Farce born of sadly irreconcilable impulses: Bravo!

I found it tiresomely undramatic, even saccharine. Not to mention monotonous.

A grim, twisty international conspiracy picture that challenges the audience on every level, political and aesthetic. The aesthetic part is a bit of an obstacle, though. I can't remember a time I had as much trouble--at a movie I admired--just figuring out what the hell was going on.

No, I couldn't be more pleased with what the screenwriter, Steven Kloves, and the director, Mike Newell, have wrought this time.

In spite of its standard biopic gaps and simplifications, Walk the Line gets the big things right.

A more down-to-earth actor would sentimentalize Breakfast on Pluto and make for an awkward fit with its peculiar mix of tones. Murphy's strangeness--his chill estrangement--makes his campy "Kitten" persona more poignant.

This Pride & Prejudice (ampersand and all) a joy to behold.

It has its own explosively twisted originality. It's a geyser of exhilarating tastelessness.

"Three Kings" is fictional, obviously, and Mendes and Broyles were bound by the facts of Swofford's life. But the violence in "Three Kings" was visceral, whereas Jarhead's never penetrates the blood-brain barrier. It's locked away in its narrator's jarhead.

A sour little psychodrama.

Good as it is, The Legend of Zorro would be a hollow feat without leads who are drop-dead-gorgeous movie stars and spectacular clowns.

A fine movie, beautifully acted, but it isn't easy to love--or to watch. It's a parade of miseries, made even more miserable by Gore Verbinski's direction.

What makes this an important film is the way it puts you in that landscape and in those shoes, so that you almost understand how ordinary human beings can be impelled to do inhuman things.

In any case, the best performance is by Bridgette Wilson-Sampras as the conniving but peppy slut at the perfume counter. Her big scene--farcical, filthy, surprising--is also the best in the movie. Otherwise, Shopgirl is sadly vacuous, with a sadly vacuous center.

The comic surface of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is all polished brilliance, with surprisingly few dull patches...The movie doesn't deliver in the kiss-kiss department, though.

Domino seemed to me the end of the world for movies--a glimpse of a future so excruciating that I'd prefer to take my chances with Hitchcock's eye-gouging avians.

For all sort of reasons, I was disappointed that there is barely anything of Bruce McGill as the family's hearty swindler. And there is too much of Sarandon, whose big scene--a speech at her late husband's memorial service, complete with jokes and a tap dance--is the movie's most egregious misfire.

Powerful and then some.

A passionate and rousing piece of filmmaking--a civics lesson with the punch of a good melodrama.

The hole in the film isn't a reflection on Linney's performance. It's as if Baumbach, his hands full of oily whale blubber, didn't want to deal with an exploding sac of squid ink. And who can blame him, really?

An absolutely magical fusion of deadpan Ealing comedy and Gothic horror.

I mean Serenity no disrespect when I say it's enjoyably junky.

Hoffman goes beyond the surface mannerisms and diction. He disappears into Capote.

An honest tear-jerker.

Has a routine finish but up to that point is a more than decent thriller--or, given its taut self-containment, a more than decent Hitchcockian "exercise in suspense."

Over-the-top and shockingly vicious. But what strikes some critics as complexity feels to me like shame--the shame of Cronenberg, an uncompromising director whose bloodshed has always been genuinely horrifying.

The most effective counterweight to Polanski's fatalism is young Barney Clark, whose Oliver--although given to few words--is unshakably alive and responsive, even as he's being buffeted violently by forces beyond his control.

Everything Is Illuminated is not a fiasco, but in some ways I'd have preferred a fiasco—something overreaching and inchoate instead of this self-consciously artistic mood piece.