Desson Thomson

It's his best work by far.

John Boorman's childhood and the London Blitz happened to coincide. Which is great for the movie Hope and Glory, because he turns both events into exquisite myth.

If you want to sample the sheer bouquet of great acting, you could get drunk on this movie.

Kidman grabs center stage and never relinquishes the position. Playing mercilessly against her pinup girl image, she's an unforgettable, comic archetype—a more slapsticky corollary to William Hurt's bumbling, handsome newscaster in "Broadcast News."

Nobody's Fool is so eloquently straightforward, it practically sings to the soul. A story about very real people caught in the everyday woes and worries of a small Upstate New York town, it shows the kind of character traits, tics and from-the-heart chatter you wish there was more of in the movies.

Works best when it concentrates on O'Grady and the ever-rippling effect of his transgressions. Viewers may not remember the victims whose stories practically pierce the heart, but they're unlikely to forget O'Grady's deceptively innocent face.

Sinfully watchable ensemble movie.

Demy, his cinematographer Jean Rabier and production designer Bernard Evein created an operatic masterpiece of romanticism, which makes a modest but effective antidote to the harsh era of cynicism that has pervaded world cinema ever since.

If Frears and screenwriter Donald E. Westlake (who scripted "The Stepfather") are light on substance, they're satisfyingly heavy on nuance. Grifters may not blow you away afterward but it keeps your attention riveted during.

For all the When Irish Eyes Are Smiling's and Love Is a Many Splendored Thing's filling the soundtrack, Voices never engages more than your eyes and ears. It leaves you out in the cold and vaguely wondering, Is the entire British nation depressed?

In a sense, this is a horror film, worse than anything Andy Kaufman could dream up, in which Green tries to outgross himself.

There's a good chance you're going to enjoy Aladdin more than the children.

This Is England, set in the social dystopia of Margaret Thatcher's Great Britain, gives us something far more humane and complex than a culturally specific memoir about Doc Martens shoes, reggae music and mindless aggression.

A rare commodity. It's brilliant and a guilty pleasure. A subtle damning of things Hollywood, Robert Altman's seriocomedy slices its target with a thousand, imperceptible razor cuts.

A smart, restrained entertainment, it doesn't splash around in blood and hysteria. It doesn't have to.

A spirited attempt at modern film noir, and huge parts of it are enjoyable.

A smart cartoon about the life of the mind. It's about the fuzzy border between dreaming and living. It's thoughtful, provocative, liberating and fun.

A humanistic gem of a movie, with unforgettable performances from Linney and Ruffalo.

Polanski, himself a survivor of Nazi-occupied Poland, has created a near-masterpiece.

Odd, complex and charming.

Takes you down paths full of primitive, almost biblical implications, but it also finds comic relief in moments of palpable tension.

Truly a movie for world audiences with a message that's devastatingly subtle.

A thoroughly enjoyable entertainment that should play just about everybody's strings right. Kloves proves to be quite a plucker.

A well-orchestrated nightmare that keeps you on edge until the very end.

It is a movie about the real challenge of heroism.

What gives About Schmidt its ultimate boost, what pushes it into the stirring heavens is Nicholson, who produces the most understated -– and one of the most powerful –- performances of his career.

You can feel the movie's sensibility and its powerful emotions in every aching image, which leaves you so caught up in these ancient times, you're loath to return to present-day normalcy.

Director Demme is smart and sensitive enough to sit back and listen to the music without attention-getting intrusions. The tunes are subtly compelling.

The film's not only funny and weird, it's oddly poignant. I miss Hedwig already.

Exults in the hard-riding romanticism of classic Westerns, but it takes revisionist stock too. It dismounts at places usually left in the dust -- the oppressed lot of women, the loneliness of untended children, adult illiteracy and the horrible last moments of the dying.

We're only a little spooked, only a little amused and, by extension, only a little entertained.

Tarkovsky pulls you into a dark, foreboding nightmare and Nykvist gives that nightmare an explosive awakening.

This is 90-proof, single-malt stuff. You sip it neat and you don't handle heavy machinery afterward. This movie will stay with you long after you've seen it, thanks to Thewlis's performance, Leigh's direction, Andrew Dickson's haunting bass-and-harp soundtrack, cinematographer Dick Pope's indelible images -- and the unalloyed, naked conviction of it all.

You emerge from this experience rather like a returning U-boat crewman -- drained, blinking in the light, but oddly triumphant. [Director's cut]

A memorable and devastating indictment of the oppression facing many women in Iran.

Famed script doctor Tom Mankiewicz, in his directorial debut, creates the required breakneck car chases, stunt tumbles, major crowd scenes and SWAT gunfire around Aykroyd and Hanks. We're essentially watching 48 Hours or Beverly Hills Cop, only with different funny people. Plus the script is a gold mine of one-liners penned by Aykroyd, Mankiewicz and ex-Saturday Night Live writer Alan Zweibel.

Everything has a Chaplinesque feeling, from the largely silent scenes to the highly visual, tragicomic situations...But The Man Without a Past is entirely free of the tramp's cloying sentimentality.

For the first time in ages, it seems, there's something in an Allen movie to take home with you. I'm convinced, for instance, my wife will eventually leave me for Liam Neeson.

Like Cheung's ethereally plaintive voice, the movie is a siren song that's appealing at first, but held too long. It becomes an increasing whine.

Has a refreshingly keen ability to see everything from multiple angles.

The more you watch, the more you are committing yourself to watching "56 Up" and beyond.

Gives refreshing -- and bittersweet -- dimension to the age-old clash between generations.

The movie, which is based on the Lowell Cunningham comic book series, throws out some wonderful implications, but they’re frustratingly few and far between.

Hilarious, painful and brutally frank.

This movie is great in any version...I don't miss what has been cut from the new version. The overall effect is so beautifully wrought, a few details aren't going to bring things crashing down.

Three sterling performances from Moore, Haysbert and Quaid, all of whom grapple with psychic pain in different, touching ways.

A well-mounted, macabre seriocomedy with passing punchlines. And for about half the movie, it's compelling stuff.

Maintains its artistic magnificence after more than 30 years.

Just a few guilty laughs, a predictable resolution and repeated close-ups of that dog jerking its head to one side, doing the cute thing.

I love the movie's originality, its sense of macabre humor, its resourcefulness, and the great Walsh, whose memorable narration kicks off the movie.

The movie, written and directed by Jeremy Leven, may not be one for the ages, but it's a pleasant, involving experience that intermixes fairy-tale romance with modern, deadpan comedy.

In the Name of the Father is as good a compromise of fact and fiction as you could hope for -- and still call it a movie.

This all makes for a deeply entertaining experience that engages our hearts as well as our funny bones. And it's gratifying to see Cruz finally get her due.

Lee, who made the upbeat "Eat Drink Man Woman," plays this double love story as brightly as possible. There's peppy social satire in the smallest of gestures.

The compositions are masterful, especially the snow-covered scenes in Istanbul and, most memorably, the spectacle of an overturned ship in the wintry harbor.

A movie that appeals to the eye, mind, heart and funny bone; that's a pretty good quadruple for any movie.

There is a clear festive buzz, as attendees laugh, bob and listen to Chappelle's impish, inventive comedy, and some of the best music hip-hop has to offer.

Thanks to Caine's subtly nuanced performance, there's a deeper dimension to everything. He's snappily ironic at times, sometimes amazingly delicate, always engaging.

Eastwood's elegantly directed Mystic River, a deeply textured drama in which the sins (or perceived sins) of the past weigh heavily on the present.

There is no evidence of life outside the immediate world of the movie.

This is a one-riff movie and instant cult classic.

Brings kinetic, stylistic and even sexy dimension to the Bram Stoker legend.

The movie, a frenetic, explosive experience full of car crashes and gun battles, is original and exhilarating. But more often, it's so overwhelming, it'll make you want to watch "Die Hard With a Vengeance" for peace and quiet.

A museum piece, something to be enjoyed for its historical value. [2000 re-release]

May not be the first movie to examine the creative process. But it's the most playfully brilliant.

Stephen Frear's The Snapper hits the spot nicely, if your spot likes hearty rounds of working-class comedy.

The story, such as it is, follows Renton's inconsistent attempts to kick his habit.

It scores its comic points with dire one-liners, an astringent dearth of sentimentality and only-in-America developments.

Revenge was supposed to be the one that really socked it to us, about Anakin's almost biblical fall from grace. But the movie never rises to its powerful occasion.

It's not every day that movies present a Teutonic character in SS uniform as an unambiguously moral hero, so enjoy this rarity. And the film.

By the end, you realize you've seen an extraordinary movie, easily one of the best of the year.

Anguish ranges from gritty and realistic to the tragicomic soap opera found in Pedro Almodovar's films.

Although it's a drama, Osama feels like urgent documentary.

The trouble is, this is Hartley all over again. What seemed cutting edge and sharp in the 1990s -- the smart-alecky references to obscure filmmakers (Werner Herzog, Andrei Konchalovsky), the self-mocking tone in the actors' voices, the overall sense that this movie is subverting itself -- feels rehashed and old.

Forgettable the instant it strafes your retinas.

If you don't like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, have your pulse checked... You'll forget yourself right through to the end when Porky Pig, dressed as a cop, says "M-move along, there's n-nothing more to s-see folks." [24 June 1988]

Succeeds where 100 studio-generated teen romances -- starring the bland, the blunt or the blow-dried -- have failed.

This movie, directed with precision and an appreciation for (relatively) rich character texture by Sam Raimi, remembers all the fine elements of the original film (and the comic book story). It reprises them perfectly, including wonderfully choreographed, skyscraper-hanging fights.

Rush is too sinfully good for the drama he's in.

Every moment of the way, there is a delectable sense of subtle menace and, at the center of it all, Huppert's haunting expression, part sphinx, part grace and maybe part scary.

Lilya's struggle to make a life for herself is both heartbreaking and heart-stirring.

In many ways, watching the movie is BETTER than concertgoing. We can enjoy that buzzy feeling of community without the fist-pumping biker obscuring our view.

A hilarious fantasy, about a plucky piglet that learns how to tend sheep, Babe is a barnyard charmer.

Few movies have evoked the happiness of a good, strong family as genuinely as this one. And this affecting atmosphere makes the eventual outcome resonate with great power.

Mullan's movie is admiringly uncompromising. He refuses to augment the horrors with relief.

Cronenberg's deeper purpose is to pull audiences into an affecting, powerful story about right and wrong.

The satire of the season, a hilarious, razor-sharp indictment of the American Dream.

You're exhilarated from beginning to end.

As exciting for its narrative twists and turns as for its Korean textures and rhythms.

A galactic slump of a movie that stuffs its travel bag with special effects but forgets to pack the charm.

What keeps the film (adapted from the late John O'Brien's harrowing semi-autobiographical book) from being completely unbearable are the extraordinary performances.

Director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi take a deeper, edifying interest in the moral ambiguities that arise between Maurice and Jessie. And thanks to our warm investment in both characters, we're more than willing to sign up for this existential ride. We allow this relationship -- and the movie -- to take us places we'd never usually go.

A gently stirring symphony about emotional transition filled with lovely musical passages and softly nuanced performances.

Flirting With Disaster, like that Energizer Bunny, keeps on going. But in this case, the perpetual motion is a deliciously hysterical rush.

Watch this film. You may never look at nature indifferently again.

Speaking of jail, "Shawshank"-the-movie seems to last about half a life sentence. The story, chiefly about the 20-year friendship between Freeman and Robbins, becomes incarcerated in its own labyrinthine sentimentality.

A sobering reflection on our culture's attitude toward violence.

Maddin keeps what could have been a one-joke theme interesting for an admirably long time. But eventually, it becomes, well, hard to breathe. There's something wonderfully unique about the project but the reasons for doing it remain buried.