May be the most thoughtful and, in social terms, realistic film ever made about the college experience.

Whedon goes for a kind of radical naturalism, an understated approach that suggests the characters could be your friends and neighbors.

Intrigues not with good guy-bad guy shtick, but with the conundrum of how to live morally in an inherently immoral West.

While more detailed scientific analysis and greater discussion of impacts would have been welcome, the film's visual rhetoric is solid.

The stars still deliver, the supporting cast (especially Collins and Mark A. Sheppard as demon Crowley) remains prized, and the writers keep coming up with witty variations on the show's Route 66-meets-The X Files premise.

Sutter knows how to conceive inconceivable violence, and while it's fair to question whether or not such disgusting ideas are just cultural poison, one can't argue that he ignores the consequences of each act.

With a man-against-the-elements adventure like this one, the emphasis is, and should be, largely on spectacular depiction of the environment, and [the] directors...make use of the biggest budget yet afforded to a Norwegian film...

To Be or Not to Be has all the hallmarks of a Lubitsch comedy: a solidly constructed plot, good comic pacing, a light touch, and strong performances from top to bottom.

The main selling point here—and it's a considerable one—is Shannon, who shows new shadings in the role of Kuklinski...

Haneke has hit upon the most accessible, most universally understood experiential vehicle to explore his career-defining obsession with nihilism, or he has made his most emotionally sensitive film yet, a true love story. 

Season Two of Enterprise put a lot of fans to sleep in 2002, but out of that context of 'franchise fatigue,' these twenty-six episodes...are entertaining, well-executed Trek.

Disney's latest grand experiment in televised synergy has old-fashioned, corny charm—just newfangled with girl power and CGI.

Comes full up with heavy-handed signifiers, from Ben's choice of reading (Hemingway...) to a hammered motif of lapsed Christianity (the climax takes place in a rotting church) that underlines the theme of living with the sins of the past.

There are sometimes twisted lessons to be learned from their misbehavior, but it's more about the silliness, punctuated regularly by frat-boy gesticulation and verbal high-fives.

Sunny days, blue skies, and rippling blue waters lined with greenery...Plain nice, and there's nothing wrong with that.

In many ways, Spearhead from Space is terribly clunky...[but it] remains an historically important adventure and one with recognizable influences on stories to come...

For all its apocalyptic fate-of-the-world theatrics, this...[adaptation of] the 2011 graphic novel Flashpoint by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert...has an emotional core to give purpose to its crazy amounts of mayhem.

A highly personal tale of undergrown men and overgrown boys experiencing the growing pains of love turned unrequited, and the realization that nothing—not freedom, not security, not innocence, not love—lasts forever.

It's hard not to see Cavalcade today as a corny contraption...

Pure, uncut del Toro. The filmmaker accomplishes riveting scenes of suspense and scares he honestly come by, sticking the landing of every effect he attempts.

While showing great fidelity to his source, Brook succeeded in delivering a version of Lord of the Flies that could best be described as psychological horror...

With a concept and influences consciously in mind; fine performances by Creed-Miles, Poulter, and Williams; and approving cameos...Fletcher is able to put his best foot forward in this creditable debut.

Hill has remained a steadily stylish presence in the idiom of action cinema. His genres of concern tend to be the Western and the urban crime drama, and the twain meet in neo-noir The Driver.

On paper, In the Family is an 'issue movie'...But in practice, it's a made-to-scale love story and a thoughtful family drama. In other words, it's a true rarity of contemporary cinema.

Under the leadership of head writer Michael Piller...the series broke the mold with the outstanding character piece 'Family.' That episode title would also serve as a pithy summation of the fourth season's primary theme.

Perhaps the most commonly applied adjective when it comes to the Klingon homeworld episodes of Star Trek...is 'Shakespearean'...[given] a certain unity of voice, as well as compelling throne-room drama and civil-war intrigue.

In the show's grand tradition of family entertainment, with scary creatures, exciting chases, chaste romance (with a buxom companion), and more than a few choice laughs on the off chance anyone might start taking the show too seriously.

'Blackout comedy' for the Comic-Con set, the nerd's Laugh-In...all in good fun.

The show continues to grow in dimension and in scope, a reality that's also meaningful within its fictional universe.

On video, Safety Last! is a certified treat, but in packed movie houses, with audiences invariably gasping and giggling on every cue, it's a near-religious experience.

The first major Western in sound...One can occasionally feel the filmmakers showing off the technology, with close-ups of a crying baby or sizzling ham and eggs.

Oz the Great and Powerful gets saved from the junk heap by Franco and especially by director Sam Raimi, who happily treats the enterprise as a sandbox.

By setting the show in the recent past, Sorkin can productively remind or inform a broad audience of the pith of important news we've lived through...a subplot about [NSA] wiretapping...[even] gets ahead of the curve...

Once blithely acceptable as American id, McClane's become the archetypal American idiot.

Cannily plays in equal measure to the sci-fi TV crowd and families, to red states and blue states, and it's a formula—refined in Season Two—that seems to be working.

What remains most striking about Philadelphia may be the...conspicuous emphasis on intense close-ups. They force an inescapable emotional intimacy in relation to issues the mainstream, at least at the time, would rather have looked away from.

Distinguished by its thoughtfulness regarding the nature of Western heroism, as defined not only by dead-eye gunplay, but by family, community, and moral rectitude.

The awfulness of the narrative is plain to see, and yet...no one can say Stand Up Guys lacks personality.

Though the film nakedly seeks a wide audience through conventional plotting and characterization—and despite being (like most action movies) guy-centric—Shanghai Noon provides good, clean 'family' fun.

This innocent, sixties-style, big-budget comedy-romance-action-adventure romp is solid family entertainment that would make any self-respecting kid's jaw drop for a good two hours.

As good as, if not better than, any of the feature films that would later star the Next Generation cast.

Not only did the third season mark a quantum leap in non-niche popularity for the series, but a greater consistency in the show's writing and execution that meant a precipitous drop in fan complaints.

All the ingredients for a great evening at the movies: lively music, eye-catching scenery, larger-than-life comic set pieces, suave men and beautiful women, and odd-man-out Clouseau, played to perfection by the one and only Peter Sellers.

Day-Lewis...wears well the weariness of the office and Lincoln's puckish yet subdued sense of humor, scaling the man closer to life-size than Mount Rushmore monumental.

Supplements its palace intrigue with the good old-fashioned pull of romance and costume drama...Mikkelsen's magnetism and sly expressiveness hold the film's center with a quiet potency.

Monsieur Verdoux can boast a screenplay with a highly unusual moral complexity and a deeply philosophical bent...Yes, Verdoux is a film that name-drops Schopenhauer, but it's also damn funny...

By most cinematic measures, Zero Dark Thirty is one of the best-made films of 2012. It also probably shouldn't exist.

In the hands of Ang Lee, a true film artist, Life of Pi elegantly walks Martel's philosophical line while also brilliantly using every modern cinematic tool to spin an epic yarn.

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...

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.