Roger & Me is a pointedly hilarious documentary about a subject that isn't remotely funny, the indifference of corporate America to the lives of its workers. First-time filmmaker Michael Moore shows a city ruined, not by lack of drive and hard work, but by simple corporate greed. He uses humor to keep the viewer involved in what could easily have been an unbearably depressing film.

Harvey Keitel gives an astonishing performance here... Though hardly a film for all sensibilities, Bad Lieutenant has the courage of its own convictions, and follows them to the bitter end.

It's not about sex -- it's about Barbra and Bette and the Village People: That's the lesson of this cheerful, mainstream comedy about tabloid TV, Hollywood sophistry and family values that finally gets discussion about gay people out of the bedroom and into the record store, where it belongs.

A beautifully realized tale focusing on an ambitious but unfulfilled group of intellectuals, who react in differing ways to the illness that befalls their mentor, a brilliant writer (Francois Cluzet).

The second leads are far more interesting: Belushi brings a brash, hearty presence to the film, while Perkins is wonderfully acerbic. Their scenes together are the movie's best.

The film boasts fewer guest-star cameo appearances than the first time around but those who are here do a good job, and Miss Piggy's Busby Berkeley-type dance and the water ballet are fun to watch.

Xiao's bittersweet film is superficially a swoony love letter to the cinema. But her valentine has a hidden sting, rooted in some hard truths about movie mania.

Richardson's direction of this unhappy little gem gives off the appropriate dull glimmer while being economical and inventive.

Another of director Sirk's melodramatic, bitter attacks on the values of American middle-class life in the 1950s, this one stars MacMurray as a middle-aged milquetoast who lives in a claustrophobic home with his token wife, Bennett, and their three self-absorbed children.

After a positively thrilling first half, Brazilian director Andrucha Waddington's follow-up to his acclaimed 2000 debut "Me You Them" badly stumbles over an unfortunate casting strategy.

You just can't hate anything this energetic and happy.

Most of the film consists of meetings between different factions and groups, all conducted according to ancient tribal customs.

Not a film for everyone, but the unrelieved squalor of Barfly offers its own peculiar fascinations.

Dante gleefully trashes cliches and sentimental Capra-esque notions, but one should not forget this movie was given a "PG" rating and cynically aimed to draw an audience of small children who would no doubt be terrorized by this myth-shattering film.

An intelligent and very funny satire about the bloody game of American politics.

A little commentary would have helped put the tragedy of the Hillbrow Kids into sharper perspective.

Intelligent and engaging, this documentary about rave culture overcomes the challenge inherent in its subject; rave's appeal is by nature nonanalytical and experiential, while documentary films play to the intellectual observer.

The acting is uniformly superb, as is the rich, somber cinematography.

This teen-oriented gloss on Shakespeare's tale is cute and occasionally quite funny, but it's undermined by slack direction.

The film is not without its share of awkward moments, but as an insightful critique of "Girl Culture" and the mounting war over the hearts and minds of adolescent girls that's currently being waged in the media, it's mandatory viewing.

A comic masterpiece.

All three actresses are simply dazzling, particularly Balk, who's finally been given a part worthy of her considerable talents.

Harmon and Murray are cardboard cutouts of ideal boyfriends; the only male performer allowed to shine is newcomer Ryan Malgarini, who nearly steals every scene he's in.

Past and present, reality and fiction blend seamlessly into each other in Satoshi Kon's dream-like animated drama.

The excuse given here that Gerron couldn't resist one last opportunity to direct, even under the most grotesque circumstances, is really no excuse at all.

Portabella has no interest in conventional biography -- it's hard not to suspect that he included the tale of Felix Mendelsson (Daniel Ligorio) discovering the score for the "St. Matthew Passion" wrapping a meat delivery precisely BECAUSE it's probably apocryphal.

Thanks to a terrific performance by Freeman and slick direction by Jerry Schatzberg, this is a fast-moving, intermittently riveting crime drama.

One of the most genuinely haunting ghost stories in recent years, The Changeling is much eerier and more effective than the overrated and bombastic Poltergeist.

The Kemps make THE KRAYS worth watching. And they're supported by a first-rate cast of female monsters and victims, and some compelling seedy bits by strong character actors.

An affectionate tale, told with sensitivity and a wonderfully offbeat sense of humor.

Clearly designed as a cult film, this messy trifle is not without its charms. These include the affably weird Goldblum, Lithgow's deliriously overstated mad scientist, and a band of alien invaders who are not emissaries of a vastly superior race, but beer-swilling mediocrities in Hawaiian shirts.

If this new film seems less prescient than its predecessor, it's only because reality is rapidly catching up with Cronenberg's warped imagination.

But good intentions aside, Tucker and codirector Petra Epperlein only further confuse the issue: Their rap-video stylings and use of non-source music create the impression that you're watching characters trapped in a Tom Clancy Xbox game.

Maybe not Oscar material but a very enjoyable piece of entertainment.

It's a lavish entertainment that revels in lurid colors and yet more lurid emotions.

The film loses steam, sabotaged by Joshua Logan's too-obvious direction and receiving little help from a score by Lerner and Loewe that remains one of their minor efforts.

This animated children's film focuses on a unicorn and her mission to free the rest of her breed from the tyranny of an evil king.

Their scheme involves causing a major traffic jam in the middle of Turin, Italy, which allows them to steal gold ingots from an armored car. The gold is then stashed in a bus, and the predictable chase ensues.

It's a show we don't see, presumably because of issues with music rights, and while "much ado about nothing" might be overstating things, after more than an hour and a half of buildup, it would have been nice to see Wu-Tang perform.

THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA is marked by Mankiewicz's sharp wit--sometimes too much wit. When there is one character cracking wise, fine. When you have two, okay. But when almost all the characters sound as though they were sitting around the writer's table at the MGM commissary, suddenly credibility goes out the window.

Though the film verges on hagiography, Angio unearthed a treasure trove of fascinating clips, from the bored-looking writer-director leafing through his program at the 1971 Tony Awards.

Both Russell and Winger give solid performances, and the memory of the complex interplay between their ultimately not-so-very-different characters lingers long after the film has ended.

Deftly manages to avoid many of the condescending stereotypes that so often plague films dealing with the mentally ill.

Like the violence in Alan Clarke's Elephant, the BBC documentary about Northern Ireland from which the film takes its name, Van Sant offers no straightforward reasons for what happens at this particular school. The explosion of violence is far from unmotivated, but its roots are presented as deeply personal and, even more troubling, ultimately inexplicable.

Bernal continues to demonstrate an impressive range; the character requires the normally laid-back actor to be a wild ball of energy, and he's more than up to the challenge. His performance is hilarious, heartfelt and more than a little creepy, which could also be said about the movie itself.

The result is a bittersweet trifle one can conceivably fall in love with, and Honore's best film so far.

There is, however, considerable humor to what might have been an exceedingly grim film, and most of it comes courtesy of Mona's slippery brother, Marwan (Ashraf Barhoum).

Like so many true stories, Comes' lacks the clarity and comforting resolution of fiction

Satisfies the heart and engages the mind.

A sickly soft-swirl confection of low laughs and smarmy sentiment.

Though it lacks Alfred Hitchcock's wry and macabre sense of humor, DEAD CALM is a cracklingly good, cold-blooded film that never lets up in its truly Hitchcockian suspense. Under the gripping direction of Phillip Noyce, the film sustains tension and power beautifully, right through to its startling conclusion.

Thin story collapses under the leaden star chemistry; capable supporting players can't save this dud.

Style oozing from virtually every frame.

The script is spiked with cheeky, occasionally hilarious encounters, like the trio's stroll through a lazy Outback town in flamboyant space-age drag, or Bernadette's deliciously unprintable riposte to a hostile woman in a bar.

But it's also old-fashioned family drama that invites audience participation ("Don't you go making eyes at your cousin's husband, you little slut!"), and is surprisingly satisfying, in a gooey kind of way -- like macaroni and cheese or peach cobbler, perhaps.

A powerful and complex performance by Connery is somewhat weakened by Lumet's typically stiff and stagey direction, which tends to sap the life out of the film.

Seeks to set the record straight. But Gere's sneaky, ingratiating presence keeps it dishonest to the last frame.

Impassioned, unwieldy and padded with celebrity interviews.

Outsourced is a sweet, good-natured surprise that takes the cliches out of an overworked genre and makes them seem almost fresh and entirely charming.

The result is something truly special.

The wonderfully drawn characters and their soap-opera entanglements are dryly amusing and well played.

A sober, earnest drama about child abuse.

Somewhere beyond the extremes of "Fatal Attraction" and "In The Company of Men" festers this elegantly composed, outrageously violent psycho thriller.

The performance sequences are in color, while the recording sequences are in B&W. Jacquot's strategy allows his cast the benefit of being able to give full performances (Raimondi is a particularly good film actor) while demonstrating vividly that the beauty and power of the opera reside primarily in the music itself.

Haroun and cinematographer Abraham Haile Biru carefully frame their characters with a painterly elegance that is at times truly startling.

While the film is unabashedly pro-Kerry --Butler and Kerry are longtime friends -- it isn't simple hagiography; it's also a portrait of Vietnam War-era America.

Although one of his earliest films, SISTERS still stands as director Brian De Palma's greatest contribution to the horror genre.

Returning director Richard Donner seems to have smoothed over the few stylistic rough edges remaining from the earlier film to deliver here two hours of pure, breathless, high-impact entertainment.

There's nothing subtle about Pelegri and Harari's culture-clash romp, but it's sometimes frantically funny; that it's thoroughly forgettable is an issue only if you expect it to do more than poke easy fun at the thorny issues it raises.

Aside from a little eleventh-hour pseudo-mysticism about death and the weight of the soul, the story is really little more than a unusually gripping thriller.

Director Morita does an exemplary job of bringing a Japanese graphic novel to the screen.

A frustrating lack of details compromise this much-needed look at how the promise of American diversity failed a community of Somali refugees in a large Maine town.

At best, this is a kiddie movie with a few laughs for the easily pleased adult.

A brisk dramatic comedy that combines melodrama, humor and social critique in equal measure.

Ferociously entertaining.

A well thought-out script and fine direction keep a steady amount of tension, which doesn't let up until the survivors are rescued.

The horror of LaBute's articulate, self-deluded characters is that they're both sharply drawn and just vague enough that you can insert face here.

MacKinnon's film draws on his past as a youth worker and features a standout performance from first-time performer Harry Eden.

All the performers either overact laughably or underact to the point of just standing in place and speaking lines in a monotone. Whether the film ever stopped anyone from smoking marijuana is doubtful, but it certainly turned out to be a greater success than its producers ever dreamed.

The film's outstanding beauty is not enough to compensate its slim story, which remains preoccupied with the duellists' insane obsession with military codes of conduct and personal honor.

CITY SLICKERS successfully skirts the chance for a cheapshot gag comedy and becomes a friendly, heartfelt celebration of friendship and community, greatly aided by a funny and moving script by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandell (PARENTHOOD, VIBES, SPLASH). Ron Underwood's direction complements the script and, while evoking memories of old Western films and TV shows, never overshadows the acting of a uniformly capable cast.

If you ever wondered why they call it "the curse," this movie will enlighten as it entertains.

Unlike his models, however, Smith hasn't demonstrated that his sensibility reaches much beyond bathroom humor and meaningless drift.

A first-rate production full of nonstop action and inventive special effects but what truly makes Robocop spellbinding is a superior script.

A rather tepid anthology film, CAT'S EYE is a pastiche of leftover Stephen King notions, connected by a ubiquitous cat that ominously appears to set off each tale.

LaLoggia shares his unique vision with the viewer through an imaginative and innovative visual style that flows skillfully from traditional naturalism into surreal dreamlike fantasies and back again without ever seeming gratuitous or clumsy. A remarkable film.

An enjoyable hour-and-a-half for adults that creates a wholly unique world of colorful sets, costumes, and characters.

The result is very much worth the wait, bringing to life the mysticism of Mexico with a superb script by Guy Gallo, exquisite photography, and the unparalleled performance by Finney.

Dunne is superb and Cimarron was considered until the late 1940s the finest Western ever made.

This excellent documentary from Iraqi writer-turned-filmmaker Sinan Antoon presents their hopes and fears directly from the Iraqis themselves.

It's just a clever, pointed little fable about the price of complacent conformity, slavish worship of the status quo, and trading freedom for the illusion of safety, wrapped in a sugary-sweet, Jordan-almond-colored coating that looks good enough to eat.

Beautifully filmed, but extremely painful examination of the African slave trade takes a difficult position: Rather than focusing on the white European superstructure, Ivory Coast director Roger Gnoan M'bala focuses on African complicity in the capture and selling of African people.

Hugely entertaining.

Huppert's performance leans a bit heavily on the moist-in-the-eyes motif, but it's terrific none-the-less.

This gentle comedy marks the feature directing debut of writer Peter Hedges, a gifted writer who's perhaps best known for the screenplay based on his novel "What's Eating Gilbert Grape."

The screenplay just isn't funny: Most jokes fall flat and just lie there in a pool of their own sick. And while Zwigoff's deadpan pacing was perfect for the wry, sophisticated humor of "Ghost World," here it's a comedy killer; that extra beat after each new outrage is just long enough for viewers to realize just how sad and disturbing it all is.

Director Robert Benton effectively re-creates depression-era Texas in this moving tale that landed the second Oscar for Field.

What you're seeing isn't wire work or CGI -- it's stunt choreography, beautifully executed, flawlessly cut together and brainlessly thrilling.