Desson Thomson

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.