Jonathan Rosenbaum

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

Some of the results ring false, but the memorable theme song and some equally memorable character acting (by Thomas Mitchell and Lon Chaney Jr. more than Lloyd Bridges and Katy Jurado) help things along.

It has few stars familiar to Americans, and it shares with "Pan's Labyrinth" the rare distinction of being a mainstream commercial movie with subtitles.

Its tact and intelligence, and also its reticence and detachment, make it a shocking and potent statement about our times.

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.

James Whale’s brilliant and surprisingly delicate 1936 rendition of the Kern and Hammerstein musical, which was based on an Edna Ferber novel, is infinitely superior to the dull 1951 MGM Technicolor remake and, interestingly enough, less racist.

The result is a step toward multiculturalism and ecological correctness, though not without a certain amount of confusion. The movie is not quite as entertaining as The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast.

There isn't an ounce of flab or hype, and the story it tells is profoundly affecting.

The depictions of novelist Harper Lee (Catherine Keener) and editor William Shawn (Bob Balaban) aren't convincing, but Miller is mainly interested in Capote's identification and duplicitous relationship with Perry Smith, one of the murderers he was writing about, and that story rings true.

Malle is certainly sincere in his efforts to describe the overall milieu accurately, and the film is less obnoxious than his pious Lacombe, Lucien (1973), which dealt with a related theme.

Powerful.

This is the apotheosis of Classics Illustrated filmmaking, aiming at nothing more than tasteful reduction, and the fact that it's done so well here doesn't mean that it's necessarily worth doing.

Allen's movies specialize in contemplating the notion that money can somehow remove vulgarity or produce gentility. Small Time Crooks may conclude quite conventionally that money can't buy you everything, but most of it flirts even more conventionally with the opposite premise.

Billy Wilder’s soggy and uninspired 1963 adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, minus the songs.

What mainly registers is the quiet desperation and simple pleasures of ordinary midwestern lives, the fatuous ways that people cover up their emotional and intellectual gaps, and the alternating pointlessness and cuteness of human existence. This may be a masterpiece of sorts, but it left me feeling rotten.

More than an interesting curiosity, it's one of Losey's best English efforts, and Viveca Lindfors contributes a striking part as an eccentric sculptress.

This is one of the most powerful and influential American films of the 60s.

Whether the title refers to the baby or the thief remains an open question, and the viewer is left to decide whether the theme of redemption should be perceived in Christian terms. This builds to a suspenseful climax, and as in Hitchcock's best work, that suspense is morally inflected.

Devoted to both the profound necessity and the sublime silliness of gratuitous social interchange, OHAYO is a rather subtler and grander work than might appear at first.

The film has a fresh and imaginative feel for period detail that the talented cast - which also features Gabriel Byrne, Christian Bale, Eric Stoltz, John Neville, and Mary Wickes - obviously benefits from.

The high-powered drive of both the storytelling and the music is riveting.

Reportedly (and understandably) Youssef Chahine’s most popular film among Egyptians, this gritty and relatively early (1958) black-and-white masterpiece also features his most impressive acting turn, as a crippled news vendor working at the title railroad station.

For better and for worse, this is seductive storytelling as well as investigative journalism, and I wasn't always sure which mode I was in.

A caustic satire masquerading as an action-adventure. Or maybe it's Hollywood escapism masquerading as satire.

Watts and Harring even turn out to be the hottest Hollywood couple of 2001. The plot slides along agreeably as a tantalizing mystery before becoming almost completely inexplicable, though no less thrilling, in the closing stretches--but that's what Lynch is famous for. It looks great too.

Alternately superficial and profound, the film also enlists the services of Oja Kodar, Welles's principal collaborator after the late 60s, as actor, erotic spectacle, and cowriter, and briefer appearances by many other Welles cohorts. Michel Legrand supplied the wonderful score.

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.

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

Though it's a good half hour too long, this belated, overblown spin-off of the 60s TV show otherwise adds up to a pretty good suspense thriller.

Both sad and darkly funny, the film is so sharply conceived and richly populated that it often registers like a Frederick Wiseman documentary, even though everything is scripted and every part played by a professional... This is only the second feature of Cristi Puiu, who claims to have been inspired by his own hypochondria, but he's already clearly a master.

This may be Reed’s most pretentious film, but it also happens to be one of his very best, beautifully capturing the poetry of a city at night (with black-and-white cinematography by Robert Krasker that’s within hailing distance of Gregg Toland and Stanley Cortez’s work with Orson Welles).

The depiction of her risky voyage and what happens afterward is highly suspenseful and entirely believable.

The film is watchable as well as informative...But I wish I had a better notion of what story he's trying to tell.

This is the kind of tasteful tearjerker that's often overrated and smothered with prizes because it flatters our tolerance and sensitivity.

The footage is often fascinating, but when it comes to anthropomorphism I prefer the Disney live-action adventures.

This brilliant if unpleasant puzzle without a solution about surveillance and various kinds of denial finds writer-director Michael Haneke near the top of his game, though it's not a game everyone will want to play.

For me it felt like a good many weeks at a politically correct summer camp, though the talented actors--including Cecilia Roth, Eloy Azorin, Marisa Paredes, Toni Canto, Antonia San Juan, and Penelope Cruz--certainly seem to enjoy the taste of the characters they're playing.

Stylistically fresh and full of sweetness that never cloys, this is contemporary Hollywood filmmaking at its near best.

The often unorthodox inventiveness of Tampopo registers like the dividend of a filmmaker who has found his ideal subject.

This 1981 release is one of Brian De Palma's more interesting and better-made thrillers, though it's even more abjectly derivative than his Hitchcock imitations (borrowing mightily this time from Antonioni's Blowup, as the title suggests).

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 characters are so full-bodied and the feelings so raw and complex that I'd call this the best thing he's (Singleton) done to date.

Cunningly scripted and acted, and talky in the best sense, the film is engrossing to watch but not especially interesting to ponder afterward; it's certainly an improvement on formulaic Hollywood, but on a thematic level there's still more windup than delivery.

The actors keep this interesting, but as a story it drifts and rambles.

One of Sidney Lumet's best jobs of directing and one of Al Pacino's best performances (as a bisexual bank robber) come together in a populist thriller with lots of New York juice. Its details are stronger than its structure—the film loses some of its energy before the end—but it's an astonishing fusion of suspense and character, powered by superior ensemble acting.

Unlike the campy excess of Jackson's earlier Dead Alive, this kind of deliberate overkill—which extends to the broad caricatures of the girls' families as well as the girls' feverish fantasy life—ultimately points toward a dearth of ideas rather than a surfeit, though the story remains sufficiently interesting and troubling to hold one's attention.

Haggis's dialogue is worthy of Hemingway, and the three leads border on perfection.

Choreographically stunning like most of Woo’s work, especially before he headed west.

This is the only Cassavetes film made without a full script (it grew out of acting improvs), and rarely has so much warmth, delicacy, and raw feeling emerged so naturally and beautifully from performances in an American film.

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.

Notwithstanding its occasional grotesque nods to postmodernist convention, this is highly entertaining Hollywood filmmaking, full of spark and vigor.

The wonderful Richard Farnsworth plays the lead, and he was clearly born for the part...a highly affecting and suggestive spiritual odyssey.

At the same time that Boorman seduces us with such enchantments, he also deceives us with a crafty little googly of his own--persuading us that he is embarking on a fresh adventure while aiming straight for the heart of old-fashioned English cinema.

Duvall’s direction of a mix of professional and nonprofessional actors, especially in the extended church sessions, is never less than masterful.

Charting the ruthlessness of an ambitious bimbo telecaster in Little Hope, New Hampshire, this staccato black comedy sustains its brilliant exposition and narration until the plot turns to premeditated murder, complete with hapless and semicoherent teenage accomplices.

For better and for worse, it's still a Hollywood movie (and a white boys' movie to boot), but one with a more alert eye and feeling for American life than most of its competitors.

Even though it's scripted by a woman (Kelly Masterson), this tale of buried family resentments rising to the surface as the brothers plot to rob their parents' jewelry store is concerned only with the guys, and it's marred by an uncharacteristically mannered performance by Albert Finney as the father.

"Heathers" may view teenagers more caustically, but this movie, incomparably better, actually delivers the goods.

I don't see this slightly better-than-average drug thriller, with slightly better-than-average direction by Steven Soderbergh, as anything more than a routine rubber-stamping of genre reflexes.

A heartfelt, passionate, tragic musical suite made up of these formulas, which the film both celebrates and wryly examines to discover their inner logic: how they actually work, what they do and don't do.

While the filmmakers manage to keep things interesting (sexy, kinky, and ambiguous) much of the time, the self-conscious piety that Frears lavishes on this material places it in an uncertain netherworld that prevents it from ever becoming fully convincing, even as a stylistic exercise.

Francis Coppola's stylish and heartfelt tribute to the innovative automobile designer Preston Thomas Tucker turns out to be one of his most personal and successful movies.

A powerful piece of social protest, skillfully written, directed, and acted...Hilary Swank as Brandon and Chloe Sevigny as his girlfriend Lana are especially fine.

The animation seeks to dazzle, but with a self-consciousness that's relatively new to the Disney studio. The results are fun and fast moving, but far from sublime.

Mesmerizing.

Masterfully charted and acted.

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

The surface activity keeps one occupied, but never adds up to much because none of the characters is developed beyond the cartoon level; and the snobby sense of knowingness that's over everything is uncomfortably close to what the movie is supposed to be dissecting.

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.

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.

An accomplished, effective, grisly, and exceptionally sick slasher film that I can't with any conscience recommend, because the purposes to which it places its considerable ingenuity are ultimately rather foul.

There's not much story here, but the characters are substantial: a single mother (nicely played by Juliette Binoche) who runs a local avant-garde puppet theater and is preoccupied with such matters as a downstairs tenant who refuses to pay rent or leave, her neglected but mainly cheerful son, and his Taiwanese nanny, a filmmaker in her spare time.

Holly Hunter and Sigourney Weaver, a cop and a shrink, are the main trackers, but so little is done in Ann Biderman and David Madsen's script to give them or their colleagues or even their prey interesting human dimensions that the overall ambience is chiefly pornographic.

Unlike the classic noirs, this is grounded in neither a recognizable social reality nor a metaphysical sense of doom--just a lot of sexy attitude, humping, and heavy breathing.

An impressive piece of filmmaking, with lively and suggestive depictions of pre- and postrevolutionary Cuba (shot in Mexico).

Exciting and innovative feature.

The results are masterful, admirably unsentimental, and never boring, if also a little stodgy.

A strong example of the cinema verite style at work, yet few films of the school show up the crisis of its "noninvolvement" policy more tellingly.

There's not much humor to keep it all life-size, and by the final stretch it's become bloated, mechanical, and tiresome.

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.

So accessible and entertaining.

It has its moments, but not many, and generally speaking it runs neck and neck with Dune as the least successful and least interesting Lynch feature.

A dedicated, charismatic, crack-addicted history teacher is the most believable protagonist in an American movie this year.

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 more deserving of plaudits is the secondary cast--Hope Davis as Schmidt's resentful daughter, Dermot Mulroney as the waterbed salesman she's engaged to, and, above all, Kathy Bates in a hilarious turn as the latter's New Age mother.

As a moral reconsideration of the role of violence in previous Eastwood films, this is strong and sure, and characters who play against genre expectations give the film a provocative aftertaste. The only limitation, really, is that the picture hasn't much dramatic urgency apart from its revisionist context.

A significant influence on Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, this grueling pile driver of a movie will keep you on the edge of your seat, though it reeks of French 50s attitude, which includes misogyny, snobbishness, and borderline racism.

Smith is resourceful in the role, though the story stretches one's credulity about his character's resourcefulness.

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.

As with Nostalghia, Tarkovsky’s previous work of exile, it’s possible to balk at the filmmaker’s pretensions and antiquated sexual politics and yet be overwhelmed by his mastery and originality, as well as the conviction of his sincerity.

This is a pretty stupid comedy in spots, with holes wide enough to drive trucks through, and director Arthur Hiller is as clunky as ever, but the cast is so funny and likable—above all, costars Jim Belushi and Charles Grodin, and newcomer Loryn Locklin—that they almost bring it off in spite of itself.

Jean Gabin wasn't yet 50 when he starred as a big-time, high-style gangster hoping to retire, but he still looks pretty wasted, and this pungent tale about aging and friendship, adapted from a best-selling noir thriller by Albert Simonin, would be hard to imagine without his puffy features.

The results are high-spirited, with nice ensemble work from Almodovar's team of regulars, but the playlike structure (originally derived from Cocteau's The Human Voice but drastically reworked) is disappointingly conventional.

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

An E.T. spin-off, but it's a very likable and imaginative one.

There's some striking camerawork by Christopher Doyle (in 35-millimeter) and Rain Kathy Li (in Super-8), though this doesn't alter the overall feeling of random, nihilistic drift.

Out of Sight engaged me less and less, until by the end I no longer cared which of the characters lived or died. Not even the engaging Jennifer Lopez, George Clooney, Albert Brooks, Don Cheadle, and Ving Rhames or the talented secondary cast can survive the abbreviations and last-minute shoehorning their characters receive.