This is a ride, a video game, a soundtrack -- unapologetic and clearly labeled as such. It has no middle speed.

Lightyear overcomes gravity of the physical sort. That’s what Space Command specializes in. It has a harder time with the emotional kind.

The film is often at odds with itself as a sincere work of romantic comedy, as Wilder's sometimes were, too. Nonetheless, it's determined to keep Clooney's considerable comedic skills front and center. He's never been looser, sexier, or more antic.

In pace, sensibility, and big, beating heart, this is a child's first indie film, and it's the better for it.

Vividly captures a period of movie history. It’s just that the period seems less vital -- sleepier, if you will -- than it once did.

It’s cheap pandering to fans, but I really couldn’t stay mad at a movie that uses Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon” as a point of contention and has two shout-outs to one of the best movies of 1985, “Real Genius.”

Without even trying, Coccio may have stumbled over the truest metaphor for Columbine yet.

The small Indonesian island of Bali still evokes images of a tropical paradise where Westerners can escape the discontents of the so-called developed world. Much of that romance lingers in Bitter Honey.

Gilliam has a vision and a viewpoint, and he puts it on screen with an extravagance, a humanistic generosity and a visual imagination that make it a standout in 1989's virtual cinematic vacuum. [10 Mar 1989, p.32]

The result is a genuinely cathartic night at the movies - which is one of the reasons we go to them in the first place. Art it ain't, but popcorn is rarely this skilled or seductive.

The word “feminism” itself has become toxified. For young women who might be despairing as they fight the good fight, this film provides context, roots, and the wisdom of elders.

The movie is always entertaining and frequently smart about the new ground one girl will break to humiliate another.

Ben Stiller is like a guy on the 1919 White Sox. He's rigged to lose. His comedy is the stuff of failure, and sometimes it's pleasurable watching him flit around in funny get-ups, only to have a pretty costar put him down.

Streep is in movie star mode, and she’s irresistible. But Baldwin achieves something not many men have been able to with Streep: You notice him.

Just what Gooding needed to restart his stalled career.

Because its subjects are so driven and so talented, First Position, which is about ballet, is more gripping than the norm.

My Girl is a pleasant surprise. It's sweet, offbeat and ultimately slight, but likable nevertheless for the emotional integrity it maintains in its story of a girl coming to terms with the death of someone close to her. It's one of the few American movies that tries to be honest about death and give kids credit for being able to cope with it, and that alone makes it recommendable. [27 Nov 1991, p.23]

Into the Blue is as much a mesmerizing aquatic expedition as it is a reasonably suspenseful action adventure.

The performances are disarming and Mumford is the kind of comedy that grows on you if you give it a chance.

The acting is playful aces all around: Fillion gives good exhausted incredulity, Banks gives good virginal idiocy, and Rooker gives great conflicted monster arrogance even before the aliens get him.

American Dreamz pitches its softballs with style. Martin Tweed, the preeningly heartless British host of the title TV show, just may be the great comic role that has always eluded Hugh Grant.

At the heart of most of these encounters is talk about the nature of relationships -- cousins, twins, and peers. Mostly, though, Jarmusch displays an unexpected interest in the ironies and banalities of fame.

This is an easy movie to spoil. It's rather plotless. But things happen in precisely the way that life happens.

The film's insistence on the men's innocence is matter of fact. But it's also an urgent corrective to the suspicious eye the movies so often cast on Arabs and Islam.

All About the Benjamins has: flash, cash, and enough videogenic eye candy to make ''Miami Vice'' look like ''Little House on the Prairie.''

With so much going on, that means a lot of balls need to be kept in the air. Some of them drop. Of course they do: The Adam Project is entertaining but no masterpiece. What’s unusual, and impressive, is that the dropped balls often keep bouncing. That’s a tribute to the movie’s wit, energy, and imaginativeness.

The movie is corny enough to remind you that boxing rings are square.

Debbie gets away with being such a cauldron of extremes because the airy-voiced Mann is extremely good at playing them. She happens to be Apatow's wife (the kids in the movie are theirs), and with the possible exception of Téa Leoni , it's hard to imagine who else could get away with this combination of needling and affection.