverential documentary, seven years in the making, is most successful as a self-narrated autobiography. It fails, however, to deliver a balanced portrait of the man's life and work.

The movie's a little thin for the two-hour running time, but likable enough for its schoolgirl audience and painless enough for the adults doomed to be dragged along.

The French are very much the villains of the saga and, naturally, have always hated the movie (it was banned in Paris until 1971); and it remains controversial in other quarters as well because it seems to embrace, even celebrate, terrorism as a political tool.

Brooks has made a movie that is about separation from convenience and having to deal one-on-one with a stranger in a strange land. The result is a profound and moving movie.

Resembles nothing more than an overstuffed, undernourished "Brady Bunch" episode, only not as funny.

Minghella does a good job of dashing any lingering image you might have of the Civil War as a conflict fought along neat geometric battle lines with the nobility of Appomattox.

The bogus Seattle setting creates an additional problem for local moviegoers. Because we know Seattle doesn't have a subway, giant FBI building or newspapers called Telegraph or Tribune, we're jarred out of the story so regularly that it leaves us slightly punch-drunk.

Like the schoolkids in this adventure, from the opening images to the closing credits, I do, I do, I do believe in fairy tales.

Dedicates itself to the beauty and thrill of bodies and motion and in doing so upstages Altman's cinematic conduit. The medium ultimately surpasses its messenger.

Plenty of visuals but little of the rhythm, flow or characterizations that made the earlier film an instant children's classic.

It's the kind of stunt that gets Oscar nominations and accolades. Theron turns it into a raw, bristling performance that deserves them.

A strangely mixed blessing filled with glossy production values and vibrant supporting performances but suffers mightily from a lack of credibility and the grinding predictability of its plot.

McNamara finally gets to tell his side of the story -- and is somewhat humanized in the process -- but still comes off looking like a tragic character living in a state of denial.

In the end, it's just a pointless downer.

The result is a movie that washes down without much thinking or introspection, provides some laughs and a tear or two, and dishes up a little something to mull over with its messages about friendship and loyalty in the face of naked ambition.

First and foremost, it soars because its grand design and numerous story problems were worked out half a century ago by a guy named Tolkien, and Jackson was smart enough to realize this.

There are certain rare movies that speak to us solely through the power and initiative of their visuals. This is one of them, and if you're receptive to this kind of movie, and know Vermeer's work, it's an unusually satisfying, even enriching experience.

The resulting political thriller is more intriguing than riveting, flattened by Jewison's plodding direction and distracting use of British actors to play French characters.

Director Troy Beyer, who adapted the original screenplay, can't seem to decide if this is a morality play or a music-video fantasy.

Its script is sharp, its dialogue is acerbic, its stars could hardly be better and, in its more sparkling moments, it exudes some of the flavor and charm of the later Hepburn-Tracy comedies.

Next to "Bad Santa" or "Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat," it's a paragon of sophistication.

Despite its shortcomings as objective reporting, Power Trip offers a glimpse into a sputtering culture that, after decades of communist rule, has little chance of survival in the modern world.

An engagingly whimsical, sporadically charming, frequently very funny Southern Gothic fantasy that somehow doesn't quite come together to be as magical or meaningful as it's intended to be.

First-time director Billie Woodruff, a music video veteran, busts his moves in the dance scenes while the movie throbs to the beat of the wall-to-wall soundtrack.

In his first role since turning 40, Cruise displays a likable new maturity, and an unexpected willingness to look weak and foolish.

A gracefully subtle, sweet-spirited French parable of the brotherhood of man that was nominated for a Golden Globe, won Omar Sharif a César Award for best actor and has been a surprise hit in Europe.

It has its charms, but fails to strike a similar emotional chord.

Most of the magic of this unusual movie comes from the freshness, imagination and sweet spirit of its animation, which is blissfully its own thing and does not show the influence of any of the reigning forces in the art form.

If you're addicted to Billy Bob Thornton's slovenly charm, and thrill to the prospect of watching him talk endlessly about his bodily functions and penchant for anal sex with obese women, this is your movie. If not, it's like 90 minutes in hell.

The special effects display is so lacking in imagination it turns into so much noise, just a flashy distraction from the stiff, stock cliches of the by-the-numbers script.

A resounding dud.

It was also a miscalculation to make the film so sexually explicit. It doesn't particularly serve the story and, for all his gifts, Macy is just not the kind of actor most people want to see in a whirl of sweaty, naked sex.

A punch in the stomach of a movie. It is as ugly as it is beautiful, as full of peaks as of lows. It's a character-driven movie about people on an emotional edge who are ridding themselves of the things that can no longer work without inflicting damage.

Where "The Cat" book was anarchistic but ultimately sweet-spirited, this movie is ugly, dumb and colossally mean-spirited.

Kassovitz directs with an unrelenting intensity that helps you to suspend disbelief almost all the way to the credits.

Like a family visit during the holidays. Tensions run high, not everyone is likable but being there's an uneasy comfort because everything is so familiar.

The movie also has a supernatural element: the leader of the renegades (Eric Schweig) turns out to be a sorcerer with occult powers. It's very clumsy, and speaks to the pandering streak in Howard that has always prevented him from being a truly first-rate film artist.

The music, art direction and camerawork blend together with an integrity and scope that's wonderfully exhilarating. Every frame seems to communicate the grandeur, power and fatal pull of the sea.

The film is an across-the-board charmer that should appeal to children as well as their parents, aficionados of animation and old-movie buffs who will be challenged to sort out the blur of seemingly hundreds of classic film references.

MTV offers an airbrushed portrait that does nothing but perpetuate the myth of an "angelic" hoodlum.

Its elements all come together with an unforced perfection, every scene feels real and alive in a way that many of his more surrealistic later films do not, and Leonard Maltin, for one, has argued that I Vitelloni is no less than Fellini's masterpiece.

Looks simultaneously ahead of its time and delightfully quaint, a simple romantic comedy that revels in the dreamy artifice of a meticulously re-created fantasy Las Vegas.

The journey comes together to be one of the very best of the "in search of" documentaries: open-minded, informative, immaculately crafted, full of moving and highly privileged moments of discovery.

The real gift of Elf is the simple pleasure of a sweet and funny comedy that genuinely embraces its message of holiday cheer and still has fun goofing with it.

The film is an audience-pleaser, but very calculated and far from Curtis' best work: His script will go to any lengths to be cute, and his direction tends to be overly broad. In the end, he wears us out with the sheer volume of witty and endearing characters.

No, it doesn't exactly re-create the magic that made the original such an instant classic, but it's faster and more involving than "Reloaded" and it rounds off the premise and themes of the trilogy in a surprisingly satisfying way.

The best thing the movie has going for it is Kidman's performance.

A one-note farce that struggles just to remain on key.

The sharpest journalism thriller I've seen in years: an absolutely riveting drama that doesn't glorify its subject in the slightest and shrewdly says a lot of very sad things about the state of modern journalism.

Its heart is in the right place, and it doesn't flinch an iota from its duty of rubbing our faces in the horror of the Third World over the past two decades.

It's really Harris' movie, and he brings to it just the right blend of engaging affability, gruff strength of character and transcendent nobility of spirit to make it a genuinely enriching experience.

Where the Wayanses flogged every last chuckle from their belabored ideas, Zucker spring-loads his gags and lets them fly in rapid-fire succession. Not everything hits the target, but he tosses so many of them off with a wink and a grin that they catch you by surprise.

Has an unforced, pleasingly New Age feel to it; an unexpected but satisfying ending (a la "Shrek"); and a script that -- despite its overdone, body-switching premise -- comes together to nicely convey a cogent, environmentally conscious moral lesson.

What the film does extremely well is take us deep into the crime scene, and give faces to the victims so we can experience this epic, incomprehensible and somehow prototypically American act of violence on a more personal and intimate level.

Despite his harrowing real-life experiences, Downey, good as he is, is simply too young for the part. This callow telling begs for a more mature approach.

Actually, the film may be too grubby and sordid and ghoulish for its own box-office good. It's certainly going to send more than a few of the New Zealand director's sensitive women fans running from the auditorium.

Efforts to expand the envelope of grotesquery make the film repulsive and suspenseless, and it sorely misses original director Tobe Hooper's grisly, wily sense of humor.

The irony is that when the movie plays it safe, it succeeds admirably; when it attempts to be about something, it rings false.

The ordeal undeniably strikes an emotional chord, and much of this is due to Holmes, who wonderfully communicates both the character's streak of rebellion and her desire to atone. The movie is a solid star vehicle for her.

A B-movie goof on an A-minus budget, Returner is a mini-epic tweaked with computer effects and one blazing gun battle after another and set to an anonymous techno-beat.

What Jeffs -- and Paltrow -- do capture is the shroud of tragedy that hovered over Plath.

Blanchett is, warts-and-all, letter perfect.

Fairly good- natured and not as awful as it sounds, but it lacks distinction.

The movie is a delicious, consistently hilarious screwball farce that gives Clooney his best comedy role to date and should finally, forever, lift the Coens into the wide-release movie mainstream.

It's bound to be the love-it-or-hate-it movie of 2003.

There's no disguising the fact that, beneath all its talk, this is a very traditional, very predictable romance; it's sorely in need of some comic relief; and, if you're a non-smoker, you will get very tired of its heroine blowing smoke in your face.

Moves along its course and overflows at its climax with that indefinable but unmistakable assurance of a master filmmaker who knows just what he wants to say, is in total command of his medium and is in no mood to make any compromises.

It's a chilling tale that leaves us with the fear that Latin America's exploding social problems may well be beyond solution.

Although budding star Mendes and Washington sparked in "Training Day," there's less chemistry between them this time as she glowers and frets in her role as a big-city cop.

Linklater powers the film with the energy and attitude and beat of his soundtrack.

The film is so truncated, so obsessed with style and composed of so many self-contained episodes that it fails to say anything new.

Mehta's feisty, featherweight romantic comedy makes the case that even the most flamboyant cinematic conventions are as universal as they are exotic, especially when they conspire to produce that glow of happily ever after.

Not a comedy of guffaws and goofy gags, but a wry, underplayed little piece with an undercurrent of loss and abandonment.

There's no slow descent into ruthless warfare and we get neither the giddy charge of their bad behavior, nor the guilty sting of complicity in their ruthless desire. All that's left is an idea still in search of a script.

Quite a bit of fun. In fact, in its own good-natured, silly way, it works better than most of the year's other adventure-gutbusters.

Diane Lane overplays many scenes, she tries way too hard to be ingratiating and, in many other ways, it's one of the least of her performances.

Veteran British director Eric Till otherwise does a credible job of sweeping us through this huge life, and his eye for detail combines with the Oscar-worthy production design and a succession of striking Eastern European locations to create a rich visual tapestry of the Middle Ages.

If it sounds like Prey for Rock and Roll might be fun despite its shortcomings, it is not. Even those with a predilection for bad movies about rock 'n' roll should avoid this one.

Despite several touching scenes, the script comes perilously close to being maudlin and, while competent, Polley doesn't have the flair to make anything special out of her big role.

From the first voyeuristic peek into the ruthless world to the haunting, accusatory, unforgettable final image, it's a brilliant, stunning piece of work, perhaps not Assayas' best, but certainly his most fearless and impassioned.

It's so irrelevant, unambitious and lazy it almost seems to be thumbing its nose at the daring filmmaker Woody once was.

Most of the publicity for Cold Creek Manor seems to imply that it's an occult thriller, specifically a Stephen King-ish haunted house movie. But no. This is a severe case of mistaken identity: In fact, there's not a supernatural bone in the movie's body.

The movie is bursting with minor characters who upstage the main story with their comic routines and musical interludes.

When a director has two actors as iconic and skillful as Robert Duvall and Michael Caine for his leads, all he has to do is point the camera in their direction and it's hard to go wrong.

It's Shakespearean in its political machinations and closer to "Saving Private Ryan" and "Starship Troopers" than to "Dracula" or "The Howling."

But the movie goes absolutely nowhere. It allows us to be a fly on the wall to a whirlwind of gossip, confessions and intimate moments. But when the ending comes, it's an epic letdown. It's just so much Oprah-esque eye candy, without a point of view, or a plot.

Winterbottom's compassion transforms In This World from a political statement into an eloquent and involving human drama.

More than painful to behold, it's simply insincere in a film determined to undermine gay stereotypes.

A passionate, well-made documentary that stresses how time is running out for a peaceful solution.

Gradually and inexorably, the small crises of the children assume a poignant dramatic profluence, and the soothing patience of the teacher begins to have an almost hypnotically balming effect on the viewer.

Completely -- and quite cleverly -- contrived, a cascade of stupid mistakes and miscommunication stirred into a visceral stew of gooey blisters and flaying layers of bloody flesh.

The picture juggles three story threads. It's an excellent character study, a surprisingly effective father-daughter drama and a caper movie littered with surprises.

The film's deliberately overblown cartoonishness and its gleefully pandering adolescent cruelty never blend into the enjoyable style of, say, a good spaghetti western (Rodriguez's acknowledged model), or even a bad Quentin Tarantino movie.

Isn't about a May-December romance or a brief encounter in a faraway place. It's about being alone in a crowd and the power of unexpected friendships.

Deftly weaves history, film and memory into an imaginative meditation on why the movies become a part of our lives.

So Close is the film "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" dreams of being: sleek, silly, completely ridiculous and irresistible.

Imparts its fair share of laughs but bogs down after a solid start and never makes anything special out of its premise.

Taking on the sneeringly blase Alig may be a cagey career move for Culkin, but it's a disappointingly thin performance.