You can't take your eyes off Ms. Kidman; she has never played a role with more focused energy.

A thriller with a quietly sensational performance by Tilda Swinton.

The movie is counterfeit too, a coarse imitation of a stylish star vehicle for stars who deserve the real thing.

Whatever thematic clarity the added footage may confer is prosaic or didactic and intrusive; this stuff hit the cutting-room floor the first time around for good reason.

My Homo sapiens brain was boggled by the movie's clumsiness, while my heart was chilled by the chance that otherwise mature members of my species might mistake this disjointed botch for summer entertainment.

Amusing enough, especially with its uniquely credible premise of a media fraud, to recommend.

This extraordinary flight from the humdrum is not to be missed.

Smart, surpassingly odd, extremely funny and mysteriously endearing at the same time.

Exemplifies Hollywood's standard practice of stomping a brilliant concept beyond recognition.

Lacks a crucial element of the heist subgenre: ingenuity.

Thanks to Ms. Witherspoon's artful portrayal of a winning, if beachless, Gidget, I found Legally Blonde very enjoyable.

My problem is that the lack of narrative structure deprives the film of any suspense, and without suspense the film eventually collapses from its own heat like a soufflé that has been in the oven just a few minutes too long.

Although packaged as a movie, is in reality a clever 106-minute promo for Sony's PlayStation II games.

The intentional and unintentional absurdities of the plot do pay off, with a happy ending that's outlandish enough to be entertaining.

Mr. Li is a master not only of martial arts, but of composure; no one does nothing better. The film itself is no great shakes.

The silliness of Jump Tomorrow takes your breath away, and I mean that as high praise.

Grindingly tedious.

An expertly developed farce that's very funny and surprisingly affecting in the bargain.

A grim disappointment for grown-ups, and far too violent for young kids. I found it to be clumsy, misanthropic and intractably lifeless.

Spellbinding on its own terms, a modernist fable with a madly romantic soul.

Shrewdly conceived, confidently executed and outrageously entertaining.

Ever so slightly defective in the area of coherence; it plays as if it should have been written by a committee but they didn't bother to convene one.

A good subject has been ill-served by Ms. Greenwald's cliched script and clumsy direction.

Remarkably joyless, even though Ms. Jolie is a formidable presence with the potential for becoming a witty one.

Appeal lies on the bright, shiny surface of its ostensibly simple plot, and in its rat-a-tat-tat language, which often sounds like Mamet-visits-Spyne.

Bears no resemblance to the smarmy fraud that Roberto Benigni perpetrated in "Life Is Beautiful."

An ugly exercise in big-budget carnage.

The special effects are variable, but even when they're good they don't have much impact because Evolution, with its self-trashing spirit, turns moviegoers into bemused bysitters.

Like so many parties, this one goes on too long.

Qualifies as a pleasant time-killer, but it's 20,000 leagues beneath what it might have been.

Ms. Wynter's performance is only one of many failings in a heavily accented costume drama that Bruce Beresford has directed turgidly from Marilyn Levy's amateurish script.

If this adds up to a full-fledged feature film, I'm a monkey's uncle.

Certainly grows in its own right, into a coarse-grained summer vaudeville that could have been much smarter and sharper without losing its target audience.

The result is an enchanting story of love from an idealized past that endures in the mundane present.

Littered with low points -- lame comedy, dubious history, fumbling drama and a love story so inept as to make a pacifist long for war.

Directed with such a confident, delicate touch. Nothing is insisted on, yet whole lives are discovered and revealed in vignettes that seem as spontaneous as a laugh or a gasp.

This beguiling fable, with its darkly distinctive look, does DreamWorks proud.

A movie you can't readily get out of your head.

A thrillingly, thoroughly wonderful film.

A deeper problem in The King Is Alive is an almost total absence of spontaneity.

A Knight's Tale wasn't made for people like me. It was made for the kids of summer.

I might have liked About Adam more if its supposedly irresistible hero -- and the movie itself -- hadn''t been so smirky.

Eureka demands active attention, but rewards it with emotional resonance, thematic complexity and a succession of images that take up permanent residence in our brains.

This frenzied sequel has all of the clank but none of the swank of the previous version.

I took it as a pretty piece of ephemera, and I must confess that I laughed a lot.

Ragging on Town & Country is like shooting a school of fish that's already belly up in a fetid barrel, but the movie's ineptitude is almost incomparable.

The team's (Merchant-Ivory) best adaptation yet of a Henry James novel.

I did enjoy the movie's mercurial moods -- anxiety, terror, whimsical horror -- and I welcomed its confirmation that the work of the devil includes SUVs.

A rube's-eye view of Hollywood, but the rube is weary, and those around him seem to be suffering from terminal torpor.

An attractive, intelligent film that's intractably at odds with itself.

The worst part of Ms. Zellweger's plight is that she, along with others in the cast, has fallen victim to a first-time feature director whose vocabulary doesn't seem to include the word "simplicity."

A stunning drama about the desperate state of women in Iran.

Redefines the notion of a feature film another notch downward.

A textbook case of a film that's befuddled by its subject.

Mr. Freeman, a superb actor, creates the illusion of drama even when there is none.

Pretty bad, and pretty funny.

Mixes whiffs of Woody Allen and Federico Fellini with Mr. Farmanara's distinctive, mordant wit.

Only Le Carre fans with tin ears and clouded eyes will fail to note the film's sour tone, crude performances and drab look.

One of the great films of our time, or any other.

Another dim adaptation of a bright comic novel.

Mr. Maquiling's gotta learn more about dramatic arcs, but he has an infectious interest in how the world looks and works, and he can make you laugh unexpectedly. I look forward to his next film.

There's nothing wrong with the structure of Heartbreakers, but David Mirkin's direction is woefully clumsy -- and the movie's tone is nasty.

A few clumps of very funny stuff (including a quick tonsorial reference to "Mary") can't hide all the spots that are bald instead of bold.

For him (Schneebaum) it's a journey of stunning rediscovery. For us it's the discovery of a brave soul.

Most of the prime goofiness is given over to Vassili and Konig sharpshooting at each other while the battle rages. The movie's a red elephant.

Mr. Pandya tells a story of conflicted assimilation that's been told before, but he and his exuberant cast invest it with fresh energy and winning humor.

Operates in an orbit somewhere between Oliver Sacks and Lewis Carroll. I can't remember when a movie has seemed so clever, strangely affecting and slyly funny at the very same time.

Apollo 11's mission was a singular chapter in the story of mankind; The Dish finds a whimsical, winning way of telling it anew.

A small independent feature that's everything an independent feature -- small or big -- should be.

It's hard to stop quoting from a movie this good.

A magnificent documentary.

If Detroit had produced an equivalent lemon, we might have been seeing the world's first one-wheeled, square-tired car with no cooling system, steering wheel or brakes.

The result is heavy and humorless, despite a smart, skillful performance by Brooke Smith.

Beyond being entertained, I was delighted by the movie's outpouring of slapstick invention (one crazed sequence in a pet store has all the pawmarks of a classic), and the genial energy of its star, David Arquette.

Can't lift the double curse of too little genuine action, as opposed to quixotic events, and too many fancy words.

Nothing but miscalculation from clumsy start to chaotic finish, an action thriller with a cynical, shriveled soul.

Adds up to one numbingly unfunny comedy.

A huge delight.

For the director, Mr. Leconte, and for the usually volcanic Mr. Auteuil, the quiet, cumulative power of this film is a striking departure from the dazzling energy of their previous collaboration in "Girl on the Bridge."

Mr. Rock's opening scene is very funny. After that it's a steep downhill slide.

Sara is supposed to be an adorable screwball with a fatal disease. Ms. Theron certainly gets the adorable right. With a comic style that's close to unerring, she not only deserves better than this junk but the very best.

A wonderfully generous spirit. It's a film about cultural yearning and fearless love.

It's basically a cheerful slob job, one of those slapped-together features so often embraced by teenagers with more disposable income than discernible taste.

Though Hannibal the movie is unresolved in ways the book is not, that isn't Mr. Hopkins's fault. He's still a star for all seasons, and seasonings.

Excites us with words not spoken, passions not played out. A mood story more than a love story, it's all about sustaining a state of exquisite melancholy in the face of desire.

The revelations of The Invisible Circus don't justify the quest.

A stunning drama that's distinguished by a magnificent performance; the most powerful scenes are those that play, as recollection or confession, on Lena Endre's lovely face.

The best thing about a movie as silly as this is that it makes such modest demands on your attention. As the story unfolded with all the energy of California in a Stage 3 alert, I staved off brain death by trying to imagine an alternate version.

The problem isn't a lack of substance, and certainly not a dearth of talent, but a shortage of fun.

Mr. Ritchie is back with more of the same in his second feature, a comedy called "Snatch" that's a sort of lethal pinball machine in which even more picturesque characters bounce from pillage to post.

A handsome, absorbing debut feature by the fiction and television writer Henry Bromell.

This teenage interracial romance runs hot and cold, sweet and silly, with many more fits than starts.

I do wish Mr. Robbins's one-note co-stars had been worthy of his performance, and that some of the melodramatics hadn't been quite so slapdash.

Comes to the screen missing subtle cues and crucial connections.

All the backing-and-forthing between olden and modern days intensifies the emotional impact of a compelling story, and underlines the enduring power of narrative itself.

When movie lovers are looking back on the best of 2001, they will still be marveling at the beauty, intelligence and seemingly effortless mastery of Ms. Blanchett's performance.

Several startling depictions of the artist at work make you forget, if only temporarily, the serious shortcomings of the script.

A magnificent concert film of Latino jazz.