With a brisk pace and satiric blend of nostalgia and violence, it's the sharpest, funniest comedy so far this year.

The film's real power to move flows from its low, childlike angles, which, rather than infantalize its audience, bring it down to where the hurt and fear, and hence the comfort, loom larger.

A meta-horror film that hilariously parodies the genre's clichés with smarts to spare. It's also the scariest fucking movie Craven has made since the first "A Nightmare on Elm Street."

The first REALLY great mythic film of the summer has arrived.

For all its simplicity, however, the film is entertaining, even uplifting, with Lopez giving a stellar, confectionary performance.

Baumbach weds his verbal gifts to a fresh visual acuity that brings layers of rich detail to a portrait of a family coping, poorly, with self-inflicted change.

Sabu takes an already wildly original concept and launches it toward brilliance.

Temple doesn't just highlight the contemporary relevance of Coleridge's liberated words and themes, he shows us how high they still soar.

What makes the film compelling is the filmmakers' ability to blend a studied (occasionally academic) dissection of cultural and sexual decadence with a potboiler plot.

Performances that are natural yet weighted with history and frequently heart-wrenching.

The film's intimate camera work and searing performances pull us deep into the girls' confusion and pain as they struggle tragically to comprehend the chasm of knowledge that's opened between them.

Baldwin's perfectly impacted performance as a tough-love provider (the actor gets some of the best lines in the movie).

Extraordinarily witty (nothing new for this director) while coming off as a taunt to anyone who'd dare to follow in his wake.

Remarkable exploration of sexuality and the Jewish faith.

A tight blend of self-awareness, humor and fear.

It's cheap thrills all the way, served up with the kind of situational purity that only Carpenter seems to care for these days. It's that simple and that much fun.

Climaxes in a flood of revelations that, like so much of the film, take us where we least expect to go.

Writer-director Fabián Bielinsky's devilish Nine Queens serves as further evidence that Argentina's film industry is at the forefront of a resurgent Latin American cinema.

Both funny and furious -- on why black people are different from white people.

Shrek's first 20 minutes are so devilishly funny that letting go of pure belief doesn't seem like such a bad thing.

A remarkably moving and disturbing film about the possibility of belonging and the genealogy of violence.

The Jackass boys achieve true genius, however, when they take their penance public. Before stunned, inert onlookers, these skate-punk Situationists transform official zones of work and leisure -- office parks, golf courses, bowling alleys -- into arenas of dangerous stupidity to remind us that, in the end, we’re all just meat.

Proves too sincere to exploit its subjects and too honest to manipulate its audience.

Hartnett's pitch-perfect sexual panic can be hilariously funny.

While there are scenes of wrenching emotional openness and spontaneous charm -- largely due to the irresistible allure and impeccable craft of its ensemble cast -- the degree of calculation apparent in its plot and images undermines its efforts to move and seduce.

Kusturica's always masterful orchestration of chaos, coincidence and caricature really pays off as a sweet, soulful celebration of old friends, new loves and the mad scramble of life at the fringe.

The stadiums and performance halls of Pyongyang become staging grounds for massive, highly choreographed political pageants that make the Nuremberg rallies look like dinner theater. You’ve never seen anything quite like these dazzling displays of groupthink.

It's Garrison and Burnam who hold the film's center, however, with a natural magnetism. Newcomers both, they take the same clean approach to their roles that their characters bring to their tags.