As a debut it holds out the promise that Montias might do something more interesting in his next film.

Like "Lone Star," this group portrait mourns a rapidly vanishing American landscape while acknowledging that the past, free of corporate homogeneity though it may have been, is never the unspoiled paradise it appears in retrospect.

French director Helene Angel's dark but deftly handled fable about familial violence has a terrifying, fairy-tale atmosphere that's in perfect keeping with its unique point of view.

Renner's performance as Dahmer is unimpeachable, fascinating without being charismatic, and Kayaru's Rodney is a marvel of complicated characterization under difficult circumstances.

The film is an encouraging effort from McCrudden -- he manages to avoid the staginess of the recurring two-characters-in-a-hotel-room set-up -- and features a standout performance from Williams.

The film proceeds from an utterly fascinating notion. As with A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Spielberg's admirable intent is to create a prescient, serious science-fiction movie.

It's quite an achievement and makes a strong argument in favor of traditional animation — this is the first Disney feature since "Dumbo" (1941) to feature watercolor backgrounds, and they're beautiful. But beautiful illustrations and a funny premise can't save this well-meaning kid flick from its dully plotted story.

Its idiomatic wordplay and social satire is vintage Wilder, and the opening sequence where Dino performs in a nightclub is one of the funniest things that Wilder has ever done.

Frei assembles a fascinating profile of a deeply humanistic artist who, in spite of all that he's witnessed, remains surprisingly idealistic, and retains an extraordinary faith in the ability of images to communicate the truth of the world around him.

With this perceptive, however bloody, film, Ishii makes it disturbingly clear that a culturally instilled sense of shame and fear of being shunned mean that women like Chihiro are doubly victimized, both by their attackers and the society that should protect them.

For all its crime-story elements, this richly colored, beautifully shot film is really a story of the friendship between Singer and the kid he calls ZigZag, a relationship made all the more poignant by the fact that Singer is very sick.

The movie deals superficially with Native American pride and racism in the ranks, but it's hardly about the codetalkers at all: Neither Woo nor the screenwriting team of Joe Batteer and John Rice seem to appreciate the bitter irony in a Native American soldier protecting his land by serving the very government that took most of it from him in the first place.

There are moments of wonderful insight, but while the booming, fully animated adventures of the Atomic Trinity (by "Spawn" creator Todd McFarlane) that Care intercuts with the live action at first seem a good idea, they ultimately upset the film's carefully established mood.

A fun and fanciful comic adventure, based on the novel "The Death of Napoleon" by Simon Leys, that takes a great premise and runs with it.

This savvy adaptation of Robert Ludlum's action-clogged 1980 bestseller benefits from the fact that the filmmakers were smart enough to throw out most of the book's preposterous spills and thrills and concentrate instead on its intriguing central character.

The movie's captivating details are all in the performances, from Foreman's barking-mad Taylor to Thewlis's smoothly sinister Freddie and Bettany/McDowell's hard-eyed gangster, an amoral bottom-feeder with an expedient streak of sadism.

As live-action adaptations of cheap, unapologetically stupid cartoons go, this is top of the line: The cast is appealing, the sets brightly colored and fun to look at, the mystery as lame and goofy as any featured in the many inexplicably beloved Scooby-Doo cartoons.

The film is virtually wall-to-wall music with very little commentary -- it's obvious that, given the chance, these musicians would much rather play than talk.

Virgil's naïveté isn't entirely believable, but his essential goodness is, thanks to a solid performance by Jordan, and that's really what makes this modern urban tragedy unusually affecting.

Hopkins and Rock are a surprisingly good mix; Hopkins actually underplays his role as a company man with a barely acknowledged conscience, while Rock's manic impulses aren't allowed to run riot.

Its high-definition video images -- are coated with a convincing sheen of disgust, and Huston's performance is riveting.

The idea is more interesting than the screenplay, which lags badly in the middle and lurches between not-very-funny comedy, unconvincing dramatics and some last-minute action strongly reminiscent of "Run Lola Run." Great soundtrack, though.

Suffers from an excess of material crammed into too little screen time. There's so much story that the characters get short shrift; you have to wonder, for example, what became of Siddalee's three siblings.

Too daft by half -- it might have been better if Ken were less loony, especially because his nuttiness verges on implying that loons love large women -- but supremely good natured.

Not only is it a reintroduction to a fascinating culture that has survived 4,000 years in a remote and most inhospitable climate, but it's also the first film ever directed by an Inuit filmmaker and featuring an all-Inuit cast.

The impulses that produced this project, which brings together three short, English-language films by African female filmmakers into a feature-film package introduced by rap icon Queen Latifah, are commendable, but the results are uneven.

The film is surprisingly successful in developing a sense of mounting dread.

Film's real sticky wicket is that the bad guys not only threaten to nuke a major American city but do it — a conceit that might have been more amusing before terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center using hijacked commercial jets. Witnesses said the WTC attack looked like a movie; they didn't say it was a movie they wanted to see.