Alfred posits, "For what is Batman if not an effort to master the chaos that sweeps our world? An attempt to control death itself." Okay, fine, but we get this and dick jokes?

The fatuousness of that title sums up Schumacher's approach. The director allows his few scrupulous choices to be overwhelmed by garish vaudeville.

Burton['s] staging is expert, and his character conceptions are distinctive and gratifying.

Despite its failings...a hugely influential movie with literally towering design, mordant wit, and a hall-of-fame performance by Jack Nicholson.

An unfolding mystery in which truth is elusive, and twists are the order of the day...gives Norton a career-making opportunity to strut his stuff.

Merged the appeal of Bullitt with that of, say, Zabriskie Point...fast cars and dusty existentialism.

An electrifying performance that set a high standard plugged-in rockers continue to pursue.

A fast-paced feature sure to satisfy fans and win a generation of new ones.

Do you realize, the lesson at the end of this movie is just 'Call your mother!'? I understand that!

We get in these super-huge geeky debates sometimes about 'Oh, Steve Trevor would never say that' or...'That’s completely out of character,' and it’s like, who says, ya know?

Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman are their most precious babies. All the other characters, they’re like 'Oh yeah, fine. Whatever. Sign off, they’re cool.' But Wonder Woman was a bitch to nail down.

Maybe it’s like: the alcoholic becoming sober. Because basically what she went through is technically horrific, but when she gets emotions and she gets conscious, technically she’s 'coming right.'

That Milk is merely excellent and not transcendent should not obscure its importance to popular culture...

With Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee paints...symbolist drama (is it coincidental that the film begins in Signal, Wyoming?).

We hope we’re not going to piss off the fans...to flesh out a few things in Adrian Veidt’s past...he has a kind of private, now, and a public persona...And may or may not have American and German accents.

Any film that depicts a 'superheroic' rapist-brute as a self-styled parody of America's 'true face' can hardly be accused of thematic squeamishness, and any film that sends readers back to the comic for Moore (and Gibbons) has served the public interest.

Heartbreakingly explores our romantic delusions, and the tragedy of always wanting more than we can have.

As sunglasses and guitar picks fly, cello bows jut, and mics and pointed drumsticks thrust out of the screen, it's a sort of metaphor for the...film (and the band it captures) to ponder which effects are 'real' and which are manufactured in a computer.

Groening’s notoriously prickly fanbase may well overlook the inclusion of nearly the entire extended universe of Futurama characters and focus on the negative: the warmed-over story and jokes.

Likeable enough, and even amusing for stretches, but ultimately too generic for a recommendation.

A memorable comedy for the ages, Groundhog Day digs deeper than most magic-realist comedies...

More conventional than its predecessor, but it's still unconventional by the cop thriller standard set by a wash of anonymous, lesser films.

A witty and highly imaginative historical fiction, well adapted by screenwriter Peter Shaffer from his own hit play.

Naive as its young heroine, but also as good-natured.

Martin's innate verbal panache is the only asset that shows any reliability here.

It's called often the 'rubber duckie' school of drama. Mommy took my rubber duckie from me...some pop psychology answer. And really the brain is much more mysterious than that.

[Cronenberg] investigates his own cinematic propensity for violence and skill at purveying it...sex and violence can be random, can be animal, and certainly can be satisfying.

Knows its priorities: to make the legions of High School Musical fans dewy-eyed, toe-tapping, soul-soaring happy, and to pave the way for High School Musical 4.

Believing in love is swell and all, but maybe we're better off not buying the brand Pretty Woman is selling.

Children, the younger they are, they're heathens. They're wild animals. It's much more about instinct. Love is a fierce thing to a child. Separation from mother, you know, fear of death...what is death?

I think you can smell what the Rock is cooking: a dish that'll fatten your head but pleasantly plump your gut.

Harris has made himself a reputation as a mark of quality...Like Pollack, Appaloosa has the best of both worlds, with Harris both in front of and behind the camera.

One way to break down cultural walls is assimilation, and that's where Ping Pong Playa has its dubious triumph: it's just about as generic as the next 'loser makes good by coaching kids' comedy...

Energetic, fast-paced, and pumped full of zany humor...sure to entertain the younguns and be fairly painless for their guardians.

There's no denying the tween audience was hungering for this movie, without even knowing it.

Radiating serpentine self-absorption, Philip Seymour Hoffman embodies a youthful Truman Capote.

Pretty bad, but in a way, we'd be disappointed if it wasn't...it's all about Campbell, a limber linguist whose verbal sense seems straight out of the '40s, and a game physical comic.

As far as I can tell, no one is at the controls of Doom.

If you’re going to have a mall-ready entertainment about the war on terror, you might as well have this one.

Whether you want to credit or blame Friday the 13th for its role in influencing modern cineplex cinema is a matter of taste.

You'd think that Pakula would be just the man to tease the intellectual and emotional depth out of a Grisham potboiler, but you'd be wrong.

Stone isn't interested in merely bashing modern football: Any Given Sunday looks at the best and worst of the sport.

It’s hard not to think of the film as a timely reflection of today’s deep economic recession...writer-director Courtney Hunt has something of the eye for detail expected from a good short story writer.

Napoleon Dynamite may not even be friggin' sweet, but it does have skills.

In vino veritas...Payne has supplanted the Coen Brothers as a reliable purveyor of smart comedy

A fascinating true-crime story, elegant period detail, and Clint Eastwood's consummate filmmaking technique mask [that]...Changeling lacks enough grit and intellect to convert moody melodrama into thoughtful drama.

Pulls off the trick of the feel-good movie in a way movies haven't managed in a long time.

Makes a surprisingly convincing case for Dante and Randal as characters worthy of a revisit once a decade.

If you want to hear characters talk to each other in Star Wars dialogue, I've got a couple of trilogies for you.

Soul Men may get by on novelty, but what novelty!