David Sterritt

Weir had a truly magical touch in early films like this 1977 masterpiece, which offers a transfixing excursion into the "dream time" of Australian myth.

Stranger than fiction, indeed.

Green tells the tale through leisurely, eye-catching shots that allow the young cast members to imbue their characters with striking credibility and intensity.

Kubrick's great 1964 tragicomedy about superpowers on the nuclear brink continues to fascinate new generations of moviegoers, as its frequent reissues attest. A genuine classic.

Moody, atmospheric, and bewitching, like other first-rate examples of modern Thai cinema.

Egoyan's cinematic brilliance shows up intermittently in this atmospheric thriller, which gains most of its punch from Hoskins's surprisingly subtle performance.

The rock scene hasn't been the same since this hilarious 1984 comedy.

Masterly by any measure.

On screen as on the stage, Glengarry Glen Ross is a powerhouse experience - forcefully written, bruisingly performed, and one of the most thoughtful American films in recent memory. [29 Sep 1992, p.11]

What distinguishes the movie is its inventive, multifaceted way of questioning whether the "truth" of past events can ever be separated from the memories, longings, and scanty evidence that inextricably surrounds it.

It's a terrific movie, smart and funny enough to hold up at any time of year.

In sum, the classical Ron Howard and his splendid cast have made a spellbinding movie that joins "Million Dollar Baby," as well as "Raging Bull," the first two "Rocky" pictures, and "Fat City" as one of boxing cinema's all-time heavyweight champs.

This kind of quiet ambiguity, avoiding easy answers to complex human conflicts, is all too rare in American movies.

Put Roeg's powerful cinematic style on the cultural map.

Smart, funny, stimulating.

Magical movie, which has brilliant fun with the contrasts between film and theater, love and infatuation, reality and fantasy.

Iran's greatest filmmaker is fond of stripping personalities bare through conversations they have while riding in cars. Here he pushes his favorite dramatic device to its limit.

An astonishing human, political, and historical document.

Obviously a profoundly personal film, but it's also a smartly conducted tour through the world of building and design that Kahn towered over during the most successful phases of his career.

This superbly filmed Italian drama stands with Bellocchio's best work. Originally titled "Ora di religione."

LaBute is coming of age as an artist, and his future looks brighter than I ever would have suspected a year ago. Enfant terrible or not, he's starting to become a substantial figure in American film.

Articulate interviews and an unusually creative visual style make the picture as lively to watch as it is illuminating to think about.

The chief reason for its legendary reputation is the brilliant match between its timeless historical subject - the trial that required Joan to defend her faith before skeptical representatives of church and state - and Dreyer's decision to film it primarily in relentless close-ups, using the sharply etched faces of his performers to suggest the invisible spiritual struggles going on beneath the drama's human dimensions.

Hou's sensitivity plus Ozu's inspiration equals sublimity of sight and sound.

Superbly acted, cleverly written, sensitively directed.

It combines a fresh and exciting style with stunning performances and that rarity in current film, a deeply humanistic story.

Beneath its surface of chronic suffering and hospital details, Chereau's best drama etches a humane, sensitive, and richly moving portrait of fraternal love struggling to mitigate human frailty.

The movie is remarkably touching and engrossing, with Kline's spot-on acting and realistically second-rate singing balancing Judd's one-note performance as his wife.

Along with its historical value, The Weather Underground is also a terrific movie, energetic, and articulate. It's the don't-miss documentary of the season.

One of the most entertaining films ever made by the legendary Maysles brothers and their gifted associates. [17 Apr 1998, p.B2]

Not a masterpiece, but definitely one of the year's most entertaining movies.

The expanded "Redux" is even more resonant - partly because of its added material, and partly because the passage of time has increased the film's value as a key cultural document of the Vietnam War era and its aftermath. It's a movie not to be missed.

Take a chance on Gerry. It's only a movie, and you'll get out alive no matter what happens on the screen. You might even find you've had a rare adventure.

Worth a dozen "Blair Witch Projects," with much more harrowing psychology and pithy dialogue. It's a bone-chilling plunge into no-holds-barred storytelling.

The best is "Equilibrium" by Soderbergh, about a man being analyzed by a distracted shrink.

Not a great movie, but a valuable and revealing document.

Everyone raves about this 1957 film -- and everyone's right.

Timely, pointed messages about oppression and opportunity come poignantly through in strongly dramatic terms.

It's inexplicable that Wong's early masterpiece has been virtually absent from American screens since he completed it in 1991.

If it weren't so smartly filmed and acted, this might add up to an over-the-top mess. But watch how inventively Mr. Antal keeps the action moving and you'll see why his picture has won a passel of prizes.

The movie is a portrait, not a polemic -- but I can't imagine an attentive viewer leaving Love & Diane without increased understanding and concern with regard to inner-city life.

Metropolis has a place in world history as well as in the annals of fantasy. Adolf Hitler was said to have loved it, and Lang eventually fled Germany for Hollywood when the Third Reich wanted him to run its movie industry. Few movies of any era offer so much varied food for thought, cinematically and politically. Its new restoration is a major motion-picture event.

The drama's elegant structure, which takes you through a series of surprises so smoothly and logically that it might be over before you realize you've seen one of the new year's most intriguing, intelligent movies.

Filmed in a leisurely, understated style, this dark comedy is downright entrancing. A spectacular directorial debut.

As quietly dazzling as a small, very precious stone.

Kim's movie conjures a sense of spiritual discipline as suspenseful as it is stunning to watch and exhilarating to contemplate.

What makes the film stunning is less its metaphorical scheme than its cinematic style. Always a matter of flowing camera movement, Kubrick has photographed much of the action with long "traveling shots" that capture time and space as a seamless whole, not fractured into the bits and pieces of standard editing techniques. [26 June 1987]

Brilliant, poetic, and utterly unique.

A glistening gem among caper movies, this impeccably elegant jewel-heist drama takes its title from Buddhist lore, its cast from France's great gallery of leading men, and its style from the unique blend of cinematic savoir-faire and brooding existential angst.

Smart and sumptuous.

Sensitive, imaginative.

This is a lively, life-affirming documentary no viewer is likely to forget.

A scrupulously balanced look at the subject outlined in the title. Packed with historical, sociological, and cultural context.

Its best moments offer a sense of motion-picture poetry that will lift receptive viewers out of their seats.

A profound film by a legendary director in the greatest period of his career.

Riveting, suspenseful, and a perfect antidote to the too-tricky documentary "Super-Size Me."

It's a troubling, courageous, compulsively watchable work of art.

This poetic and compassionate drama by Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan combines the intricate structure of his earlier movies with an emotional power that raises his remarkable career to a whole new level.

A true American tragedy, directed with skill and conviction.

The delights of the movie lie in its zany characters, its goofy settings, and above all its surrealistic visual style.

Always hard-hitting and often grimly, revealingly satirical.

This deliciously offbeat Canadian comedy gets its charm from marvelous acting and from a screenplay bursting with ideas. Great fun.

This is a funny, sad, stunningly smart movie about the end of movies, made in Tsai's inimitable, unblinking style. No movie lover should miss it.

The tale is simply told but stunningly photographed and superbly acted in the best tradition of modern Iranian cinema.

Imaginatively acted, endlessly atmospheric.

This great masterpiece of German film is evocative and inventive from its first shot to its last.

This is a great companion piece to Hou's masterly "Flowers of Shanghai" and fresh evidence of his status as Taiwan's greatest filmmaker.

Hoffman's acting is poignant and compassionate, etching a profoundly sad character with no trace of compromise, and Bates gives one of her most controlled performances ever.

Intelligent, revealing, and sometimes hilarious.

The performances of this quiet Iranian drama are utterly genuine, and the story is a delicate blend of slice-of-life realism and soft-spoken social commentary.

Harrowing, informative, conscientiously balanced documentary. [14 Jan 2005, p.14]

The movie's underlying theme is the complex relationship between objects and memories, worked out through a taut, compelling story and superbly understated acting. Ryuichi Sakamoto composed the atmospheric score.

Stands with the greatest science-fiction movies ever made.

Aniston and Reilly give the best of many excellent performances. A few plotty scenes aside, this quietly directed drama paints a sensitive, sympathetic portrait of modern malaise, and has a smart sense of humor as a bonus.

Berri lets the story develop in a leisurely and organic way, capping it with a last scene that's subtle and satisfying. Jean-Pierre Bacri is just right as the man and Emilie Dequenne is perfect as the maid.

Hearing her speak her finely honed mind in unscripted, un-"handled" terms is worth the price of admission in itself.

Masina gives one of her most expressive performances.

All told, he's (Linklater) one of today's most versatile American filmmakers, and Before Sunset finds his light shining as brightly as ever.

Thoughtful, exciting, moving.

The movie's main contribution is its fresh look at the Vietnam War, being refought in the Kerry-Bush presidential campaign at the time of the film's release.

Superb acting and authentic details energize this rare Iran/Iraq coproduction.

It's the year's cleverest comedy in more ways than one. The animated sequences are brilliant... Most important, the story also has dark overtones that lend a hint of seriousness to what could have been just silly. [24 June 1988]

Informative documentary about the recent history of efforts to legalize gay marriage, tying these in with the history of marriage as an institution.

Riveting and unique.

This highly challenging, deeply philosophical Iranian drama focuses on a man who has decided to end his life but first drives through the countryside in search of a compassionate stranger who'll agree to give him a proper burial. At once a compelling human story and an utterly fresh piece of moviemaking, the picture reconfirms Kiarostami's growing reputation as one of world film's most original talents. [20 March 1998, p.B2]

Its dark-toned cinematography by Henri Decaë still packs a wallop, and the screenplay has a refreshing sense of humor.

A fascinating nonfiction voyage into rural and urban France, focusing on idiosyncratic individuals who live off things the rest of us throw away, from food to furniture.

As stylish as it is suspenseful.

Surely the best fiction film ever made on a jazz subject.

Wong has acquired a loyal cult following over the years, and Dupont's exquisitely filmed episodes show why.

Charged with humanity and compassion.

Quiet, mysterious, sometimes violent, ultimately close to sublime.

In the hands of a lesser talent, this might have become a self-conscious stunt, but in Hitchcock's it has the tightly wound perfection of a flawless sonnet or sonata.

Stunningly acted. [21 September 1990, The Arts, p.12]

A quintessential New York director made this quintessential New York movie in 1973, with Pacino at his best.

Utterly unsentimental, deeply moving.

This thriller is ingeniously woven with motifs suggesting the difficulty of seeing and understanding truth, and substitutes psychological chills for commonplace gore.

Its leisurely, deliberative style is a perfect complement to the emotions it deals with - emotions so penetrating that I warn you at the outset how jarringly intense you may find Bergman's most brilliant drama in decades.

Illuminating, disturbing, evenhanded.

The film would be more informative if it put Goldsworthy into the broader context of modernist art movements. It's visually ravishing from start to finish, though.

Cary Elwes is marvelously funny as the hero. [25 Sept 1987]

Rigorous and riveting.

Wrenching on both personal and political levels.

Children may enjoy it, aside from the youngest, who might find it too weird for comfort. Its main audience is adults, though. And not just any adults, but those in the mood for venturesome fare that's both surreal and hilarious.

A walloping entertainment, brimming with the magic-realist action that made Ang Lee's somewhat similar "Couching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" a hit.

Rarely does a movie combine so much genuine human drama with such vivid exemplifications of "identity politics" and other sociocultural issues.

This is a sad and funny true-life tale that speaks volumes about the difficulties of independent filmmaking.

Superb performances from a nonprofessional cast. It's gripping, timely, and revealing.

Hurt gives an astonishingly sensitive and funny performance as the bedazzled intellectual, and first-time filmmaker Kwietniowski unfolds the story with an unfailing blend of humor and compassion.

Heart-pounding melodrama.

Ms. Denis is one of contemporary film's best stylists. Friday Night is part tone poem, part love song, and all pure magic.

Excellent acting, a stirring screenplay, and crisply intelligent directing make this fact-based movie a great human drama as well as a riveting and revealing look at crucially important social issues.

This territory is familiar if you remember the great BBC miniseries "Upstairs Downstairs," but Altman gives it a new twist with his restlessly roaming camera and incisively satirical approach. He's still near the peak of his powers.

This is the only film Laughton ever directed, and he packed it with a mixture of eerie chills, ingenious suspense, and absurdist humor. It's a genuine classic.

While it's not a great movie, it's a revealing study of how long it often takes for businesspeople to realize they're being freaked out, not flattered.

Makhmalbaf continues her rise as Iran's most promising young female filmmaker, and Iranian cinema extends its reign as one of the world's most exciting cultural phenomena.

This is an op-ed polemic, and it's refreshing to see one so skillfully produced by filmmakers with a shoestring budget and meager access to mainstream distribution. A must-see movie, no matter what your politics are.

Exhilarating doses of style, imagination, and sheer energy.

This modestly produced family drama has all the poignancy and humor associated with today's vibrant Iranian film industry.

Ingenious, eye-opening documentary.

The eerie tale is steeped in brooding atmosphere and psychological suspense thanks to Glazer's hugely imaginative visual style and creative use of music, sound, and silence.

The material is right up Schrader's alley, and while his vision of the first "Exorcist" chapter isn't a masterpiece, it's far superior to the Renny Harlin prequel to "The Exorcist" released last year.

Should be required viewing for every concerned citizen.

Noyce's movie pares away the novel's meditations on the futility of war and the importance of religion. It retains the book's thoughtful blending of psychological and moral issues.

A full-fledged masterpiece.

It's the best animated fun of the year, and you don't need a lamp or a genie to enjoy it.

The movie doesn't reach any deep insights, but its mixture of psychology, philosophy, and realpolitik is downright riveting.

A pungent, powerful film that points an accusing finger not at religious beliefs but at flawed human institutions. It also targets social and cultural mores that are almost medieval in their patriarchal bias against girls and women.

Cantet has rich insights into this material, and brings them alive through sensitive acting and powerful filmmaking.

It's unlikely there will ever be a more moving portrait of the shared selfhood, usually veiled by politics, common to the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.

Superb performances by Setsuko Hara and the great Chishu Ryu also contribute to the film's impact, which is at once deeply moving and profoundly thoughtful about moral and spiritual issues. [10 Nov 1994, p.12]

Intelligent yet easy-going masterpiece.

Lively characters, snappy dialogue, and snazzy visuals make this an uncommonly fine animation.

The latter element joins with Crudup's excellent acting to make this deliberately scruffy tale a worthwhile experience if you can handle its explicitly sordid subplots.

The acting is smart and gritty, Almereyda's visual style has a raw immediacy found in few films with Shakespearean pedigrees, and an eclectic music score adds atmosphere and surprise every step of the way.

It's never been topped.

An ingeniously scripted psychological thriller.

This is a riveting treatment of a fascinating subject.

Intimate and engaging.

Can a misguided adult start afresh with a new set of values and priorities? This ambitious drama, directed by one of France's most resourceful filmmakers, explores that crucial question in depth and detail.

Gentle, humanistic, delicious.

Yedaya's prizewinning debut film is acted and directed with uncommon psychological realism.

Results are illuminating, harrowing, and riveting.

Strange, scary, and atmospheric, with a delicious Claude Debussy score.

Visually sublime and intellectually dense, this is one of the extremely rare movies that prove cinema can be as complex and profound as the very greatest art works in any form.

The story has old-fashioned characters and situations, and Haas has sensibly filmed it in an old-fashioned way, stressing visual appeal rather than the story's sordid undertones. The acting is excellent, too.

Von Trier sets the action on a theatrical stage, spotlighting the existential isolation that weighs on people who don't seek larger visions of life, individuality, and community. Challenging, dramatic, provocative.

This thoughtful, troubling drama is leagues above the sensationalistic stuff Araki peddled in earlier films.

Piccoli gives one of the most nuanced performances of his distinguished career, but the primary star of the movie is de Oliveira, who unfolds the story with unfailing skill and sensitivity.

At the very least, look for it on 10-best lists next month, and there's every chance it will be a strong contender at the Oscars. Filmmaking so sensitive and intelligent deserves its weight in honors.

This is one of the rare movies to explore American materialism through the eyes of an all-too-ordinary person who isn't up to the challenges of everyday life.

Gripping, suspenseful, and spiced with fascinating information about the long history of chess between human and mechanical opponents.

One of Almodóvar's most challenging pictures, jumping around in time and sending a large gallery of characters through a wide variety of situations -- will find him again at the peak of his powers.

The acting is brilliant and Leigh's screenplay - developed through his usual process of improvisation and rehearsal - is very long on compassion, very short on preaching and politics.

There's much subtle beauty in the last movie completed by Merchant Ivory Productions before Merchant's untimely death.

Suspenseful and ingeniously directed.

Weir's offbeat directing makes the most of Andrew Niccol's inventive screenplay, which includes large doses of surprisingly sardonic satire aimed at today's entertainment trends.

This restraint of acting and filmmaking results in a story that's all the more powerful. While many films try to force the audience into laughing and crying in the right places, Au Revoir les enfants invites us simply to watch, think, and feel according to our own perceptions. The result is touching in a way no manipulative film could equal. [12 Feb 1988, p.21]

Lively documentary about McGovern's disastrous run for the US presidency. The interviews with him are worth the price of admission.

A mix of war film, road movie, and romantic comedy-drama, this peripatetic yarn is less resonant than Ghobadi's beautiful "A Time for Drunken Horses," but it has enough energy to keep your eyes popping and your toes tapping.

See it with an open heart and a tapping toe.

Thoughtful and reflective, it stands with the most exquisitely crafted films in recent memory, joining eloquently conceived images to an uncommonly literate screenplay. [17 Sept 1993, Arts, p.11]

Touching, transfixing, unique.

This delicious fable reflects Merchant's great love of language, his delicate visual sense, and his ability to make you think and laugh out loud, often at the very same time.

Made near the end of Buñuel's career, it's not his greatest movie, but it contains some of his most memorable moments.

Weerasethakul's latest has received mixed responses on the film-festival circuit, yet while it's anything but commercial, it's also anything but unadventurous.

This wry comedy drama has excellent acting and surprises galore.

A major treat for the eyes.

Extravagant and funny it is, and also quite dark at times.

Yang favors a gentle and introspective style that shows how deep and strong everyday emotions can run. A memorable treat.

Content and style dovetail superbly in this offbeat drama, where images continually change in size and shape, evoking the story's message that human experience is always a pathway, not a destination.

What makes the movie powerful is Timoner's decision to structure it via Taylor's perspective on his competitor, with no holds barred.

A hilarious and harrowing cautionary tale.

Tuneful, colorful, delightful.

Stillman brings his usual sharp wit to this exploration of upper-middle-class angst, completing the comic trilogy he began with "Metropolitan" and "Barcelona."

First and foremost a very funny film, and a very pleasant one that doesn't really have a villain. Credit for its hilarity goes largely to Black, who gives the performance of his career as a character who might have seemed merely coarse and crude in less gifted hands.

The latest installment is packed with surprises and emotion for people who've seen earlier stages of the project, but even newcomers will be fascinated by the vivid glimpses it provides of everything from love and family to political action and the pervasiveness of class distinctions in British life.

From its star-studded cast to its indelible camerawork by the legendary Giuseppe Rotunno, it's an unforgettable experience by a revered master of European cinema.

This sometimes harrowing, often delightful drama stands with his (Sembène) most compassionate, colorful, and artfully filmed works.

Look for realism, and you'll find The Cooler disappointing. Look for a far-fetched yarn that's as unpredictable as a throw of the dice, though, and you'll find it engaging fun.

What makes this small-scale drama so compelling is Pontecorvo's treatment of the main character.

There's a new visual idea every second, each teeming with energy, pitch-dark comedy, and inspired cinematic lunacy.

Movie-style romance may never look quite the same. Neither will flower petals.

A complicated story that demands your full attention; Mr. Gondry unfolds it at a mind-bending pace. This alone makes it a hugely refreshing respite from ordinary multiplex fare.

The director's cut of this 2001 cult fantasy is a deliriously subtle exploration of storytelling possibilities, and a deliciously wry teen-pic to boot. Brilliant.

A riveting movie.

Almereyda's movie is riveting for several reasons: its inside look at Shepard in action, its vivid account of how a challenging play is brought from printed page to public stage, and its glimpses of Shepard's troubled youth.

It's hugely ambitious, with a sweeping range of character types, frequently shifting moods, stylistic flourishes of many kinds, and some mighty wry satire, aimed largely at the world of psychotherapy.

A pungent pleasure from start to finish.

Most of the way this ranks with the Coens' most immaculately crafted work. Cain would have loved its dreamlike chills, and so will audiences nostalgic for the movies of half a century ago.

Funny, sad, and skeptical in about equal measures, it announces writer-director Dylan Kidd as a filmmaker with a bright future.

Tykwer's style gives the movie an explosive energy that never quits, marking him as the most ingenious new talent to hail from Germany in ages.

Absorbing.

The Secret of NIMH is exciting, engaging, and often magnificent to look at. Add it up, and you have what is probably the best cartoon since the bygone heyday of the Walt Disney studio.

What distinguishes Girl With a Pearl Earring is its combination of refined filmmaking and Johansson's exquisitely understated acting. It partakes of Vermeer's spirit and style, and that makes it one of the year's best movies.

In addition to its own merits as a social and cultural document, Broomfield's film continues the welcome trend of more and more nonfiction movies finding their way to theater screens and attracting wide general audiences.

This masterpiece of 1952 is one of the gentlest, subtlest tales from one of Japan's all-time-great filmmakers, combining the sweep of a novel with the intimacy of an elegy. [10 Jan 2003]

Enriched by allusions to biblical stories of fathers, sons, and sacrifices, subtly woven into the movie's moodily photographed fabric.

In the acting department, there's nobody on the current scene with more sheer talent --- or offbeat charisma -- than Philip Seymour Hoffman, in whose bearish body nestles the heart of a lithe and limber artist.

This is epic filmmaking on a profoundly human scale, directed to perfection and magnificently acted by everyone in sight.

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.