Point Blank is as disposable as a feature-length episode of TV's 24: The movie is all adrenaline and excitement, and it doesn't really stay with you. Just try to tear your eyes away while you're watching it, though.

Like most movies about the Middle East conflict, Omar is ultimately about the futility of violence and how it feeds on itself.

The movie takes you over, shakes you for a couple of hours and then turns you back out into the street, limp. You've grown to know a lot about its characters. But when you think about them, you realize that you don't want to know this much. They're hollow men, on both sides. [15 Aug 1986, p.D1]

The movie is better when it’s poking sly fun at Cruise’s superheroic screen persona (look at the expression on his face when Ethan realizes just how big the guy he must fight is) than when it asks you to buy into its far-fetched antics.

Has the ring of classic Disney seamlessly combined with a modern-day sensibility.

Digs deep into the roots of female fortitude.

There is little trace of tragedy in this warm, refreshing Southern comedy, which is quirky without being idiotic, original despite some familiar developments.

The touch of sharp and edgy storytelling has returned to French master Claude Chabrol.

Even Greg’s tattooed and charismatic history teacher (Jon Bernthal) is more interesting than the self-absorbed kid we’re supposed to care about.

Sicko occasionally returns to Bush, but it doles out the smacks equally on both sides of the political spectrum (Sen. Hillary Clinton gets hers, too).

Theron's transformation in Monster goes far beyond mere appearance. As Wuornos, the actress gets to display a blunt, graceless physicality that is rarely needed in women's roles, which are traditionally internal.

The Lady and the Duke is not about the revolution. It's an intimate story of a woman's perspective during a dramatic event in world history.

In its last half-hour, A Bigger Splash becomes a specific kind of story, and it’s not as pleasurable or strange as what preceded it.

This delightfully twisted story about a boy and his (dead) dog showcases precisely what Burton excels at: blending the macabre and the heartfelt in a perfect, if oddball, union.

An overwhelmingly tactile experience. Scott brings you so close into the action, the grit and smoke and blood seem to spill off the screen and into your head.

So Woody Allen has turned nostalgic for at least a movie. He remembers the old days. He knows it's a cliche to think of those old days, whenever they were, as simpler, sweeter times. But Allen can turn the cliche on its head, and convince us that they were indeed, if not more innocent, more interesting times. And not just for him. [30 Jan 1987, p.D1]

The result is an eye-opening social portrait in the tradition of "Paris Is Burning," the landmark 1990 documentary that introduced drag balls and ''vogueing'' to the mainstream, but it lacks the earlier film's structure and focus.

Wild may sound like a film about redemption, but it’s more about learning to live with what you can’t control — and accepting what you can control, which is sometimes just as difficult.

Humpday sells its admittedly far-fetched premise by illustrating how men often can't help but behave like stubborn children in the company of their friends -- even when the stakes are raised to ridiculous levels.

There are many nuances to My Mother's Smile, not all of them evenly told. Yet even when the conversations sound absurd, the film never fails to captivate.

Fortunately, Bardem, who earned an Oscar nomination for his role in Julian Schnabel's "Before Night Falls," makes up for the script's shortcomings.

A fiendishly subtle horror movie, a goosebump-inducing exercise in suspense that uses your own imagination to scare you silly.

While you watch, be sure to scour the background for in-jokes, including cameos by Gromit and other DreamWorks characters, and rest assured that Flushed Away gets even funnier on second viewing.

Simplicity is ever so eloquent in a film that despite a questionable last scene is outstanding enough that even the credits deserve attention. [06 Feb 1998, p.8G]

Nothing fantastic or supernatural ever happens, but you can still feel cosmic forces at work behind the scenes, conspiring to repeatedly test the movie's characters, doling out reward and punishment in equal doses.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is an example of Disney animators at the very top of their craft -- and at their most daring. [21 June 1996, p.5G]

Here, finally, is something you've really never seen before.

Serenity shows what might have happened if Han Solo had been the focus of the original "Star Wars" instead of whiny Jedi wannabe Luke Skywalker.