Desson Thomson

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

In this final installment of a glorious trilogy (which includes the films “Blue” and “White”) he has saved his greatest for last.

Masterfully arranged for color, texture, decor and camera fluidity, The Conformist is more like a symphonic poem than a movie. (Review of 1994 Release)

After watching Vertigo at the Uptown, I was awestruck.

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.

Grim, yes, and great viewing.

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.

It doesn't matter how many times you see these images. They're always exciting.

Observed mostly from Remy's rat's-eye view, Gusteau's kitchen is a memorable world-in-miniature with its vivid old-fashioned stoves, bright, brassy pots and general air of frenzied industry; never did sliced red onions or simmering soup look so fresh and real.

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.

To TV-raised minds, Paradise spends more time than it needs to get where it's going. But in its own terms, the movie has flashes of oldtime magic. It's a precious piece of time past -- and time kept.

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.

Screenwriter Walters and director Hoffman superbly replay the mood of Tremain's lively, well-written novel.

This heavy-hitting fist lands with calculated deliberation. Despite Spielberg's obviously genuine commitment, "Schindler's List" feels strangely controlled -- more than impassioned. It's officially artistic, an engineered project of pride, Little Stevie's growing-up project, rather than an organically brilliant masterpiece.

Robocop is one weird and entertaining hybrid of camp and sci-fi shoot-'em-up.

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

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.

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

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

Magnificently nonchalant about its magic.

One of the most pleasurable movies of the year.

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

If it were the last videotape available in the only video store in the remotest corner of Alaska, I'd take one last slug of Jack Daniels and start walking directly into the howling snows.

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

There's no doubt about the film's sheer power and taut originality.

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.

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.

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.