Jonathan Rosenbaum

Brilliantly conceived and competently executed.

Spielberg does an uncommonly good job both of holding our interest over 185 minutes and of showing more of the nuts and bolts of the Holocaust than we usually get from fiction films. Despite some characteristic simplifications, he's generally scrupulous about both his source and the historical record.

Reputed to be sentimental crowd pleaser, for better and for worse.

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.

Striking for its performances -- especially Anthony LaPaglia.

Starting off as a low-key psychological drama, this suddenly turns into a murder mystery that's resolved awkwardly and ambiguously, but the fascination of the characters and milieu remains.

This is a worthy successor to Chinatown - full of ecological and geological insights into Los Angeles history that recall Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald and give a view of southern California that could have been conceived only by a native.

Equally impressive is Duncan's stylish handling of decor, dialogue, narrative ellipsis, and pacing, all of which call to mind the Hollywood master Ernst Lubitsch.

Apart from a certain implausibility in the film's initial premise, this is a first-rate entertainment that captures Le Carre's jaundiced if morally sensitive vision with a great deal of care and feeling.

Quirky and nuanced, this movie has a lot to say about sibling rivalry and the current music scene.

Lane’s conceit is handled with such unassuming sweetness and charm that it never comes across as presumptuous or pretentious, and the simple authority of his conclusion–which uses dialogue in order to point out what most of us refuse to hear when we’re walking down the street–is unimpeachable.

This is effective as straight-ahead, action-packed storytelling, losing some of its energy only in the final stretch.

Starting with its romantic and inappropriate title, this is an old-fashioned melodrama, the same movie about police corruption and a cultural crisis of morality that Lumet has been making since the 70s, starting with "Serpico".

There's something a mite pathetic about our culture still clinging to 007, but it's hard to deny that this is one of the most entertaining entries in the Bond cycle, which started with "Dr. No" (1962).

Leisurely pacing of this kind is likely to register as a form of respect for the viewer's intelligence and observation.

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

This is the first feature I've seen by writer-director Dominique Deruddere, and I hope it won't be the last.

Amiably unvarnished... Much more successful than most other films that deal with daily life in the projects.

Enhanced by Jason Staczek's superb score, this is characteristically intense and, unlike most of Maddin's silent-movie models, frenetically edited.

Haneke is still a masterful director, and his authority carries this well-acted and attractively shot account of a family from an unnamed city trying to survive in the sticks after an unspecified catastrophe.

This David Cronenberg masterpiece (1991) breaks every rule in adapting a literary classic - maybe On Naked Lunch would be a more accurate title - but justifies every transgression with its artistry and audacity.

The concept itself is so strong - particularly as a revenge fantasy for anyone who's ever resented hypocritical exploitative shrinks - that it winds up working pretty well anyway.

This is a twilight film, full of sorrow yet lyrical, beautiful, and dark.

I can't say that this feature by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, about the life and art of Harvey Pekar, made me want to run out and buy his comic books, but it does offer a highly interesting and original introduction to them.

This has much of the warmth and feeling for adolescence that Crowe displayed in his first feature ("Say Anything"), though the slick showboating of "Jerry Maguire" isn't entirely absent either.

The story didn't fully answer all my queries about the characters, but did such a nice job of keeping me interested that I wound up appreciating the mysteries that remained.

We finally learn much more about Moskowitz than about Mossman, and more about Mossman than about his novel, but Moskowitz's passion for books is irresistible.

The transition from stage to screen may be bumpy in spots, but this movie is much funnier than Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc?, and the long-take shooting style is executed with fluidity and precision.