Janet Maslin

One of the more remarkable things about Notorious is that it hasn't seemed to age; if anything, it grows more timely. [26 Oct 1980, p.17]

Brilliantly schematic, endlessly fascinating...this prescient 1958 spellbinder can now be admired as the deepest, darkest masterpiece of Hitchcock's career. [Restored version]

Thanks to exultant wit and so many distinctive voices, Toy Story is both an aural and visual delight.

With Beauty and the Beast, a tender, seamless and even more ambitious film than its predecessor, Disney has done something no one has done before: combine the latest computer animation techniques with the best of Broadway.

There have been few sharper portraits of the film maker as alchemist than Hearts of Darkness: A Film Maker's Apocalypse, in which Francis Ford Coppola is seen struggling with hellish logistical problems, wild-card actors, freak accidents and other unseen demons, then ultimately pulling a miracle out of his hat.

A triumphant, cleverly disorienting journey through a demimonde that springs entirely from Mr. Tarantino's ripe imagination, a landscape of danger, shock, hilarity, and vibrant local color. Nothing is predictable or familiar within this irresistably bizarre world. You don't merely enter a theater to see Pulp Fiction; you go down a rabbit hole.

But the film Schindler's List, directed with fury and immediacy by a profoundly surprising Steven Spielberg, presents the subject as if discovering it anew.

A stunning feat of literary adaptation as well as a purely cinematic triumph.

Mr. Demme has captured both the look and the spirit of this live performance with a daring and precision that match the group's own.

A shrewd and engrossing documentary even for audiences who have absolutely no patience for the music it includes.

Unfolds beautifully, with a rueful, knowing intelligence that rises above easy assumptions. [27 September 1996, p.C1]

A supremely elegant and thoughtful parable.

''It's such a fine line between stupid and . . . '' ''And clever,'' muse the band members collectively. It certainly is- and the delightful This Is Spinal Tap stays on the right side of that line.

A tough, gorgeous, vastly entertaining throwback to the Hollywood that did things right. As such, it enthusiastically breaks most rules of studio filmmaking today.

The cast is unknown, the director has a spotty history, and the basic premise falls into this year's most hackneyed category (unknown boxer/ bowler/jogger hopes to become sports hero). Even so, the finished product is wonderful. Here is a movie so fresh and funny it didn't even need a big budget or a pedigree.

The filmmaker creates schematic, intuitive images that hauntingly crystallize the characters' situations.

Steven Spielberg's soberly magnificent new war film, the second such pinnacle in a career of magical versatility, has been made in the same spirit of urgent communication. It is the ultimate devastating letter home.

Warm, affecting and refreshingly shtickless, he (Carrey) occupies center stage here through sheer, beguiling force of personality.

Mr. Assayas's screenplay is loose and uneventful, but his direction has more energy.

Besides being one of Woody's most consistently witty films, Love and Death marks a couple of other advances for Mr. Allen as a film maker and for Miss Keaton as a wickedly funny comedienne.

Even though this film may do for chess what "The Red Shoes" did for ballet, it works movingly and most effectively as a family drama.

It reimagines the buddy film with such freshness and vigor that the genre seems positively new.

The Madness of King George mixes the ebullience of Tom Jones with a pop-theatrical royal back-stabbing that is reminiscent of films like The Lion in Winter. That makes it a deft, mischievous, beautifully acted historical drama with exceptionally broad appeal.

More so than the exuberant movie miracles that came before it, this latest animated juggernaut has the feeling of a clever, predictable product. To its great advantage, it has been contrived with a spirited, animal-loving prettiness no child will resist.

Mr. Lee, whose lean, straightforward documentary style loses none of his usual clarity and fire (the film has been exceptionally well shot by Ellen Kuras), summons a powerful sense of Birmingham's past and a galvanizing sense of how this bombing would change its future.

A marvel of skillful animation, witty songwriting and smart planning. It is designed to delight filmgoers of every conceivable stripe.

For all its exaggerated ordinariness, this film seems to start where others leave off.

Mr. Zemeckis is able both to keep the story moving and to keep it from going too far. He handles Back to the Future with the kind of inventiveness that indicates he will be spinning funny, whimsical tall tales for a long time to come.