In truth, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” isn't about Sept. 11. It's about the impulse to drain that day of its specificity and turn it into yet another wellspring of generic emotions: sadness, loneliness, happiness. This is how kitsch works. It exploits familiar images, be they puppies or babies - or, as in the case of this movie, the twin towers - and tries to make us feel good, even virtuous, simply about feeling. And, yes, you may cry, but when tears are milked as they are here, the truer response should be rage.

Ben Stiller isn't funny - honest. Ben Stiller is very funny, and smart, and cute, too, in a neurotic, New York kind of way.

NOTHING SHOULD BE TAKEN FOR GRANTED IN 'EVERYONE ELSE,' WHICH IS AT ONCE LAID-BACK AND RIGOROUSAbout the world we create when we fall in love, and how we navigate the space between us and that separating us from everyone else.

Created for MTV in 1990, the sharply observed, pop-conscious Ben Stiller Show - featuring its star's lacerating impersonations of Bono, Tom Cruise, and Eddie Munster, among others - subsequently moved to Fox TV and copped an Emmy for writing.

Paprika is evidence that Japanese animators are reaching for the moon, while most of their American counterparts remain stuck in the kiddie sandbox.

Moment by moment, with a twitch, a shudder, a look, it’s Mr. Hardy who movingly draws you in, turning a stranger’s face into a life.

André Bazin wrote that art emerged from our desire to counter the passage of time and the inevitable decay it brings. But in “Boyhood,” Mr. Linklater's masterpiece, he both captures moments in time and relinquishes them as he moves from year to year. He isn't fighting time but embracing it in all its glorious and agonizingly fleeting beauty.