Marc Savlov

Eye in the Sky maintains nerve-racking suspense throughout its running time and explicates some of the unknown nuances of drone warfare. Plus, you know, Alan Rickman is reason enough to see it.

Once the rodeo's over, where do the sweethearts go? Beesley, thankfully, doesn't end the film with the end of the rodeo, but there's a potentially more interesting follow-up doc ghosting right behind this one.

In many ways, A Field in England is a funhouse mirror of audience expectations and something of a filmic Rorschach test.

It's the best-looking film of the year, hands down, and Thornton is dazzling, a dull diamond in the gutter rough.

13 Minutes, which was released in Germany two years ago, is an earnest examination of personal conscience and the frequent necessity of the individual to monkey wrench the state. Or at least to try.

Ultimately Hill of Freedom is surprisingly satisfying in its sheer — albeit abjectly disjointed – fish-out-of-water ordinariness.

Director Ben Young’s first narrative feature is loosely based on actual events, which makes watching this psychological horror show all the more harrowing.

While the evil that men do to one another in this film may well be rooted in the Cain-like enabling of original sin from one doomed brother to another, the final familial tragedy feels exactly like classic Lumet.

A powerful little gem: a little bit of "The Outsiders" (the film's tone is remarkably similar to Coppola's film, minus the airy redemption and golden sunrises), a lot of "The 400 Blows," and a slice of "Radio Flyer" all wrapped up in a dirty black bow.

It's Disney's best traditionally animated outing in ages.

While the story may be a common one (for the action genre, at least), Rodriguez, who wrote, produced, shot and edited the entire film himself, has a uniquely straightforward wit that makes what might otherwise have been just another shoot-'em-up something more than that.

With centrifugal force on his side, Spider-Man dips, weaves, and whooshes past, up, and around the camera -- it's a rush, and it plasters a grin on your face even after you've left the theatre.

Achingly gorgeous in almost all respects, the film soars in its period depiction of turn-of-the-century London (and later in Venice, as well), from costuming to cinematography on down.

A fatalistic fantasy that positively bleeds, bruises, and blows holes in its stoic antihero even as the odds consistently favor his imminent demise.

Doesn't just raise the bar on sci-fi and action films, it rips that sucker off and sends it spiraling into the sun.

By far the most gorgeous slice of sunlit sadism so far this summer, I’m Not Scared also manages to be oddly sweet: a boy’s life, with treachery.

While director Bill nails the sheer spectacle of squads of SPADs dovetailing in flames into the wide blue yonder, the earthbound action (much as it was in another sputtering epic, Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbor") is strictly laissez faire.

One of the 10 best films ever made, period.

Depp is perfectly cast as Gilbert, by turns sullen, quiet, and caring. Depp's expressive face has long been the focal point of his talent, and he uses it to excellent effect here. It's DiCaprio as Gilbert's retarded brother Arnie who may well get the Oscar statuette. He's utterly, tragically convincing as the boy who wasn't expected to make it to ten, much less eighteen years old.

Depp’s performance aside, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is pure magic, swimming as it is in a black-treacle riptide of astonishing Oompa Loompa production numbers, an eerie patina of CGI airbrushing (Wonka himself looks downright pasteurized), and some almost too-clever in-jokes, and at least two references to Kurt Neumann’s 1958 film "The Fly."

The script fires off clunker after clunker so fast you don't know whether to laugh or cry. (I chose to laugh as I'd already done enough crying at The English Patient.) Vintage bad Stallone, this lost-in-the-shuffle Summer of '96 blockbuster is just what you thought it would be: loud, boisterous, and without a single original line of dialogue. It's enough to make you miss Judge Dredd.

Zombieland is dead set against being dead serious. Its tonal pallor has more in common with a foreshortened "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" than with "28 Days" or "Weeks Later," and then, again, there's that jaw-dropping cameo. It'll kill ya.

There’s plenty of nifty action set-pieces on display here – including a decidedly unamazing but hilarious gag involving Spidey and a kid’s tree house – but for the first time, the most popular of all of Marvel’s 1960s-era characters genuinely focuses less on the amazing and more on the boy behind the mask, and that’s a welcome change of pace.

This utterly mediocre forget-me-now could've been crafted by any faceless serial director at all. The shame of it is that the man behind the camera is Wes Craven when, by all rights, it should have been Alan Smithee.

This documentary is the sort of film that will leave both young and old(er) film fans grinning like the boys (and one girl) who dreamed the whole fantastic, mad scheme up in the first place.

Without a doubt, the animation is vibrant and electrifying; it's only the story that lacks.

The few gags that hit their mark only serve to point up how flaccid the rest of his material is, and that spells doom for a comic, no matter how much his hometown crowd cheers him on.

A slam-bang, sci-fi actioner, relentlessly paced and edited, with a pounding soundtrack and some ingenious aliens courtesy of Berni Wrightson and KNB Effects.