Andy Klein

Maniacally funny. It remains neck and neck with "Young Frankenstein" as Brooks' best film.

The film is a masterpiece of nuance and characterization, marred only by an inexplicable, utterly distracting blunder at the very end.

Its tone has elements of Jim Jarmusch and the Coen brothers but without Jarmusch's self-conscious artiness or the Coens' hip snottiness.

This film made Dietrich a star, and it's easy to see why: Slightly more voluptuous than in her later films, Dietrich is the embodiment of the pleasures of the flesh.

It was Melville's second-to-last feature, and it shows him in top form, with a more generous dose of humor than usual.

The plot may be nothing, but the film is something indeed.

No one can blend melodrama and heightened emotion with laugh-out-loud wackiness the way Almodóvar does.

Wong weaves a spell that no other director could create.

This is a dark, often funny walk through Ingmar Bergman turf.

Released in 1962, it was pretty clearly the most intelligent spectacular within living memory. On its 40th anniversary, it's even better.

Spinal Tap is still on the right side of the fine line between stupid and clever.

There have been other films dealing with the Jewish ghettos during the Nazi occupation of Poland -- some very good -- but The Pianist, the latest feature from Roman Polanski, may be the best.

Craven's other accomplishment here, besides resuscitating the genre, is the way he keeps things scary even when they're at their funniest. The grand finale, while thoroughly bloody and tense, has some genuinely hilarious shtick.

A six-year-old masterpiece, never-before widely seen in the U.S., is still a masterpiece.

It's funny, heroic, exaggerated and, most of all, energetic; the film speeds along as though afraid to lose the audience's attention for even a moment.

Full of provocative concepts, but, like most films that attack such metaphysical concerns head-on, things have become a tad too jumbled by the end to be altogether satisfying. It's a problem built into the subject matter...This all said, Dark City is immensely entertaining, as well as visually dazzling.

An exciting, sharply realized melodramatic film noir, based on Elizabeth Sanxay Holding's novel "The Blank Wall."

Altman's technique also allows his huge cast to act up a storm, in the best sense. Gosford Park has roughly half the best actors in England in it.

While Imamura films generally have their droll moments, this is the most blatantly comic work he's done since the '80s -- richly entertaining and suggestive of any number of metaphorical readings.

One of the compulsively watchable films this year, second only to "Memento." It's a must-see, except for those with a sensitivity to on-screen mayhem.

Singleton may spend the rest of his career chasing the kind of critical and commercial success he won at an early age with "Boyz N the Hood". But even if Rosewood fails to meet that standard, it is a film that reaffirms that depth of his talents.

It's moving; but it's also endlessly engaging, uproariously funny at moments, informative, and eventually touching in ways one might not have expected.

Unless you're deeply familiar with Korean culture, you've truly never seen anything like it.

The pacing is slow, but the film is entrancing and earns a permanent place in the viewer's mind.

Casting is perfect all down the line.

Once the action kicks in -- starting with an extraordinary balletic fight in the rain featuring the two masters and a flying wooden beam -- you can't take your eyes off the screen.

Pecker is a satire, but an incredibly good-natured one, which is not quite the contradiction in terms it might seem.

Zemeckis is more interested here in getting us thinking (and feeling) than in telling us what to think.

It's an amazing story, but, in addition to its intrinsic interest, the Shackleton expedition has another remarkable draw: Crewman Frank Hurley had brought along not only still cameras, but a movie camera as well, providing us with an extraordinary record of the ship's voyage.

I found myself roaring at the grotesque way some of the characters talk to their pets, pausing only briefly when I realized that I do precisely the same thing.

The film could be subtitled "Six Characters in Search of an Ending:" When they find that ending, it is gently, delightfully uplifting.

The film operates like a clockwork mechanism. If there were foul-ups or major implausibilities—as such trick plots often have—they eluded me.

For fans of the franchise, Evil Dead Rises marks a welcome return to the seamless blend of humor and genuine scares and creepiness that Raimi created 42 years ago.

Except for a few slow patches, the movie is compulsively watchable: You keep waiting to see just how sick things are going to get.

At first glance, Schizopolis may seem like no more than a grab-bag of tricks and gimmicks, but repeat viewings reveal a more coherent pattern.

More involving and intriguing than any by-the-numbers studio thriller. In large part, it holds our interest because of its stylistic boldness, not despite it.

The story is just as funny and touching. The only problem is the inevitable one: The freshness -- the novel delight -- is a little faded now.

What Nolan does accomplish here that we haven't seen from him before is staging a few horrifyingly effective suspense set pieces -- one of which, in particular, is likely to stay with you for a long time.

Zhang deftly and quickly draws a half-dozen supporting characters, and his pacing never flags.

What about Ronny Yu's 1992 masterpiece "The Bride With White Hair," of which Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a decent facsimile?

His most thoroughly surreal work since Eraserhead, this two-hour-plus fever dream is more of one piece than Fire Walk with Me and less desperate and jokey than Wild at Heart.

The entire cast is right on the money, a special word must be said about Seth.

In the end, Code Unknown is a puzzle with no obvious solution.

It is engaging, touching, and frequently funny. Maybe because his hero is inarticulate and his heroine is mute, Allen relies far more than usual on physical comedy than on the verbal jokes that are his strongest comic suit.

The Wachowskis still hold the current franchise on intellectually engaging action films. It's not like I won't be heading back for a second (or even third) look.

Eastwood provides more than an hour of easygoing fun, followed by 45 minutes of action and suspense.

For those with a taste for epics that integrate the historical and the intimate.

Fans of convoluted narrative in the manner of Christopher Nolan and David Lynch are likely to be intrigued, although Medem has a far stronger streak of sentiment.

Indeed heartwarming, though not simplemindedly so.

From the start, a comprehensible, if necessarily simplified, sense of an extremely complicated moment in history.

Gilroy has brilliantly played to his strengths in Spring Forward. With a story that has no room for big, obviously "cinematic" effects, he concentrates on simple staging, unobtrusive (though often beautifully evocative) visuals, and sheer performance. It's a decision that pays off.

Not everything in the film happens according to the traditional, overly familiar blueprint.

Both Fellini and Woody Allen have remarked that casting is 90 percent of directing--and Citizen Ruth bears witness to that notion. While this is primarily Dern's show, the casting is perfect all around.

Dramatically effective, thanks in large part to Montand's impassioned performance.

Taymor moves Titus completely out of time and into all time.

Wisely, Run Lola Run lasts something under 80 minutes; any longer, and it would have been as exhausting and boring as a half-hour Donna Summer track.

This nearly perfect confection never takes its action more seriously than its comedy.

One of the glories of the film is that Ramsay keeps us rigorously to Morvern's point of view without ever being explicit about what's going on in her head.

This sweet little movie is a mild comedy, a much calmer cousin to "Sister Act," with men in robes rather than women in habits.

Takes roughly a third of its length to really get going, but, once it does, it's a devilishly clever, engaging piece of work that milks every cent of value from its tiny budget.

Hilarious--a terrific updating of ancient farce conventions for the '90s.

Hilary Birmingham -- makes an impressive feature directorial debut with this rural drama. She gets first-rate performances.

Surprisingly manages never to grow boring -- which proves that Rohmer still has a sense of his audience.

Whatever its flaws -- and it has some lulus -- it's a textbook model for how to structure action of this kind.

Compellingly watchable.

On one level, Together is a countercultural soap opera, though played more as bittersweet comedy than as drama.

I still think the first is the best in the series, but I'm in the minority: Number two has a stronger following among the legions of Hong Kong movie buffs.

We become so absorbed in the ramifications of the techniques involved that a more challenging plot might have resulted in sensory overload.

The fractured structure, which moves from one species to another while following a generally chronological overall arc, can occasionally leave your mind to wandering, but for a film with no plot or characters to focus on it is remarkably gripping.

Office Space's pleasures don't really depend on plot. It's pretty much what a Dilbert feature should look like.

Whatever its faults -- and it has more than a few -- it is unquestionably different. It at least takes a stab at interpolating cerebral ideas into the format of a thriller.

Washington creates an indelibly charming and terrifying character whose volatile blend of dedication and horrible expediency keeps us off balance.

Dench is wholly extraordinary in a characterization that is frequently muted, literally and necessarily.

As in Extraction, the action sequences are the whole game here, and they do not disappoint.

Manages the seemingly impossible task of being very funny indeed and being as dark as anything Wong has ever made. This is an almost painfully bleak comedy that makes you squirm in the manner of “The Out-of-Towners.”

This is not Tsui's best film by a substantial margin, but it's immense fun.

It manages to be sentimental without seeming trashy.

Fuqua has done an admirable job staging the action scenes, but the script is little more than a thin framework to justify those scenes.

For all its mystery and its stylistic finesse, there is something vaguely plodding about The Sweet Hereafter.

Despite some savvy camera movement, the production values obviously can't match American action films made for a hundred times the budget. Still, Hatamikia has put together a gripping drama that balances visceral suspense and interesting ideas.

As the story plows toward its finale, the cultural dislocation problems become worse, until by the end they almost defeat the whole film.

A lovely little comedy that--like its predecessor--will, one hopes, buck the odds and find its audience.

The movie is not always satisfying as a standard thriller, nor is it always clear; but it's never dull, either, and it displays a sensibility so weird as to be its own recommendation.

While Mononoke is often gorgeous to look at and has a far more sophisticated story than most Japanese animated features, it still feels overlong and dramatically unengaging.

Headey, Skarsgård and Rampling flesh these people out marvelously, bringing them fully to life. It's almost a pity: The more real they become, the less pleasant is the time we spend with them.

It's during the shift to seriousness that The Ice Storm makes its missteps. The intrusion of tragedy, while altogether believable, still seems like a device, a calculated tug at the heart strings. It is, in short, a once-effective ploy that now feels like a cliche. A near-miss might have been more effective.

At 75, Aranda can still make his actors sizzle on the screen as well as he did 10 years ago in "Lovers." The explicitly hot bits here may be few and far between, but what there is of them is choice.

Shot in stylish black and white, with a memorably low-key performance from Duchesne, Bob le Flambeur is definitely worth checking out on the big screen in a fresh print.

Stylish, but definitely not for the squeamish

Varda, still pixieish in her early 70s, is having fun here.

The film still delivers the goods, in part because of Eastwood's iconic presence and in part because of Daniels' scene-stealing work in what could have been a hokey role.

The performance itself (which aired on PBS and is available on DVD) apparently went perfectly; given the potential pitfalls that Miller documents, it's some kind of miracle.

Were it not for the gravity of the setting, the movie could just as easily be a comedy -- with everybody play-acting and doors opening and shutting and the repercussions of lies multiplying geometrically -- as a drama.

Helgeland makes a solid debut as director here, finding a new angle through which to view the Parker character, and doing so without exhausting the possibilities.

It's unlikely that anyone will be bored. But it's just as unlikely that anyone will be swept off his feet either.

It's an interesting, often worthwhile, film, but humor isn't its strongest attribute.

Scrappy, sappy, and appealing.

While there's nothing original in Rush Hour, it runs through its well-worn paces with both wit and excitement.