The epic sweep supports thoughtful reflection on the evolution of a fragile early republic...and the fragile ego of the man crucial to its existence.

Revolutionary Road’s existential dread of unspoken feelings bubbling to the surface perhaps better resembles Tennessee Williams, a towering explorer of authenticity and self-delusion.

Retains the journalistic flavor of its source, in turns terrifying and absurd, with gallows humor never far out of reach.

Unsubtle...A disappointment for adults, [but] still qualifies as a peppy object lesson for would-be overachievers.

Miracle capitalizes on its understanding of team dynamics: the bonding of pain and gain alike, the ownership of integrity over ego, the satisfaction of communal accomplishment.

Skilled hiding isn’t very exciting, so for the sake of the audience, Zwick carefully incorporates some hyped-up action standoffs, the last being an unfortunately laughable stretch of credibility.

With Frank in the great beyond, it's up to Barbra to drive the world into hysterics with her rare public performances.

Couples who want to stay happy might want to think twice before seeking out a movie about how the majority of relationships end up making people paranoid and miserable.

Perhaps no one film speaks more fully to the human condition than The Seventh Seal.

In its natural habitat, Anaconda can be appreciated for its campy pleasures, not the least of which is Jon Voight in a delirious, balls-out performance as creepy Paraguayan snake poacher Paul Serone.

With its investigation (and a few expertly conceived action set pieces), The International builds a compelling case.

Undeniably bad, but sort of a nice try.

In the end, the trashy but entertaining Season Seven will be best remembered for giving the show 'buzz' again.

In its broad strokes, Glory gets at the spirit of a group of previously unsung black heroes, and the filmmaking is of a high caliber.

[An] unabashedly jingoistic action extravaganza starring Harrison Ford as...'The Ass-Kicking President'...

The Coen Brothers have always loved to go far, a tactic they don't forgo in Fargo.

The sublime film music, now-iconic situations (like the climactic ghost town shootout), and sure visual style add up to a pitch-perfect genre pic that ongoingly influences generations of hip filmmakers.

It’s all mildly entertaining in an incredibly stupid, borderline coherent way...But in banishing formula, the film ends up, well, lost.

A blunt-force narrative...[though] Morel does good work with a string of brutish and short action scenes...

True Blood is delightfully, deliriously sick and "wrong," but it's also a medium for Ball's patented brand of social satire.

A hall of fame guy's movie...[with] a macho '90s ensemble eclipsed only by Glengarry Glen Ross...the monologues—oh, the monologues!

A heavy-handed potboiler, but as it raises the temperature, it does give cause to consider the line—so easily crossed—between social function and disasterous personal undoing.

The bones of the story are comfortingly familiar, the action is rollicking, and the metaphorical moustache-twirling of Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham is priceless.

Widely regarded as a modern populist classic, the film is both a fabulist fable and a celebratory baseball movie that acknowledges scandal within the sport but also the game's transcendent ability to rise above attempts to damage its integrity.

Lee is a bona fide cinematic genius, and his lively and inventive take on tired material proves that thriller corn needn't be mindless in its machinations.

It's nice to see the two together, practicing their easy screen rapport—and no doubt more so given Farley's untimely passing—but Black Sheep is still a clunker.

Ham-handed...makes Afterschool Specials look like Ibsen.

A diverting but typically silly Roger Moore entry in the Bond canon.

[A] pleasing throwback to 1970s war-intrigue pictures.

Writer-director Ross's true-believer American salesmanship—inspired by Frank Capra and honed in Dave and Pleasantville--suits this story of American entrepreneurship, optimism, and resilience.

In Cuarón's highly-skilled hands, Children of Men continuously threatens to develop into something more fascinating than it is.

[The] writers...pay lip service to the dark side of 'yes,' but don’t do enough to explore what could have made the film more than a bouncy entertainment

It's like the Whack-a-Mole of everything reasonable people hate about so-called 'chick flicks.'

Cinderella Man may not be subtle, but it's reminiscent of the well-crafted popular entertainments of Hollywood's Golden Age, blarney and all.

Entertaining and provocative...a satisfying intellectual bout.

Problematic but ultimately irresistible adaptation of Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey's hit Broadway musical.

Pollack excels by establishing an interesting situation, sustaining it, and—in keeping with the paranoid-thriller genre—resolving it on a pleasingly ambiguous note.

Wayne's World 2 revels in silliness even more than the first movie, but it turns out that's a good thing as compensation for the otherwise repetitive feel.

With Myers feeling his oats as a comedy star, Wayne's World turned out to be an irresistibly silly (and masterfully marketed) option for audiences.

A meat-and-potatoes '80s movie, that maybe doesn't 'taste great,' but at least is 'less filling.'

A bizarrely appealing movie, Tango & Cash is the essence of camp: it's bad and knows it's bad, so therefore, it's...good?

Gauche, garish, and gross, a prime example of the coarsening of our culture and of the art of comedy in film. It's also pretty darn funny.

A Bug's Life [is] sure to endure as a superb children's entertainment.

Common: 'One day they came and told me...'Yo, it’s the scene your brother got killed.' I’m like, 'I didn’t even know I had a brother!'...when I got to the set, they was like 'Oh, he’s not your brother anymore.'

Schwarzenegger's Brewer remarks, 'If I don't do it, it seems no one else will,' but that's a lousy excuse for...a multi-million dollar mistake like this one.

With the second one, should we be able to make it, I can’t stand how excited I am about it. Let’s just say that it involves time travel, and it involves John Connor once again trying to galvanize the forces of those who think he’s crazy.

Yelchin: 'I just kind of fully embraced Chekov...there’s no point to losing the potential within Chekov just by making him a Russian kid...it’s a Cold War stereotype meets Davy Jones, you know?'

The tone set by director Frank Coraci tends to the cartoonishly broad while making jokes at the expense of grotesques.

If didactic and overwrought at times, it's also powerful and persuasive.

The technically proficient The Sky Crawlers is nice to look at and listen to...but by relying on zombified blank-slate characters, Oshii makes a point at the expense of engagement, much less entertainment.