Though the film nakedly seeks a wide audience through conventional plotting and characterization—and despite being (like most action movies) guy-centric—Shanghai Noon provides good, clean 'family' fun.

This innocent, sixties-style, big-budget comedy-romance-action-adventure romp is solid family entertainment that would make any self-respecting kid's jaw drop for a good two hours.

As good as, if not better than, any of the feature films that would later star the Next Generation cast.

Not only did the third season mark a quantum leap in non-niche popularity for the series, but a greater consistency in the show's writing and execution that meant a precipitous drop in fan complaints.

[Pegg:] Kirk is emotionally compromised from the start of this film. You know, he's driven by something other than sense. He's driven by vengeance. And Scotty really is absolutely right to stand up to him...

Luhrmann approaches the story and directs his actors in ways that hold them at a distance from us: the overkill plays less as bold art and more as lack of trust in the source material.

Inviting photography and a relentless pace complement Claude's unfolding narrative, but the big thrills are in the deftly drawn characters...and the incisive satire...

Works best when it sticks close to Henry, whose broad grin fails to mask a growing desperation. Quaid not only makes a believably corn-fed patriarch, but he captures the mien of one who is slowly ceding his soul...

[Quaid:] It’s like a process of osmosis...I was thrown into the place, and I was just trying to soak in as much as I could from the farmers, from the feel of the place where we were at...

Perhaps it's damning Renoir with faint praise to call it agreeable, but Gilles Bourdos' film...shows an admirable restraint, quiet simplicity, and lush pictorial beauty.

All the ingredients for a great evening at the movies: lively music, eye-catching scenery, larger-than-life comic set pieces, suave men and beautiful women, and odd-man-out Clouseau, played to perfection by the one and only Peter Sellers.

[Wagner:] Blake...had it in his mind. But he used a lot of what happened and what the actors would bring to it...the thing with the hook on the door and me going around and all that—the sweater...all things that came up as we went along.

The most satisfying cinematic experience we've had at the multiplex thus far this year, and largely through its disinterest in playing along with movie trends.

None of us are doing peer-reviewed stuff on the things that we believe; we’re just sort of swallowing whatever gets published in Scientific American, or whatever, which is not a horrible thing, but...we obviously don't know everything.

There are two types of people in the world. Those who should under no circumstances see the horror sequel/reboot Evil Dead and those who just gotta see it.

Day-Lewis...wears well the weariness of the office and Lincoln's puckish yet subdued sense of humor, scaling the man closer to life-size than Mount Rushmore monumental.

Do not consume The Host before operating heavy machinery. Side effects may include spontaneous coma or fits of giggling.

Supplements its palace intrigue with the good old-fashioned pull of romance and costume drama...Mikkelsen's magnetism and sly expressiveness hold the film's center with a quiet potency.

Monsieur Verdoux can boast a screenplay with a highly unusual moral complexity and a deeply philosophical bent...Yes, Verdoux is a film that name-drops Schopenhauer, but it's also damn funny...

By most cinematic measures, Zero Dark Thirty is one of the best-made films of 2012. It also probably shouldn't exist.

When I saw Gospel According to St. Matthew, I started getting heart palpitations...It was the best movie I had ever seen...I had to crawl up to the projection booth and call my girlfriend and have her take me to the hospital.

Appears to have been market-tested to within an inch of its life, so despite a theme of finding the capacity to evolve, the picture remains mired in the tar pit of formula.

This pretty period-pictorial companion piece to the novel fatally misses out on the brain-firing raw buzz that Kerouac felt and passed on to his readers...

Park’s skills for surreal subjectivity and the mischievously weird certainly don’t hurt, but they can’t quite banish Stoker’s narrative speed bumps and draughts of cold air...

In the hands of Ang Lee, a true film artist, Life of Pi elegantly walks Martel's philosophical line while also brilliantly using every modern cinematic tool to spin an epic yarn.

Swims upstream against high-definition with a defiantly lo-fi approach that's also ingeniously evocative of the historical period.

The film isn't a worldbeater as either old-school journalism of rigorous reportage or dazzling showmanship...will be of most use as a time capsule of sorts...

The mealy half-truth director Peter Webber...and screenwriters Vera Blasi and David Klass settle for just winds up a waste of everyone's time.

Built for fun...in its dazzlingly elaborate production design and kinetic 3D action...perfect casting...Who Framed Roger Rabbit-esque video-game-character cameos, and a cramming of clever comic touches...

Provides plenty of moving case studies...[but] it's most useful for its prismatic look at the problem of American hunger, examining the problem's recent history, its root causes...and its inextricability from other national crises...

The Master begs for a reorientation of the viewer, perhaps requiring more than one viewing...there's nothing easy or conventional about this account of a doomed search for external meaning, doubling as a meditative tone poem on human frailty.

While in its romantic and romanticized particulars, this A Star Is Born can often seem silly, hoary, disjointed or meandering, the essence of the showbiz narrative still exerts a powerful pull...

Tease[s] out the provocative and liberating properties of art. Add extraordinary, emotionally generous performances, and Blue Is the Warmest Color grasps enough moments of truth to justify its extensive reach.

Gets it right, in the essence of its true story as well as the social discomforts surrounding disability and sane discussion of sexuality.

In its modern way, Snitch is almost Dickensian in its intent, missing no opportunity for melodramatic confrontation as it puts a (baby) face on a social ill.

The material calls out for a more expressive cinematographic treatment. Had the film been less antiseptic and more bold in its visuals and the emotional depths of its performances, it could have been a classic; instead, it's a rather ordinary indie.

The 'other' Oscar-nominated feature about a war on terror, Dror Moreh’s documentary The Gatekeepers proves more intellectually engaging than Hollywood’s Zero Dark Thirty, and at least as unsettling.

To the extent that Our Man Flint works, it does so due to its tossed-off wit...and the sheer oddity of Coburn, the toothy, gangly character actor who nevertheless charms his way into stardom here with laid-back cool.

It's a shame that In Like Flint plays as such a defensive reaction to on-the-rise American feminism...in most other respects, it's a worthy-enough sequel to Our Man Flint.

From its jazzy main titles to its gentle fadeout, Monsters, Inc. has something that money can't buy. It's likeable.

Does Sparks have to treat people like total idiots...?...[A] soulless-cash-grab.

Observe the white, middle-class American Catholic teenager in his natural habitat...Though we have, perhaps, never flaunted the fetching eyelashes and perfect skin of these curious creatures...have we not, in a sense, been there?

McCarthy is a worthy successor to John Candy, who also had a gift for warming up caricatures with loveable humanity.

Written in four days and shot in fifteen, this homegrown indie shows its seams...in cinematic terms, it's pretty weak sauce.

Doesn't avoid all of the traps of the genre, but Hoffman does show good taste, particularly in casting.

Like Anatomy of a Murder, The Graduate, and Daniels' own Precious rolled into one wacked-out bloody Southern Gothic that's considerably less than the sum of those parts...

Has significant blemishes that don't quite come out in the wash...but the picture persists on the strength of its committed performances.

The sheer bulk of talent involved (top-tier technicians and designers included) turns out to be a case of water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

Flipping the cautionary themes of Mary Shelley’s original source material, Frankenweenie plays out as a primarily pro-science parable...goes out of its way to encourage free-thinking square pegs to avoid gaping round holes.

Takes dicey material—the story of one privileged family's suffering during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami—and transcends its political incorrectness by focusing on the human condition.