Lee provides no such easy comfort, instead keeping audiences constantly off-kilter, purposefully frustrating them with character behavior that's just...wrong.

Eastern Promises' unusually ambiguous character study makes for a different kind of crime drama, a striking if not entirely satisfying one.

The dichotomy of Rickles' customary matador-theme entrance and tongue-in-cheek but true theme song "I'm a Nice Guy" captures Rickles' secret of success: you gotta love him.

A study in isolation and, yes, paranoia...The mesmerizingly beautiful images--often in slo-mo--glide to evoke Alex's primary pursuit of skating.

One of the film's prime strengths is its wordless willingness to let the principal characters express themselves through music and mime to overcome cultural barriers.

Though it panders shamelessly, it's not entirely unwelcome in a time when the PG movie is an endangered species.

It's a dicey proposition to reverse-engineer a story, and Across the Universe shows the strain...[nonetheless] a very impressive music-video anthology.

An historical story of consequence and consequences around an enduringly lively social argument.

After these 97 minutes, resting in peace sounds pretty good.

Sets the tone with an opening suite of scenes that put a kitty in danger.

Kon marries visual dazzle to unblinking pop existentialism in ways that make viewers' heads hurt so good.

Deluxe tribute to the playwright gets by, surprisingly, as much by romantic poignancy as farce...it's hard to dislike a picture so in Love with its subject.

Were the film not so insistent on conventional payoffs, The Great Debaters could have been much more satisfying. As it is, it's a pleasant holiday film with a positive message.

Sends the endlessly bickering couple to Paris, where the great director Roman Polanski gives them a rectal exam. I wish I were kidding.

Verhoeven doles out his customary boobs, bombs, and blood, but the tension between thrills and serious consequences splits Black Book's difference.

Charms in large part due to the performances of the two stars.

A Bizarro-world Frank Capra picture...Though the story deserves more weight...still a pleasing, unusually smart, consistently witty mass entertainment.

Butler, though puportedly attractive, gives a chipmunk-chipper performance that can only be described as supremely annoying.

The cinematic equivalent of the guy who runs up to a cop, grabs the cop's hat, throws it to the ground and takes a shit on it. One is left a bit speechless.

Qualifies as a masterpiece of sensual cinema and poetic subjectivity.

A profound and poignant requiem for our preferred human conditions.

Posh fantasy...the film's dazzling imagery and serviceable story hustle along agreeably, if a bit dourly.

In the story's nooks and crannies are ideas to savor...the human-condition horrors of unpassable distances of space, time, and reconciliation.

A well-researched model of the true-crime genre...[and] close cinematic relative of Larry Clark's Bully.

"Science-fiction nerds will be in hog heaven with this feature-length indulgence of time travel, and the customary Futurama gag humor rarely disappoints."

Moshe and co-screenwriter Guy Jacobson use their white protagonist not cynically to exploit white guilt, but to excavate it and examine its possibilities and failings with an anthropological eye.

Two gripping hours so richly realized you won't want them to end.

About ethics and personal character as much as it is about the weird world of die-hard arcade gaming.

Gracefully condenses the complicated history of the Irish Troubles in ways both literal and allegorical.

The humor is up to Muppet par, with physical comedy, puns, running jokes, and layered gags...Muppet Treasure Island is grand family entertainment. [new DVD review]