Ever since the movie made a brief appearance late last year to qualify for Oscar consideration, Mr. Caine's performance has been hailed as the best of his career, and surely that's true.

Everything and everyone is observed sharply, succinctly and indelibly.

Has its flaws, but it's better, as well as darker, than the first. It's also longer, by nine minutes, but hold that protest to the Kidney Foundation; the time flies, albeit in fits and starts, like players on a Quidditch field.

May be something of a stunt, but it's a fascinating stunt that holds your attention from the start to shortly before the finish.

Affecting, even touching, provided you can put up with its sclerotic pace.

A glorious feature-length documentary -- This film will leave an indentment, and a deep one, on anyone who loves great, joyous music and cares about the people who make it.

The tone is that of a telenovela -- soap-operatic at heart -- even though the film was adapted from a 19th-century novel.

Transcends its star's controversial career and, in the bargain, stands head, shoulders and heart above every other Hollywood movie that we've seen so far this year.

Yet dramatic energy is in short supply. The actors move about this elaborate movie museum in a modified dream state, as if living in the present while rooted in the past. But the strategy doesn't work. It's an imitation of lifelessness.

Comes briefly to life, after many longeurs -- many large longeurs in IMAX -- with the discombobulated entrance of B.E.N., a dysfunctional, hyperverbal robot voiced by Martin Short.

The only parts of the film that ring true -- and they sometimes ring touchingly true -- are the ones that give Mr. Allen simple human themes to work with.

A strange anomaly. It's both cutting-edge entertainment and primitive precursor of unimagined wonders to come.

Stinker doesn't begin to describe this movie's character -- both frenzied and dispiriting.

All three performances are excellent, in their different ways.

So the awful truth about The Truth About Charlie is that it needed two movie stars and got one.

Skips from episode to episode without illuminating the essence of the woman or her art.

This feelbad movie makes you glad when it's over.

Challenging and fascinating -- everything you didn't know you didn't know about Derrida's life and work.

With all its flaws, though, The Grey Zone deserves to be respected, and to be seen.

Ms. Ferrera is an engaging performer; you find yourself rooting for Ana from the start, even though you know, from the predictable script by George LaVoo and Josefina Lopez, that rooting isn't required for a happy outcome.

Won't kill you, but it could bore you half to death.

It grows repetitious, both in its account of Crane's ritual behavior and in clumsily written -- and stolidly directed -- scenes between Crane and Carpenter, two men acting out their own unacknowledged sexual drama.

This isn't great filmmaking, but, under Rick Famuyiwa's direction, it's more than good enough.

Considering the star power -- and talent -- of the cast around her, it would have been impressive if Alison Lohman had simply held her own as Astrid, the young heroine of White Oleander. Instead, she owns the movie.

Difficult too, and certainly problematic, but it's sometimes quite wonderful. Do see it if you're curious about one-of-a-kind films, and if you care about the ever-evolving career of one of our most gifted filmmakers.

Mr. Tykwer's hands the movie changes almost magically from drama to chase to romance. As it does so its moral weight lessens; by the end there is less than what first engaged the mind. What meets the eye, though, is unforgettable.

A harrowing lesson in unintended -- and intended -- consequences.

I say don't bite unless your taste runs to thin gruel, and grueling gruel at that.

In a truly terrible action adventure called The Tuxedo, a high-tech monkey suit turns Jackie Chan into an all-powerful cyborg, and will turn you into a boredborg.

The whole dumb movie is a baloney cake, but the enticing icing on it is Reese Witherspoon, who manages to have a few moments of spontaneous fun in this half-baked store-bought comedy.

Eloquent acting -- in fits and starts -- can't make up for the movie's glib, off-putting calculations.

Terrific performers doing what they're often forced to do, overcoming sorely flawed material.

Lee's journey of the body and soul is something else. Maggie Gyllenhaal makes it strangely touching, a revelation.

The cast is the main attraction in Francois Ozon's witty, even touching 8 Women.

It is plainly, though not simply, a masterpiece from an acknowledged master of contemporary animation, and a wonderfully welcoming work of art that's as funny and entertaining as it is brilliant, beautiful and deep.

Mr. Miller tells several interlocking stories with such daring and intensity that you sense he could go on indefinitely, spinning one terrific yarn off another.

Igby has his own prickly charisma and bleak humor; he's a character you'd like very much to embrace. But he's surrounded by insufferable fools in the airless Manhattan universe of a film that's as offputtingly precocious as its preppy hero.

Why, in our drum-thumping, ritually trumpeting time, did so little fanfare precede the opening of a movie with so much to recommend it? This is grand entertainment.

Especially well-rendered is the divide that occurred between the downtown and uptown worlds -- something that many who don't live in New York will grasp here for the first time.

Notwithstanding a thin script and a color-by-numbers ending, the movie is redeemed by its solid performances.

The movie is juvenile on many levels, and it's downright creepy to watch an hour and a half of dramatized neoteny -- a state defined by American Heritage as "the attainment of sexual maturity by an organism still in its larval stage."

For the most part, the movie serves up an incomprehensible collage of high-tech voyeurism sprinkled with every hackneyed creep-out trick in the book -- from eerie little ghost girls to melting walls and scurrying cockroaches.

Despite being a pretty film with some good performances, it's hard to sympathize with a character that won't help herself. More proof, if we need it, that mixing sex and politics only leads to trouble.

Mr. Snipes and Mr. Rhames get credit at least for doing their own stunts. By the middle of the film, viewers will take a certain satisfaction in each punch that lands on either of them.

But for what it is, the film supplies enough laughs to bury most nagging existential questions.

It's a simple story, exposing the beauty that lives inside difficult relationships, and it leaves you feeling quietly exalted without ever seeming to try.

It lacks the redeeming warmth of a character the audience can identify with. But longtime fans of Mr. Williams will enjoy it as an example of the creepiness we always knew he was capable of.

Be warned: Although it was filmed on the North Shore of Hawaii's Oahu island, this is a surf movie, not a surfing movie. As for the empowered-girl premise -- well, the kids may not notice, but Blue Crush is about as progressive as a Virginia Slims commercial.

A romance, a detective story, a comedy and a fable. Such a mishmash prevents it from being a standout in any of those categories. -- It's lovely to look at, though, and it's ultimately carried to success on the back of a strong story.

To top it all off, no matter where you sit in the theater, no matter how far you arch back in your seat, there's no escaping the sensation that all the action on the screen is taking place about three feet from your face. I loved it.

In the end, though, it's all about seeing Clint Eastwood; it always was about Clint and always will be. To his fans, he's cool in every role (except, possibly, for that movie with the monkey). He can't help it. We can't help watching.

Although The Good Girl is peppered with amusing small-town eccentrics in refreshingly original guises, it gets off to a long, slow start.

The medium really is the message here, and it steals what there is of the show.

Mr. Shyamalan is a new national treasure, as attuned to our sensibilities and everyday life as Steven Spielberg.

A smart, funny and strangely touching film.

Nothing to write home about, though nothing to stay home about either, especially if you're a dyed-in-the-polyester Powers fan.

Crude as its build-up may be, the movie pays off with unexpected delicacy.

It's hard to imagine spending $120 million on a film starring a computer-generated mouse -- an actor who barely demands a byte to eat -- but if that's how much it takes to provide innocent enchantment for the global hordes, so be it. This sequel beats the original paws down.

Rarely has a major motion picture -- and this one is major by virtue of its misplaced ambition as well as its budget -- been afflicted by such flagrant dissonance between subject and style.

I can't say I was scared, but I wasn't bored. By way of full disclosure, Warner Bros. provided free popcorn at the screening. I gobbled up every greasy morsel.

Elegant and sometimes inscrutable.

Long and winding though it may be, Road to Perdition gets to places that are well worth the trip.

Mr. Attal's real-life problem is his simplistic script, which makes the husband a childish fool and a bit of a bore.

Since you can't read my lips, read my words: See this movie.

It's interesting to see how a potent premise -- those among us who behave like aliens probably are -- can sustain, more or less, an erratic, disjointed sequel.

This Flubbery fantasy won't win any prizes for elegant craftsmanship or originality, but it's entertaining, good-natured and a slam dunk to be a hit with young kids.

Lovely & Amazing goes to the heart -- and face, and skin -- of a subject that's sure to ring true with women, and may even educate men.

There's no transcending a prosaic plot and several flat performances.

Looks like Weimar decadence and feels like down-home friendship.

The remake stumbles from a ragged start into a child's garden of worses -- worse than the original in more ways than you could imagine.

Though his movie wraps challenging ideas and ingenious visual conceits in a futurist film-noir style, it's pretentious, didactic and intentionally but mercilessly bleak in ways that classic noir never was.

This screwball comedy about a scrappy Hawaiian kid and the rabidly destructive little alien she mistakes for a dog is powered by ferocious joy. And, remarkably, it manages to incorporate traditional Disney values, such as the sanctity of the family, in a visually bold, subversively witty package that's as far from corporate as mainstream movies get.

The Navajos must have sent much more crucial messages at much higher levels during the war, but you'd never know it from this movie. Windtalkers is practically all action and no talk.

Essentially a coming-of-age story set in working-class North Carolina in the 1970s. But it's so startlingly original that it transcends the genre. This is a wonderful film, from puckish start to momentous finish.

The blithely dishonest script would have us believe that the real Napoleon can't prove his identity when the fake Napoleon refuses to come clean. Not only is that patent nonsense, it's cockeyed dramaturgy.

The outcome is distinctive and entertaining. There's no way you'd mistake this for James Bond, and no reason you would want to.

I paid steadfast attention, both to the actress, a performer of unusual versatility, and to the character she plays, a caged -- and cagey -- bird who sings because she's too stubborn to cry.

The movie finally comes together into something that is genuinely -- and almost quietly -- stirring.

The last thing we need is entertainment that evokes the horror and then trivializes it with cheesy heroics. Never has a movie taken on a subject of greater immediacy, or handled it more ineptly.

Exceptionally likable and affecting as well as entertaining.

This one is nowhere near as original -- it's a flawed remake of a fine first feature from Norway -- but "Insomnia" still stands on its own as a thriller with brains and scenic beauty.

It's classic animation wedded to modern technology -- painted pictures that move in magical splendor.

Better than a feelgood movie, it's a feelgreat movie -- genuinely clever, affecting when you least expect it to be and funny from start to finish.

What it's about is also what it requires for proper appreciation -- the ability of the human mind to hold, and even cherish, diametrically opposite thoughts.

For all its video-game bedazzlements, Attack of the Clones suffers from severe digital glut, periodically relieved, if you can call it that, by amateur theatrics.

Meticulously crafted and beautifully performed.

That Mr. Rohmer is an octogenarian just beginning to play with digital technology makes the venture even more intriguing.

It's thanks to her (Leoni) that we stay tuned to Mr. Allen's comic premise long after it has gone from delightfully outrageous to off-puttingly preposterous.

Every action adventure needs a memorable villain, but no movie needs the strident intensity of Mr. Dafoe, who either has no interest in, or no grasp of, the sort of charmingly malign wit that Gene Hackman brought to "Superman," or Jack Nicholson to "Batman."

Through exquisite details, evocative music and bold dramatic strokes -- including a tragedy that transcends the melodrama it might have been -- Rain renders this family's life in its full dimensions.

Every now and then, though, a movie comes up with a scene of surpassing stupidity, and then builds from that defining moment to a climax of perfect ineptitude. Life or Something Like It is such an achievement.

An improbably bountiful subject -- kids on skateboards turning themselves into virtuoso artist-athletes -- has been brought to life in a wonderful, unpretentious documentary.

Predictably dumber than its predecessors, though that shouldn't get in the way of its profitability.

The shallow-seated problem with Murder by Numbers is that it's serious and doggedly intricate but not much fun.

An accomplished and enjoyable Spanish-language debut feature by Fabían Bielinsky.

A small story, a monodrama with a hero but no antagonists.

Truly transporting film.

A hoot, or at least a collection of delightful hootlets hung on a short, frayed line.