The Sound of Music is high-fructose corn-syrupy, built on simplistic psychology, unnaturalistic acting and historical inaccuracy. It's also well-nigh irresistible.

There can be no better description for Modern Times—or indeed, Chaplin's career—than the film's initial title card: 'A story of industry, of individual enterprise—humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness.'

Cuarón filigrees his film with brilliantly outsized projections of Harry's fears and underlying realities.

Newell's film, unlike its predecessors, fails to generate fresh wonder...but on balance Rowling's creative opus—roiling with hormonal consequences and eye-popping effects—continues to earn its crowds.

Zigs where other monster movies zag...a trip worth taking.

Synthesizes the traditions of the samurai narrative and the American western to create an intimate epic with deeply felt ground-level consequences.

Both a rebuke to critics and a confession of charlatanism, The Magician puts forward a one-of-a-kind examination of the problem of truth in life and in art.

I’m still not sure if writer-director Michael Patrick King intended for his audience to laugh at or with his fab foursome as they refresh the stereotype of the 'ugly American' abroad...

It's time to get cra-zay, Alien fans.

A cogent synthesis of the factors leading to, defining, and resulting from the global economic crisis of the last couple of years.

Ever so charming...with some satirical snap to its characterizations.

Nicholson gets to use all the colors on his palette, from quiet, troubled contemplation to the disturbingly truthful, live-wire jesting with which he has become best associated.

Serves up a stew that seems to be made of a little of everything from one hundred years of screen comedy, seasoned with Grand Guignol.

Playing God and playing house converge...about as gonzo as the multiplex gets.

A delightfully old-school comic thriller and an unlikely romance that proved Grant—then in his late fifties—still had it.

If you thought the first season of Sons of Anarchy was tough-minded, Season Two will shake you to the core.

Murphy has proven there's an appetite for the musical format on television, as long as it's (in alphabetical order) AutoTuned, big, bold, brassy, and candy-colorful.

Greene's story and screenplay, which he accurately described as 'a comic thriller,' is a gift that keeps on giving, with patter that's never less than brilliant.

Ol’ Cusinart Hand is back in A Nightmare on Elm Street, a pointless, unimaginative 're-imagining' of Wes Craven’s cleverly conceived slasher movie.

A bizarre, alternately joyful and gloomy take on sexual fantasies and complications.

Ultimately, Kounen takes two hours to say not very much; one imagines him constantly barking, “More smoldering!” [but there's] a captivating, fully realized recreation of the premiere ...[of] The Rite of Spring...

Mostly harmless.

All about the empty spectacle, sound and fury building to multiple climaxes (without the pleasure).

Thematically adventurous...the bloody shocks that paint the town Red emerge from suburban squalor: dirty streets, dirty crimes, and dirty politicians.

May be a naively simple variation on that other George—Orwell—but it remains a dazzling triumph of creativity and style over financial limitations.

Richard Linklater brings a new novelty to a Dick adaptation: fidelity to the source.

The encoded bloom is off the digital rose in The Matrix Reloaded.

In its thirteenth year on the air, The Simpsons may have been past its prime, but it retained a keen sense of the bizarre while also recommitting to telling some family-themed stories with a more heartfelt core.

If it’s half-baked Italian modernism you’re after, you’ve come to the right place.

The picturesque romantic travelogue...is as obvious but elegant as the bit of symbolism that ends it.

[This] blend of swoony romance and horror-styled action...[isn't] shy about detonating plot twists.

A “human nature film,” a crime drama that observes cops and robbers in their natural habitat and studies their instinctual behaviors.

A humble riff on the well-worn coming-of-age film.

One of the funniest elements of Withnail & I is that it concerns three varieties of drama queen: the flamboyantly dark-minded Withnail; neurotic, ill-equipped Marwood, and the larger-than-life Monty.

A smart and imaginative fantasy with appeal for the whole family is always cause for celebration...Time Bandits rivals Roald Dahl in its surrealism and satire.

As a study of social façades as a means of social climbing, and as a character study of Hoskins' would-be angel, Mona Lisa excels...

The screw-turning plot is great fodder for Hoskins and Mirren, who expertly calibrate their stressed-out character arcs.

After six attention-grabbing seasons on the network airwaves, Lost has turned out to be more than the sum of its parts.

Its unique oddball blend of fatalistic Hemingway-esque masculinity, swoony romance and mythology, literary allusions...and grab bag of styles...makes Pandora and the Flying Dutchman nearly as hypnotic as the romance it retells.

Darkly funny, haunting, and perhaps hopeful...there's a keen sense of absurdism (and in Agnès Godard's brilliant photography a sort of surrealist realism, if there is such a thing) in the circumstances.

One is always in good hands with Thompson, even in this kiddie franchise...for the kids, there’s not only the sobering reminder that they're works in progress but also lots of...fairy-tale magic, with a touch of Babe’s farm charm.

Brought to you by Participant Media, makers of Food, Inc. and The Cove. Next time, guys, give a hoot and don’t pollute the multiplex. Save the children.

Consummate showmanship...evidence of a huge pop idol and savvy showman with a finely tuned stage act.

The play widely regarded as the best piece of dramatic literature ever written...[in] the only unexpurgated big-screen version.

How do I find thee ridiculous, The Last Song? Let me count the ways...

Julia Roberts and voluptuous production value contribute mightily to this ultimate of wish-fulfillment tales.

The premise begs for wicked bite, but winds up poking along amiably. That’s the problem with these Joneses: it’s all too easy to keep up with them.

Much as I would prefer to see the subtler Carell of Dan in Real Life comically negotiate a struggling marriage to Fey, we’re in a land of gunfire and super-computers.

Deserves its status among sports films, but its ongoing appeal reflects that it's something more: an old-fashioned romantic comedy that succeeds in establishing and deepening memorable characters through memorably flavorful dialogue.

New York is the ghost town and Van Cleef the corrupt sheriff in Escape from New York's thinly disguised postmodern Western, with ex-soldier Russell as the anti-establishment hero who won't cotton to anyone's code but his own.