The mealy half-truth director Peter Webber...and screenwriters Vera Blasi and David Klass settle for just winds up a waste of everyone's time.

Built for fun...in its dazzlingly elaborate production design and kinetic 3D action...perfect casting...Who Framed Roger Rabbit-esque video-game-character cameos, and a cramming of clever comic touches...

Provides plenty of moving case studies...[but] it's most useful for its prismatic look at the problem of American hunger, examining the problem's recent history, its root causes...and its inextricability from other national crises...

The Master begs for a reorientation of the viewer, perhaps requiring more than one viewing...there's nothing easy or conventional about this account of a doomed search for external meaning, doubling as a meditative tone poem on human frailty.

While in its romantic and romanticized particulars, this A Star Is Born can often seem silly, hoary, disjointed or meandering, the essence of the showbiz narrative still exerts a powerful pull...

Tease[s] out the provocative and liberating properties of art. Add extraordinary, emotionally generous performances, and Blue Is the Warmest Color grasps enough moments of truth to justify its extensive reach.

Gets it right, in the essence of its true story as well as the social discomforts surrounding disability and sane discussion of sexuality.

In its modern way, Snitch is almost Dickensian in its intent, missing no opportunity for melodramatic confrontation as it puts a (baby) face on a social ill.

The material calls out for a more expressive cinematographic treatment. Had the film been less antiseptic and more bold in its visuals and the emotional depths of its performances, it could have been a classic; instead, it's a rather ordinary indie.

The 'other' Oscar-nominated feature about a war on terror, Dror Moreh’s documentary The Gatekeepers proves more intellectually engaging than Hollywood’s Zero Dark Thirty, and at least as unsettling.

To the extent that Our Man Flint works, it does so due to its tossed-off wit...and the sheer oddity of Coburn, the toothy, gangly character actor who nevertheless charms his way into stardom here with laid-back cool.

It's a shame that In Like Flint plays as such a defensive reaction to on-the-rise American feminism...in most other respects, it's a worthy-enough sequel to Our Man Flint.

From its jazzy main titles to its gentle fadeout, Monsters, Inc. has something that money can't buy. It's likeable.

Does Sparks have to treat people like total idiots...?...[A] soulless-cash-grab.

Observe the white, middle-class American Catholic teenager in his natural habitat...Though we have, perhaps, never flaunted the fetching eyelashes and perfect skin of these curious creatures...have we not, in a sense, been there?

McCarthy is a worthy successor to John Candy, who also had a gift for warming up caricatures with loveable humanity.

Written in four days and shot in fifteen, this homegrown indie shows its seams...in cinematic terms, it's pretty weak sauce.

Doesn't avoid all of the traps of the genre, but Hoffman does show good taste, particularly in casting.

Like Anatomy of a Murder, The Graduate, and Daniels' own Precious rolled into one wacked-out bloody Southern Gothic that's considerably less than the sum of those parts...

Has significant blemishes that don't quite come out in the wash...but the picture persists on the strength of its committed performances.

The sheer bulk of talent involved (top-tier technicians and designers included) turns out to be a case of water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

Flipping the cautionary themes of Mary Shelley’s original source material, Frankenweenie plays out as a primarily pro-science parable...goes out of its way to encourage free-thinking square pegs to avoid gaping round holes.

Takes dicey material—the story of one privileged family's suffering during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami—and transcends its political incorrectness by focusing on the human condition.

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.

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.