The new political satire In the Loop is the best film I’ve seen so far this year.

Anders Thomas Jensen’s Adam’s Apples was one of the best films I saw during the 2006 Seattle International Film Festival.

Junebug is the type of movie you want to see twice in quick succession.

Bad Education is a brazen, ambisexual noir that embraces the conventions of the genre while at the same time shattering them with explicit wickedness.

But with Mean Girls Waters and Fey do what they can to show scrubbing off one’s humanity for a mechanical glassy-eyed façade is something that should be avoided. In the end, life in plastic just isn’t worth the effort.

It’s a beautiful screenplay overflowing with moments of such sudden, tight-fisted insanity that frequently knocked my socks off, all of its coupled with a poignant purity that’s beyond terrific. As early-year movies go, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind isn’t just a surprise, it’s a bona fide cinematic miracle I’m not ever going to forget.

Despite a winning moment here and a wonderful one there, The Haunted Mansion has more in common with The Country Bears than it does Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and that’s too bad.

School of Rock caught me by surprise. It features some pretty big laughs and gets the essence of what makes great Rock ‘n’ Roll timeless.

American Splendor is an absolute delight.