Mini-Review: The crime sequences that bookend this art-heist film are ingenious, suspenseful, well-paced and well-directed. The rest of the film doesn't caper; it crawls. The leads have little chemistry, and their relationship leads nowhere interesting. Watching the film is like opening an elegant jewel box only to find that the ring that was supposed to be inside is missing.

Mini-Review: The soundtrack of *Secretariat* is just like the film itself: derivative of other horse-racing films, boring in the family scenes, but exciting once hooves begin to thunder in Dolby Surround 7.1

Mini-Review: Dersu Uzala has an epic feel for landscape, but it tells a simple tale of friendship that transcends culture, class, and language. How is deep, long-lasting friendship between the Siberian trapper and the Russian surveyor even possible? It emerges from shared experience (each saves the other's life), mutual respect, and a sense of common humanity. Kurosawa shows that in cross-cultural human relations, what we share in common is far more important than the ways in which we are different.