Desson Thomson

The movie's a treasure of small gems.

A helter-skelter ride of the soul, an unblinking, white-knuckle crash landing into the mushy mysteries of the subconscious.

Grim, yes, and great viewing.

This story doesn't just belong to them anymore. This richly observed, sometimes heartbreaking movie has become ours, too.

To watch this movie is to be moved not only by an affecting, warmly spirited yarn, but also by the wisdom that seems to waft to us directly from those snow-capped peaks.

Huppert and Greggory provide the emotional impact. They respond accordingly, imbuing their mutual suffering with an exacting and moving finesse.

Barry's deliberately unspectacular performance makes this even more powerful. He gives "Assassin" a disquieting authority.

It's as much fun to anticipate what he's (Herzog) going to say as it is to appreciate the snowy landscapes, belching volcanoes and mustachioed seals before his lens. And what could have been a conventional travelogue becomes a sort of ruminative odyssey of the mind.

It is stylistically breezy but deeply sincere, as Tickell offers a thoughtful, well-researched argument for alternative energy.

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.

Fascinating facts and testimony.

There are scenes that simply ask the audience to drink in the details, to enjoy the repast, just as much as follow the plot.

Takes unabashed delight in itself and its own culture.

Miller time for the funny bone.

Tautou is a delight, as always, using her bubbly personality to comic advantage. And Elmaleh makes for a sort of poor man's Buster Keaton, perpetually stressed but refusing to surrender, no matter how much damage he sustains to himself or his wallet.

It is a snapshot of a great actor in his prime and a chance for us to see one of yesteryear's great films in all its kingly luster.

Shaolin Soccer is "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" with soccer balls, a touch of Sergio Leone and not one microsecond of seriousness.

May just be the best in its genre… Entertainment and radical street preaching, all rolled into one. If it tells black kids not to try this at home, it also revels cinematically in blam-blam-you're-dead. This is what makes the movie maddening -- and what gives it strength.

The movie, which suggests a combination of "Wait Until Dark" and "Rear Window," not only takes your breath away on an aesthetic level, it eloquently evokes the mother's and daughter's vulnerability.

Relentlessly funny satire.

Makes a virtue of its own simplicity. But don't be fooled. That simplicity is mere cover. You're kept wondering about the outcome until the very end.

It's not art, but it's fun artfully done. And as long as you're paying less than the price of a cheapo motel for the night, it's worth checking into.

Wedding has enough coincidences, screamfests, drunken rants and shock revelations to fill a season of "Desperate Housewives," but it comes across as finely textured drama, thanks to the performers, who make their characters so persuasive and three-dimensional, we're too mesmerized to care about the story's more overwrought or histrionic passages.

There isn't a dull or dumb moment in this movie.

Writer-director Niccol (who wrote and directed "Gattaca" and scripted "The Truman Show") uses disarming, but wicked lightness to damn the celebrity-worshiping culture and Hollywood's beyond-the-looking-glass filmmaking.

You're drawn in, like it or not. You can't get away from the immediacy. Or the feeling that you're getting sucked in, too.

The movie is given unusually wide dimension by director Taylor Hackford, who creates a subtly scary drama that emphasizes character over caricature (in most cases) and plausibility over formulaic stupidity (again, in most cases).

Bacon's subtle, assured performance keeps us with him every step of the way.

The gals are fab. And so's the movie.

Far richer than you'd ever think possible.

The movie's wonderfully original, fast-moving and funny.

Odd, complex and charming.

That the actor performs so effortlessly, so casually, is the real magic here. You forget about technique, and, best of all, you forget you're watching a black-and-white subtitled French movie from the dusty past.

In the end, the movie works because Grant and Roberts are disarming geniuses at playing themselves -- and then some.

Though the story line seems grim at times, it's always made lighter by Brodsky's gentle, often hilarious presence.

The most cinematic of the three films. It tells its story in stark, often wordless scenes.

Although we miss some of the finer details that made Jhumpa Lahiri's 2003 book so meaningful, we're moved by the movie's themes of cultural displacement and the power of chance.

Intense and absorbing experience.

Thanks to the new guerrilla narrative, the world has a constant flow of images to file in its collective consciousness. And that camera-testable accountability slowly becomes a global civic right that fulfills the noblest purpose of journalism -- to bring truth to power.

The story, which deals straightforwardly with racism, miscegenation, adultery and consumerism, is a fascinating combination: a movie with an almost Capraesque heart and pristine, almost stagey lighting schemes, that addresses uncomfortable moral issues with today's perspectives.

Hums with compassion for its outlandish, lonely but always sweet characters.

This is a captivating experience.

The images are crisp. The story is restored. And there's no sign of Raymond Burr.

As they stumble, bumble and fumble their way to love, they get more charming by the minute. Which makes them more interesting than Hollywood-style characters, anyway.

A devilishly, hysterically, cacklingly, subversively funny picture that builds and builds until it literally self-destructs.

You will surely leave this movie shocked, shaken and surprisingly moved. And definitely stuck on that poor octopus.

It's not the deepest thematic concern you ever saw on screen. But it's watchable, great fun.

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

No matter what's coming their way, post-apocalyptic doom or gloom, this James Gang of the galaxy is just plain fun to watch.

I had to beg my 8-year-old to stop laughing.

In a sense, Shattered Glass is a parenthetical horror movie in which someone discovers (or worse, denies) the monster within themselves.

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

It's great to watch characters in The War Room operating as most of us do -- by the seat of their pants.

Surrender and enjoy the spectacle.

All in all, this is a celebration of Australian exuberance, a national ethic of adventurousness and enormous charisma.

This is Disney at its live-action best and brightest.

Whatever its ultimate position on the greatest hits list, Monsters, Inc. is supple and technologically sophisticated entertainment.

It'll keep you amused enough to sit still and even remember it fondly.

Vietnam will do well on the strength of Williams' performance: He's Groucho in 'Nam, with his rapid-fire quips and cast of imaginary guests. But when it's time to mourn Cronauer's departure, after a final softball game with the locals and a farewell to buddies-in-arms, there isn't a wet eye in the house. [15 Jan 1988, p.N31]

The cliches are obscured by the sheer fun of it all.

The movie's a gas. Very funny, to a rather dark degree.

Apart from moments of conventional schlock (the ending included), "Serpent" twists with expertly drawn menace. The editing's snappy, the images visceral, and Craven's Haiti is a craze of blood ceremonies and political rioting -- it's set during the fall of "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

Belgian actor [Jan] Decleir's tough-guy vulnerability ... gives an otherwise standard police procedural extraordinary grace and power.