The impact is all in the broad strokes of Scorsese's design: the corresponding coming-of-age stories of three confused and violent adolescents: Amsterdam Vallon, New York City, and America. 
After the wayward kids' stuff of [Kids' WB's] The Batman, Batman: Gotham Knight's adult tone and visual wonderment are like (Bat-)manna from heaven. 
Asks us to believe the terrorists would, after slaughtering countless people, risk their entire plan—and their very lives—on...well, I won't say. But from my vantage point, it was ridiculous. 
Doesn't have a nuance in it, but it's pretty consistently amusing in its latter-day Woody Allen way. For most of the way, its morals are happily, believably wrong, but all bad things must come to an end. 
A Discovery Channel production about Antarctica that breaks the mold with Herzog's eccentric musings and auteur's eye. 
Disturbing in the extreme, Savage Grace gives a guided history tour of a family as dysfunctional as they come. 
It's best not to ask too many questions...Take the film's outstretched hand and go with it. That's the best way to enjoy a film that's as charming as a tale of two robots falling in love can be. 
Delivers slam-bang action entertainment, and does it while putting a surprising twist on the archetypal heroic journey. 
Profane, hallucinogenic, and wickedly satirical, Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers mainlined a message from hell (a.k.a. modern America, as seen by Stone) into mall theatres and multiplexes. 
As for Squires' outlandish behavior and Kingsley's theatrical performance, they're entertaining, but very hard to believe. The film lives more comfortably in the milieu of '90s youth culture... 
Persepolis is so satisfying because it works on a few complimentary levels: as a coming-of-age story tracking innocence to experience, as an accounting of revolutionary and feminist struggles, and as an artful visual experience in cartoon form. 
For a movie about magical beasts, The Spiderwick Chronicles does an awfully good job of pegging childhood emotional realities, particularly in a context of divorce. 
Thomas Wolfe wrote, "You can't go home again," but the new film from Fatih Akin explores a number of ways one can. 
For the summer months, it'll do nicely, and we can all thank our lucky stars that we get Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart. 
Hello, police? I'd like to report a mugging. Oh, it was horrible, horrible! Yes, I'm safe now. The mugging took place in a movie theatre, but I fear the mugger will strike again! 
In a Barbie world, American Girl Kit Kittredge is a hero, and Kit Kittredge: An American Girl is heroic. 
It's engrossing one minute and stupefying the next, off and on, off and on, for ninety minutes. 
Like his wee alter ego, ten-year-old Huey Freeman, McGruder sees himself as hopefully out of step with society—radical, in fact—self-confident, and determined to effect change by any means necessary. 
Among the best of the summer movie blockbusters, Men in Black comes on like gangbusters and never lets up. 
The Promotion skates out onto that thin ice of comedic subtlety. Like its characters, it's not terribly successful, but it's an admirable effort all the same. 
Tucker delivers a stroke of casting so perfect it might seem obvious: Oscar winner Jim Broadbent as the father and Colin Firth as the son. 
The Incredible Hulk gets 'er done, but while "Hulk smash!" is essential, it's also undeniably uninteresting when handed over to a computer. 
Harmless but seriously wit-deficient. 
The delirious idiosyncracies of the '60s Batman are all on display...a pleasant-enough romp that's just a little too-distracted with its new toys. 
If Jumper too often feels like a special-effects demo reel in search of a story, at least the eye candy is pretty darn sweet. 
Veteran director Stuart Gordon guts us with dark satire and twists the knife...[this] horror fable is enough to make weary gorehounds sit up at attention. 
May be the most entertaining and provocative hybrid of personal essay and American social-satiric documentary since Roger & Me. 
Methinks the kids to whom this superhero movie will most appeal won't be able to separate the stereotypes from the political wishful thinking. 
The movie's crackpot message—'To make something special, you just have to believe it's special'—may best be proven by the existence of this funny, unpretentious crowd-pleaser. 
By crafting a serious-minded character study, the filmmakers bring us closer to understanding the enigmatic artist's inspiration and desperation: a life that spun out of control. 
The ad copy for Grant Gee's 2007 Joy Division calls it "the definitive documentary on Joy Division," and given the roster of participants, it seems a reasonable claim. 
Anderson's most mature and ambitious film yet...[though his] growth as a filmmaker remains hindered by an obsession with effect and a disinterest in depth. 
A bio-epic on the order of Lawrence of Arabia, Patton is a smart, fully realized historical film. 
A fine old-school picture...elevated further by its progressive themes. 
Though the film makes a few egregious historical changes for dramatic effect, The Longest Day pretty much lives and dies by its scale. 
Attenborough consistently reinforces the horrors of war by depicting not only the disasterous military engagements and their toll on heroes, but also the witless political decisions that led to needless, excessive loss of life. 
Succeeds in giving the general impression of a pivotal historical moment, and excels in crafting some of the most astonishing aerial-warfare sequences ever put on film. 
Two years after Match Point, Allen delivers another London-set murder melodrama, with diminishing returns. 
Harold Prince's original staging remains the gold standard, but John Doyle offers an intriguing alternative on Sondheim's ode to commitment anxiety. 
The visions, the menagerie of women and the horrid behavior of Tommy Gavin suggest a lewd FDNY variation on 8 1/2, and one that's still going plenty strong after four thirteen-episode seasons. 