Nathan Rabin

It's a measure of the film's brilliance that it strips away the trappings of superstardom and allows audiences to see these men as flawed human beings first, musicians second, and rock gods a distant third.

Joe’s brilliance doesn’t lie in its destination, but in the gripping, intense, surprisingly joyous and funny journey it takes to get there.

Perhaps the best thing about Naked City is that it does justice to that source material. At times, it rivals Weegee's best work in its harsh, unsentimental portrayal of New York as a city with a dark side the size of the Hudson River.

Like his makeshift societies, Garland's tantalizing set-ups tend to unravel in unsatisfying ways.

The film's subjects are almost uniformly likable, self-deprecating, funny, and hyper-verbal, and their peculiar passion for crosswords and the sense of genial camaraderie among buffs proves surprisingly infectious.

Moore hasn't tackled a lead role since the turn of the century, and judging by her eminently forgettable work here, she hasn't spent that time painstakingly honing her chops.

A Most Wanted Man is a cold film that examines its characters from a clinical distance, but its iciness gives way to raw emotion in a powerful final sequence.

Writer-director Davaa allows the drama to emerge organically out of the characters, the beautifully captured setting, and the conflict between the past and the present.

Spurlock's film proves yet again that the phrase "crowd-pleasing documentary" doesn't have to be an oxymoron.

There's something almost perversely old-fashioned about Flyboys.

I was never bored, even if the film ultimately amounts to little more than a very expensive freak show. Just before slurring one of the all-time great terrible last lines ("I want to go to dog heaven"), Kilmer utters, with sublime understatement, a line that doubles as the film's epitaph: "Well, that didn't work out." Failure, Fiasco or Secret Success: Fiasco.

Efron has yet to learn that smiling pretty is merely a component of acting, not its entirety. He makes for a supremely passive lead whose chemistry with Danes is nonexistent.

Bible doesn't take itself too seriously, and boasts a disarming undercurrent of gleeful prankishness.

The four protagonists aren’t about to let something as minor as the complete breakdown of society get in the way of having a good time, and their fun proves infectious.

Without a unifying authorial voice to tie it together, the film often feels shapeless and rambling, brought together by little more than free-ranging contempt for capitalism's excesses.

Fine lowbrow entertainment, a fast, funny pastiche of science-fiction, horror, and teen-movie archetypes that is, aside from the original Scream, perhaps the most entertaining, fully realized film of the current postmodern horror/sci-fi cycle.

The always-dependable and chameleon-like Craig has the chops and substance for that kind of film, but Vaughn prefers to keep matters brisk and superficial.

Gives the Michael Moore muckraking-underdog treatment to the kind of delirious conspiracy theories generally associated with mentally ill homeless people screaming at passersby to stop stealing their brainwaves.

As Ray nears its abrupt ending, it veers into camp silliness, complete with a psychedelic freak-out withdrawal sequence straight out of a Roger Corman LSD epic.

Liberal Arts has the tony look and feel of a vintage Woody Allen movie, but the sophistication is all surface-level. Radnor will never ascend to Allen's rarified realm, but judging by his forgettable first two features, he could give Ed Burns competition.

Compassion and sociological acuity can only take a film so far, however, and clunky dialogue, comically broad supporting characters, and often-amateurish acting sabotage much of Suburbia's plot-and-dialogue-heavy second half. But it still shows enormous empathy and sensitivity in capturing the angst and alienation of American youth, making it seem both rooted in a specific time and place and strangely timeless.

Though the filmmaking is pedestrian, The Camden 28's timeless truths come through with resounding power.

Funny and realistically romantic, but almost never at the same time.

As a testament to the vitality of—and sense of community engendered by—black comedy, The Original Kings Of Comedy is a success. As a comedy, however, it's sluggishly paced and not nearly funny enough to justify its two-hour running time.

Boasts an action-movie plot and an action-movie title, but precious little action. It's a lovely film about brutal men, but its integrity and visual splendor ultimately can't make up for its overall lack of visceral excitement.

"Women" confirms that the only thing less enjoyable than enduring long, drawn-out conversations about feelings and relationships in real life is watching movies about people having long, drawn-out conversations about feelings and relationships.

Unexpectedly heartwarming documentary.

It isn’t a terribly intimate portrait of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Chapin, or Nixon, but it is revealing in its own right, as a fascinatingly warped and aged Polaroid of an epic life that’s grown more compelling with the passage of time.