Winds up feeling strangely perfunctory. This is subject matter that should fascinate, rather than deliver an occasional droll observation.

If only Morel and Besson would have committed to satirizing, instead of merely exploiting, this superficially cool, destructively cold archetype of American firepower, they could’ve had more than multiplex filler.

A smart little genre outing, an endangered species in modern Hollywood.

A very impressive formal exercise in style and restraint...

Predictable and, in the end, embarrassingly sappy...[but] does touch on some interesting points about the ethics of drug trials and approvals, the entrepreneurial spirit, and the challenges of doing important work that isn’t a sure thing...

A hall-of-mirrors investigation of extraordinary talent, emotionally stunted personality, a performer’s process, and the cruel mistress of celebrity...but it also serves as a powerful performance version of a last will and testament.

No one can accuse the show of shrinking from dark psychological themes: the leading character of Nancy Botwin (Emmy winner Mary-Louise Parker) has spun more wildly out of control with each season...

Okay, everybody, back to your shopping--there's nothing to see here.

It’s a mark of Jackson’s lack of restraint as a filmmaker that the mystery-thriller elements and fantastic visualizations overtake the domestic drama that is the novel’s true raison d’être.

As preposterous as this "Die Hard on a mountain" flick is, Cliffhanger remains one of the zestier big-budget action pictures of the nineties.

Considered a dunderheaded big-budget flop in its day, Last Action Hero looks considerably better now in its creative self-parody.

Sets thoughts swirling about three bitch-goddesses: the teenage variety (namely Megan Fox’s Jennifer), “success” in the commercial cinema, and that fickle mistress called hype.

I was fascinated by Sky King, until I went to the studio one day with my Dad and met a pudgy little man, who didn’t fit my image of Sky King. But I think that tweaked my interest in the whole business of show business.

Endearingly packed to the rafters with ornate anachronistic artistry, Gilliam’s Imaginarium is a great place to window shop—and get lost for a spell.

Call this one the thinking boy’s sex romp.

The stupid fun of The Hangover is worth experiencing at least once.

Jones has a very interesting existential idea here, and though he frustratingly doesn’t exploit its every possibility, he does give a great actor an opportunity for a tour-de-force performance.

The playful Generation Y story (500) Days of Summer goes against the grain by wisely substituting delusion for deception. Boy meets girl. Boy thinks he understands girl. Boy oh boy.

Gathers nine of the comedy icon's best-known comedy films, an impressive haul by any standard.

District 9's City of God meets War of the Worlds hybrid proves overbearing and under-convincing.

Bateman reliably tickles in his signature role of a square who can’t catch a break, and Wiig once more delivers subtly funny character work in a tricky role.

The film’s greatest strength may well be how Sarsgaard's David, in concert with Hornby and Scherfig, seduces the audience along with Jenny, promising the world and leaving temptingly unlocked a Pandora’s Box of social ambiguity.

Without McKay, Me and Orson Welles would be unthinkable as a film; with him, Linklater’s delightful celebration of the arts turns out to be one of the season’s most surprising gifts.

Tony is as much an archetype of the American father as Homer Simpson, only just smart enough to be perpetually miserable.

In working to keep the audience off-center...Desplechin artfully makes the well-worn family-weekend plot endearing again.

[Linklater:] You can feel...him pushing the boundaries or finding maybe there aren’t any boundaries to his own genius and to his behavior and his appetites. You can almost feel them expanding as you watch him.

A serially bold experiment in audience engagement and the ability to produce feature-quality genre entertainment...on a weekly television budget.

Musters only a few lackluster laughs...[but] has one trump card: it’s a kid-friendly, “PG” film that celebrates museums.

Rude, raunchy and given to comical violence, the show sets out to offend delicate sensibilities and to get tough ones laughing their asses off. Abandon political correctness all who enter here.

Whether you're talking about an empire or a TV series, it doesn't get much bigger than Rome.

Because Costello is himself so hugely talented as an eclectic songwriter and performer, because his taste is so impeccable, and because he is such a cultural magpie...Spectacle is a wholly addictive musical program for the ages.

Series creator Bill Lawrence has always toggled between the zany and the emotional, and the eighth season is no exception.

The action sometimes conjures a thrill-ride's breathtaking quality or, in other words, Terminator Salvation's only hope of redemption with audiences.

A potent and distinctly philosophical morality play about human instinct, the moral cost of survival, and a father’s love for his child...

Keaton proves as endlessly clever and athletic as his screen surrogates...chock-full of hilarious sight gags, including bits of business that incorporate moving trains, cow-catchers, a bear (and bear trap), and a misbehaving cannon.

Guaranteed to entertain actual "clerks" and those who have outgrown slackerdom to look back in bemused fondness at wasted time.

Smith has made a film with the potential to improve gender relations—without sacrificing his profane style.

In a wonderful evocation of the art of war, Woo not only recreates elegant troop movements but also stages a memorable scene in which...[two men of war], still wary of each other, bond over music as they play what becomes a conversational duet.

There’s so many heroes that I admire, like the one general called Zhao Yun, who is saving a little baby in the middle of all the battles...I used him for Chow Yun-Fat in Hard Boiled.

Just creative enough to keep kids glazed over with nominal interest, but it won’t challenge them much...

Undeniably manipulative, not only in its plot, but in its dramatization of it.

Gabourey Sidibe brilliantly embodies the understandably bitter Precious, who shares her heartbreaking despair through extensive narration.

One of the seminal films of the 1990s...just as darkly funny, epic, and psychically wrenching as ever.

Ribbing for your pleasure, Brüno is crafted to cause a flurry of varied reactions, even within a single viewer.

For everything else that's come down the road, nothing has been better to Stallone than his baby, Rocky.

Does Chris Columbus owe somebody a favor?

Has enough crisp sight gags, character moments, frantic mayhem, and musical interludes...to box the family crowd into a state of punch-drunk love.

A labor of love...so it's appropriate that the film should also be about love, the spanner in the works that allows humanity to triumph over machinery.

Usefully, it provides counter-balance to its own doom-saying with numerous suggestions of how to deal with the corporatization of food.