Documentary filmmaker Julie Gavras has made a successful transition into narratives with the remarkably assured, thoroughly delightful Blame It on Fidel.

Although The Willow Tree occasionally suffers from a surfeit of portentous symbolism, it is ultimately a powerful portrait of a man who gets what he always wanted.

Catapulted by an endearing lead performance by Reece Daniel Thompson as a stuttering high-school student, Rocket Science transcends the predictable high-school yarn and arcs into usually unexplored domains of self-discovery and personal growth in a coming-of-age film.

Diverting and pleasurable to watch, Stardust, a tongue-in-cheek sword-and-sorcerers romp bolstered by a top-flight cast, is most adroit when it plays the fantasy straight rather than sending up the genre.

Quite an entertaining genre piece boasting a terrifically sinewy lead performance from Wanda De Jesus.

Atkinson remains an expert clown, and there are sufficient numbers of gags to ensure that Bean fans worldwide will be kept fairly happy.

Charged by a knock-out performance from Samuel L. Jackson, this compelling story of manly redemption will deliver a winning boxoffice combination of word of mouth and ultimately step outside the generic ring of sports lore.

The two actors are solid, never overplaying scenes and capturing well that slow realization that their lives are never going to be the same.

An impassioned ecology-themed documentary that ultimately is more rewarding for informational than cinematic reasons.

An involving sci-fi action-thriller, probably longer on chase sequences than the original director wanted and shorter on the "ick" factor than the studio wanted.

One might question the operatic finale, which doesn't quite have the inevitability of the greatest tragic love stories. But the film's humanism gives it an overwhelming impact. To Israeli audiences, the experience must be even more explosive.

Writer-director Richard Shepard assembles all the elements for a dark suspense comedy only to lose his way in a surfeit of plot mechanics and unlikely behavior.

The film's dramatic moments are small but exquisitely rendered so that you feel the emotions experienced so many years ago. The film lingers afterward in your mind like a favorite vacation that triggered moments of sheer intensity.

A vigilante drama boasting a powerful Jodie Foster performance and carefully weighted direction by Neil Jordan.

The film's characters are lively, the women all look terrific (the guys do too, for that matter), and its many romantic story threads weave into artfully told tales of love lost and found.

The film, with its intersecting vignettes, might ultimately feel like more of a sampler platter than a sustaining smorgasbord, but it's effectively rooted in a lovely Morgan Freeman performance.

At the heart of the film is a powerful performance by the beautiful and most promising Hao Lei as its tempestuous, complex heroine.

Farrelly brothers films are looking better and better, but aren't nearly as funny as their grungy early films that hit with the stealth and vigor of guerrilla commandos. Maybe there is a kind of heartbreak here after all.

A true gift to fans of this important musician.

Livingston and director Steven Sawalich keep the character in constant motion, his dialogue sprinkled with humor and his energy contagious. The film also is surrounded by a crew of ferociously individualistic characters.

Despite top-flight acting from Michael Caine and Jude Law, it loses its grip in the third act and let's the air out of what might have been a memorably gripping film.

A fascinating film even if it never completely pins him (Verges) down.

Those who stick with Martian Child won't entirely avoid mush, but they will find terrific performances.

A refreshingly upbeat film that finds its roots in some seriously sobering events.

Amusing cinematic buffoonery by a man poking fun at movie conventions and the movie business itself.

Director Robert Zemeckis not only deploys 21st century movie technology at its finest to turn the heroic poem into a vibrant, nerve-tingling piece of pop culture, but his film actually makes sense of Beowulf. In Zemeckis' hands, it's an intriguing look at a hero as a flawed human being.

The story is about musicians and how music connects people, so the movie's score and songs, created by composers Mark Mancina and Hans Zimmer, give poetic whimsy to an implausible tale.

A sometimes clever, other times grating mix of live action and animation that plays tricks with levels of movie reality as the world of fairy-tale animation invades contemporary New York.