Desson Thomson

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.