Beautifully animated, the celebrity voice performances are terrific, and the action sequences negotiate the fine line between being physically convincing and becoming too intense for the young children.

Though it can get laborious, and produces the odd unintended chuckle, The Secret Garden is charming and sometimes chillingly authentic.

Now seen for the first time in close-up, these "boys" are well past adolescence, which makes Bennett's sympathy for poor Hector a bit easier to take.

Fun for the kids, but no Beauty and the Beast or Lion King. This child-friendly retelling of Hercules' story takes the predictable liberties with a story originally chockablock with sex, violence and generally sordid behavior. After several passes through the Disney wringer, a sanitized, blandly blond Hercules (voice of Tate Donovan) emerges, ready to enter no pantheon other than that of muscle-beach pinup boys.

Even if the screenwriters were obviously inspired by the mega-success of ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, that doesn't make this funny, rambunctious entertainment a mere rip-off. Whether dancing, singing, or hamming it up as the legendary tomboy, Day proves that she was second only to Judy Garland as the Golden-Age Hollywood Musical's consummate triple threat.

Though absurdly criticized for being too "white" to play Mariane Pearl, Jolie gives an excellent performance. She portrays Mariane as gutsy, smart, passionate and highly efficient.

There are echoes of Stephen Spielberg's "Duel," as well as "Roadgames," "The Hitcher" and "The Hills Have Eyes," but director/cowriter Mostow isn't interested in hommages: He's just looking to crank up the suspense (not the in your face action, thank heavens), bit by miserable bit, and does a very nice job of it.

Literate, but not at the expense of the cinematic, THE BODY SNATCHER is one of Lewton's greatest works and contains what is arguably Karloff's finest performance.

Zieger's thoroughly researched film is a vital reminder that beginning in the mid-'60s, a few conscience-stricken military individuals -- including dermatologist Dr. Howard Levy, sickened by cynical attempts to win Vietnamese "hearts and minds" through medical treatment, and Navy nurse Susan Schnall, who wore her uniform to a civilian antiwar demonstration -- actively and openly voiced peace sentiments.

THEM! is one of the best of a 1950s spate of monster movies rooted in nuclear paranoia.

Deneuve has never been better.

The theme--that just beyond the edge of the perfectly normal lies the truly bizarre--is realized with intelligence and visual flair.

Equal parts "Oliver Twist" and "Pinocchio," Russian director Andrei Kravchuk's fictional hearttugger exposes a troubling real-life practice in contemporary Russia: the buying and selling of abandoned children to rich foreign couples.

Rivette brings a refreshing realism to what could have been a stodgy costume drama, it's still pretty slow going.

The battle of wits is peppered with funny lines and the suspense seldom flags.

Bar-Lev also explores the freakish popular appeal of child prodigies, the family dynamics that come into play when a child's celebrity and earning capacity overshadows the adults', and the remarkably conflicted and contradictory admissions drawn from Brunelli about Marla's work.

But anyone who would be inherently interested in this kind of sendup is unlikely to be surprised by anything in this film -- overall it feels like a trifle, if an entertaining one.

But once you're good and drunk on the look, details like the tin-eared tough-guy dialogue (which sounds especially stilted issuing from flesh-and-blood mouths) don't seem so important.

Poitras boldly dispenses with the traditional documentary voice-over, but her film is filled with telling moments that are far more eloquent than any scripted narration.

The film not only stands as an important street-level document of that time, but makes a valuable contribution to the growing compilation of 9/11 storytelling.

This psychological thriller takes its time and never delivers the big shocks genre fans raised on its American cousins have come to expect. But it works up a chilly atmosphere of creeping dread, and the tension.

Director Sturla Gunnarsson crams each sequence with subtle, telling detail while avoiding "exotic India" clichés.

This gentle, slow-moving film contains some charming sequences but no new insights into the pleasures and burdens of family.

Thoughtful look at the itinerant street musicians of Paris.

At a brisk 97 minutes, the film skips over many episodes that make Hahn's book a pulse-pounding page-turner, but offers her rare perspective on both sides of civilian life during those nightmare years.

No matter how you spin Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's chronicle of headbangers on the couch, it sounds like a pitch-perfect parody in "Beyond Spinal Tap" mode. If anything, knowing it's no joke makes it harder not to giggle.

Watch it for the songs. A paean to Oklahoma's "Sooner" pioneers, it's a watchable, if hardly terrific, rendering of an innovative Broadway landmark.

Firm dates and more detailed historical background would have better served the filmmakers' purpose than their "chronological narrative relay race," which muddles an already complex situation.