David Sterritt

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.

Smart and sumptuous.

One of the great Bertolucci's most acclaimed films...Trintignant gives a legendary performance.

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

The legendary Mifune leads a superb cast, and Kurosawa's kinetic camera keeps the adventure sizzling with energy and wit from start to finish.

This masterpiece of poetic realism features one of Gabin's most renowned performances, a smart subtext about French colonialism, and enough exotic atmosphere to keep your head in the clouds long after the final scene.

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.

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.

Less pretentious and more gripping than the overrated sequel, ''The Road Warrior,'' but viciously violent and awfully shallow.

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.

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.

Among the picture's many surprises is a superb robbery scene filmed in a near-total silence that contrasts exhilaratingly with the noisy flamboyance of more recent films in this venerable genre.

The ensemble acting is impressively in tune; and Michael Nyman's surging score adds an extra measure of emotional power.

Too intense for the youngest viewers, but teenagers will enjoy it -- an ill-smelling "stink-god" character is almost worthy of a Kevin Smith gross-out movie -- and grown-ups should find it diverting, if not exactly deep.

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

Wit, joy, imagination, and sensational mid-'60s music.

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]

Superbly acted, stunningly photographed, and edited with a rhythmic pungency that makes it irresistibly watchable even when the plot turns dark and scary.

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

True, traces of his bad habits show through at certain moments, especially near the end, when a long and lachrymose scene plunges into Spielgerian sentimentality of the gooiest kind. But before that unfortunate point, Schinder's List serves up three full hours of brilliant storytelling. That's as humane and compassionate as it is gripping and provocative. [15 Dec 1993]

The action is skillfully directed by Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, and there are many bursts of razor-sharp social satire. But the story amounts to a celebration of brute force in a crudely etched law-and-order context.

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

Without question, the bold Jeanne Dielman deserves to be seen by those curious about new directions in cinema or about the vigorous Belgian film scene of which Akerman is an important member. But it's a long shot that so challenging and demanding a work will have much widespread appeal. [31 Mar 1983, p.17]

The film may be too talky for action-minded viewers and too fantastic for more serious spectators, but it brings appealing twists - including a feminist sensibility - to the venerable martial-arts genre.

Slow, beautifully filmed, Nolte's Jefferson implausible.

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

Add a lot of dull acting -- except Sir Ian McKellen and Andy Serkis -- and you have an uneven movie with yawns aplenty.

A plan for a perfect murder goes wildly wrong in this 1958 melodrama by one of France's great filmmakers.