Jonathan Rosenbaum

The film gradually devolves into action-adventure, then the equivalent of a war movie. But the filmmaking is pungent throughout, and the first half hour is so jaw-dropping in its fleshed-out extrapolation that Cuaron earns the right to coast a bit.

The film is full of relevant insights into the kinds of compromises, trade-offs, and combinations of skills and personalities that produce media, and the personal stories are deftly integrated.

Allen's conception of character is as banal and shallow as ever, but the lively performances of some of his actors—mainly Davis, Pollack, and Juliette Lewis (as a creative writing student of Allen's who has a brief flirtation with him)—and the novelty of the film's style make this more watchable than many of his features.

Leigh displays a passionate affection for and commitment to his leading characters that never precludes a critical distance.

This is arguably John Huston's best literary adaptation, and conceivably his very best film.

Striking for its performances -- especially Anthony LaPaglia.

A highly emotional epic about what it means to be both Chinese and American.

Don't expect any psychological depth here, but the cool wit and fun... are deftly maintained, and Sonnenfeld provides a bountiful supply of both fanciful beasties and ingenious visuals.

Traffic is a masterpiece in its own right—not only for the sharp picture of the frenetic and gimmick-crazy civilization that worships cars, but also for many remarkable formal qualities: an extraordinary use of sound (always one of Tati’s strong points), a complex interplay of chance and control in the observations of everyday behavior, and, in some spots, a development of the use of multiple focal points to articulate some of the funniest gags.

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.

The grafting of 40s hard-boiled detective story with SF thriller creates some dysfunctional overlaps, and the movie loses some force whenever violence takes over, yet this remains a truly extraordinary, densely imagined version of both the future and the present, with a look and taste all its own.

This brilliantly and comprehensively captures the look, feel, and sound of glamorous 50s tearjerkers like All That Heaven Allows, not to mock or feel superior to them but to say new things with their vocabulary.

The music is great, and the film would be memorable for its goofy, syncopated opening sequence alone.

Its special effects are used so seamlessly as part of an overall artistic strategy that, as critic Annette Michelson has pointed out, they don't even register as such, and thus are almost impossible to trivialize, a feat unmatched in movies.

The movie is dominated by Maddin's usual black-and-white photography, silent-movie syntax, and deadpan melodrama.

Remains mired in a smart-alecky film-school sensibility.

This first feature by novelist and psychologist Jeremy Leven has a fairly rudimentary mise en scene, but the actors take over the proceedings with aplomb, and Brando and Dunaway have the grace to turn much of the show over to Depp, who carries the burden with ease.

But the acting's so good it frequently transcends the simplicities of the script, and whenever Day-Lewis or Postlethwaite is on-screen the movie crackles.

I can't say I remembered this 1995 feature too clearly a couple of days later; but I certainly had a good time as I watched it.

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.

Ken Marino, who plays the silliest of the diggers, wrote the script, and when it isn't straining after elegiac moments, it's fresh and unpredictable.

It's a welcome throwback to the carefully crafted family films of the studio era. The scenery is lovely, and the cast is entirely worthy of the enterprise (including the regal and athletic star).

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.

Much as Emile de Antonio's neglected "In the Year of the Pig" (1968) may be the only major documentary about Vietnam that actually considers the Vietnamese, this film allows the people of Iraq to speak, and what they say is fascinating throughout.

The performances, especially of Penn and Robbins, are so powerful and detailed (down to the Boston accents) that they often persuade one to overlook the narrative contrivances (particularly the incessant crosscutting), the arty trimmings (including Eastwood's own score), and the dubious social philosophy.

All-expert cast.

Maddin takes on his first commissioned feature--an adaptation of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's production of Dracula--and succeeds brilliantly, making it his own while offering what may be the most faithful screen version to date of Bram Stoker's novel.

Takes a while to arrive at what it has to say, but some of the performances kept me occupied in the meantime.

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.

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

The virtues on display are very much those of the heroine: generosity, imagination, charm, and the capacity to keep an audience mesmerized with a good story.

This is like a Ferris wheel--the ride's enjoyable but you've gone nowhere once it's over.

It's largely Kazan's authentic feeling for the locale, aided by Boris Kaufman's superb black-and-white cinematography, that makes this movie so special, combined with a first-rate ensemble.

Better-than-average sitcom stuff, enhanced by the lively performances, Doyle's own adaptation, and the able direction of Stephen Frears.

Good campy fun from the combined talents of Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet; Chayefsky was apparently serious about much of this shrill, self-important 1976 satire about television, interlaced with bile about radicals and pushy career women,

A must-see.

This obsessive movie, awarded the grand jury prize at the Sundance festival, may not quite live up to its advance billing; the subject is powerful, but the filmmaking often seems slapdash, and the final half hour dithers.

The light ribbing of conspicuous consumption in southern California and the Simon and Garfunkel songs on the sound track both play considerable roles in giving this depthless comedy some bounce. [Review of re-release]

An absorbing and compelling account of a historical episode that should be better known.

The involved backstory and Hartley's own generic music both prove burdensome; the main attraction is the cast's amusing way of handling Hartley's mannerist dialogue and conceits.

The performances are strong, but the spectator often feels adrift in an overly busy intrigue.

Combines live-action and animation with breathtaking wizardry... Alternately hilarious, frightening, and awesome.

The broad Italian family humor gets so thick at times that you could cut it with a bread knife.

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

As Dr. Octopus, Alfred Molina makes a more baroque supervillain than Willem Dafoe did as the Green Goblin, but the other stars--seem happy to be giving us more of the same.

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.

Ridiculous enough to be hilarious, but this didn't prevent me from thoroughly enjoying Philip Kaufman's silly romp.

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.

Unfortunately, a conclusion stuffed with so many improbabilities that it left me gaping in disbelief. Prior to that, this is pretty much fun.

The result is grimly "effective," but it made me long for Hollywood junk.

The characters (both animal and human) are solidly conceived, and the storytelling and visuals are expertly fashioned.

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.

Its brutal take on living under totalitarian rule periodically suggests Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four." Mullan makes the authority figures (such as the nun played by Geraldine McEwan) grimly believable, but as in "Orphans," there are times when he doesn't know when to quit.

The cast - including Derek Jacobi as the modern-dress chorus, Paul Scofield, Judi Dench, Ian Holm, Emma Thompson, and Robbie Coltrane in an effective cameo as Falstaff - is uniformly fine without any grandstanding.

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.

Well-crafted if relatively impersonal adaptation.

Needless to say, the plot goes nowhere, but under the pornographic circumstances Figgis, Cage, and Shue all do fine jobs.

This comedy drama is an exercise in self-indulgence for O'Toole, but an enjoyable and touching one.

Tom Courtenay is quite good in the title role, and Julie Christie makes a memorable early appearance .

The results are watchable enough--sometimes funny, sometimes over the top--and fairly fresh, though also a bit calculated.

Three Times, one of the peaks of his (Hou Hsiao-hsien) career, may be your last chance to see his work inside a movie theater.

To my taste the only serious distraction and ethical lapse is Gibney's sarcastic, cheap-shot use of popular songs like "That Old Black Magic," "Love for Sale," and "God Bless the Child" to underscore certain points; it seems almost to celebrate the shamelessness of the creeps being exposed.

Gripping...compelling.

Fernando Meirelles stresses old-fashioned storytelling and takes full advantage of his cast, including Danny Huston.

This movie has its share of laughs, but it's also Ron Howard's most personal film, and clearly his most ambitious--a multifaceted essay in fictional form about the diverse snares of child rearing.

This masterpiece, an art film deftly masquerading as a thriller, seems to celebrate small-town pastoralism and critique big-city violence, but this position turns out to be double-edged.

As frequently happens in both Loach films and history, the betrayal of ideals, socialist and otherwise, leaves a harsh aftertaste, which made me feel sadder but not much wiser.

If you like the early work of David Lynch you should definitely check this out; Maddin's films are every bit as beautiful and in certain respects a lot more sophisticated.

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

As adapted by Michael McDowell and scripted by Caroline Thompson, this 1993 release is at worst a macabre Muppet movie, at best an inspired jaunt. The set designs are ingenious and the songs (music and lyrics by Danny Elfman) are fairly good.

One emerges from this film not only with a new vocabulary and a fresh way of viewing the straight world but with a bracing object lesson in understanding what society “role models” are all about.

You won't come out of it indifferent, and even if it winds up enraging you (I could have done without most of the ending myself), it nonetheless commands attention.

The implied critique of progressive, bohemian parenting is devastating--wise and nuanced, with the painful hilarity of truth.

The kids, all real musicians performing, are wonderful, and so is Black; Joan Cusack is both charming and funny as the principal.

What's most memorable about it is the period flavor, including a detailed and precise account of the jim crow complications blacks had to contend with.

The movie's dreamlike spaces and characters are sometimes worthy of Lewis Carroll.

I've never read Stella Gibbons's popular English novel of 1932--a parody of the romantic rural novels that Mary Webb wrote during the 20s--but director John Schlesinger and adapter Malcolm Bradbury have gotten plenty of enjoyable mileage out of it.

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.

This 1955 example of kitchen-sink realism about the awakening love life of a Bronx butcher (Ernest Borgnine) and his shy girlfriend (Betsy Blair), directed by Delbert Mann, has never been popular with auteurists, but Paddy Chayevsky’s script, adapted from his own TV play, shows his flair for dialogue at its best, and the film manages to be touching, if minor.

Although most of the elements are familiar and virtually all of the characters are unpleasant, this is a better than average melodrama--mainly because of the volcanic power of Kathy Bates in the title role.

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

One of Penn's best features; his direction of actors is sensitive and purposeful throughout.

Something of a tour de force, this adaptation of Joe Simpson's nonfiction book about his climbing the 21,000-foot Siula Grande mountain in Peru, breaking a leg, and eventually making it back alive is remarkable simply because the story seems unfilmable.

A touching Fred Zinnemann movie (1960) about an Australian sheepherding family.

The film's a swell way of torturing yourself for 108 minutes.

Beautifully structured and emotionally wrenching.

Adapted by Van Sant and Daniel Yost from an unpublished autobiographical novel by James Fogle, this 1989 feature has the kind of stylistic conviction that immediately wins one over.

This is so ravishing to look at (the colors all seem newly minted) and pleasurable to follow (the enigmas are usually more teasing than worrying) that you're likely to excuse the metaphysical pretensions—which become prevalent only at the very end—and go with the 60s flow, just as the original audiences did.

Like the painter, it's painstakingly serious about what it's up to.

Disappointingly conventional though well-made...An OK teen movie, but not a whole lot more.

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.

The period ambience (call it funk) is irresistible, but the main points of interest here are sociological rather than musical.

The overall feel is phantasmagoric--pitched, like most of Maddin's work, in the style of a half-remembered late silent feature or early talkie.

Has memorable characters and images. Yet the story is elusive and occasionally puzzling, and some of the ideas are amorphous and self-conscious.