Monster is a compassionate picture without any obvious agenda. And it's effective precisely because it's not a polemic.

Children of Men is a solemn, haunting picture, but it's also a thrilling one, partly because of the sheer bravado with which it's made. It left me feeling more fortified than drained. [Director Alfonso] Cuarón, the most openhearted of directors, prefers to give rather than take away.

This isn't a picture filled with wonder and a sense of fun; it's so jaded and crass that I almost wonder if it's a highly unscientific experiment designed to gauge how little audiences will settle for these days. Manic and multicolored, "Speed Racer" is an excess of nothingness.

This film "Phantom" takes everything that's wrong with Broadway and puts it on the big screen in a gaudy splat.

While "9 Songs" is sexually explicit in the basic sense, its directness is what's most fascinating, and ultimately most moving, about it.

It's impossible to tell what's going on at any given moment in Tomb of the Dragon Emperor; it's even harder to care about being able to tell.

It's time to start recognizing that not all escapist entertainment is created equal. And that some of it isn't even entertainment. "Miss March" is, to use the vernacular of the escapist moviegoer, the biggest pile of crap I've seen in ages.