Anyone who goes in this movie expecting a rollicking comedy is in for a shock. Its scant humor is dry as the Sahara and, like all Dickens stories, its upbeat ending is never quite convincing enough to offset the horrors of the journey toward it.

Kidman's Virginia Woolf is already controversial -- Yet there's something fierce, noble and deeply affecting in her work that mirrors Woolf's prose style, and her turbulent presence is the soul of the movie.

DiCaprio could hardly be better. He brings this outrageous character and his demons to life with skill, sympathy and a symphony of small, telling touches.

Never more than an extended TV episode, the originality of its heroine and messages merit a recommendation for families seeking slightly more thoughtful animated fare.

There are two reasons Ramsay succeeds with a story that might at best be called morbid: She visually transforms the dreary expanse of dead-end distaste the characters inhabit into a poem of art, music and metaphor -- and she has the perfect actress to embody Morvern.

Grant's timing is flawless, his delivery is perfection, and he once again demonstrates himself to be the movies' unrivaled master of sophisticated verbal comedy.

As the most diabolically focused and politically incorrect cop this side of Popeye Doyle, Liotta is a hot prospect for this year's supporting-actor Oscar.

All of Scorsese's movies deliver a mixed message, but this one is downright schizophrenic.

Cronenberg's most disciplined exploration yet of that shadowy realm: the world refracted through the prism of a schizophrenic mind.

Washington brings it off with an unforced and well-earned emotional wallop, and whose strong hand, keen eye, sweet spirit and good taste are reflected in almost every scene.

Lee doesn't seem to have the slightest sympathy for his hero, no particular point is made, and the whole exercise seems cold and empty.

A brilliantly conceived, boldly executed, cumulatively thrilling fantasy epic that expands the art of film and is sure to be the middle link of one of the movies' greatest trilogies.

A bit smarter than it seems at first glance, and ends up being a rather colorful and fascinating -- and often imaginatively Capraesque.

A comedy that surpasses stupidity, and not in entertaining ways.

It's crowd-pleasing stuff, to be sure.

There's still nothing quite as thrilling on the screen as the spectacle of an icon movie star in a perfectly tailored role.

Along the way the film loses sight of the joy of music that supposedly pushes them all.

Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo creates the same world of devils and innocents that grounds so much of Spain's modern, seeped-in-Satanic-evil horror, recast in a secular cinematic vocabulary.

Has a delightfully nasty villain and pumped-up action, albeit along familiar lines.

The stripped-down dramatic constructs, austere imagery and abstract characters are equal parts poetry and politics, obvious at times but evocative and heartfelt.

Universal Pictures has a lot of gall to pick up a movie as thoroughly awful as Empire and -- with a straight face and a $20 million or so ad campaign -- thrust it on the holiday movie market as if it were a significant piece of filmmaking.

Feels forced every step of the way. Ultimately it's the kind of under-inspired, overblown enterprise that gives Hollywood sequels a bad name.

For three-fourths of its journey, Adaptation is, for my money, the movie of the year: an incredibly audacious and original exercise that challenges the conventions of moviemaking and stretches the boundaries of fiction -- almost, but not quite, to the breaking point.

A preachy parable stylized with a touch of John Woo bullet ballet.

That rare thing at the movies these days: a new experience. It awes us with its technological feat, it sweeps us up in its mystical spell and, with its final scene -- it takes us to an emotional climax of almost unbearable poignancy.

Noyce's movie is a testament to endurance -- the camera caresses the landscape -- instilling us with a respect and reverence for it, its harsh ways and the attachment to it that Australia's indigenous people hold.

The film has good design, effective animation and generic if endurable songs, but Sandler wants to slam his sentiment and wallow in it too, and he compromises with the worst of both worlds.

Philip Messina's claustrophobic sets and Cliff Martinez's elegantly creepy score add to the film's distinction and work off Clooney's performance and Soderbergh's staging to create an hypnotic spell and suggest a cosmos full of spiritual possibility.