Desson Thomson

Isn't just a fabulous seagoing spectacle. It's one for the ages.

Manchurian, with its fatalistic, dreamlike quality, comprises two of [Frankenheimer's] finest hours. [Re-release]

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.

As rich and fun as it was in post-Depression 1937 -- yes, 1937. And the seven dwarfs (Doc, Happy, Sneezy, Sleepy, Bashful, Grumpy and Dopey) are every bit as charming as they "Hi-ho" to work at the diamond mine.

The movie equivalent of a great read. It's a masterfully conducted concert of characters...already head and shoulders above most of the competition.

You're exhilarated from beginning to end.

An extraordinary film ... that's impossible to dismiss or leave unmoved.

As viscerally compelling as smash-mouth filmmaking gets.

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

Magnificently nonchalant about its magic.

Its themes of passion, heartbreak and the inexorable passage of time are eternal.

One of the most pleasurable movies of the year.

An extraordinarily riveting drama.

Watching this masterwork allows you to return to the filmmaking sensibility of the 1960s, when epics looked like epics.

The most eloquent and exacting vision of the war to date... Inspired with technique rather than overblown with it, Kubrick, the filmmaker's filmmaker, lays one on you.

A story that rips fleshy holes through your heart.

Something to treasure: a thriller whose style, structure and rhythms are so integrated with the story, you cannot separate them.

A sequel that eclipses the original. The toys are back with even more hilarious vengeance. The story's twice as inventive as its predecessor.

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

To watch "Lives" is not just to enjoy a fabulously constructed timepiece; it's to appreciate a deft cautionary tale.

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

A small masterpiece of a documentary that takes us into the heart of a complex darkness.

Keeper is nonfiction in name only. Unabashedly subjective and dramaturgically conscious, it squeezes reality until the drama collects. Luckily for filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, this reality was juicy stuff.

It's one of the most powerful films of the year.

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]

His (Tarkovsky's) pictures, and his sounds -- such as the symphonic drip of raindrops in a wooded pond -- tell more than just the immediate story; they rejuvenate the mind.

A great American picture, full of incredible images and lasting moments.

You believe in everything.

The Piano plays itself with such contrapuntal richness, it resonates in you forever.

The best heist flick since "The Usual Suspects," a perfect 10 of a movie.

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.

One of Martin Scorsese's most brutal but stunning movies, an incredible, relentless experience about the singleminded pursuit of crime.

Its mixture of wisdom and whimsy -- exemplified by the movie's unnamed and occasionally cheeky narrator -- makes this Australian movie feel as timeless as it is timely. And instead of feeling dutifully cultural as we immerse ourselves in this story, we're genuinely intrigued, touched and even amused.

It's easily the best and brightest family-friendly movie of the year.

The title may be a mouthful but Like Water for Chocolate is a feast for the soul. Hauntingly and exquisitely prepared, this Mexican adult fairy tale is garnished with mystery and wonder.

The result is one of Almodovar's darkest films since the early days of "Law of Desire" and "Matador," and certainly one of his finest.

One of the most startling, grittily brilliant films in recent years.

Awash in heart-rending emotions and gorgeous images, this is a movie to lose yourself in.

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.

Through this miasma of pain and suffering, love may not flicker more strongly than a dim lamp. But it's the only beacon to consider. Can Barry find his? Thanks to Anderson's assured picture, a symphony of cinematic textures, that disarmingly simple question becomes incredibly compelling.

Not since the 1972 'Cabaret' has there been a movie musical this stirring, intelligent and exciting.

This movie is not only a thrilling experience, it closes the book on a truly satisfying trilogy.

The list of great moments is virtually endless.

Instead of "Masterpiece Theatre"-style fawning, [Scorsese] fills this movie with visual flow, masterful cinematography and assured direction. There's an alert, thinking presence behind the camera.

British director Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, treats the ugliest content imaginable in the most beautiful way possible. Give or take another masterpiece coming down the pike, this intricately assembled, viscerally provocative tract on consumerism gone full and grisly circle, is without a doubt, the most accomplished, astounding film of the year.

Brilliant and brutal, funny and exhilarating, jaw-droppingly cruel and disarmingly sweet...To watch this movie (whose 2 1/2 hours speed by unnoticed) is to experience a near-assault of creativity.

Simple, yet quietly astonishing film.

No matter how you come down on this movie politically, Dogville is a compelling chamber piece with constant cinematic surprises. And you remember that von Trier is, above everything else, a consummate filmmaker.

This brilliant combination of stop-motion animation, three-dimensional sets and superbly imaginative graphics, brings animation to new peaks. Burton, whose inventive, delightfully haunted mind put so much zest into "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," "Beetlejuice," "Batman" and "Edward Scissorhands," has done it again.

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.

Rules would have been just another good movie if not for its masterly visual design. With it, however, the black-and-white film enters the realm of immortality.

On one level, Yi Yi is classic soap opera, with a suicide attempt, a wedding ceremony, even a brutal 11 o'clock news murder, all in the mix. But Yang's direction is so admirably restrained, it lends rich heft to everything.

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

Moolaade, in short, is a movie to rock the soul.

Fabulously kinetic.

Directed by Irwin Winkler, the movie's constantly full of big, all-engrossing moments. The performances -- minor and major -- are all superb, from Warden's hard-as-nails boxer to Lange's serene Helen. As De Niro's secret and devoted partner, with business-building dreams of her own, she exudes a graceful, happy-hour serenity.

Wings is a soaring vision that appeals to the senses and the spirit. (Review of Original Release)

The sexiest movie of the year.

It's a great pleasure that -- we get to ponder one of the most involving psychological mysteries in recent memory.

Thanks to two delightful performers, you're drawn powerfully to the outcome.

Dramatically, this is something of a waking dream.

For those who enjoy cinematic visits to other, darker worlds, this blood's for you. Watching Ringers is not unlike watching a critical operation -- unnerving but also enthralling. [23 Sept 1988]

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

[The children's] remarkable lack of self-consciousness ... and Kore-eda's quasi-documentary style give this movie a stunning credibility.

A movie with the visual expanse of a John Ford western and the ensemble grandeur and long takes of a Robert Altman picture. The movie is definitely Chinese in content, but it exudes American style and spirit.

If 8½ seems stuck in the early 1960s, it's only superficially so. Somehow, the movie is more than the dated crisis of a naval-contemplating artist. It's about the inability in all of us to make sense of our lives, put it all together and come up with something meaningful.

A great little film, dignified by a superb performance, Diamond Men is a gem.

There are so many things to enjoy here.

Maintains its artistic magnificence after more than 30 years.

There are so many good things to say about this film it's hard to find a statement that really nails it. Perhaps we can leave at this: Y Tu Mama Tambien is originality writ large.

In a harmonic convergence of narrative, cinematic expertise and performance, Nelson’s chilled expression—and this movie—will stay with you like a closely held, personal memory.

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.

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."

Doesn't need the passage of time to become a classic. It's one already.

It hasn't aged so much as triumphantly metastasized. [20th Anniversary Release]

The visual comedy is brilliant.

Hilarious…The joy of Beetlejuice is its completely bizarre -- but perfectly realized -- view of the world, a la Gary Larson's "The Far Side," or "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." [1 Apr 1988]

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.

This movie -- which is equally appealing to children (those of adventurous, non-freak-outable spirit), Japanese animation (anime) fans, and any surviving acquaintances of Timothy Leary -- is so full of invention, you might want to take a breather now and then.

Exquisitely textured film.

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

Has to be one of the must-see films for any student of Hollywood fame and infamy.

A great picture, 113 minutes of stirring stuff, set to the ironic lilt of Jean "Toots" Thielemans's harmonica and Harry Nilsson's theme tune, "Everybody's Talkin'."

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

Kryzstof Kieslowski's White...is a continuing testament to the Polish director's poetic mastery. Like all of Kieslowski's works, White articulates a whole language of sensations, images, ironies and mystery -- often with a minimum of dialogue. But it is no rarefied, abstract exercise. The movie...aches with human dimension.

More like a waking nightmare than a docudrama. A true story of murder and justice evidently miscarried, wrapped in the fictional haze of a surrealistic whodunit, it will leave you in a trance for days. [2 Sept 1988]

It's a guaranteed must-see for its generation. Sin City has a long, long shelf life ahead.

Wickedly funny and devilishly subversive. It is satire at its most fearless.

A classically polished drama about repressed emotions, self delusion and protracted heartbreak, this Merchant/Ivory movie is one of the most affecting experiences of the year.

It's more than a detailed account of one man's petty vindictiveness in a bygone era. It's about how our hatred can consume us so deeply that we lose sight of everything.

Superbly conceived anti-biopic.

One fabulous Middle-earth show.

Buscemi makes Seymour into a character you simply want to see again and again. He's the most appealing, amusing "loser" anyone could ever share old records with.

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.

It gets you below the emotional belt in a searing, delicate way. No movie this year approaches such magnificent imagery, such delectable poetry.

Chinese director Zhang Yimou understands perfectly that the small can be epic and awe-inspiring. And, by the way, he knows how to get big, too.

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

A movie for aesthetically hungry moviegoers: wildly amusing, sometimes sardonic and always touching. There's so much here, and all of it delightful.