Desmond Ryan

Hirokazu Kore-eda's After Life is a minimalist, mesmerizing allegory set in a limbo. It is not a memorial to the dead but an extraordinary consideration of what memories mean to the living. [11 June 1999, p.12]

La Promesse is a compelling look at issues that - in a world where ethnic frictions grow more tense, even as national boundaries disappear - really are universal.

The way that power and wealth corrupt the spirit is a recurring theme in Huston's work, and it is served up here in a hugely entertaining fashion. [17 Mar 1995, p.11]

Underlines the nightmare of entrapment so vividly captured in The Day I Became a Woman.

The film treats the ensuing issues of conscience and compromise with subtlety and warmth.

If you enjoy visuals with substance as well as flash, look no further than this exuberant movie.

A powerful and moving contribution to the cinema of the Holocaust.

If you've had enough of the loony tunes coming from Florida, this piece of absurdist serio-comedy is the perfect picture.

Glazer has a daring sense of story structure that ratchets up the suspense, and his sense for sardonic black comedy is unerring.

It deserves to be more widely seen as a quite definitive exercise in mob psychology. [17 Apr 1998, p.16]

Visually brilliant and thought-provoking.

Scrupulously made and deeply affectionate.

A film that returns the director to the blunt and cutting honesty, pungent observation, and sharply targeted humor that made him so appealing in the first place. [16 Oct 1996, p.D01]

The accomplishment of The Eel is to be both sardonic and compassionate - often at the same time. [23 Oct 1998, p.16]

The Lady Vanishes brings out Hitchcock's macabre wit and sardonic view of mankind in a light mystery starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave.[10 May 2003, p.E01]

A classic of subversive surrealism.

Refreshingly gritty and hard-nosed.

If Emmerich had any sense, he would have ceded the direction of the battle scenes to his star.

Honest, sensitive and keenly observant.

Attenborough's underrated 1977 epic A Bridge Too Far fashioned an antiwar statement from the foolhardiness that stranded 35,000 paratroopers behind German lines in an attempt to take key bridges. [02 Feb 2002, p.C01]

A rewarding exploration of the knotty and often contentious relationship between teacher and protege.

Davis, with a nicely turned and witty screenplay from Bucatinsky, freshens up the familiar predicament by having her two lovers recount the affair to a stranger.

As an exploration of a man who really did take the road less traveled, the film is fascinating.

There is one scene in The Legend of 1900 that is easily worth the price of admission. It finds the ship heeling in an Atlantic storm. In the ballroom Roth plays the piano as it moves and slides in an eerie waltz around the floor.

Gunnarsson crams his movie with subplots from the novel and then abandons them for lack of room but Seth calibrates the stages of Gustad's journey with infallible judgement and conviction.

In theme and technique, it pushes the boundaries of animation and opens up new and imaginative possibilities.

A comedy of the old school. Depending on your view of the current state of screen humor, that's either a promise or a warning.

Little gem of a movie.