If Moland is a bit more interested in romantic melodrama than anthropology, the plight of the refugee still makes the intended emotional impact.

Conceptually...The Baxter is hobbled, and all Showalter has is his concept.

Miller freely uses the unusual as an allegory for the most usual of subjects: parentage and the rocky path from childhood to adulthood.

Gilbert Gottfried's version at a Friar's Roast just after 9/11 reminds us that irony will never be dead. It's the role of comedy to test our ...boundaries of comfort.

The injury of 3D eyestrain [adds] to the insult of garish production design...[looks] like a 94—minute Saturday-morning commercial for Marshmallow Toast Crunch...

Sweet and raunchy in equal measure, which I suppose makes it the aged-to-perfection version of American Pie.

[Audiard's] hamhanded touch with the obviously symbolic plot elements results in a static accounting of polar personal themes...lacks spontaneity, authenticity, or suspense.

A conspicuously charming kids' film [but] adults who slobber over The Chorus are kidding themselves if they think it's sophisticated, realistic, or original.

A beautiful and beguiling film about love, cinema, and love of cinema...has the quirky, breezy quality of a bicycle ride by night.

Has powerful moments, mostly courtesy of the Holocaust survivors, but the interviews and narration sound overly coached, and...the film is given to repetitive overstatement.

A bargain for lovers of splashy, outre entertainment.

A rather exceptionally counter-cultural "teen movie"...raises authentic youth concerns and answers them with convincing integrity.

Stephen Frears on Mrs. Henderson Presents and Career Highlights: 'It's not bad to make an innocent film about naked girls.'

Light lessons about pain, endurance, and commitment...Likeable to a point, but in the end, Saint Ralph winds up incredible, manipulative, and strictly for the choir.

A bloated melodrama more interested in poses than inner lives (according to some Japanese-culture-vultures, it gets the poses wrong, too).

Profanity does not a creatively satisfying comedy make....slim characterization and an overfamiliar premise...[relegate] Bears to lazy, hazy, summer-daze mediocrity.

Rapturous cinema of the senses...proves once again that nobody does swoony romantic longing, and heartache, like Wong Kar-Wai.

Like the funky little shop at its heart, Going Shopping may not look like much from its exterior, but a little browsing turns up unexpected treasures.

Lemmon turns in showy, theatrical work that's appropriate to the not-terribly subtle film around him, but the whole enterprise is one that's best avoided...

Watts' performance is brave and jazzy, but Coffey's riffing lacks lasting impact.

Ang Lee on Brokeback Mountain: 'If I think about messing with the western genre, that's very scary. I'd better not think about it--stay with a love story.'

Araki embraces the mysteries of human sexuality with a refreshing lack of hysteria and a brace of empathy.

Diverting and well-acted...There are eight million stories in the naked city, and Heights is five of them.

Like the rest of Johnston's oeuvre, Jumanji puts vivid characters through paces that will quicken any child's pulse.

Brush aside the pratfalls, cheap-shot fat jokes, and creative variety of crotch attacks, and what's left? Not a lick of emotional sense.

Plays like a giant warning to get out of town before Cheaper by the Dozen 2 opens.

[Afield] from its off-Broadway origins, but the intimacy afforded by the camera and...most of the original cast occasionally restore the emotional vitality of the piece.

Henry Jaglom and Victoria Foyt on Going Shopping and Career Highlights: 'Some women are very joyous about shopping and life, and some find it very troubling.'

Though Agrelo blunts the competitive drama by visually excluding the opposition, the kids' talent and infectious spirit carries the day for Mad Hot Ballroom.

Wright's ability to evoke sympathy for even the marginal characters--partly by exercising ingeniously economical staging to catch them in private moments--distinguishes this Pride & Prejudice.

Neil Jordan on Breakfast on Pluto: 'It was like freeing me from the three-act structure, which just seems to bedevil movies these days, y'know what I mean?'

Scott Coffey on Ellie Parker: 'Watching Naomi become a big movie star, and then we go back to shoot again. That was kind of--pretty surreal.'

Far more manic than funny, Chicken Little tries to spin the kiddie standard about a little chick convinced the sky is falling into a depressingly "hip," Shreky-green comedy act.

Triumphant coming-of-age drama (complete with horses!) [aimed] at little girls and their captive-audience fathers.

Feature films about sexual harassment are hardly a dime a dozen, so Niki Caro's North Country—gawky though it may be at times—comes as welcome.

Jeff Daniels on The Squid and the Whale and Career Highlights

Mysterious daddy issues, a color scheme that washes everything in fluorescent urine and lime-green Jello, and....editing so jittery it'll send you into rapid eye movement.

[Jerks] every tear in the "chick-lit" book...but the fertile combination of Hanson, Grant, and the stars allows blossoms of truth and humor to spring up out of the mulch.

Exemplifies the rich, acquired taste of the Roeg film.

Far from perfect, but what it lacks in finesse, it makes up in shaggy-dog charm....the fun is in the journey.

Few filmmakers could be consciously redolent of Moliere, Dylan Thomas, and James Joyce and pull it off, but apparently writer-director Sally Potter is first in that class.

Tinkers around with an intriguing premise but with little creative facility for dialogue or structure...[splits] the difference between fans and neophytes, impressing neither.

Ira Sachs on Forty Shades of Blue