Desson Thomson

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.