ADMIRABLY BOLD. There's something grand about the film's sincerity and the intensity of its emotions and something fresh and bold about the way director Gray uses the conventions of romantic melodrama.

War of the Worlds is rated PG-13. Much of the earth's population is wiped out, leaving very little time for sex or bad language.

A piercing satire, a poignant family drama and an investigation of the competing claims of honesty, loyalty, ambition and love.

AN ABSOLUTELY VITAL FILM. Exacting, enraging and revelatory. A clear, temperate and devastating account of high level arrogance and incompetence.

My fellow critics and I may occasionally fault a movie for departing, in detail or in spirit, from its literary source, but the grousing of a few adult pedants is nothing compared to the wrath of several million bookish 10-year-olds. Their presumed demands, and the hovering spirit of Harry's creator, J. K. Rowling, inhibit this movie as it did the first Potter film.

STARTLING & INVENTIVE...This is not a movie that lets go of you easily.

Pearl Harbor is strenuously respectful of contemporary sensitivities, sometimes at the cost of accuracy.