David Ansen

A painfully funny movie. There’s nothing in the history of movie courtship quite like the first meeting between Pekar and his future wife and fellow depressive, Joyce Brabner.

A fine, well-groomed entertainment, but the road it takes has already been well paved.

Filled with delicious backstage drama, and superb actors reveling in the opportunity to play their 19th-century counterparts.

I don't know how a movie this original got made today, but thank God for wonderful aberrations.

Though acid is dropped, groupies are bartered like poker chips and rock-star egos flare like fireworks, what comes through is the relative innocence of that era.

This is first-rate, visceral filmmaking, no question: taut, watchful, free of false histrionics, as observant of the fear in the young terrorists' eyes as the hysteria in the passenger cabin, and smart enough to know this material doesn't need to be sensationalized or sentimentalized.

It’s like a nightmare that follows you around in daylight: you can’t quite decode it, you can’t shake it, you can’t stop turning it over and over in your mind. This is one queasily powerful movie.

It's not to be missed in any language. In a year that has given us such marvelous animated movies as "Ratatouille" and "Paprika," this vibrant, sly and moving personal odyssey takes pride of place.

Smart, generous, as subtle as it is expansive, this is storytelling of a rare order. Six hours may seem like a big investment, but the emotional pay-back is beyond price.

It's hard to believe this is von Donnersmarck's first feature. His storytelling gifts have the novelistic richness of a seasoned master. The accelerating plot twists are more than just clever surprises; they reverberate with deep and painful ironies, creating both suspense and an emotional impact all the more powerful because it creeps up so quietly.

Zaillian tells it with warmth, humor and zest. The cast is first-rate. Laurence Fishburne plays the rather underdeveloped role of Vinnie, Josh's other teacher, a speed-chess hustler with a more instinctive approach to the game than Pandolfini. Joan Allen is Josh's protective mother, determined to see that his childhood isn't stolen by the monastic demands of the game. Best of all is young Pomeranc, a chess whiz with no previous acting experience. [30 Aug 1993, p.52]

The eroticism in Cuaron's road movie (which broke all box-office records in Mexico) is the real deal: tactile, sexy, psychologically charged.

This is comedy from the danger zone, and it will genuinely offend some folks who feel certain subjects are not to be laughed at. They'd best stay at home. Fans should be warned as well: Borat can make you laugh so hard it hurts.

It's unprecedented, a sorrowful and savagely beautiful elegy that can stand in the company of the greatest antiwar movies.

Aided by Vladimir Cosma's haunting score (and that great Catalani aria) and by Philippe Rousselot's bravura cinematography, Beineix makes an utterly stunning debut. "Diva" demonstrates the depth of pleasure a shallow movie can provide. [18 Apr 1982, p.96]

The Name of the Rose spins a whopping good tale, a medieval murder mystery that only those with seriously damaged attention spans will find hard to enjoy. [29 Sept 1986, p.63]

Malle's film -- the most personal he's ever made -- goes out of its way not to tug on your heartstrings. Dealing with the most painful memory of his childhood in France during World War II, Malle has made a film of uncommon restraint. [15 Feb 1988, p.70]

It has the stately, well-crafted anxiety of a Hitchcock movie, except that the protagonist and antagonist are one and the same.

For anyone who grew up worshiping at the shrine of Julie Christie, the notion that she could be playing a white-haired woman drifting into senility is a jolt to the system. But her radiance, beauty and talent are undiminished: she's hauntingly, heartbreakingly good.

It starts quietly, introducing its splendid gallery of fowl, rats and humans, then builds and builds until it achieves full comic liftoff.

The superrealist images beguile us with their bold wit, and the storytelling is so tight, urgent and inventive there doesn't seem to be a wasted moment. Which makes you wonder -- why can't scripts this clever be written for human beings?

What's remarkable is how immediately, after a full year, The Two Towers seizes your attention, and how urgently it holds you through three seamless, action-packed hours.

Harrowingly intense odyssey.

Thanks to fine acting and its vividly unconventional protagonist, it pumps fresh blood into a conventional formula.

There is enough enchantment in this big, generous, flawed movie for most everybody. [24 Sep 1984, p.85]

Director Carl Franklin is a talent to watch: he gets subtle, textured performances from his fine cast; he knows how to let a scene breathe; how to create dread without strong-arming the audience. And on the subjects of racism and crime and the way the rural and inner-city experiences are linked, this modest film noir has a lot to say between the lines of its action plot.

A fast and furious feature film that starts at a gallop and never stops to catch its breath. [9 Aug 1993, p.57]

Puiu's is the art of the seemingly artless: he takes a story that's utterly unglamorous and mundane, and transforms it into something mythic.