It's hard to turn a stoner comedy into a franchise – those require a little too much follow-through. But Cheech & Chong pulled it off with the immortal trilogy of Up in Smoke, Cheech & Chong's Next Movie and Nice Dreams. And like the Godfather and Star Wars trilogies, this one peaks with Chapter Two – with some help from Pee-wee Herman. "Man, if you had a second brain," says Cheech, "it would die of loneliness, man."

Basing a teen film on Romeo and Juliet? It'd had been done. Replacing a Montague and a Capulet with a San Fernando Valley shopping-mall habitue (Deborah Foreman) and a sensitive Hollywood punk (Nicolas Cage)? Now we're talking.

As in all of his movies, Malle exhibits in Pretty Baby his characteristically detached, skeptical, lucid, moral — not moralistic — attitude toward life.

The film, sometimes talky and overemphatic, is also literate, erotic, brutally funny and touched by brilliance in its quartet of live-wire performances.

Pieces of a Woman largely belongs to the woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown at its center, however, and it’s Vanessa Kirby who gifts the film with The Performance.

Undeniably thrilling and troubling...Dazzling, era-defining.

Reality tv, welcome to the multiplex. If "The Hills" went back to high school and developed wit, perception and a conscience, it might play something like Nanette Burstein's wallop of a doc.

There’s a secondhand feel to the way this gangster movie delivers the goods. Carlito’s Way is haunted by a ghost from De Palma and Pacino’s past — Scarface.

The heart of Jackass - the adolescent drive to bash body and soul into the symbolic brick wall of maturity - remains pure.

Dissenters who see this film as a wallow in self-absorption aren't paying attention. Baumbach is acutely attuned to the droll mind games of smart people who only think they're impervious to feeling.

Baumbach overreaches in White Noise. The movie is unsuccessful because its various energies eventually begin to feel mismeasured.

It’s a movie that stumbles every so often, overplays its hand numerous time, and relies on an oddball true-story premise and 1000-watt star power to pave over some of the rougher spots. It would also give you its coat if you needed it without asking, and the big takeaway from Roofman, we’d argue, is its emphasis not on sympathy for the “devil” here but a palpable sense of empathy for everyone involved. Given the scarcity of this particular quality today, that’s no small feat.

The movie belongs to Moretz, whose sensational performance will be talked about for years. Her scenes with Cage, who wears a Batsuit and uses a voice borrowed from Adam West, are a hoot.

Ferrara’s blend of toughness and lyricism turns this visionary crime film into something stylish, seductive and haunting.

The plot is flimsy, but director Mark Waters (Freaky Friday) trusts Fey's tart dialogue to carry the day. Wise man. Fey subverts formula to find comic gold. She's a brash new voice in movie comedy. Boy, do we need her now.

The movie's soul is with Huffman. Speaking in a low voice, her posture as stiff as her vocabulary, her eyes a pool of sadness and hope, she turns this small, resonant film into a cry from the heart.

The show belongs to Geoffrey Rush in a note-perfect performance as Harry Pendel, the tailor.

The grand becomes grandiose and the lyrical turns bombastic.

Gillespie and his movie-star cast aren’t trying to short squeeze the topic for statuettes. They’re just laying out what happened, why it happened, and why it mattered in the most audience-friendly manner imaginable, then take the whole thing to the moon. And it’s the lack of pandering in the way that they do it while also drawing clear battle lines that make it a surprisingly safe bet. We like the stock here.

If you're looking for a crime story that sizzles with action, sex and the visceral jolt of life on the edge, Miami Vice is the one.

Skinamarink isn’t scary because of what it depicts. It’s scary because it already knows that our imagination will do half of the work.

Breaking is a family affair, a film that works because every person in its cast, even those playing the “villains,” gives you a character whose flawed humanity is worth believing.

For some, the chance to hear the divine sound of that voice and see that smiling mug once again will be worth it. For others, it will simply feel like song half sung.

Dahan's impressionistic heartbreaker of a movie gets it all in. And Marion Cotillard, lip-syncing Piaf's songs and digging into her soul with gale-force urgency, gives a performance for the ages.

But, oh, that dragon. I'd endure another slog through Middle-Earth just to spend more time with Smaug.

Another Earth offers imagination and provocation to spare.

Near the end, Hill boxes himself into a sentimental corner that takes a little off the film’s edge. But before that, Mid90s bristles with fun, feeling and the exhilaration that comes with risking life’s hairpin turns.

Webb never loses touch with the film's emotional through line. And he allows time and space for Garfield and Stone, both stellar, to turn a high-flying adventure into something impassioned and moving. A Spider-Man that touches the heart. Now that really is amazing.