A humanistic gem of a movie, with unforgettable performances from Linney and Ruffalo.

A Chinese film whose simple surface belies greater mysteries.

A slight, disingenuous script that robs the characters of their histories.

A tarted-up but tedious reprise of the '70s TV series.

Very funny in a way reminiscent of "Babe: Pig in the City."

Proceeds with an episodic pace, full of narrative twists and turns that clearly are not pretested by a Hollywood committee. Things feel sort of strange and original all at once.

Tells us nothing we didn't already know, and it tells it over and over and over.

We're only a little spooked, only a little amused and, by extension, only a little entertained.

At times, it's downright nasty; and that's when I like it best.

Like too many Thanksgiving dinners, too much squabbling really wreaks havoc on the digestion. Football, anyone?

Coupled with the fact that the plant and animal life (hoopoes, zorilles and ground squirrels, among other beasties) really look African, and that the film's original score is by the great contemporary Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour, Kirikou and the Sorceress's surprising honesty about the banality of evil makes the movie -- even with all its magic -- feel truly authentic.

A great director's losing battle against a goofy script.

You have to see this to believe it.

This is one fan's valentine to the music he loves. It just happens that the fan is a terrific filmmaker and the music loves him back -- and we get to see it and hear it all. What a treat.

Baldly manipulative, emotionally counterfeit melodrama.

A mite sluggish.

A pretty dreary affair to sit through. It's not even scary.

Though it's allegedly a comedy, there is nothing funny about this tasteless, shallow and mean-spirited slam.

I can recommend the first two-thirds of this movie with great enthusiasm.

It orders you to love it. It demands love, which is the best way not to get it.

Another cheesy, overdrawn and witless "Saturday Night Live" takeoff.

The story, which deals straightforwardly with racism, miscegenation, adultery and consumerism, is a fascinating combination: a movie with an almost Capraesque heart and pristine, almost stagey lighting schemes, that addresses uncomfortable moral issues with today's perspectives.

With conceptual misfires like this, Lee's best work recedes even more swiftly into the past.

If there's one piece of wisdom to be culled from this botched project, it's this: No one gets Carter.

So twitchy, fidgety, skittery and wiggly that the drug it made me yearn for was Dramamine, followed by a chaser of bourbon, 12 years old.

On one level, Yi Yi is classic soap opera, with a suicide attempt, a wedding ceremony, even a brutal 11 o'clock news murder, all in the mix. But Yang's direction is so admirably restrained, it lends rich heft to everything.

Roach knows to play to the movie's twin strengths: Stiller and De Niro. Throw these guys together, turn up the intensity.

In the end the movie goes nowhere a hundred movies haven't already been and tells us nothing we don't already know. It does so with so much violent energy, however, it's like four brutal years at film school crammed into an hour and a half.