David Sterritt

This is a brilliant, if challenging, film.

Every shot plays a part in the director's underlying scheme - to probe the actual and symbolic roles of money in society, and grander yet, to explore the relationship between matters of the flesh and the human spirit, as manifested by the struggle between aspiration and corruption. [22 March 1984, p.21]

Not that Honda's original Godzilla is a message movie first and foremost. It's a horror flick, and an ingenious one at that, with visual effects so vivid that gimmicky spin-offs became an enduring staple of popular film.

All give heartfelt, unflashy performances that help make Shattered Glass one of the season's most thoughtful offerings.

Reveals a key aspect of fascism's cynical use of art and architecture to mesmerize a weak and vulnerable society.

The credo of Italy's fabled neorealist movement was that movies rooted in real, unadorned experience carry more dramatic impact than studio concoctions can dream of, and this 1952 masterpiece exemplifies that argument brilliantly.

Arguably the subtlest, most carefully textured film of Cronenberg's career.

Visually stunning animation.

Polanski's directing is marvelously assured and Depp is always fun to watch.

Cinema's greatest surrealist is at the peak of his powers in the last movie of his unparalleled career.

This is the kind of movie that literate viewers pine for, laced with gracefulness and wit.

It's an ideal match, and Eastwood deserves accolades as both director and star of this powerfully made picture.

What emerges most strongly, though, is a staggering degree of ignorance among everyday Americans about the basic meanings of democracy, liberty, and national security. [20 Aug 2004, p.15]

It's all deliberately homemade and raggedy, and that's where its charm comes from, along with the delightful old-music score.

The director of "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums" scores his most funny-sad movie to date.

Easily the best American film so far this year, Far From Heaven is close to perfect.

Technical virtuosity and entertainment ingenuity.

Written and directed by a brilliant screen artist at the peak of his powers, it's an utterly original comedy-drama.

Spellbinding.

This is moviemaking on the highest dramatic, psychological, and moral plane.

Moore makes no pretense of being "fair and balanced." He makes a passionate case for his own perspective, and invites us to agree with him or not. "I fulminate, you decide" could be his motto.

Required viewing for anyone interested in the struggle for American racial equality.

It's illuminating and nostalgic and for anyone who lined up for American movies in that bygone golden age.

The first feature-length movie from Bhutan tells its lighthearted story through smart performances, appealing images, and unfailing good humor.

Mood, atmosphere, and character are more important than story twists in this unassuming, acutely observant drama.

This astoundingly beautiful Korean production is poignant, original, and engrossing.

A must-see account that casts a harshly illuminating light on a key period of recent American history.

Hollywood censors made Wilder reshoot one scene, but the original version has been rediscovered; while it's tame by today's standards, it makes the movie's caustic social commentary more potent than ever.

Superbly cast, evocatively directed.

Everything about this subtly directed drama enhances its pathos and humor, especially an astonishing performance by Gorintin, a 90-something woman only a few years into her acting career.

The filmmaker keeps things lively by roaming far and wide with her camera, returning to the statesmanship side of the documentary often enough to let us follow relevant events as they unfold.

It reconfirms Marker as one of the most serious-minded and artistically gifted filmmakers in France, or anywhere else.

The filmmaking is meticulous and the ideas are endlessly thought-provoking.

A triumph of psychological drama, owing as much to Ms. Bier's sensitive style as to Anders Thomas Jensen's smart screenplay, based on Bier's own story idea.

Like all this adventurous filmmaker's work, it's truly one of a kind.

You run across animation this ingenious about as often as a moving castle comes your way.

A smart and scary voyage into the uncanny realm where hard realities,mind-spinning myths, and hallucinatory visions blur.

This low-key drama is a miracle of mood, atmosphere, and sensitivity.

Expressively filmed story of rivalry, romance, and cultural conflict.

Like its star, it's quietly sincere and compulsively watchable.

Barbet Schroeder directed the ingeniously made film, which weaves fact, hypothesis, and conjecture into a harrowing yet continually gripping and often highly amusing narrative. [12 Oct 1990]

Smart, funny, and splendidly acted.

Brilliantly acted, sumptuously filmed, and overflowing with mellifluous music.

Harrowing, extremely disturbing at times, but brought to the screen in dazzling pop-art images that make the movie's grim content very much worth watching.

A travelogue unlike any other.

This strikingly unusual movie is at once an old-fashioned melodrama, a boldly stylized spectacle, and a very grim fairy tale, acted and directed with originality and flair.

Well worth seeing on the wide screen before its video release next year. It's guaranteed to take your breath away.

The secret to enjoying 8 Women is to check your analytical mind at the popcorn counter and settle back for almost two hours of cinematic mischief.

Feisty, funny, and smart.

Acted as a drama, paced like a ritual, filmed as a slice of rural Iranian life.

The timeless fairy tale about a young woman who agrees to dwell with a mysterious monster, as interpreted in 1946 by one of cinema's most brilliant visual stylists and mythmakers.

The result is a history lesson both invaluable and horrific.

Concise, humane documentary.

Superbly acted, movingly written, and directed with a tough-minded lyricism rarely found in today's films. A summer movie to love.

Stay far, far away unless you can handle the copious amounts of blood--and agonizing psychological problems-- that its participants face on what seems like a daily basis.

Anderson fulfills the promise of his inventive "Bottle Rocket" with this quirky, often hilarious comedy, and Murray gives his most uproarious performance since the groundbreaking "Groundhog Day."

The movie elegantly mingles drama, comedy, and low-key spiritual resonance. It also has a splendid cast.

Pure fun.

Riveting and revealing whatever views you have on the partisan issues involved.

Rohmer's films are renowned for their beauty, so it's surprising that he made a picture using digital video rather than film. But this was the right choice.

Soldier's Daughter thrives less on Hollywood-style drama than on nuances of personality, details of everyday life, and emotions so commonplace that conventional movies rarely take the time to acknowledge them, much less explore them with loving care.

Like all masterpieces, it speaks to later ages as powerfully and intelligently as to its own.

Iwai's ambitious drama is strikingly shot, poignantly acted by a splendid young cast, and enriched by surprising use of Debussy classics on the soundtrack.

One of a kind, turning Foreman trademarks such as self-satirical acting and out-of-nowhere music into powerful elements of an outlandish story.