It's just a little film that strives to be likable, and is less so than it might have been.

Rather than dwell on the darkness and squalor, von Donnersmarck has fashioned a genuinely thrilling tale, leavened with sly humor, that works ingenious variations on the theme of cat and mouse, speaks to current concerns about personal privacy and illuminates the timeless conflict between totalitarianism and art.

I feel for the marketing person charged with devising a tagline for Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, a fantasy whose turgid pretensions defy the very notion of marketing.

Déjà Vu is pretty dazzling, as action adventures go, even when it's wildly, almost defiantly, implausible. Movies can make us semi-believe the damnedest things.

The screen, like the stage, can barely contain this marvelous play of intelligence.

Daniel Craig isn't merely acceptable, but formidable. His Bond is at least the equal of the best ones before him, and beats all of them in sheer intensity.

The essence of this inventive though erratic animated feature is joyous music and eye-popping motion.

What we see, though, is the same old same old - beautiful faces turning gaunt and haunted, strung-out hero and heroine, stupid parents, de-tox worse than tox, descent to and return from the depths. Candy could be seen, I suppose, as a cautionary tale; take this as a cautionary review.

Ms. O'Hara, like almost everyone else, falls victim to a prevailing tone that's short on wit and long on self-congratulation.

Tests your patience to the breaking point -- maybe beyond.

There isn't a milliliter of honest feeling from start to finish, and precious little comedy or romance.

Pulls us along in a state of pleasant expectation.

A documentary of stunning immediacy and marvelous images.

Fur starts stylishly, and confidently, but the film dwindles down to a chamber piece in a claustrophobic chamber. Enter at your own risk.

The script is somewhat predictable and the pace is leisurely, but Ms. Judd makes Lucy's choices seem momentous, and Ms. Adams gives us several beautiful scenes.

Not since the halcyon days of Archie Bunker and "All in the Family" has so sharp a wit punctured so many balloons.

It's hard to say if Volver is a great film -- hard because every woman and girl in it is so damned endearing (the men are either impediments or bystanders to the real business of life) -- but safe to say it's right up there with Mr. Almodóvar's best.

An affecting story of punishment and crime, of betrayal and redemption marred by preachiness and a treacly ending, Catch a Fire is notable for its refusal to see things in terms of black and white.

The ultimate poor judgment: the decision to put Babel before the camera. That defies comprehension in any language.

Sympathetic, engaging documentary.

Viewed through a contemporary lens and set mostly to a score of '80s pop tunes, this highly stylized, self-conscious enterprise -- really, a music video -- posits the misunderstood and vilified Marie, née Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna, as a figure in the mold of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Ms. Bening takes her part and acts it all over the place, while Ms. Paltrow and Ms. Wood do their best theater of the absurd. It is left to Ms. Clayburgh, in a performance free of vanity and artifice, to find the movie's heart.

The cheap perfume of sentimentality wafts through the closing moments of Flags of Our Fathers. It's all the more noticeable for having been avoided so well and so long. Mr. Eastwood knows that sort of thing doesn't mix with the stench of war.

The result is a mess -- sometimes an entertaining mess, but mostly a movie that makes a perfunctory mockery of the mockery currently passing for political discourse.

Deliver Us From Evil has its flaws. Certain passages are diffuse, others are argumentative, and there's a discomfiting staginess to the climax... Yet the film's concern for the victims, and their families, is one of its strengths.

This coming-of-age movie, is a clumsy contraption, but it's nice to see Rupert Grint coming out from under that colorful thatch, and coming, not a moment too soon, into an appealing pre-maturity.

The film benefits from three splendid performances: Toby Jones as Capote, an aggressively gay elf exuding a tosspot charm; Sandra Bullock as Nelle Harper Lee, a novelist who uses spoken words with quiet precision, and Daniel Craig as Perry, a deluded monster who is nonetheless forthright and strong.

Mr. Field is a filmmaker with an exceptional gift for directing actors -- he's an actor himself -- and an eye for telling detail. (His cinematographer here, as in the previous film, is Antonio Calvache, and again the images are quietly sumptuous.) Yet I was put off by Little Children's satiric tone.