Jami Bernard

The movie is set in a gloriously creepy and crumbling Venice. It's the off-season, and every deserted canal and alleyway reeks of bad vibes. Roeg plays masterfully with this menacing atmosphere, jangling the nerves with quick cuts and quixotic possibilities. [16 Oct 1998, p.72]

Spielberg's direction and Melissa Mathison's script never lose sight of the realistic, low center of gravity world of childhood, in which such marvelous adventures happen every day that an alien knocking around the garage is not really such an unusual occurrence. [2002 re-release]

Handsome, passionate and fun. It's everything we go to the movies for.

Borderline brilliant. Tackles the war on drugs from a kaleidoscope of perspectives.

The sunny, funny, toe-tapping Lagaan is the answer to those who ask why they don't make movies like they used to: They do, but in India.

Brilliant. [24 December 1997, p. 24]

With its agile, clever script and winning characters, Toy Story 2 is that rare thing -- an excellent children's movie with no upper age limit.

It took the German restorers four years to ready this print using dupe negatives and old prints found in archives around the world. Their work speaks for itself. Each frame of this classic is drop-dead stunning, the more so now that the movie no longer hiccups its way across the screen.

It's an uplifting movie about the rewards of perseverance and community.

A gripping thriller whose terror -- unfortunately -- comes from real life.

An adorable, infectious work of true sophistication.

This audience-pleaser is smart and acerbic. Jaoui has an uncanny ear - as director, co-writer and part of the inspired ensemble cast - for human foibles, self-deception, celebrity worship and female body issues.

Film makers Barak Goodman and Daniel Anker dig deep into the story and its ramifications, exposing how the twin evils of racism and anti-Semitism combined to foment institutional injustice, and led — if a silver lining could be found — to the triumphs of the civil-rights movement two and three decades later.

In the end, it's a sweeping, important film that overturns everything you learned in school about the birth of this nation.

A daring, teeth-grinding experience that doesn't let the viewer rest easy.

Almodovar is adept at weaving together strands you'd never guess would match.

An insanely delicious animated feature.

The stop-the-presses news from The House of Mirth is the number of fine performances from people you never knew had it in them.

A tart, funny and tremendously sobering movie about the deepest recesses of personal unhappiness.

Washington can bank on an Oscar nomination for the most forceful work of his career.

Once in a great while there's a movie that's so funny, infectious and welcoming - a movie that makes you feel so good about America and the people in it - you just want to climb inside the screen and live there. That's the case with Dave Chappelle's Block Party - part comedy, part concert film, part avant-garde experiment, and all of it a joy.

Payne achieves an impressive control over the look and tone, so that, melancholy as the movie is, it comes off as both comedy and comment on the human condition.

A marvel of character-driven drama that no serious filmgoer should miss.

A sunny-looking movie about the darkest paranoia.

It's said to be an autobiography, but that pertains only in the loosest sense. It's a comedy. It's a 1920s silent movie. It is practically indescribable. And it is pure genius.

Exquisitely moving story.

The overall result is a romantic comedy that indulges fantasies, calms insecurities (can an ordinary bloke stack up?), and breaks and mends hearts with surgical precision.

A juicy noir stew of amorality that's the best thing since "Chinatown."