Dave Kehr

The film is full of ingenious details and effective character sketches (Thomas has a mother who would give Woody Allen the willies) that go a long way toward covering up its conventionalities.

Imamura’s detached, almost scientific style forestalls any pat sympathy for the central character—he is not a sentimental “victim of society,” but the embodiment of its darkest Darwinian forces.

It is a moving and entertaining work, executed with high finesse by a master cineast.

Martin Scorsese's intrusive insistence on his abstract, metaphysical theme—the possibility of modern sainthood—marks this 1973 film, his first to attract critical notice, as still somewhat immature, yet the acting and editing have such an original, tumultuous force that the picture is completely gripping.

Grandly entertaining.

An effective, well-made film that will certainly please its target audience of preteen girls.

A pleasant surprise, Michael Dinner's film manages a mild redemption of the conventions of the horny teenager movie by taking its characters with a grain of seriousness and injecting some light romance and melodrama.

Peter Yates, previously typed as an action director (Bullitt, The Deep), lends the film a fine, unexpected limpidity, and the principals are mostly excellent.

Obscure by nature and unwieldy by design, Darger's work is difficult to confront and consume; Ms. Yu has brought it a little closer, and that is as fine a public service as an art documentary can provide.

It's a great-looking film, filled with wildly imaginative sets and costumes that would have done the Maestro proud, and veteran director Richard Fleischer (The Vikings) rises to the occasion with some sharply staged action scenes. With Nielsen's minimal English rubbing up against the fractured locutions of costar Arnold Schwarzenegger, the dialogue passages don't exactly play like Noel Coward, but this is a movie that succeeds rousingly well on its own humble, Saturday-night terms.

Attenborough's work lacks even the undercurrent of personality that David Lean brought to his films: the film has no flavor but that of the standard Hollywood hagiography, in which the hero is rhetorically elevated to sainthood by systematically stripping him of all his psychology and inner life. Luckily, Ben Kingsley is charismatic enough in the title role to command some warmth and interest, and the film is paced so quickly—rushing through 55 years of hastily exposited history—that it's never really boring.

Ripping entertainment overall, with just enough meat for amateur sociologists.

All of the elements of the formula are there, but in pleasing moderation.

It remains a documentary at heart, full of astonishing glimpses of human resiliency that have nothing to do with artfulness and everything to do with patience, persistence and sympathy.

Based on a minor novel by William Faulkner (Pylon), the film betters the book in every way, from the quality of characterization to the development of the dark, searing imagery. Made in black-and-white CinemaScope, the film doesn’t survive on television; it should be seen in a theater or not at all.

A grisly extravaganza with an acute moral intelligence. The graphic special effects (which sometimes suggest a shotgun Jackson Pollock) are less upsetting than Romero's way of drawing the audience into the violence.

As the perfect crystallization of 50s ideology the film would be fascinating enough, but the special effects in this 1953 George Pal production also achieve a kind of dark, burnished apocalyptic beauty.

One of the loveliest of Nick Ray's movies: this 1952 feature begins as a harsh film noir and gradually shifts to an ethereal romanticism reminiscent of Frank Borzage.

Lawrence Kasdan's 1981 noir fable is highly derivative in its overall conception, but it finds some freshness in its details. All in all, this evokes the spirit of James M. Cain more effectively than the 1981 remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice did.

Orson Welles's 1946 film reproduces his personal themes of self-scrutiny and self-destruction only in outline, though it is an inventive, highly enjoyable thriller.

A genuine charmer by George Roy Hill, a director best known for such ersatz charmers as Butch Cassidy and The Sting. His crowd-pleasing instincts have been subsumed by a bracing technical assurance here; the contrivances are still there, but they're presented with a smooth and rare professionalism.

Jarmusch's eye for blighted landscape (he films in a grainy black and white) is hilariously sharp, and he sends his performers on their zomboid rounds with a keen sense of rhythm and interplay.

Muddled on the issues, but it earned its Oscar as a dramatic, involving story, full of tough and appealing characters. (Review of Original Release)

For those in search of something different, Wendigo is a genuinely bone-chilling tale.

Never backing off from big, emotional moments, but also fleshing out the necessary transitions between them, he has realized his finest movie. It's a renaissance for Mr. Schultz, who seems to be speaking with his own voice after all these years.

The blend of slapstick and pathos is seamless, although the cynicism of the final scene is still surprising. Chaplin’s later films are quirkier and more personal, but this is quintessential Charlie, and unmissable.

It still has several moments—most notably a completely offhanded kidnapping—when Cassavetes's inimitable off rhythms do strange and wonderful things to the conventionally written comedy. Big Trouble is just a footnote in the career of one of America's most innovative, unclassifiable filmmakers, but it's something to see.