Oldman's mid-film music-video performance of 'My Way' before a neon staircase compares favorably—as a revelation of character through performance—to Robert De Niro's framing monologues in Raging Bull.

What Killer Elite never manages is to convince us of its sociopolitical import...or its emotional resonance.

While it's unspooling, it has enough visual snap, narrative tension, and humor for a satisfying 'drive-in movie' diversion.

An orgiastic celebration of Glee concocted by its own creators...sort of like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, but with more hot air.

Shares with...Get Smart roughly the same ratio of silliness and satire, which is to say heavy on the former and light on the latter.

Justified remains one of the most satisfying hours on television, creating a illusion of the social margins of Southern life that's convincing enough that we want to believe in it.

The film's self-conscious gestures in the direction of fish-out-of-water comedies, buddy-cop movies and Westerns don't amount to much in and of themselves, but they tie together as a functional clothesline for character comedy and left-field drama.

A charmer in its gee-whiz, irony-light resuscitation of the movie serials of the '30s.

In the hands of actor-turned-director Charles Martin Smith, this kid-centric drama provides a welcome family option with positive values and a minimum of frantic, noisy CGI. It's a tale told on a human (and animal) scale.

A landmark screen musical that left its own indelible stamp on popular culture.

If only The Help accepted more of Davis’ help, we might have a work of art on our hands instead of another condescending, half-baked history lesson.

Unmistakably Little Miss Sunshine-y...a sunny sitcom of family dysfunction...

Strong work from Mayance and Thomas keeps Sarah's Key from rusting amid the sometime soddenness of the script.

Unsparing character studies, using the specific to illuminate the universal.

Works brilliantly as an allegory of American repression and willful illusion of order, Lumberton's forced-smile '50s sensibility unable to keep down the anarchic, raging id that is humanity's primal drive.

A back-to-basics charmer evoking the Pooh short films from the '60s and '70s.

When they're not risking their lives with exciting spy maneuvers, Blaster works out to Lady Gaga and Juarez updates her Facebook page. Okay, so maybe G-Force is just a tad self-consciously 'hip.'

Are your kids ready for an existential movie? Turns out they are: Disney's CGI-animated action comedy Bolt is, at its core, a story of one individual's discovery that his sense of reality...has been seriously skewed.

Thematically, like any good myth, the Harry Potter story comes full circle, with a heroic homecoming and the promise of more adventures, if only in our imaginations.

Director John Lasseter pushes the credo 'Story is king,' but the sequel to the 2006 hit Cars unwittingly abdicates the throne.

A story with timeless, universal themes: family, coming of age (and leaving behind childish things), and the inevitable time when, past our prime, we will all face potential social obsolence.

'You can't rush art.' Pixar's bliss in art and play is part and parcel of both the creation and the meaning of Toy Story 2, a celebration of the pure joy of doing.

Introduced not one but two indelible characters to the pop culture pantheon: cowboy rag-doll Woody (Tom Hanks) and plastic space ranger Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen).

It's not hard to understand why The Lion King's good-vs.-evil adventure and high-spirited comic passages haven't lost their appeal.

[Malick] wants to see so much: people and through people to their souls, the world and through the world to the ineffable, life and death and through them to their meaning. And...he wants to help us to see it all too.

Succeeds as a witty Elmore Leonard crime story...but also as a surprisingly affecting mid-life romance.

A balls-out postmodern comedy par excellence. It's a Royale with Cheese. 

The problem with attempting to replicate the 'magic,' such as it was, of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is you get something very close to a replica, minus the novelty.

On brightest screen, in threest-D,
It's the latest franchisee.
This superhero's super-slight;
Beware two hours... Green Lantern bites!

If you weren't a kid when you first saw Space Jam, you're a lot less likely to find it palatable.

A purely creative movie that one must admit has no equal in cinema history (for better or worse).

The dark drama that launched a genre of evil-kid movies.

The only thing that could make The Cutting Edge more absurd would be if the final competition revolved around a potentially deadly, possibly illegal move called the Pamchenko Twist. Wait, it does? Never mind.

Not everything works out neatly for everyone, but life seems a little better by the end of two hours' struggle, for the characters and for the audience.

Something of a train wreck...[but] comedy scavengers may find it worthwhile to pick through the remains for a few amusing gags.

Cycles through the same old cliches, like squares accidentally being dosed with drugs, overzealous pharmacists blaring out sensitive medical information (nothing like a good ol' venereal disease joke), and climactically scotched weddings.

The romantic comedy version of its setting: an overgrown theme park that momentarily amuses, wears down the body and spirit, but mentally stays behind.

Never stops doling out demented treats....Dahl's morality play of bad parenting and bad-egg kids is evergreen....a genuinely amazing movie.

The characters in the latest Disney film frequently attack each other, sometimes eat each other, and spend the whole time running around naked.

Though Terri doesn’t have the reassuring clarity of a straight path from starting block to finish line, its fits and starts are pretty good.

It’d be nice to report that this film with a still-all-too-rare female protagonist is a great time at the movies, but alas, not so much.

They don't come much more ridiculous...

A depraved exploitation film specifically designed to shock and repulse viewers...also a cultural artifact reflective of and reactive to the time it was made...

Even with its mock-pretentious parallelism to The Odyssey...O Brother, Where Art Thou? refuses to take itself seriously, which is both its principal failing and its charm.

When it comes to swashbucklers, I'll take Wolpert's unmolested molestation of Dumas over Pirates of the Caribbean any day of the week.

Taymor tries a little too hard, neither breaking nor broken by the play, but ultimately losing the wrestling match.

Pretty much a non-starter...its squeaky-cleanliness will seem more at home in its inevitable cable afterlife on the Disney channel.

Though The Twilight Zone largely fell into tired repetitiveness in its final season, its crafty tales and spectrum of darkness to humor still stood apart from the television pack...

A superb, stylish piece of modern mythology.

Doesn't quite go far enough, instead settling for cheap gags and cheap thrills, but it tickles fairly well for a couple of hours of crashes and fireballs.