The Baby Boomer teaming no one was asking for—Billy Crystal and Bette Midler—melded to that most moribund of genres, rugrats 'comedy'...

A mixed bag of suitable and not-so-suitable choices. On balance, though, it's about as compelling a screen version of Les Mis as we have any right to expect...Pop a dramamine and you'll be fine.

There's a case to be made that blood-spattering revenge pictures, no matter how evil the villain, are cultural poison, but if this is what it takes to [get] Don Johnson as a dyed-in-the-wool racist done up as Colonel Sanders, well, so be it.

[McQuarrie] spreads a unearned veneer of intelligence over...a plot one character aptly describes as 'grassy-knoll ludicrous.'

Silly and nice, basically unfunny but basically innocuous—so as satisfying as your average leftovers.

Mostly succeeds on its own merits...[but] many comedic and musical distractions pad the 134-minute running time and stray from the implicit promise of that title: the film has little to say about middle age...

Even for an episodic kiddie farce, Dog Days seems overly familiar in its comic premises (oh no! peeing in the municipal pool!) and conflicts...but it’ll all be new to its intended audience...

As playful as it is...Holy Motors has the power to haunt as much as to amuse.

Another day at the Romantic Comedy Factory:
'...Pull me down a Gerard Butler and a Jessica Biel, will ya?'

Just remember, kids, you’re not paranoid if they’re really out to get you…or your movie dollars.

Trek became famous in large part for its (often corny) science-fiction morality plays...Few episodes of either series achieve this goal more elegantly than Melinda Snodgrass' 'The Measure of a Man.'

Though some scary parts may make the very young fret unduly, the film also puts forward some thoughtful messages for both children and their parents.

It's beginning to seem as if Pixar's delivery of one of the very best films of the year will be an unstoppable annual tradition.

Has no MSG. I mention this because many will probably want to make a meal of it and, it should be said, it's both pretty tasty and will leave you feeling hungry an hour later...

Reenactment cinema...On balance, Hitchcock is about as entertaining and as trustworthy as a tabloid.

Even if the cause and effect of the plot proves fairly impenetrable...one can't deny the film is frequently visually resplendent and imaginative...

Who's for 130 minutes of alienation?...We're able to intellectualize why we should care (those social strictures are crushing hearts!), but we're too distracted to be moved.

John Milius' 1984 original may not have been a paragon of clear-headed foreign policy, but...Dan Bradley's remake predictably sidesteps—and, in one case, mocks—its source material's most interesting moments...

Even when it's not quite running on all cylinders, LeRoy's Gypsy is never less than cute, and sometimes, it's a good deal more.

It would be criminal to reveal how the plot unfolds, other than to say it's impressive dramatic origami, manipulated deftly by an ideal cast and one of Hollywood's all-time top directors.

My role, I think, as much as the book, is provide a platform so people can talk about the irrational.

Heavenly shades of night are falling: it's Twilight time...[for a series which] has always been borderline comical in its moments of greatest sincerity...

According to an old showbiz saw, the key to comedy is timing. Well, the new big-budget sci-fi comedy The Watch has a problem there.

'Be excellent to each other.' Out of the mouths of babehounds...

Playful...the most conspicuously repeated word is 'game,' the most dangerous of which Bond typically is, pursues, or plays.

One character innocently asks Peter, as he looks for an ID badge, 'Are you having trouble finding yourself?' Maybe just a little, but consider the franchise relaunched...

This version...won't be remembered as a major one—it's too faithful and too wobbly for that—but it's an entertaining novelty version, largely justified by the casting and Gemignani's slavish devotion to the original Broadway orchestrations.

Strikes just the right balance of irony and sincerity...genuinely heartwarming, from its opening dedication to Henson and Hunt to its joy-to-the-world finale.

I've never done heroin, but heroin addicts say it's always trying to chase the euphoria of that very first hit...For a filmmaker...that first movie is such a grand exhilarating adventure, and you're always just trying to replicate that.

I feel, for any storyteller, anyone making any piece of art, the more specific you can be, and the more truthful detail you can imbue into what you're doing, the more universal your story becomes, oddly.

That positive, enthusiastic outlook, combined with the topic of sex, seemed like a great thing to be able to play.

I stumbled across this article, 'On Seeing a Sex Surrogate.' And...it was a bit like a 'burning bush' experience; it had a profound emotional impact on me. And I thought: if I could reproduce that, in a film, then I would be making a good film.

I knew from an early point that if we were making a movie in these big fantastical worlds that it needed to be grounded by something that was existential and something that was very personal and internal to the character.

Despite...misguided commercial instincts, Flight offers much that's productively unsettling, anchored by Washington's old-school movie-star performance...

The Wachowskis and Tykwer are determined to make you understand eternity, and in that and only that, they succeed: by the time you get to the film’s endless series of endings, you’ll feel as if you’ve lived lifetimes.

There’s a nobility in a well-made teen movie, not least because of the rarity of the breed...[this] sports movie concerned with the physical, emotional, and moral development of a young man fruitfully aspires to the likes of Breaking Away.

Foreign-film comfort food...at its best in exploring the psychology of the adopted.

[McDonagh:] You can never have too much Catholic guilt.

Maybe Prometheus is deep, after all, with Weyland Corporation standing in for 20th Century Fox in an allegory for Scott's artistic aspirations: funding and undermining his ambitions at the same time.

Smart enough to work on multiple levels: as a witty salute to masculine '70s cinema...as a deconstruction of same...and as an existential consideration of the role of self-expression in ascribing meaning to life...

Entirely larky...for Beatlefans, what's not to like?

'Eat Gray Love'...the whole enterprise [is] too platitudinous, but with powerhouse actors like Dench, Nighy and Wilkinson, even a critic can agree it's better to be plucky than a sour stick-in-the-mud.

The ludicrous plot devices that allow Mills to go from point A to point Z insult the intelligence of the character and the audience.

Murphy and Falchuk don't go after anything deep...they just want the reflected glow of America's collective nightmares as they peddle their own ambitious, at times affecting, but generally klutzy serialized/recurring bad dream.

With its deathless car chase, Friedkin's film became an instant American classic...

What have I learned? High school movies can be duller—and more sour—than previously thought possible...The least generic element of General Education is its openly hostile attitude toward gay people.

Part religiopolitical satire, part smalltown sitcom, with a hint of romance, Where Do We Go Now? is pleasingly populated with 'characters' and light farce that occasionally breaks out into a movie musical.

While fully embracing the single-camera and mockumentary trends that have all but taken over modern sitcoms, the show hearkens back to...snugly-fitted farcical plotting and traditional sitcom writing...

The milieu End of Watch introduces as 'Once upon a time in South Central' may feel a bit old hat...