Nathan Rabin

The film lets audiences be third parties in Coogan and Brydon’s dinner conversation. For lovers of words, comedy, and conversation, that’s an awfully hard proposition to pass up.

Attack The Block turns its modest budget into a virtue by focusing on character, especially the surprisingly charged, complicated dynamic between enemies-turned-allies Whittaker and Boyega.

Its protagonists' hearts aren't lawless so much as stuck in various states of quiet desperation, and the modest charms of this observant, affecting film fortunately bear little relation to the sensationalistic label.

Convoy has one huge advantage over the song that inspired it: It’s one thing to hear about a mighty convoy, but it’s quite another to see it. There’s a certain tacky, truck-stop grandeur to witnessing so many huge vehicles traveling together like a pack of steel, gasoline-fueled animals.

The film begins like a Frank Capra movie--pure-hearted idealist takes on corporate fat cats against impossible odds and triumphs--but ends like a Shakespearean tragedy.

It’s a carnivalesque lark whose brevity and gravity are both attributable to the remarkable, pitch-perfect performance of O’Toole.

Unforgettably documents the kind of journey that leads not to easy answers, but rather to an even thornier knot of questions.

Midnight Madness' comedic tone can accurately be described as a sort of cross between Eight Is Enough and early-period Troma, a blend best epitomized by a scene involving conflicting interpretations of the phrase, "between a large pair of melons." And, in case you're wondering, yes, at one point fat snobs do get thrown in the pool. What is not to love?

Courageous literally preaches to the converted, delivering ham-fisted messages of responsibility to the most receptive audience possible.

Part of Spielberg's skill as a filmmaker comes in choosing the right collaborators. Janusz Kaminski's gorgeous cinematography, Michael Kahn's graceful editing, Jeff Nathanson's clever script, and John Williams' score all work well in unison, but the film's masterstroke is the casting of Walken as DiCaprio's utterly decent father.

When American films were addressing social turmoil like never before, Brooks used his clout to turn back the clock by combining silly sight gags, show-biz satire, silence, and celebrity cameos in 1976's aptly named, ingratiatingly goofy Silent Movie.

Altman and Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion is fittingly both a celebration and a winning example of the joys of collaboration.

A vibrant, funny, fully realized slice of oft-overlooked cultural, show-business, and black history. It's better than the film whose genesis it chronicles, though inherently doomed to be nowhere near as important.

It's a black-and-white shocker, a crazed psycho-melodrama, a pitch-black show-biz satire, a warped meditation on the traumatizing effects of child stardom, and a gothic tale of familial dysfunction as its dysfunctioniest.

There's a tight, urgent, and timely film hidden inside Shot In The Heart, but it's not always worth forging through all the gratuitous bells and whistles to find it.

A harrowing, unblinking look at the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal regime that by some accounts killed off more than a quarter of Cambodia's population between 1975 and 1979.

The Skeleton Twins has a pair of terrific, sharply etched lead performances, a polished, autumnal look, and some affecting moments where its protagonists bond. But to borrow a water-based metaphor from the film’s overflowing stock of them, The Skeleton Twins just lies there, cold and clammy, like a dead fish.

In her feature-film debut, writer-director Patty Jenkins combines the gritty, claustrophobic neo-realism of "Dahmer" with the unlikely gutter romanticism of "Boys Don't Cry," creating a haunting portrait of how a person can feel so desperate and hopeless that murdering for a few crumpled bills and maybe a beat-up car can begin to seem like a reasonable option.

Rize eventually gets a little preachy and sentimental, but a little sermonizing seems a small price to pay for such an industrial jolt of kinetic electricity.

Foulkrod's film covers little new ground, but some painful truths are worth repeating.

Dyslexic, talkative, and permanently tethered to a video camera that documents his solitary life and vivid fantasy world, Peck, in a stunning performance, resonates as both monster and victim, predator and prey.

Winnie The Pooh is a storybook brought to life with intelligence, wit, and palpable affection; where so many kids' films try desperately to come off as hip and timely that they often feel tacky and instantly dated, Winnie The Pooh is bravely quiet, old-fashioned, and wry.

Take My Eyes might look and sound like an earnest message movie, but its bone-deep understanding of the tricky psychology of abuse feels effortlessly authentic.

The film crawls to a halt, its pace further marred by anemic, time-wasting pop songs. Even at 72 minutes, Never Land feels padded, while the animators make Never Land so unmagical that war-torn London seems preferable by comparison.

Straight from the fiery, churning bowels of high-concept hell comes Kangaroo Jack, Bruckheimer's idea of kid-friendly fare, and some of the longest 90 minutes ever committed to film.

History Boys boasts a dazzling verbal cleverness--the gleeful rat-a-tat of snappy banter expertly executed--that doesn't keep it from also being deeply, exquisitely sad.

Ffor all its clumsiness, Sir! No Sir! movingly captures the raw excitement of grunts discovering their power and their voices in their ability to resist.

Starlet is an unusually subtle, quiet character study - especially given the potentially salacious subject matter - that builds to a quietly powerful climax.