Yojiro Takita's movie simultaneously tickles tears of mourning as it wrings laughs about the meaning of life.

In addition to Carell and Fey, Date Night boasts a deft supporting cast...Best of all are a very droll James Franco and Mila Kunis as the downtown hipsters for whom the Fosters are mistaken.

Michelle Williams is a beautiful moper.

Comparisons to HBO's "Girls" will abound, but Fort Tilden has a more satirical bent than Lena Dunham's much-talked-about show.

Makes for the most thrilling action movie of the year.

Crafty, cutting movie.

If the film itself isn't brilliant, its star most definitely is.

An economical thriller, both narratively and budgetarily, Sound of My Voice serves up moments of extreme dread and discomfort, but works a winning undercurrent of playful absurdity into the material as well.

House is one of the most exciting genre discoveries in years. [17 Jun 2010, p.14]

A powerful indictment of Russia's illegal adoption industry - and a story of pipsqueak resolve and resilience - The Italian is clear-eyed and tough in its depiction of a corrupt, atrophied social order.

A parablelike melodrama with obvious symbolic meaning.

There is so little emotionally or intellectually at stake in most popular entertainment that Goya's Ghosts, Milos Forman's challenging, compelling and wildly uneven film, shoots like a cannonball into the solar plexus. I can't remember when I've been so physically and mentally shattered.

Ain't no mountain high enough to keep the Funk Brothers from getting to you.

Penny Marshall brings a logic to the premise that is sustained through most of the movie. And where the other movies snickered at the sexual possibilities in the idea, she faces up to them with both candor and taste.

Fascinating and flawed spy thriller.

Brazenly enjoyable, The Matador is a picaresque cocktail with a Tarantino twist. It is The Odd Couple with a buzz on.

Question: Is life still like a box of chocolates if you're going in reverse? The answer, in the case of the curiously Gumpian The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, is a gooey yes.

For its first two acts this flashy vehicle is an anodized titanium streamline baby. Then comes a robot rumble that brings the action to a crashing halt.

A well-shot, gore-free psychological thriller about our elemental fear of darkness, Lights Out has a good deal in common with "The Babadook." While it can't touch Jennifer Kent's masterpiece, it does mark the arrival of a major new talent.

While Thorpe ostensibly explores the sibilant consonants and careful enunciation that characterize what we have come to think of as "sounding gay," his film is really about his identity.

Wang's young actors are impressively natural, and his documentary-style camerawork captures the rhythms and cacophony of the big city, all its crazy-quilt comings and goings.

Remarkably poignant (and pungent) when it comes to child psychology.

For its first hour, it's a delightful cloak-and-dagger comedy starring a brave Beagle James Bond and a depraved Persian Dr. Evil.

The four women couldn't be better - or better matched. As always, Parker is the standout, cracking your heart and cracking you up with equal ease.

While it descends too often into the melodramatic, it's a solid, smart picture and a welcome addition to the genre.

The middle 40 minutes of Lone Survivor have to be some of the toughest battle scenes in Hollywood history - an epic, close-range firefight that finds the SEALs throwing themselves down rock faces like superheroes. Only they aren't superheroes - they bleed, they break.

While Weitz's story is diverting, the performances cut deeper than the film.

Best of Enemies offers a bracing view of a pivotal time in our recent history, as Vietnam and race riots scarred a nation's soul, and as the Establishment and the Counter Culture exchanged epithets and blows.