An absolute stunner, a feature-length animated documentary, from Israel, in which the force of moving drawings amplifies eerily powerful accounts of war, shaky remembrance and rock-solid repression.

Enjoyable enough for what it is, a clever idea developed by fits and starts.

The Class is clearly a microcosm of contemporary France, beset by social and economic tensions. More than that, though, it's a saga of education's struggles in many parts of the modern world. If only the film were pure fiction.

Mr. Smith's latest film is about nothing less than life and death, sin and atonement, and it takes the soggy cake for multiple layers of sentimentality topped by indigestible grandiosity.

Director, Darren Aronofsky, and the writer, Robert D. Siegel, have turned the story of this washed-up faux gladiator into a film of authentic beauty and commanding consequence.

What's never explained is why anyone would do such a dumb remake of Robert Wise's 1951 sci-fi classic.

Doubt leaves none in one respect: John Patrick Shanley was the right person to direct this fascinating screen version of his celebrated play.

It's a meditation, as affecting as it is entertaining, on the limits of violence and the power of unchained empathy.

The cast is superb: especially Kate Winslet, who transcends, by far, the limits of her character's narrow soul. Yet The Reader remains schematic, and ultimately reductive.

In a minimalist film of muted emotions, Michelle Williams gives as lovely a performance as a moviegoer could ask for.

What Ron Howard gets, to a degree that's astonishing in a two-hour film, is the density and complexity, as well as the generous entertainment quotient, of Peter Morgan's screenplay.

Cadillac Records may be a mess dramatically, but it's a wonderful mess, and not just because of the great music. The people who made it must have harbored the notion, almost subversive in a season of so many depressing films, that going out to the movies should be fun.

More than acting, though, Penn's performance is a marvelous act of empathy in a movie that, for all its surprisingly conventional style, measures up to its stirring subject.

Taken on its own terms, Bolt the movie certainly makes the cut.

In a film that has the courage of its absurdity but not much else, Mr. Pattinson gets the best of what passes for style.

[Luhrmann's] movie is all over the map. But what a gorgeous map it is. The too-muchness, like the too-longness, befits the Northern Territory's vastness. In its heart of hearts Australia is an old-fashioned Western -- a Northern, if you will -- and all the more enjoyable for it.

A model of mediocrity.

Density of detail and intensity of experience are the twin distinctions of A Christmas Tale, a long, improbably funny and very beautiful film.

Slumdog Millionaire is the film world's first globalized masterpiece.

Furiously raunchy, occasionally bright and eventually benumbing comedy.

The film succeeds to the degree that it does -- partially, but honorably and sometimes affectingly -- because it was made as well as it was.

The roots are shallow, but the sequel is good-natured, high-spirited and perfectly enjoyable if you take it for what it is.

It's short, taut, nicely shot, well-acted, astutely directed, specific where it might have been generic, original enough to be engrossing and derivative enough to be amusing.

It's really dumb, even though it starts promisingly and continues, in a self-infatuated way, to consider itself quite bright.

J. Michael Straczynski's disjointed script manages to ring false at almost every significant turn (Collins' psychiatric-hospital stay has grown into a latter-day version of "The Snake Pit") and Clint Eastwood's ponderous direction -- a disheartening departure from his sure touch in "Letters From Iwo Jima" and "The Bridges of Madison County" -- magnifies the flaws.

Philippe Claudel gives his heroine unusual depth, which Kristin Scott Thomas reveals with unusual passion.

A remarkably fine and genuinely frightening movie about a teenage vampire.

In spite of Josh Brolin's heroic efforts, W. is a skin-deep biopic that revels in its antic shallowness.