What's an eight-letter word for a non-fiction feature that is witty, wise and wonderful? "Wordplay."

It doesn't make Cars a bad picture -- the visual inventions are worth the price of admission -- but it constitutes conduct unbecoming to a maker of magic.

Both magical and consistently joyous. The director, Robert Altman, and the writer, Garrison Keillor, have, against all odds, transmuted the fatigued public radio institution into a lovely fable about mortality, fleeting fame, fondness for the past and the ineffable beauty of life in the present.

It's not a good sign when a movie is called The Break-Up and you can't wait for the couple to split so they'll get some relief from one another, and give the audience some relief from them.

Real-life events have overtaken District B13, and they give this feverish, yet oddly flat French action adventure a whiff of substance to go along with its spectacular stunts.

Surprise, surprise. X-Men: The Last Stand, the third big-screen convocation of mutant shape shifters, weather changers, ice makers, energy suckers, healers and telepaths from Marvel Comics, has shifted the shape of the franchise from pretty good, if uninspired, to terrifically entertaining.

The film succeeds powerfully, even though it's short on practical solutions, makes some questionable statements of fact and, given Gore's current ambiguous position in public life, requires a tighter focus on the message than on the messenger.

Even as a visual aid, though, The Da Vinci Code is a deep-dyed disappointment. Paris by night never looked murkier.

Offers plenty of modest pleasures.

It's as good as anything that Hurt has ever done -- a study in explosive understatement.

A deeply dreadful movie -- no, a shallowly dreadful movie -- that's too unpleasant and repetitive to be entertaining, even as camp.

It's a stirring portrait of a singular artist, a gorgeously photographed album of his buildings, and, perhaps most importantly, a film that manages to demystify the way he works without diminishing it.

The summer's first action epic does exactly what it's supposed to do, more clearly than "M:i:I," and more likeably than "M:i:II."

A visionary tale -- bleak but visionary all the same -- of a fragile civilizing impulse crushed by family loyalty and a lust for revenge in the vast Outback of the late 19th century.

Quite remarkably, though, its clear-eyed view of an unprecedented American tragedy leaves us with emotions that audiences of those earlier days would readily recognize -- love of country, bottomless grief, an appreciation of life's preciousness and fragility. A film that can do this and also teach is to be cherished. And seen. It's time.

A powerful drama, albeit a flawed one with a clumsy, didactic script.

Needlessly long, visually drab and not just a foreign-language film, with English subtitles, but a film that's ostensibly foreign to our experience. That said, there are compelling reasons to see it.

The movie stands as a genuine offense against the venerable and indispensable institution of satire.

I can't find much slack to cut the film, except to say that it's a potboiler cooked in an upscale Teflon pot.

Ms. Shortland has announced her presence as a new filmmaker to be taken seriously, while her star, Abbie Cornish, gives a performance that starts impressively, and gets even better as it goes along.

This English heart-warmer isn't all that kinky. It's actually quite sweet-spirited, as well as unswervingly formulaic.

To give the film its due, the direction is expert, the writing is shrewd, the cinematography is stylish, and the performances are extraordinary... Hard Candy is also sadistic in its own right, relentlessly ugly, entirely heartless and eventually unendurable. It's torture.

In spite of the film's surface allure -- no, not the leather, the period evocation -- and a fine performance by Gretchen Mol in the title role, Bettie is in bondage to a shallow, black-and-white script.

Declarative sentences are as scarce as detectable feelings in this stylish, emptyish thriller -- it's Tarantino with the vital juices left out.

Anger is the rocket fuel of drama. Of the four women in Nicole Holofcener's Friends With Money, only Frances McDormand's Jane is flamingly angry, and she's the most vivid character in the group.

When a feelgood formula is fleshed out artfully, going along with it can feel very good indeed.

Basic Instinct 2 is pretty awful. Rarely has a meaningless thriller had so many meaningful glances, or such arch acting by good actors who know better.

The film is enjoyable enough, at least for young children.