May be the most thoughtful and, in social terms, realistic film ever made about the college experience.

Life may be meaningless, but Cameron Diaz doing the (commando) splits on your windshield makes for a momentary distraction. I think we can all agree on that.

As a 'man vs. wild' adventure in the Jack London mode, All is Lost has plenty of fearsome moments, but the deeper fears are existential: man in mortal contention with an indifferent universe.

The lightning rod figure here is Rick Hall, 'the founder of the music business in Muscle Shoals'...At 80, Hall remains sharply opinionated, and his extensive recollections give Muscle Shoals its spine.

The sort of ability to put total and complete trust in a bunch of young yahoos for a guy who’s accomplished as much as [Redford] has was kind of shocking—that he makes decisions to kind of expose himself.

The point of change, I think, for Solomon that makes him very distinctive and distinct from a lot of people and a lot of us...is that he recognizes that he is actually in a fight for his mind.

It wasn’t until she became of sexual interest to Master Epps that she was sent out into the field...that spoke of a woman who had kind of the Stockholm syndrome where you’re traumatically bonded to the people who cause you the most harm.

Hums along nicely as it diagnoses what Dr. Judith calls 'the least-parented, least-nurtured generation—ever.' It's funny without being broad, thanks to a fine ensemble...

May be obvious and it may be clumsy, but it's also at least a little bit thoughtful, and there's never a dull moment.

Please steer away your loved ones from this tone-deaf travesty, this misbegotten farrago, this offensive, rank, charmless, near-lifeless, anti-romantic twaddle, a classic tale 'told by an idiot.' Want to know what I really think?

Whedon goes for a kind of radical naturalism, an understated approach that suggests the characters could be your friends and neighbors.

Moves us closer to an art-house/blockbuster hybrid paradigm that could be Hollywood’s salvation...a survivalist adventure that captures the primal terror of present death while exploring the will or won't to live.

The odds of hitting a 'runner runner' flush (in Texas Hold 'Em) are 'roughly four percent.' Coincidentally, those are the same odds you'll be satisfied with your purchase of a ticket to Runner Runner.

Typically slick, both overstated and undernourished when it comes to the drama. All the same, Rush makes for a pretty good fall night at the movies: fast and furious, but not too stupid.

A comedy of separation anxiety and conjoining anxiety...When Holofcener gets Dreyfus and Gandolfini alone, Enough Said is a beautiful thing.

Even the best movies...are not as rich and nuanced as detailed as real life or an actual human being. And so to compare your real life, or your partner or lover or whoever to a character in a movie, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

Intrigues not with good guy-bad guy shtick, but with the conundrum of how to live morally in an inherently immoral West.

For me, if you want to make a film about Saudi Arabia, there is no way you can escape religion; it's a big part of people's lives, whether they are religious or not...people find themselves in situations where they position themselves next to religion...

Exquisitely captures the vulnerability not only of youth, but of the male identity.

In a film full of humane performances, Larson stands out, personifying the necessary vulnerability and strength Cretton captures of the workplace.

Feels rather 'been there, done that' for a movie that keeps (idly, as it turns out) threatening to turn transgressive. Still, by putting utility player Hahn front and center, Soloway earns instant good will.

While more detailed scientific analysis and greater discussion of impacts would have been welcome, the film's visual rhetoric is solid.

The stars still deliver, the supporting cast (especially Collins and Mark A. Sheppard as demon Crowley) remains prized, and the writers keep coming up with witty variations on the show's Route 66-meets-The X Files premise.

Sutter knows how to conceive inconceivable violence, and while it's fair to question whether or not such disgusting ideas are just cultural poison, one can't argue that he ignores the consequences of each act.

As violent, macho fantasies go, this one is surprisingly engaging, a throwback to '80s sci-fi actioners like Predator in its striking visual approach...its juicy pulp dialogue...and its unabashed hard-'R' gusto.

With a man-against-the-elements adventure like this one, the emphasis is, and should be, largely on spectacular depiction of the environment, and [the] directors...make use of the biggest budget yet afforded to a Norwegian film...

To Be or Not to Be has all the hallmarks of a Lubitsch comedy: a solidly constructed plot, good comic pacing, a light touch, and strong performances from top to bottom.

[Larson:] One of the interesting things that I learned was that sometimes loving someone or showing love doesn't always mean that you have to give in. Sometimes you have to be hard and kind of get them to toe the line a little bit.

The main selling point here—and it's a considerable one—is Shannon, who shows new shadings in the role of Kuklinski...

More than anything, perhaps, The Grandmaster is a feminist tragedy that, at least in this cut, seems to lose interest in Ip Man and pass the torch to the considerably more fascinating Gong Er...

Getaway does inspire escapism, as its title implies, but not in the way the filmmakers had in mind: rather, you’ll be looking for the exits.

Haneke has hit upon the most accessible, most universally understood experiential vehicle to explore his career-defining obsession with nihilism, or he has made his most emotionally sensitive film yet, a true love story. 

Season Two of Enterprise put a lot of fans to sleep in 2002, but out of that context of 'franchise fatigue,' these twenty-six episodes...are entertaining, well-executed Trek.

Despite breathless proclamations about 'the biggest, most high profile murder case in British history' and timely trappings of closely held government secrets threatening to come to light, it all turns out to be rather boilerplate.

My father wasn’t the greatest guy in the world, to me. And his treatment of me wasn’t that great. Some of this stuff is directly taken from me and my father. And my father actually took me to see Jayne Mansfield’s car...

You can go home again. But it's going to involve a lot of drinking.

As a tart analogy for our escapism into literature and romantic comedies, Austenland is, itself, enaging, if not particularly sharp.

Disney's latest grand experiment in televised synergy has old-fashioned, corny charm—just newfangled with girl power and CGI.

Comes full up with heavy-handed signifiers, from Ben's choice of reading (Hemingway...) to a hammered motif of lapsed Christianity (the climax takes place in a rotting church) that underlines the theme of living with the sins of the past.

There are sometimes twisted lessons to be learned from their misbehavior, but it's more about the silliness, punctuated regularly by frat-boy gesticulation and verbal high-fives.

Sunny days, blue skies, and rippling blue waters lined with greenery...Plain nice, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Everybody's got an idea about what everyone is. But only if you take the time to kind of be with that person and get to know them and understand where they're coming from and what makes them tick [do] you start to see there's a lot more...

Voice-over...it's the ultimate acting, because the blind voice, you're not judged by what you look like; you're judged by what you sound like. So you can be anyone. You can be any nationality; you can be—I could be a dude. You know?

A mature film about immature people, tenderly performed by its young leads and skillfully adapted, by (500) Days of Summer screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, from Tim Tharp's YA novel.

Give this to Kick-Ass 2: it's never boring...Even so, Kick-Ass has lost most of its transgressive charge along with its element of surprise and its heroes' disturbingly unwavering conviction.

Faced with almost three decades of complicated history, Jobs does a fair job of telling the story of Apple and conveying something of what made its co-founder unique.

Despite admirable work from Whitaker and Winfrey, Lee Daniels' The Butler is nearly crushed by its own symbolic weight and its contrivance of a central character arc from keeping one's head down to learning to stand up.

In many ways, Spearhead from Space is terribly clunky...[but it] remains an historically important adventure and one with recognizable influences on stories to come...

For all its apocalyptic fate-of-the-world theatrics, this...[adaptation of] the 2011 graphic novel Flashpoint by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert...has an emotional core to give purpose to its crazy amounts of mayhem.