Whether coolly dispatching a fly or eating a Wimpy burger with knife and fork, Oldman carefully makes every gesture part of his quiet revelation of character.

In the hands of actor-turned-director Charles Martin Smith, this kid-centric drama provides a welcome family option with positive values and a minimum of frantic, noisy CGI. It's a tale told on a human (and animal) scale.

Fincher is perfectly suited to the material, with its voluminous clues to be organized and parsed, its emotional austerity, and its serial murder, rape, and sundry sick plot twists.

What ultimately makes Young Adult worth the trip is Theron’s uncompromising performance, which dares to make Mavis unlikeable and, in the process, earns our pity and, more disturbingly, our identification.

A landmark screen musical that left its own indelible stamp on popular culture.

I tell ya, I haven't heard this much talk about ball-dropping since the junior high locker room.

If only The Help accepted more of Davis’ help, we might have a work of art on our hands instead of another condescending, half-baked history lesson.

Though this pastiche has been crafted by film nerds and largely for them, Michel Hazanavicius' feature has an emotional generosity that speaks louder than words.

If you see The Descendants, see it for Clooney (and Woodley), but don’t believe the hype that it’s one for the ages.

Muppet News Flash! Your friends in felt are back on the big screen, ready and waiting to charm a new generation of…moppets.

Jim used to always con you into doing things by saying, 'Oh no, it'll be great. It'll be really nice.'

Unmistakably Little Miss Sunshine-y...a sunny sitcom of family dysfunction...

Strong work from Mayance and Thomas keeps Sarah's Key from rusting amid the sometime soddenness of the script.

Unsparing character studies, using the specific to illuminate the universal.

The interviews that make up the balance of the film yield plenty of oddities of modern American life.

Works brilliantly as an allegory of American repression and willful illusion of order, Lumberton's forced-smile '50s sensibility unable to keep down the anarchic, raging id that is humanity's primal drive.

A back-to-basics charmer evoking the Pooh short films from the '60s and '70s.

When they're not risking their lives with exciting spy maneuvers, Blaster works out to Lady Gaga and Juarez updates her Facebook page. Okay, so maybe G-Force is just a tad self-consciously 'hip.'

Are your kids ready for an existential movie? Turns out they are: Disney's CGI-animated action comedy Bolt is, at its core, a story of one individual's discovery that his sense of reality...has been seriously skewed.

Thematically, like any good myth, the Harry Potter story comes full circle, with a heroic homecoming and the promise of more adventures, if only in our imaginations.

The director's emotional sadism and laughable bluntness in his symbolic approach leave us in the cold, to pick through the art-auction catalog of Manuel Alberto Claro's cinematography and contemplate Dunst's award-winning suffering.

Has the perfect 'generic brand' title to match its Teflon blandness.

At least, though the insights here aren't as plentiful as Durkin seems to think, Olsen's fine work as the off-balance, paranoid anti-hero helps to create that illusion.

Director John Lasseter pushes the credo 'Story is king,' but the sequel to the 2006 hit Cars unwittingly abdicates the throne.

A story with timeless, universal themes: family, coming of age (and leaving behind childish things), and the inevitable time when, past our prime, we will all face potential social obsolence.

'You can't rush art.' Pixar's bliss in art and play is part and parcel of both the creation and the meaning of Toy Story 2, a celebration of the pure joy of doing.

Introduced not one but two indelible characters to the pop culture pantheon: cowboy rag-doll Woody (Tom Hanks) and plastic space ranger Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen).

From the man who brought you Godzilla and 2012...a loud and ludicrous historical rewrite about the supposed hidden authorship of Shakespeare's plays.

It's not hard to understand why The Lion King's good-vs.-evil adventure and high-spirited comic passages haven't lost their appeal.

[Malick] wants to see so much: people and through people to their souls, the world and through the world to the ineffable, life and death and through them to their meaning. And...he wants to help us to see it all too.

Chandor’s social critique may or may not stand the test of time, but as all eyes turn to the 'Occupy' movement, Margin Call is entirely right for this moment.

Succeeds as a witty Elmore Leonard crime story...but also as a surprisingly affecting mid-life romance.

A balls-out postmodern comedy par excellence. It's a Royale with Cheese. 

The problem with attempting to replicate the 'magic,' such as it was, of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is you get something very close to a replica, minus the novelty.

On brightest screen, in threest-D,
It's the latest franchisee.
This superhero's super-slight;
Beware two hours... Green Lantern bites!

If you weren't a kid when you first saw Space Jam, you're a lot less likely to find it palatable.

A purely creative movie that one must admit has no equal in cinema history (for better or worse).

The dark drama that launched a genre of evil-kid movies.

The only thing that could make The Cutting Edge more absurd would be if the final competition revolved around a potentially deadly, possibly illegal move called the Pamchenko Twist. Wait, it does? Never mind.

Not everything works out neatly for everyone, but life seems a little better by the end of two hours' struggle, for the characters and for the audience.

Something of a train wreck...[but] comedy scavengers may find it worthwhile to pick through the remains for a few amusing gags.

Cycles through the same old cliches, like squares accidentally being dosed with drugs, overzealous pharmacists blaring out sensitive medical information (nothing like a good ol' venereal disease joke), and climactically scotched weddings.

The romantic comedy version of its setting: an overgrown theme park that momentarily amuses, wears down the body and spirit, but mentally stays behind.

Never stops doling out demented treats....Dahl's morality play of bad parenting and bad-egg kids is evergreen....a genuinely amazing movie.

The characters in the latest Disney film frequently attack each other, sometimes eat each other, and spend the whole time running around naked.

Though Terri doesn’t have the reassuring clarity of a straight path from starting block to finish line, its fits and starts are pretty good.

It’d be nice to report that this film with a still-all-too-rare female protagonist is a great time at the movies, but alas, not so much.

Plays out like a game of high-stakes poker, mostly in shades of quiet, intense deliberation.

Butler delivers an unconvincing performance that's part and parcel of a phony film lacking in any narrative subtlety or finesse.