F. X. Feeney

No parent who's been roped into leading the troops to a matinee need fear being bored: gags are, Simpsons-like, conceived to tickle several generations at once.

The Godfather traces the arc of this doomed idealism with a beauty that is still fresh.

One of the best films of the year thus far.

Remains the most popularly successful film ever to render the inner life of an artist.

It is one of the most beautifully staged American movies in a very long time.

Not only one of the best films of the year, it's one of the best films of the decade.

The Japanese title means chaos, and that is what is let loose when a powerful king foolishly tries to release the reins of power, in the hopes of enjoying a peaceful old age.

It's an exhilarating display of filmic artistry.

I've not stopped thinking about it -- weighing might-have-beens and alternative courses of action, as though remembering an actual event rather than a nimble, superbly-realized fantasy. That's a first-rate achievement.

Of the many excellent animated features Disney has produced over the past decade, this is the one that feels the freest, and sweetest.

It's a cheerfully deranged stunt, executed in a spirit of infectious lunacy that powers the resulting film to its strongest laughs, and weirdest depths.

Writer-director Gianni Amelio masterfully chronicles the ways two people can betray each other, and especially themselves, in the name of love.

The deeper strength of Smoke Signals rests on the sensitivity and truthfulness of Farmer’s performance as the ebullient, self-hating alcoholic father, and that of Irene Bedard as the young woman he knew in later life.

It works its magic with such exuberance and passion that the film's length becomes a part of its fun.

What Harris extracts from himself is nothing less than a psychological nude scene, sustained across two hours.

Leonard Schrader adapted the screenplay from the novel by Manuel Puig, and his fearless willingness to explore every corner of human nature serves what is greatest and sweetest in the performances of William Hurt and Raul Julia.

A superb film by any measure, as deep and harsh as the sin Dillon committed to become great.

Everyone plays their role (and the roles within their roles) to perfection, and writer-director Mamet keeps us guessing what's what and who's who right up until the final minute.

Above all, Oshima has fashioned a tale of men among men that feels familiar at first, then moves boldly into more enigmatic terrain.

This is the deepest of Jewison's three racially themed films, the other two being "In the Heat of the Night" and "A Soldier's Story."

Astonishingly deep and moving.

Yet Waiting for Guffman is never mean-spirited. Its weird warmth is perfectly embodied by Guest himself, whose flamboyant, stagestruck choreographer, Corky St. Clair, could have (in less ingenious hands) been a cruel, gay-bashing caricature, but instead becomes a hallucinatory Everyman.

It's a film which aims to persuade us of its truth without props or signposts--and it does so with unforgettable beauty.

LaGravenese (writer of "The Fisher King," adapter of "The Bridges of Madison County," making his directorial debut) eschews distractions of style and molds our attention to the performances.

The alchemy of good acting under the pressure of sublime film sense makes for a miracle in the hearts of the audience.

We never seem to be looking at actors, but at people; never at scenes, but at life unrehearsed.

Has power not only as film scholarship, but as an inquiry into cinema's interplay with our collective memories and the nature of history itself.

A delirious fable about every creature's need for espace.