Desson Thomson

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

Passionate, literally shimmering movie.

This is a fully realized movie, whose intelligence -- despite its grim findings -- dwarfs any Hollywood production.

Franklin's picture is effortlessly wise beneath its entertaining surface.

Surprisingly powerful and universal: the search for meaning and small blessings in the face of life's utter randomness.

Kidd, a first-time writer and director, has created a sophisticated but intriguingly toxic comedy of manners.

It's his best work by far.

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

A movie for almost everyone, from boomer parents (who remember their teens and twenties) to their teenage kids (who can't wait to get started with same). And if there's anyone who can bring so many into the same mosh pit, it's Black, who so occupies the role you can't believe he's acting.

Contains about 10 additional minutes and is as fabulous and enjoyable as ever. To be honest, I didn't even notice the new material, having not seen the original film since its 2001 release. I just saw a film that works beautifully and has held together well.

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

Suddenly, you're looking at life in his (Thornton's) jaundiced way and laughing with a sense of vicarious liberation, even when he says the most outrageous things -- to children, no less. And I daresay you can still recover your holiday spirit when you're through laughing.

Childishly simple, but extremely funny.

When you're in the hands of the Coen brothers, you're in for sheer originality.

Inspired, sublime fun.

Once again, Frears -- who has enjoyed a glorious run of diverse, good-quality movies, from "My Beautiful Laundrette" to "High Fidelity" -- has crafted a unique gem.

Theron has rendered herself 100 percent unrecognizable. Not since Robert De Niro morphed into hulk dimensions to play heavyweight boxer Jake La Motta in "Raging Bull" has there been a transformation this powerful and effective.

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

Spy movies just got thrilling again.

As Morvern, Morton is disconcertingly enigmatic, often bordering on catatonic. But she carries the movie effortlessly. And even though we're on the outside looking in, she carries us along, too.

Raimi offers all the fantasy, camp and hardcore horror you devoured in the comics. You can feel the pen-and-ink drawings coming to life. Dipping wittily into myth, the macabre and the modern, it's an effervescent adventure that's as amusing as it is genuinely gripping. [19 Feb 1993, Weekend, p.n38]

Pure energy, a perfect orchestration of heroism, villainy, suspense and comic relief.

A darkly enjoyable roller-coaster ride -- Clooney and Kaufman deftly interweave the macabre with lightheartedness.

Yes, it's that cheesy, but it's also surprisingly appealing. After all, the horse Seabiscuit really WAS that phenomenal.

For those who accept Potter's premise -- and why not embark on a challenging, enriching experience? -- this is a unique, bold adventure of the soul.

This is about the rise of a pop star, plain and simple. The real deal –- and the movie's greatest fun –- is in the rap contests.

As in Chaplin's films, humor and tragedy dance a wonderful tango throughout the movie. Baran is heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes apart, sometimes together.

If the scope of the film feels small, Girl With a Pearl Earring fills that scope to bursting with subtle glory. It takes things as far as they can -- and should -- go.

Guilty, deftly orchestrated fun.

Director Van Sant, who made the lyrical "Mala Noche," "Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho," returns to his favorite hunting ground -- the subworlds of grimy, poetic lost boys -- and pulls us right in

Reconfirms Tarantino's status as the master of pop cinema and puts a sense of excitement into the year. He has matched, if not eclipsed, the power and scope of 1994's "Pulp Fiction," though not its human charm.

A great movie, easily the most brilliant of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series. It’s witty, smart, funny, entertaining, and you’ll still like yourself in the morning for watching it.

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

Batman Begins emerges from the darkness and leaves a powerful, lasting impression.

Never has an actor embodied the passing down of violence and bitterness from father to son more powerfully.

A chalice of unpretentious delight, flowing over with goodwill, a cheeky love for soccer and, uh, Buddhist humor.

So wonderfully antiquated, so blissfully free of postmodern cleverness.

A three-ring circus of visual pleasure, showing us the beauty of Korean garment, custom and national character.

It's simple, sizzly and very funny.

This digitally animated movie, filled with a cast of charming, funny critters from long ago, is family entertainment at its most bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

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

Though it might lack in Hollywood production values, it overflows with moral impact.

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

Mamet's graceful, reverent movie adaptation moves along with a deliberating, almost hypnotic flow, strengthened by impeccable, dignified performances from Nigel Hawthorne, Rebecca Pidgeon and others.

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.

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

Thanks to strong performances from all, particularly Mount and Nicholson, we're with this story all the way.

McNamara fits perfectly into Morris's canon: He tells a story that knocks you right off your feet.

Lee's finest, most unabashed labor of love.

This is the Mickey Mouse factory at its finest, with inventive animation, stirring music and a pride of inspired, almost-human animals.

Rushmore is an almost indefinable genre of its own. A comedy with a menacing edge? An ironic romance? Hard to call.

A 160 minute work of sustained brilliance and delicacy.

The Krays is a foreboding, riveting metaphor about human monsters and the monstrosities of criminal life. It's one of the most original films of the year.

Evokes its spirituality with deft strokes and wonderful humor.

What's best about Faithless is its honesty, its lack of desire to ingratiate itself with the audience.

So unassuming and pure of heart, you can't help but warmly extend your arms and yell "Safe!"

Grabbing every backstage musical cliche by the lapels, it sends each one pirouetting, then sprawling hysterically across the floor. It's hard not to love this kind of tribute.

Dogme 95 at its best: open-ended and exciting, with a grand sense of experimentation.

It is quietly observant, with a detached eye for the telling moment, and the visual compositions are often exquisite.

What songs, what people and what a triumph that their music won in the end.

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.

This film explores what low-budget films do best: the quirkiness of character, and slightly off-kilter comedy.

Soderbergh and screenwriter Coleman Hough aren't interested in creating a coy whodunit so much as evoking the deeper, less romantic mysteries of people -- and it's riveting.

In this admirably unconventional film, director Paul Schrader is interested in just about everything BUT traditional biopic business.

More juvenile than a Mel Brooks movie, wittier than "Get Smart," almost as low as "Animal House" and close to the laugh count of "Airplane!", "Gun" is a loving parody of every cop show that ever syndicated its way to your living room. [2 Dec 1988]

What's so powerful about the film is the rich stories it tells and how it leads them like so many human tributaries to one black, bubbling source.

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.

An understated, hypnotic stroke of brilliance.