If you think the "Star Wars" prequels are a disease, then Serenity is the cure.

For Whitaker's performance alone, Last King is a substantial piece of work. Otherwise, the film is estimable but not quite great.

With its weary introductory and concluding passages, it announces itself as the most typical of fare, a real letdown after that stirringly fresh central part.

Powerfully explores the struggles faced by those whom DNA testing has exonerated after years behind bars.

Reaches truly terrifying heights as it becomes clear how possible the worst outcome can be. Like "Pan's Labyrinth," this is a movie about children made very much for adults.

Finely etched and acted but too often limpid and punchless in its impact.

It's not deep for a second -- indeed, it repels depth deliberately as if allergic to it -- but it's as swell a swell time as grown-ups could want at the movies.

If you feel, like me, kinship with this essential building block of music, you owe it to yourself -- and to the Ramones -- to see this film.

One of the most joyous, diverting and original mainstream American movies in years.

Invigorating, blistering and chilling.

The result is a solid film, but one that remains more interesting than intense.

Some movies uses make-believe to make you squirm or cry or rise to righteous anger. Bully does all of that with reality.

This is a violent, romantic, beautifully shot and performed film -- with brutal battle scenes and charisma-bomb performances by Asano as the future Khan and Honglei Sun as a rival chieftain and brother-in-arms.

With its protracted storytelling, its fuzzy philosophizing and its less-than-compelling leading man, it's far less gripping than the subject matter deserves.

It's a film with a silly story, and it's been dubbed laughably into English. Yet it's a transporting bit of fluff, full of zest, miraculous physicality and cheeky humor.

Like "The Reader," this film treads unsteadily over the terrain of German guilt.

The film, built around McKellen's magnificent performance, is a sleek and deceptively artful work, a bio-pic that manages to encompass the whole of a man's rich life by concentrating solely on the final months of it.

Ultimately, though, this is a story about a conflicted, intelligent, flawed, moral woman making her way through her life.

Hitchcock has fun playing with Grant’s suave onscreen image, pulling the rug out from under our expectations, only to keep replacing it and yanking it over and over again.

As the eye-opening documentary Stonewall Uprising shows through interviews and frequently horrifying old footage, homosexuality in this country was once a highly illegal behavior, widely viewed, at the very least, as a mental disorder, possibly even psychopathic.

It’s disappointing that, with such talent and seriousness of intent, the movie ultimately doesn't have much new to say. To paraphrase “The Simpsons”’ Milhouse, it started out like "Bonnie and Clyde," but instead it ended in tragedy.

One of the great achievements of In Darkness, is in creating a sense of life in the sewers.

How pleasant to report, then, that a new romantic comedy -- small, smart, funny, tender and dear -- should emerge from a pair of filmmaking brothers still in their 30s and with a distinct indie film pedigree that informs, while not dominating, their work.

It's almost numbingly sad, but you won't regret watching -- and you'll surely never forget it.

Bounces along magnetically even when the storytelling goes a bit flat.

This is more Errol Morris' or Truman Capote's territory than Herzog's, and his patient, determinedly respectful interviews with members of the American underclass bear a whiff of European condescension.

Nolan takes big chances with his actors, his action scenes, and his pacing -- you'll feel all 169 minutes in your backside -- and the payoffs come slowly and sometimes not at all. It's frustrating because there's so much to look at, so much money well spent in every frame, but Interstellar wears out its audience long before it ends.

An unforgettable experience.