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A stirring, funny and finally transporting re-imagining of Beauty and the Beast and 1930s horror films

Apparently reassembled from the cutting-room floor of any given daytime soap.

They presume their audience won't sit still for a sociology lesson, however entertainingly presented, so they trot out the conventional science-fiction elements of bug-eyed monsters and futuristic women in skimpy clothes.

This is a visually stunning rumination on love, memory, history and the war between art and commerce.

Jonathan Parker's Bartleby should have been the be-all-end-all of the modern-office anomie films.

Campanella gets the tone just right -- funny in the middle of sad in the middle of hopeful.

A fan film that for the uninitiated plays better on video with the sound turned down.

Béart and Berling are both superb, while Huppert ... is magnificent.

A little less extreme than in the past, with longer exposition sequences between them, and with fewer gags to break the tedium.

The film is strictly routine.

A lyrical metaphor for cultural and personal self-discovery and a picaresque view of a little-remembered world.

The most repugnant adaptation of a classic text since Roland Joffé and Demi Moore's The Scarlet Letter.

For something as splendid-looking as this particular film, the viewer expects something special but instead gets (sci-fi) rehash.

This is a stunning film, a one-of-a-kind tour de force.

May be more genial than ingenious, but it gets the job done.

There is a freedom to watching stunts that are this crude, this fast-paced and this insane.

If The Tuxedo actually were a suit, it would fit Chan like a $99 bargain-basement special.

As quiet, patient and tenacious as Mr. Lopez himself, who approaches his difficult, endless work with remarkable serenity and discipline.

Final verdict: You've seen it all before.

Blue Crush follows the formula, but throws in too many conflicts to keep the story compelling.

You ... get a sense of good intentions derailed by a failure to seek and strike just the right tone.

A slick, engrossing melodrama.

A wretched movie that reduces the Second World War to one man's quest to find an old flame.

Will undoubtedly play well in European markets, where Mr. Besson is a brand name, and in Asia, where Ms. Shu is an institution, but American audiences will probably find it familiar and insufficiently cathartic.

Lacks the inspiration of the original and has a bloated plot that stretches the running time about 10 minutes past a child's interest and an adult's patience.

The Santa Clause 2 proves itself a more streamlined and thought out encounter than the original could ever have hoped to be.

The film is moody, oozing, chilling and heart-warming all at once...a twisting, unpredictable, cat-and-mouse thriller.

Too bad.

A strong first act and absolutely, inescapably gorgeous, skyscraper-trapeze motion of the amazing Spider-Man.

Gooding offers a desperately ingratiating performance.

A well-intentioned effort that's still too burdened by the actor's offbeat sensibilities for the earnest emotional core to emerge with any degree of accessibility.

A fun ride.

An edgy thriller that delivers a surprising punch.

'What's the Russian word for Wow!?'

Otto-Sallies has a real filmmaker's eye.

Lurid and less than lucid work.

With its parade of almost perpetually wasted characters ... Margarita feels like a hazy high that takes too long to shake.

I could just feel the screenwriter at every moment 'Tap, tap, tap, tap, tapping away' on this screenplay.

Overall, Cletis Tout is a winning comedy that excites the imagination and tickles the funny bone.

You live the mood rather than savour the story.

The movie is so thoughtlessly assembled.

Some Body is a shaky, uncertain film that nevertheless touches a few raw nerves.

It's a very sincere work, but it would be better as a diary or documentary.

While American Adobo has its heart (and its palate) in the right place, its brain is a little scattered -- ditsy, even.

Unfolds with such a wallop of you-are-there immediacy that when the bullets start to fly, your first instinct is to duck.

And it's a lousy one at that.

It's not too fast and not too slow.

It's an entertaining movie, and the effects, boosted to the size of a downtown hotel, will all but take you to outer space.

It is as uncompromising as it is nonjudgmental, and makes clear that a prostitute can be as lonely and needy as any of the clients.

Compellingly watchable.

Despite some comic sparks, Welcome to Collinwood never catches fire.

Though Jackson doesn't always succeed in integrating the characters in the foreground into the extraordinarily rich landscape, it must be said that he is an imaginative filmmaker who can see the forest for the trees.

Not only does Spider-Man deliver, but I suspect it might deliver again and again.

It's worth taking the kids to.

Without Shakespeare's eloquent language, the update is dreary and sluggish.

Dense, exhilarating documentary.

...feels as if (there's) a choke leash around your neck so director Nick Cassavetes can give it a good, hard yank whenever he wants you to feel something.

Poignant if familiar story of a young person suspended between two cultures.

Methodical, measured, and gently tedious in its comedy, Secret Ballot is a purposefully reductive movie -- which may be why it's so successful at lodging itself in the brain.

Though a touch too Arthouse 101 in its poetic symbolism, Heaven proves to be a good match of the sensibilities of two directors.

Superbly photographed and staged by Mendes with a series of riveting set pieces the likes of which mainstream audiences have rarely seen.

A metaphor for a modern-day urban China searching for its identity.

It's a square, sentimental drama that satisfies, as comfort food often can.

The wonderfully lush Morvern Callar is pure punk existentialism, and Ms. Ramsay and her co-writer, Liana Dognini, have dramatized the Alan Warner novel, which itself felt like an answer to Irvine Welsh's book Trainspotting.

Admirers of director Abel Ferrara may be relieved that his latest feature, R Xmas, marks a modest if encouraging return to form.

Not once in the rush to save the day did I become very involved in the proceedings; to me, it was just a matter of 'eh.'

An ugly-duckling tale so hideously and clumsily told it feels accidental.

Becomes a bit of a mishmash: a tearjerker that doesn't and a thriller that won't.

Could I have been more geeked when I heard that Apollo 13 was going to be released in IMAX format?

This is a very ambitious project for a fairly inexperienced filmmaker, but good actors, good poetry and good music help sustain it.

More successful at relating history than in creating an emotionally complex, dramatically satisfying heroine

Cho's timing is priceless.

Criminal conspiracies and true romances move so easily across racial and cultural lines in the film that it makes My Big Fat Greek Wedding look like an apartheid drama.

There's something to be said for a studio-produced film that never bothers to hand viewers a suitcase full of easy answers.

What elevates the movie above the run-of-the-mill singles blender is its surreal sense of humor and technological finish.

Nicholson's understated performance is wonderful.

The filmmakers know how to please the eye, but it is not always the prettiest pictures that tell the best story.

It's unfortunate that Wallace, who wrote Gibson's Braveheart as well as the recent Pearl Harbor, has such an irrepressible passion for sappy situations and dialogue.

Jackson shamefully strolls through this mess with a smug grin, inexplicably wearing a kilt and carrying a bag of golf clubs over one shoulder.

... a fascinating curiosity piece -- fascinating, that is, for about ten minutes.

Over and over again.

Nolan proves that he can cross swords with the best of them and helm a more traditionally plotted popcorn thriller while surrendering little of his intellectual rigor or creative composure.

This Bond film goes off the beaten path, not necessarily for the better.

...its solemn pretension prevents us from sharing the awe in which it holds itself.

The drama discloses almost nothing.

A sham construct based on theory, sleight-of-hand, and ill-wrought hypothesis.

Isabelle Huppert excels as the enigmatic Mika and Anna Mouglalis is a stunning new young talent in one of Chabrol's most intense psychological mysteries.

Like its parade of predecessors, this Halloween is a gory slash-fest.

Perhaps the best sports movie I've ever seen.

This pathetic junk is barely an hour long.

ou've got to love a Disney pic with as little cleavage as this one has, and a heroine as feisty and principled as Jane.

This is a gorgeous film - vivid with color, music and life.

Playing a role of almost Bergmanesque intensity ... Bisset is both convincing and radiant.

The trappings of I Spy are so familiar you might as well be watching a rerun.

It treats Ana's journey with honesty that is tragically rare in the depiction of young women in film.

Leigh makes these lives count.

Ambitious, unsettling psychodrama that takes full, chilling advantage of its rough-around-the-edges, low-budget constraints.

The Woodman seems to have directly influenced this girl-meets-girl love story, but even more reassuring is how its makers actually seem to understand what made Allen's romantic comedies so pertinent and enduring.

I couldn't recommend this film more.

An inexperienced director, Mehta has much to learn.