Takes liberties with its hero, which is hardly a crime (the real-life Barrie was extremely childlike), but the movie chases after magic with overproduced fantasy sequences, and a feel-good, literalist climax that betrays the very notion of imagination as a force superior to reality.

In case you were holding your breath, Renée Zellweger's Bridget Jones is still sweetly earnest, chronically overweight and swinging once again from lovestruck to lovelorn.

Liam Neeson has never had a richer character to play on screen -- including his landmark role in "Schindler's List" -- and has never displayed such formidable energy and virtuosity.

A train wreck of mind-numbing proportions.

His story is instructive, as well as chilling and occasionally hilarious -- a brief, probably foredoomed career during which a would-be Orson Welles, playing shamelessly to the camera, draws from a bottomless cesspool of hubris, bile and rage.

This new Alfie is earnest -- irony is so last century -- and not angry at all, since working-class anger would mean nothing here, because class means nothing here. Nothing means anything here.

A work of huge, if unobtrusive, ambition -- a vision of modern life, appropriate for sophisticated adults as well as for kids, that is both satirical and, of all things, inspirational. It's a great film about the possibility of greatness.

At the center of it all is an incomparable singer brought to life by a sensational actor. With a huge soul to fill, Jamie Foxx has filled it to overflowing.

Might have qualified as dumb fun if they hadn't left out the fun.

Thus does a book of literary distinction become not-so-grand-Guignol.

Sideways makes you glad about America, about movies, about life.

I know this sounds like great fun, and some of it is, but there's nowhere near enough good stuff to fill the 114-minute running time.

A remarkably ill-advised remake.

Ms. Bening is the only reason to see the movie, but a compelling reason. Just like Julia, she prevails over lesser mortals with unfailing zest.

The devil had taken Reagan to the mountaintop and offered a world of spoils, from peace prizes to popular acclaim and a glamorous place in history. To reject it took more than guts. It took a man who put freedom ahead of his own glory. This is not a biography but the story of a man who faced off against the 20th century's "heart of darkness" and won.

As an evocation of English working-class life half a century ago, it feels utterly authentic, and is ennobled -- not too strong a word, I think -- by Imelda Staunton's performance in the title role.

For all its energy, fine performances and dramatic confrontations, Friday Night Lights substitutes intensity for insight, dodging the book's harsher findings like a dazzling broken-field runner.

Mr. Walken performs with a marvelously minimalist precision.

I haven't seen the original, but I can vouch for the clumsiness of the new version. As usual, though, Queen Latifah is an indomitable, if sometimes undirectable, comic force.

A little humanity can go a long way to make up for a movie's shortcomings, and there's more than a little in Ladder 49, a surprisingly stirring celebration of heroic firefighters.

The story leaves you snoozing with the fishes.

Huckabees is godawful, a mirthless, bilious bore in which the vividly focused fury of "Three Kings" has become free-floating anger at the follies of human existence.

Makes an eloquent case for John Kerry's courage, both during and immediately after his service in Vietnam.

It's not a great film, but there's something to be said for a cool-button treatment of a hot-button issue.

It's "The Sixth Sense" as nonsense, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" without the sunshine. Or the mind.

A convincing, entertaining portrait of the revolutionist as a young man.

A sports movie with a quick wit, uncommon grace and a romantic soul.

The best way to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow -- if you see it at all -- is as an interesting experiment that failed.