My guess is that The Dreamers will have a certain resonance for those of us who discovered movies and sex at the same time during the '60s. For the rest of you, the film is a curiosity about cinegenic youths baring their bodies while thinking they are baring their souls.

While the film starring Abigail Breslin as a resourceful 10-year-old is faithful to the Kit books, it's pokey where it should be perky.

At the multiplex where so many holiday movies feel regifted, This Christmas is a gift.

Keanu doesn't go far enough. Key & Peele was searing and incisive about race and American culture, and Keanu doesn't even scratch the surface.

Megamind has momentum and dazzle.

The Signal has its share of things to say about urban paranoia, road rage, addiction - whether to sex, drugs or, more dangerously, consumerism. But it stands apart from other pictures of the same ilk by using its apocalypse as a backdrop to a bitter-sweet love story.

A goofy screwball romp that affords a gaggle of A-listers the chance to hambone around in antic style.

Core, a cinematographer who helms both camera and directorial duties here, creates a vivid sense of time and place without letting the period music, clothes or art direction intrude. The performances are likewise understated and unpretentious, especially those of Wahlberg and Kinnear.

There are many many fine performers here, including the terrific Patricia Clarkson as the elusive Rachel. But Shutter Island is not so much a character study as it is an atmospheric thriller.

Working from a story by Antwone Fisher, screenwriter Tina Gordon Chism is tender toward characters balancing where they come from with where they'd like to go. Fisher was the subject of an inspirational biography by Denzel Washington.

Some tacky animated sequences notwithstanding, Youth in Revolt is smart, cool and frequently hysterical.

Suffice to say it's got plenty to do with corporate karma. And the word severance is more than just a double play on words - it's a triple whammy.

A far more trenchant - and funnier - satire of the fame-afflicted than Woody Allen's "Celebrity."

Illsley's fine cast, with a riotous contribution from William H. Macy as the sheriff who falls for Harry, plays out the comedy without condescension.

A lot of dark, Orwellian fun.

The film underscores the power of reading, and applying what we read to problem-solving. The story suggests that we don't really see the natural world around us, and if we did our lives, like Jared's and his siblings', would be immeasurably richer.

An elaborately presented feast that will taste familiar to the 'tween and teen audience for whom it is served. The four courses are love, war, faith and humor, served in no canonical order, and sometimes, simultaneously.

A big, kabooming sequel that plays sleight-of-hand with its audience.

A whodunit, a whydunit, and an excuse for Adrien Brody to mug it up like nobody's business.

Baird is a highly regarded editor of action films, and his debut as a director shows a sharp eye for the tensions and angles in individual scenes. But his grasp of pace is less certain, and it exposes the movie's more outlandish developments. [15 Mar 1996, p.03]

It does commit a cardinal sin of filmmaking. It's boring.

There is a sequence where his four felons parody a sitdown from The Godfather that is both inept and painfully out of place. But there's enough in Set It Off to set it apart and to argue that, when it comes to putting a new spin on the inner-city heist, you're better off with the ladies. [06 Nov 1996, p.E01]

Skin is both exasperatingly choppy and exceptionally moving.

42 doesn't shirk from showing how daunting it was for Robinson to turn the other cheek, as Ford's Rickey tells him he must do, in the face of the insults and hostility.

At a certain point, movies like Disturbia require suspension of belief. To its credit, that moment comes much later in the game than usual. Up until then, like "Rear Window" before it, Disturbia is sly and suspenseful and full of mounting dread.

Despite its familiar formula, feels fresh.

While it won't do much for those into cutting-edge computer animation, it won't disappoint parents looking for wholesome high-quality entertainment for preschoolers.

Cinematic dynamite.