David Ansen

Infused with the bleak romanticism of Melville's gangster movies ("Le Samouraï," "Bob le Flambeur"), and deepened by his own experiences in the Resistance, this hard-bitten tribute to freedom fighters makes most current movies look flabby and undisciplined. Don't miss it.

The Wild Bunch still retains its sorrowful, fatal power because of the complexity of Peckinpah's attitudes about violence. He forces us to confront our own voyeuristic ambivalence; we're alternately horrified by the butchery and exhilarated by the orgiastic energy his balletic spectacles stir up.

Suspended between the brutally graphic and flights of lyrical fancy, Pan's Labyrinth unfolds with the confidence of a classical fable, one that paradoxically feels both timeless and startlingly new.

It's one of the richest movie experiences of the year, a spellbinding American epic that holds you firmly in its grip for nearly three hours.

But the thing about Carol Reed's 1949 The Third Man was that no matter how many times I saw it over the years its magic never failed. Its sophisticated, world-weary glamour never lost its allure. The movie only got richer as my own experiences got richer. I kept discovering dark new delights, and the classic moments remained every bit as classic.

Once again Disney has come up with a winning animated feature that has something for everyone on the age spectrum.

A film as rich as a sauce béarnaise, as refreshing as a raspberry sorbet.

Constructing a work of implacably interlocking images, the 76-year-old director -- as clear-eyed, still and attentive as a beast of the forest observing human folly -- has produced an Olympian protest against the modern world. Yet his lucid mastery produces not despair, but an odd exhilaration. [16 April 1984, p.93]

Once again, the Pixar wizards have pushed the animation envelope in unexpected directions and come up with a winner. Wondrously inventive, funny and poignant, WALL*E is part sci-fi adventure, part cautionary fable, part satire and part love story, which may be the best and most improbable part of all.

One of the year's best: a rich, funny, enormously humane portrait of a middle-class Taipei family in the throes of romantic, economic and spiritual upheaval.

Succeeds stunningly on its own terms.

At once elegant and sublimely silly, contemplative and gung-ho, balletic and bubble-gum, a rousing action film and an epic love story, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is one bursting-at-the-seams holiday gift, beautifully wrapped by the ever-surprising Ang Lee.

In Sideways, Payne has created four of the most lived-in, indelible characters in recent American movies. This deliciously bittersweet movie makes magic out of the quotidian.

The second installment was better than the first, and this one is best of all. It has spectacular action scenes and imaginary creatures, and it’s by far the most moving chapter. The performances have deepened.

There Will Be Blood is ferocious, and it will be championed and attacked with an equal ferocity. When the dust settles, we may look back on it as some kind of obsessed classic.

Schnabel, screenwriter Ronald Harwood and Spielberg's great cinematographer Janusz Kaminski have found a way to take us inside Bauby's mind--his memories, his fantasies, his loves and lusts--transforming a story of physical entrapment and spiritual renewal into exhilarating images.

Platoon is a ferociously compacted work, but the filmmaking rarely calls attention to itself; it never distracts from the dirty, horrific subject at hand..."Platoon" captures the crazy, adrenaline-rush chaos of battle better than any movie before. Stone is ruthless in his deglamorization of war, but not at the expense of the men who fought there. [5 Jan 1987, p.57]

You know a romantic comedy is in trouble when you root for the hero not to get the girl.

The results are wondrous, wrenching and crazily funny to behold.

The Movie Works. It has real passion, real emotion, real terror, and a tactile sense of evil that is missing in that other current movie dealing with wizards, wonders and wickedness.

Quiz Show is supebly shot (by Michael Ballhaus), and the acting ensemble could hardly be better..."Quiz Show is witty enough never to need to get on a soapbox to make its points.

Reiner has made a very hip, sophisticated sendup, but his affection and feel for life on the road keep the satire friendly. This is surely the funniest movie ever made about rock and roll, and one of the funniest things about it is that it may also be one of the most accurate. [5 March 1984, p.81]

You have to pay close attention to follow the double-crossing intricacies of the plot, but the reward for your work is dark and dirty fun.

Their (Murray/Johansson) brief, wondrous encounter is the soul of this subtle, funny, melancholy film.

A tad dark for little kids, this one-of-a-kind movie delivers 80 minutes of idiosyncratic inspiration.

The images of war that Folman and his chief illustrator, David Polonsky, conjure up have a feverish, infernal beauty. Dreams and reality jumble together.

A schlock horror movie made for a pittance by 30-year-old John Carpenter, which happens to be the most frightening flick in years. Halloween is a superb exercise in the art of suspense, and it has no socially redeeming value whatsoever. Nasty, voyeuristic, relentless, it aims at nothing but to scare the hell out of you. [4 Dec 1978, p.116]

Raises Hollywood's depiction of war to a new level.