The filmmakers created an animated version of the writer to accompany audio clips of Dick speaking. It's a well-intentioned but unsatisfying invention, which pretty much sums up the whole enterprise.

Crams more subplots, minor characters and comic situations into 100 minutes than most sitcoms burn through in an entire season. And that's not necessarily a good thing.

Apparently intended as a larky, character-driven adventure with dark underpinnings, this attenuated road movie was originally envisioned as a vehicle for relative unknowns, and might have worked better that way.

This coarse, nearly incoherent action picture apparently aspires to a 'Pulp Fiction"-like mixture of brutality and self-referential insouciance.

A fairly serious psychodrama rendered in cartoon images.

Sweet, melancholy comedy; it's ineffable charm lies entirely in the delivery.

Fascinating documentary.

A genuinely heartbreaking, romantic film based on a true story; frankly, if it doesn't make you cry, we don't want to know you.

A light, entertaining musical travelogue down the highways and byways of the Pelican State: taping performances, interviewing a few legends and dropping in on various musicologists for a little historical perspective.

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

Easily one of the oddest romantic comedies since "My New Gun." It's also one of the most visually inventive, and if its charms very nearly defy description, it's nonetheless irresistible.

Not funny at all.

The script, by co-writers and -directors Douglas McGrath and Peter Askin, is intermittently clever, but their direction is leaden and assassinates every gag with a lethal accuracy the CIA could only hope to achieve.

The movie's uninspired animation (including primitive, blocky computer imagery) doesn't help, nor do its astonishingly stereotyped characters.

This whimsical weeper gets off to an awkward start and never finds its footing.

A huge hit in France, this ensemble drama revolves around two very different social groups whose encounters with each other change several lives in surprising ways.

Fictional but frighteningly realistic.

Spare and coolly evocative, it's a chilling accomplishment.

The result is sometimes strained, but often fresh and funny. And the sequence in which the entire cast sings "Avenues and Alleyways," bombastic '70s crooner Tony Christie's lush ode to thug life, is worth the price of admission in itself.

Witless comedy.

By the time it's over, this deeply unsettling tale of romantic obsession strays far from the usual course of teen flicks and into some very dark territory.

Though the movie is clearly meant to work on its own, the relationship between Starling and Lecter plays best if you're familiar with "Lambs."

It's extraordinarily sexy: The atmosphere is all cigarette smoke and Nat King Cole songs, silk suits and tight sheath dresses.

The only surprise here is how a film with so much promise could ultimately settle for so little.

It's a far more interesting film; unfortunately, it's locked inside a maudlin coming-of-age story that barely registers.

A coarse and unappealing black comedy.

Breezy, surprisingly poignant Spanish film.

This picture's b-movie values probably play better on video than in theaters.

So silly it's best taken ironically. But the film, much of it shot digitally, is also astonishingly beautiful.

Director Jamie Blanks "Urban Legend" appears to be carving himself a career making slasher movies for a new generation; unfortunately, he's in no way improving on the originals.

If you try to imagine a breezy Cary Grant movie in which Grant makes penis and fart jokes, you'll have some idea just how wretched it is.

Goofy and inconsequential, but pretty damned cute.

His (Finkiel) ability to control economical dialogue with subtle but unusually powerful images -- haunted faces peering out from behind foggy bus windows; train tracks that once carried other passengers to a death camp -- lend this quiet, unforgettable film an uncanny power.

Brilliantly acted and lugubriously paced, Liv Ullmann's fourth feature as director — the second written by her mentor, Ingmar Bergman — will no doubt be manna to those who miss the brilliant acting and lugubrious pace that characterized Bergman's late-period films.

A likeable, if somewhat whitebread, farce in the Woody Allen mode about love in the big city.

Your ability to overlook the film's myriad contrivances will ultimately depend on how you react to little De Roma.

That rare, unfortunate thing, a total misfire of a movie.

Hugely smug and annoying.

Short on action but heavy on ambiance, and the cumulative effect packs a whopper if you're willing to stop and think about it. Penn, never one to opt for action over thought, clearly expects that his audience will.

Smacks of a certain kind of TV movie filled with pious uplift, even as it makes token concessions to contemporary lifestyles.

Barak Goodman and Daniel Anker have done a tremendous job of sorting the facts from a tangle of fictions, and include perspectives from a wide variety of experts and testimonies from a surprising number of surviving eyewitnesses. Together, they do the whole, horrible episode justice, something awfully hard to come by in the state of Alabama in 1931.

More isn't always better; everything feels slightly forced, and the funny bits -- make no mistake, there are several -- are all but lost in the noise.

From the opening lines to the epilogue (one of the film's few misfires), this taut first feature from TV producer and novelist Henry Bromell sustains a taut mood of unease and isolation, and the ensemble performances (TV starlet Campbell's included) have the qualities of the highest-caliber stage work.

There's so much going on it's hard to keep track, and after a while you may be tempted to give up.

Each scene is beautifully written and exquisitely shot, and the sum total is an unusually perceptive picture of urban loneliness.

Holmes's story isn't pretty, but it's fascinating, in no small part because the people Paley interviews offer a glimpse into a brief time when making porn was an act of rebellion that attracted a diverse and eccentric group of filmmakers and performers.

An utterly formulaic, teen-oriented romance whose greatest asset is charming leads Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas.

Ironically, the filmmakers seem to think the audience for this movie about super-smart people is super-dumb.

This strikingly beautiful anti-western is filled with arresting images.

From the ravishing landscape photography to the exquisite costume design, the entire film is a stunning visual experience; rarely since Hollywood's golden age has the genre been so well served.

A creepy, clever, film buff's delight of a fantasy.

Though meticulously researched, well acted and filled with striking moments, the movie ultimately feels oddly disconnected.

It differs from American films about the period in its evocation of day-to-day passion. The power of beauty is often dealt with in films, but not so often its powerful curse.

Thoroughly gripping.

The movie's greatest liability is the familiarity of the material, much parodied since the glory days of John Ford. Unfortunately, Thornton's love for its iconography doesn't quite bring it to life.

You could hardly ask for more from a historical spectacle: Silly wigs, plunging décolletage, lavish banquets in ornate halls, a stirring score from Ennio Morricone and witty dialogue by Tom Stoppard.

A bit of whimsy.

Bardem's performance is simply shattering.

Sharp-edged comedy.

With consummate grace and exceptional style, Terence Davies transformed Edith Wharton's caustic tragedy of manners into a somber, languid dream.

This is no film for the squeamish.

Often clever but fundamentally shallow, this shaggy-dog story is greatly enriched by its extraordinary bluegrass soundtrack, supervised by T Bone Burnett and performed by a phenomenal collection of artists.

In the end it's the same old blood pudding.

A surprisingly charming fable.

With a little more plot, this could have been a killer.

William Shatner's comic timing helps him nearly steal the picture.

Mamet's jabs at Tinseltown's silken ruthlessness are quietly pointed, and the ensemble cast -- even the brittle and sometimes annoying Pidgeon (Mamet's wife) -- is brilliant.

Aimed at youngsters, this odd mix of fantasy and disease-of-the-week conventions doesn't really gel, though its ambitions are laudable.

Well acted (notably by newcomer Brown), warm hearted and utterly predictable, this film is aimed squarely at everyone who loved "Good Will Hunting."

Blanchett's quietly radiant performance anchors even the most outrageous plot developments, and she's well-supported on all sides.

A wildly overblown, unpleasantly smirky mess of a film.

The result is so overloaded with extra characters, tangled story lines, dance numbers, fantasies and flashbacks that the once-simple plot feels puffed-up and irritatingly self-important.

A smart but disappointingly conventional portrait of an artist who had little use for convention.

If you accept the film on its own brain-damaged level, there actually are laughs to be had.

A comic masterpiece.

The film burbles with delightful dialogue and a sparkling sense of life.

Directed and co-written by country singer Dwight Yoakam, this film just screams "vanity project."

Relentless parade of tragedy.

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

If ever anyone earned the title "diva," it was the late singer Amalia Rodrigues.

Delightful Bolivian comedy, which also works as a sly critique of mass media.

His (Crowe) emotionally charged performance stands in contrast to Ryan's annoying, movie-star turn.

A turkey with all the trimmings.

Jeremy Irons, giving what is, hands down, the worst performance of his career.

The film satisfies on both visceral and emotional levels.

Touching, if cliched.

Tom Gilroy's debut feature is a little obvious, but it's an excellent showcase for the criminally underused Ned Beatty.

Grim tale of good and evil.

Professionally produced and surprisingly tame.

Adults -- even the die-hard dog lovers -- will just have to resign themselves to being bored silly whenever the cartoonish Cruella is absent from the screen.

Censorship, madness, social rebellion and the power of art.

A gloomy, preposterous psychological thriller.

A powerful anti-war film.

A smartly stylized hoot.

Beneath the plot's romantic turns lies a surprisingly complex examination of the personal and professional price of honesty; falsehoods, half-truths, little white lies and self-delusion spur most of the key plot developments, and Roos never resorts to platitudes to account for their effects.

Best of all is Tsugumi's wild performance.

A good opportunity to catch some marvelous acting.

Surprisingly intimate, full of sly humor and, believe it or not, an odd sort of tenderness.