This French pastry, directed by Danièle Thompson, who wrote it with her son Christopher, is a meet-cute comedy in excelsis. Or very near excelsis.

A prime candidate for a time capsule, to disclose a century hence the current state of some of our civilization's discontents, including the ability to be convinced that one is telling the truth even when one is lying.

The film is merely a succession of odd events. But those events are interesting, and the texture of the village's life is full-fashioned.

It lets us glimpse once again the stubborn, if slender, persistence of the humane.

The pace is fairly hectic, which it needs to be. (Mustn't linger on bubbles.) The performances are warm, especially the tender Judith Godrèche as the doctor's wife.

His (LaBute's) work needs attention even at its nadir, which I hope this new film is.

Washington Heights, under De Villa's guidance, bubbles. Once more, as in comparable films, it creates a foreign nexus in a domestic setting -- a group of people who live in two cultures.

The essence of the film is that French gambit which Leconte has called "the magic of the unlikely encounter.

Malkovich has done considerable directing in the theater, but nothing in the acting here shows acuteness of choice or subtlety of touch.

Moncrieff's insistence on her subject suggests conviction -- about her contribution and about her cast. Both beliefs are pretty much justified.

The very considerable impact of the picture is mainly the work of two men, the author and the star.

His (writer/director Konchalovsky's) plunge into the world of mental distortion is so garish, so exploitative, that the picture needs only a few clicks of the dial to move from the horrible to the ludicrous

It is Akinshina's presence and performance that make the pedestrian story heart-wrenching. She is pretty, responsive, reflective. Without the slightest strain, she convinces us of the beauty and pathos and hope within Lilya.

What an extraordinary idea it was to make this film. What a splendid achievement.

The Good Thief merely adds a new tinct to the pathos of Jordan's career. Once again we see a director who is better than anything he has so far done.

Moreau's face is the base and the beauty of the film.

It is Fellini's face that is peculiarly welcome, the face that -- in a probably fantasizing but pertinent way -- endorses his films.

This is Sollett's first feature film -- he has previously made only one short -- and it shows, more than exceptional talent for cinema itself, his ability to evoke character, in a kind of sidewise offhand way, and to create a sense of community both within and around the film.

A series of disconnected scenes alternating between two story lines, neither of which is cogent or concluded. The picture is tinged with the irrational.

Precisely the point of films in this genre is to provide pleasant predictability. We collaborate, in a way: we chuckle silently as, so to speak, we make the film ourselves.

The result is not a quilt, just a succession of story snippets that keep interrupting one another.

This is a fictional film, but it is based on a novel by Stefanie Zweig that is autobiographical. The adaptation was done by the director Caroline Link, whose screenplay is serviceable and whose directing is generally sure.

Frances McDormand plays the record-producing mother with the nativity that talent makes possible.

Imagine finding the will to get up every morning to do another day's work on this stale story tarted up with relevance.

Over and over in the course of the film, we can see Spacey, a good actor, reaching down into himself to find a source of verity for this plot-constructed character. It is not a pretty sight.

Green treats his people with affectionate knowledge, untinged with patronizing. And he sees them in ways that are free of cinematic cliché.

Gerry is all manner without any trace of depth.

A binding strength of the film is the performance of Choi Min-Sik as Ohwon: far from any fake-Barrymore antics, he makes us feel that we are intruding on the heat and genius of a man for whom life -- existence as is possible in the world -- is insufficient.