Jonathan Rosenbaum

To my knowledge there's no one anywhere making films with such a sharp sense of contemporary working-class life -- but for the Dardennes it's only the starting point of a spiritual and profoundly ethical odyssey.

While it's easy to imagine an infinite number of bad courtroom comedies based on this scenario, this 1992 movie turns out to be wonderful—broad and low character comedy that's solidly imagined and beautifully played.

A quantum leap in ambition from "Hard Eight" and "Boogie Nights" and is, to my mind, much more interesting.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing here is Thornton's nuanced performance, but the film has other rare virtues: all the characters are fully and richly fleshed out (with some unexpected turns by John Ritter and singer Dwight Yoakam), and the story's construction is carefully measured.

Neil LaBute delivers his most interesting and powerful film to date, though it's also his most unpleasant and disturbing.

The film offers a fascinating glimpse of the Iranian urban middle class, and though it eschews most of the pleasures of composition and landscape found in other Kiarostami films, it's never less than riveting.

The first Ang Lee film I've seen that I've liked without qualification.

The overall effect is disturbing yet mesmerizing.

Stylistically captivating, subtly nuanced, and structurally unpredictable.

Unprecedented in its intellectual ambition, this is endlessly stimulating; it probably tries for too much, but it shames many other contemporary essays that try for too little.

In its own quiet way this is an astonishing film, both as a medical detective story that sustains taut interest over an extended running time and as a piece of cinema combining unusually resourceful acting and direction. If any movie of recent years deserves to be called inspirational--a much-abused term that one hesitates to revive apart from exceptional circumstances--this one certainly does.

For all its minimalism, Tsai Ming-liang's 81-minute masterpiece manages to be many things at once.

A stunning achievement in epic cinema.

Sweet and warm as well as manic, this is full of loopy surprises, and the supporting cast (including Penelope Ann Miller, Bruno Kirby, Steve Bushak, Maximilian Schell, and Bert Parks, playing himself in his film debut) is uniformly fine.

Kiarostami's brilliantly suggestive script, which is quite unlike anything else he's written and is marred only slightly by one of his obligatory sages turning up gratuitously near the beginning.

By placing so much emphasis on aspects of life and work that other films routinely omit, mystify, or skirt over, Akerman forges a major statement, not only in a feminist context but also in a way that tells us something about the lives we all live.

Woo's third Hollywood movie, Face/Off, is the first to balance his visual imagination with the emotional intensity of his Hong Kong films.

The film is both wise and tender in its treatment of relationships -- between birds, between people, and between birds and people.

Tarkovsky's eerie mystic parable is given substance by the filmmaker's boldly original grasp of film language and the remarkable performances by all the principals.

Months after seeing this, I still feel I know most of these people as if they were old friends.

This 1950 effort shows Disney at the tail end of his best period, when his backgrounds were still luminous with depth and detail and his incidental characters still had range and bite.

A witty, canny meditation on the power of pop culture in general and the rationalizations of cinephilia and film criticism in particular.

Caine has already been cited as a likely Oscar nominee for his performance, which is clearly one of the most nuanced to date from this first-rate actor, and Fraser is funny and effective as a foil to the old pro.

This remarkable British silent (1929) is special in many ways.

One hell of a movie.

Under the thoughtful direction of Guy Ferland - what emerges is solid and affecting.

This is a powerful story and a splendid spectacle.

There are even more characters of interest here than in "Nashville."

A compellingly watchable, suspenseful, and often funny treatment of a grim subject--the hatred that can build up in a long-term marriage--that also becomes an indirect commentary on yuppie materialism.

Not only Waters's best movie, but a crossover gesture that expands his appeal without compromising his vision one iota; Ricki Lake as the hefty young heroine is especially delightful.

Exciting and innovative feature.

Their calm assurance -- Hallyday as a grizzled icon, Rochefort as a melancholy mensch -- is a pleasure to behold.

This offbeat and unpredictable comedy-thriller throws so many curveballs, one right after another, that I doubt I've had more fun at an American movie this year.

A postnoir melodrama with metaphysical trimmings, it does remarkable things with mood and pacing, and the two matches with Gleason as Minnesota Fats are indelible.

Powerful.

This 1964 entry is the most enjoyable of the James Bond thrillers starring Sean Connery—perhaps because it's the most comic and cartoony in look as well as conception. Still, it's every bit as imperialist and misogynistic as the other screen adventures based on Ian Fleming's books.

This is a highly personal and even religious expression of Hitchcock concerning the vicissitudes of fate, predicated on his lifelong fear that anyone can be wrongly accused of a crime and placed behind bars.

The cast as a whole is astonishing--especially Gillian Anderson as Lily and Dan Aykroyd in his finest role to date.

It's Tykwer's most assured picture to date, and like much of Kieslowski's best work it qualifies simultaneously as engrossing narrative and philosophical parable.

A brilliant satirical diagnosis of what's most screwed up about life in this country, especially when it comes to sexual frustration and kiddie porn.

Gripping...compelling.

This is the least well-known of the madcap satirical comedies of Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker (Airplane!, The Naked Gun), and by all counts the weirdest. But the richness of its ideas makes it my favorite. The plot combines the rock musical with the spy thriller (not to mention assorted other genres), and the comic invention is fairly constant.

As absurd and as beautiful as a fairy tale, this chilling, nocturnal black-and-white masterpiece was originally released in this country dubbed and under the title "The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus," but it's much too elegant to warrant the usual "psychotronic" treatment.

I'm not prone to like socially deterministic films of this kind, yet Loach is so masterful at squeezing nuance and truth out of the form that I was completely won over.

Yang seems to miss nothing as he interweaves shifting viewpoints and poignant emotional refrains.

I would nominate this authoritative 1962 adaptation of Ed McBain’s novel The King’s Ransom as Akira Kurosawa’s best nonperiod picture, though Ikiru and Rhapsody in August are tough competitors.

Nicely acted and inflected, this is a very fresh piece of work.

It's virtually guaranteed to make us squirm.

This poses some tricky moral questions, and its troubling ambiguities rank a cut above the dubious uplift of "Schindler's List."

Warren Beatty sounds off angrily and shrewdly about politics, delivering what is possibly his best film and certainly his funniest and livliest.

This pared-away comedy-drama, which concentrates exclusively on the three characters, has plenty of old-fashioned virtues: deft acting, a nice sense of scale that makes the drama agreeably life-size, a good use of Seattle locations, fluid camera work (by Michael Ballhaus), a kind of burnished romanticism about the music, and a genuine feeling for the characters and their various means of coping. And Pfeiffer turns out to be a terrific singer.

Much of the film's potency derives from its personal edge -- the passion for precise period decor, the title dedicating the film to Leigh's parents (a doctor and midwife), and even the childlike classification of many characters as either good souls or villains.

This may be the most literate of all the spectacles set in antiquity.

Directed by Rouben Mamoulian, this 1932 screen adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic is a remarkable achievement that deserves to be much better known.

Film is still an impressive piece of work, visually and rhythmically masterful.

The conceit gets a little out of hand after one of the angels falls in love with the trapeze artist and decides to become human; but prior to this, Wings of Desire is one of Wenders's most stunning achievements.

The best Australian feature I've seen in years.

Warmly recommended to viewers who like their romantic comedies small-scale but life-size.

His mise en scene is mesmerizing, and the final scene is breathtaking. Not an easy film, but almost certainly a great one.

Not to be hyperbolic, but Richard Linklater's first big-budget movie may be the Jules and Jim of bank-robber movies, thanks to its astonishing handling of period detail and its gentleness of spirit, both buoyed by a gliding lightness of touch.

The results are skillful, highly affecting, and ultimately more than a little pernicious.

Clint Eastwood's ambitious 1988 feature about the great Charlie Parker (Forest Whitaker) is the most serious, conscientious, and accomplished jazz biopic ever made, and almost certainly Eastwood's best picture as well.

Impressive for its lean and unblemished storytelling, but even more so for its performances.

Exciting not as ethnography but as storytelling, as drama, and as filmmaking.

I was floored by Cronenberg's mastery of the material. Fiennes gives one of his finest performances; Miranda Richardson, playing at least three characters in the protagonist's twisted vision, is no less impressive.

Action-adventure pictures have a lamentable tendency toward mindlessness, but Edward Zwick's epic story has numerous virtues apart from suspense and spectacle.

It's Fellini's last black-and-white picture and conceivably the most gorgeous and inventive thing he ever did—certainly more fun than anything he made after it.

Thoroughly researched, unobtrusively upholstered, this beautifully assured entertainment about Victorian England is a string of delights.

A lot more imaginative and entertaining than one might have thought possible, a feast for the eye and mind.

An astonishing tour de force--especially for Irons, whose sense of nuance is so refined that one can tell in a matter of seconds which twin he is playing in a particular scene.

Richard Linklater goes Hollywood (1995) -- triumphantly and with an overall intelligence, sweetness, and romantic simplicity that reminds me of wartime weepies like The Clock.

Beautifully structured and emotionally wrenching.

Crichton keeps the laughs coming with infectious energy.

This may not have gotten much publicity, but it's a lot more engaging than most movies that have; Forster alone makes it unforgettable.

He doesn't lose his stylistic identity either: in addition to the very Mamet-like delivery of unfinished sentences, his command of rhythm and flow remains flawless throughout.

The narrative, capped by a brief bad dream and the capture of a mouse, isn't always legible, but it feeds into a monumental, luminous visual style like no other.

The movie evokes Howard Hawks (in spirit if not to the letter) with its tight focus on a snug, obsessive world of insiders and camp followers where the exchanges between buddies and sexes have a euphoric stylishness and a giddy sense of ritual.

A fascinating humanist experiment and investigation in its own right, full of warmth and humor as well as mystery.

Genuinely frightening...it's nice for a change to see some of the virtues of old-fashioned horror films—moody dream sequences, unsettling poetic images, and passages that suggest more than they show—rather than the usual splatter shocks and special effects (far from absent, but employed with relative economy).

A genuine rarity: a sex comedy with brains.

This deserves to be seen and cherished for at least a couple of reasons: first for Joanne Woodward's exquisitely multilayered and nuanced performance as India Bridge, a frustrated, well-to-do WASP Kansas City housewife and mother during the 30s and 40s; and second for screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's retention of much of the episodic, short-chapter form of the books.

This is absorbing throughout--not just a history lesson but, as always with Rohmer, a story about individuals

This erotically charged drama may not be quite as great as the original, but it's an amazing and beautiful work just the same.

Magical, visually exciting, affecting even in its sincere hokeyness, and extremely provocative.

Despite a few narrative confusions, I found it pure magic.

One regrets the pounding Muzak of Tangerine Dream, but this is on the whole a striking directorial debut, at once scary and erotic, with lots of sidelong touches in the casting, direction, and script .

The tragic tale that emerges is full of powerful lessons and impenetrable mysteries

You feel it in your nervous system before you get a chance to reflect on its meaning.

Based on a true story, Ken Loach’s powerful and disturbing British drama (1994) about a single working-class mother with four children from four different fathers is made unforgettable by stand-up comedian Crissy Rock’s lead performance and by the filmmakers’ determination to make the story as messy and as complex as life itself.

A lot of claims have been made for this campy bloodbath concerto (1989) by Hong Kong director John Woo, and I must admit that he's even better than Brian De Palma at delivering emotional and visceral excess with staccato relentlessness.

Pedro Almodovar's 1995 comic melodrama seems in many ways his most mature work, in theme as well as execution.... Almodovar's control over the material and his affection for his characters never falter.

Cronenberg's follow-up to "A History of Violence" -- starring the same lead, Viggo Mortensen, in a very different part -- lacks the theoretical dimension of its predecessor, but it's no less masterful in its fluid storytelling and shocking choreography of violence.

Waters builds to a didactic message that he underlines with Disney-esque dream dust (in various colors), as if to protect his sincerity with the disclaimer of self-mockery.

Day-Lewis's performance is necessarily a bit showy—one has to strain at times to understand all his dialogue because of the character's contorted features—but he puts on a terrific drunk scene, and for all his character's travails the film as a whole winds up surprisingly upbeat.

Compared with the novel, the movie might seem predictable. But compared with other movies, it stands alone.

This sharp, convincing, and utterly contemporary political film calls to mind some of Ken Loach's work, full of passion as well as precision.

Underrated when it came out and unjustly neglected since, it’s not only the major French New Wave film made by a woman, but a key work of that exciting period—moving, lyrical, and mysterious.

If, like me, you've been wondering how Terry Zwigoff, the brilliant documentary filmmaker who made "Crumb," would negotiate his shift to fiction filmmaking, here's your answer: brilliantly.