History has since overtaken Ponfilly's film, which now more than ever seems like but one chapter in a much larger story -- the ongoing tragedy of Afghanistan -- and a tragic tribute to all that might have been.

The final effect, particularly the climactic ballroom sequence, is astonishing -- a haunting impression of the vast synchronicity of unbroken time that must surely stand as one of the great achievements in the development of the movie medium.

Compulsively watchable.

Thrilling, heart-wrenching tale of the real-life incredible journey.

The dramatic scenes are frequently unintentionally funny, and the action sequences -- clearly the main event -- are surprisingly uninvolving, especially given that director Christian Duguay is an extreme skiing buff who habitually shoots dangerous stunts himself.

An offbeat, sometimes gross and surprisingly appealing animated film about the true meaning of the holidays.

The real irony is that for all its integrity, the film isn't nearly as thought-provoking as Steven Spielberg's recent "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" or "Minority Report", and nowhere as entertaining.

Though the story eventually runs out of steam and it's never clear why the night-crawlers torment certain children and then come back to get them, fledgling screenwriter Brendan William Hood and director Robert Harmon -- whip up some effective suspense sequences.

It's refreshing that there's any moral at all, and that despite its warm and fuzzy trappings, the film floats actual ideas and sprinkles serious questions of ethics and morality atop the usual Hollywood syrup.

The non-action scenes are so pedestrian that one suspects the good stuff is less due to workmanlike director Lee Tamahori than to one of the best second-unit crews in the biz.

It's familiar, undemanding and not as bad as it could have been, but you can't help thinking that somewhere else, there's a real party going on.

While the transgressive trappings (especially the frank sex scenes) ensure that the film is never dull, Rodrigues's beast-within metaphor is ultimately rather silly and overwrought, making the ambiguous ending seem goofy rather than provocative.

This ode to the peculiar strength and flexibility of love, romantic and platonic, is simultaneously perverse, overwrought, deeply creepy and truly moving, a high-wire act that finds humor in the grotesque and hope in emotional malformation.

The second version of Graham Greene's sad and prescient 1955 novel about American involvement in Vietnam hews far closer to the book than the first, preserving the sophisticated ambiguity of his depiction of a tangled struggle for power played out on both personal and political fronts.

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

Anyone unfamiliar with Chomsky's work may be unsettled by his unblinking critique of the U.S. policy at a time when patriotism is the order of the day, and while he fails to offer any real solutions, his conscientious perspectives on the questions remain invaluable.

This loud and thoroughly obnoxious comedy about a pair of squabbling working-class spouses is a deeply unpleasant experience.

While this is just as long as the first film, more convincing special effects help make time fly.

More shaggy dog story than a contribution to the ever-growing mountain of fact and fiction dealing with the Kennedy assassination, Neil Burger's feature film debut is a cleverly crafted but ultimately hollow mockumentary.

For anyone unfamiliar with pentacostal practices in general and theatrical phenomenon of Hell Houses in particular, it's an eye-opener.

We only experience the horror of the genocide through several layers of artifice -- first Saroyan's, then Egoyan's own -- a sad acknowledgement that with each story told, we're drawn that much further from the truth.

Sleek, pointless action picture.

The movie more than compensates for its biographical deficiencies with thrilling footage of a recent reunion concert which finds the Funk Brothers still in top form.

Roundly condemned (though not banned) by Church officials in Mexico, the film became a smash hit -- probably in part because the public wrangling gave it an enormous publicity boost.

By alternating between Jackson's and Kim's point of view, McCann shows both sides of the story: the panicky fear of the paranoid schizophrenic -- the arrhythmic editing and Marshall Grupp's masterful sound design convey a sense of dislocation and shifting reality -- and the bewilderment and frustration of the people who try to help him.

Kapadia's intelligent, nuanced performance is the film's highlight, balanced by Khanna's portrayal of Nashaad, who could easily be a patronizing, chauvinist caricature.

Sticky sweet sentimentality, clumsy plotting and a rosily myopic view of life in the WWII-era Mississippi Delta undermine this adaptation of an unpublished novel by David Armstrong.

A crazy, subversively funny film about convention-bound characters who have a hard time dealing with sexuality and freedom.

Cinematographer Ken Kelsch, Ferrara's frequent collaborator, picks up the theme of overlapping lives by layering images within scenes -- the ongoing interplay of reflections and shadows is breathtaking -- and through slow, shimmering dissolves.

Tatou IS adorable, but Michele is a such a brainless flibbertigibbet that it's hard to take her spiritual quest at all seriously, and if you don't feel in your heart that she's really TRYING to grow and mature as a spiritual person, then who cares about her idiotic antics?

Overall the film is a fascinating glimpse into an insular world that gives the lie to many clichés and showcases a group of dedicated artists.

What's most disappointing is the thoroughly cliched story.

Performances are really what count in a character-driven romantic comedy like this, and each is well above the indie average.

A sweet and surprisingly unconventional look at the changing definition of family in contemporary Japan.

Haynes took an enormous risk here, but thanks to his thoughtful script and an utterly sincere performance from Moore, what could have easily become a cold, calculated exercise in postmodern pastiche winds up a powerful and deeply moving example of melodramatic moviemaking.

"Double Indemnity's" darkly poetic carnality is timeless. Trashy, throwaway fluff like De Palma's film can only look bad by comparison.

A disturbing examination of what appears to be the definition of a "bad" police shooting.

Michael Meeropol provides a far more eloquent statement of the song's enduring impact: "Until the last racist is dead, 'Strange Fruit' is relevant."

Stripping away the false glamour generated by pop culture's undying fascination with the Mafia, this hour-long film tells the tragic but inspiring story of a 17-year-old Sicilian woman who risked — and ultimately lost — her life in order to reveal just what a nasty bunch they really are.

The oddest thing about this movie isn't that the familiar characters have been transformed into aliens, or that dogs and cats possess human traits: It's the odd sight of futuristic fantasy in 18th-century dress.

You have to have a certain affection for any movie in which a stressed-out Mother Nature announces ominously, "Don't mess with me -- I'm pre-El Niño."

Anemic chronicle of money grubbing New Yorkers and their serial loveless hook ups.

Hardman is a grating, mannered onscreen presence, which is especially unfortunate in light of the fine work done by most of the rest of her cast.

Once Kim and Heidi finally meet, it becomes something much more complex: a gripping drama of culture clash and familial responsibility that also serves as a stinging metaphor for U.S. involvement in Third World nations like Vietnam.

Penn, in particular, is so subdued he's hardly there, while Hurley's seductive, hyper-articulate Adaline is actually ludicrous, sucking suggestively on ice cubes and reciting poetry like a phone-sex operator pretending to be a book-reading babe.

A modest but finely tuned look at small-town life.

The real problem with the new film, however, is a certain lack of chemistry between the leads; Wilson is game, as always, but his part is seriously underwritten, and while Murphy raises trash talking to the level of a fine art, he seems to be operating in another movie altogether.

Good-natured fun; it doesn't always work, but it's not for want of trying.

Campbell Scott's fiendishly mercurial performance as razor-tongued womanizer Roger is a revelation but it's only one of this nimble film's pleasures.

An appealing, if decidedly unconventional, buddy picture that seems to channel "Midnight Cowboy" while going its own quirky way.

Where "Charade" unfolds in a fantasy Paris full of glamorous white people, Demme's film takes place in a gray tangle of streets teeming with multi-ethnic Parisians. Newton and Robbins mimic Hepburn and Matthau, while Wahlberg is the anti-Grant, lumpen and thuggish rather than beguilingly debonair.

While the story is thin, Clouzot uses his immense skills to raise the picture above the standard for the genre.

Once the excellent Rhys and Corunder are off-screen, the film's overall staginess and the inconsistent work of the supporting cast become glaringly apparent.

Though occasionally enlivened by fanciful sequences suggesting the surreal power of Kahlo's vivid inner life, it's often mired in the mechanical accretion of incidents that blights most biographical films.

Though the script's twists and turns are fairly conventional and the Davis subplot is handled in an awkwardly obvious way, first-time feature filmmaker Robert Connolly understands the power of style.

A vivid telling of a familiar story -- the rise and fall of a street criminal -- bolstered by exceptional performances and a clear-eyed take on the economics of dealing and the pathology of ghetto fabulousness.

The movie is simultaneously soft and icky; the gross-out effects are grafted onto a sub-"Tales from the Crypt" ghost story that never scares up any serious chills.

In an outstanding ensemble, Spall is particularly good.

Overall, the filmmakers are a little too reverent -- it would have been interesting to hear Derrida respond to criticism leveled against deconstruction as an academic methodology -- but then again, they're not entirely in control here.

Refreshingly serious look at young women whose relative freedom doesn't mean they're particularly free.

There's terrific chemistry between Perez and Auteuil.

The story's rhythm is so bogged down in unnecessary characterization that the film can hardly breathe.

Extremely difficult but worthy film.

A sweet-natured coming-of-age/raising-of-consciousness drama.

Cocky, vulgar and very noisy picture.

Dense collage of digitally altered images often looks shockingly like some super-hip media agency's show reel.

A frighteningly good horror movie with enough solid scares to freeze the blood of ardent fans and newcomers alike.

This ultra-stylish film is far more interested in exploring its own central image -- the camera -- than the forensic minutia of the mystery.

The lack of opposing viewpoints soon grows tiresome -- the film feels more like a series of toasts at a testimonial dinner than a documentary.

All too often, dramatic confrontations feel like barely dramatized debates.

The reality of the situation and the nightmarish consequences they suggest, however, are frighteningly real.

Fans of the series may be disappointed to see so little of Barker's sadistic Cenobites, but while they're used sparingly, they're used to good effect.

Given the film's focus on the importance of hip-hop, its soundtrack -- crammed with current artists though it is -- doesn't make the impression it should.

Situations don't come much more claustrophobic, and if the payoff doesn't quite live up to the build-up, the film is still an enjoyable exercise in claustrophobic suspense.

The impish Wood is a little light as Sean, who's inextricably bound by same family ties that robbed him of a promising future and made him a fugitive from the only life he's even known, but the supporting cast is top-notch.

Further proof that so-so books often make better movies than good ones.

This high-concept gangster picture tries unsuccessfully to duplicate Reservoir Dogs's(1992) hair-raising high-wire balance between dark comedy and violent crime thriller, undermining some entertaining performances and the script's small virtues in the process.

It does get K-Mart to pull handgun and assault ammunition from their shelves after two Columbine survivors show up at corporate headquarters with Moore's camera crew in tow and bullets bought for 13 cents apiece at a K-Mart store still embedded in their bodies.

It takes perverse genius to make an action film this stupid.

A sprawling, semi-biographical account of two real-life filmmakers who both found work during darkest days the German occupation.

Occasionally marred by purple narration; it's also a mite sloppy in terms of time-passage and geography. Yet its mythic characters feel like genuine, hurting human beings.

This film got made because Seinfeld is famous, but it's still hard not to wish the filmmakers had devoted a couple of years to following Adams instead. The guy's such a throbbing bundle of arrogance, raw nerves and self-destructive insecurity that you can see the flame-out coming.

The story is a bit predictable and the characters given to restating the obvious (presumably for the benefit of very young viewers), but overall this third Pokemon sequel is surprisingly entertaining.

The effectiveness of this kind of issue-driven give and take relies heavily on casting, and Ritchie puts himself at a disadvantage: Madonna looks terrific in a bikini but she can't act, and the younger Giannini is stunt casting.

While the film may drop a few of the novel's more disturbing moments, it still travels some emotionally rocky territory, and each of those actresses -- particularly Alison Lohman, who carries most of the movie on her young shoulders -- turns in a first-rate performance.

The strangest thing about writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's unusual romantic comedy is how much of it is based on a true story.

Dong shows how intolerance has the power to deform families, then tear them apart. At 75 minutes, the film is too short; each story deserves a full hour of its own.

John Walter's documentary suggests that Johnson, who made no distinction between his life and his art, designed every detail of his own mysterious 1995 suicide with the same whimsical care that went into his painstakingly assembled pieces, and provides an engaging overview of Johnson's eccentric career in the process.

Populated by a great ensemble cast and oozing a grubby sort of charm.

The conclusion, clearly meant to feel ambiguously poetic, is distinctly unsatisfying.

Neither Parker nor Donovan is a typical romantic lead, but they bring a fresh, quirky charm to the formula. Nor are their characters typical meet-cute types: David and Toni are imperfect people who are some how perfect for each other.

Even generally sympathetic adults may eventually find their minds wandering, if only because of the characters' continual, annoying hopping; being vegetables, they have no legs, you see.

The accents are thick and the soundtrack noisy, but even as the screen explodes in chaos, Greenglass maintains a solid grip on the story.

Without the top-notch cast it would be indistinguishable from hundreds of pedestrian serial-killer pictures that clog video store shelves.

A military satire in the tradition of M*A*S*H and Catch-22, based on Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa's 1973 book.

Fails to capture the essence of Hesse's book, try though it may. It is more a series of filmed events than an interpretation of the story.

This small-scale film isn't for all tastes. But veterans of the dating wars will smirk uneasily at the film's nightmare versions of everyday sex-in-the-city misadventures.

Driven by sheer enthusiam (much of it for the worst excesses of Hollywood filmmaking), which makes it fun to watch in spite of its fundamental ridiculousness.