Jonathan Rosenbaum

The main novelty of this conventional, slight, but charming youth picture is that it's English and therefore more class-conscious than most American equivalents.

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.

Probably the most influential of all silent films after The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance launched ideas about associative editing that have been essential to the cinema ever since, from Soviet montage classics to recent American experimental films. And in the use of crosscutting and action to generate suspense, the film's climax hasn't been surpassed.

Stylistically captivating, subtly nuanced, and structurally unpredictable.

Every effect is so calculated that only the conscious minds of filmmakers and viewers are engaged--and not by very much or for very long.

This cagey and compelling 2004 documentary looks at the world of wine, but it's actually a nuanced, provocative piece of journalism about globalization and its discontents.

David Morse, who plays the driver, gives a relatively sharp and understated performance -- for me the only bearable thing in the movie.

It’s a historical marker in a way that few other films are — not only the nail in the coffin of the French New Wave and one of the strongest statements about the aftermath of the failed French revolution of May 1968, but also a definitive expression of the closing in of Western culture after the end of the era generally known as the 60s.

None of the characters emerges as very sympathetic.

Misogynistic claptrap about a divorced husband (Dustin Hoffman) fighting for the custody of and learning to cope with his little boy (Justin Henry) - a movie whose classy trimmings (including Nestor Almendros's cinematography) persuaded audiences to regard writer-director Robert Benton as a subtle art-house director.

Half-funny mockumentary.

Ben Stiller directs Lou Holtz Jr.'s script with plenty of unsettling edge, and Carrey throws himself into his part as if it meant something.

There are a few pretty good design effects en route, but not enough to compensate for all the embarrassments.

As for remakes, it stands to reason that if you try to redo a work of art without the original artist, you're bound to damage the artistry as well.

Watchable enough on its own terms.

The film never strays much beyond the obvious, despite a conscientious effort by Tim Robbins to humanize a white security officer.

Yet some of the laughs come too easy and linger too long; for the film's message to have maximum impact, the laughter has to stick in your throat.

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.

An epic about the Irish patriot (Liam Neeson) during the last years of his life (1916-'22), it clearly represents a lot of thought on Jordan's part, yet it's dramatic and cinematic sludge.

Reasonably entertaining spy-versus-spy shenanigans were for me partially undercut by the hypocritical pretense that the CIA and its various forms of mischief were somehow being ridiculed.

Overwritten by Billy Crystal and Peter Tolan, overdirected by Joe Roth, overplayed by most of the cast, yet typically undernourished.

If the relatively prosaic Minghella, making his movie debut, lacks the suggestive poetic sensibility of Lewton, he does a fine job in capturing the contemporary everyday textures of London life, and coaxes a strong performance out of Stevenson, a longtime collaborator. Full of richly realized secondary characters and witty oddball details, this is a beguiling film in more ways than one.

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.

A provocative and stirring climax to the Corleone saga, as well as an autonomous work that sometimes shows Coppola at his near best.

I wasn't exactly engaged, but this time boredom never took over.

What we don’t know about these characters–and what we don’t see in certain scenes–is often as interesting and as important as what we know and see, and Assayas’s sense of how relationships evolve between people over time is conveyed with a rich and vivid novelistic density.

Beginning with almost no dialogue at all, Le samourai unfolds like a poetic fever dream.

Harry Kumel's stylish Belgian vampire film with a cult reputation (1971) is worth seeing for several reasons, not least of which is Delphine Seyrig's elegant lead performance as a lesbian vampire who operates a luxury hotel. The baroque mise en scene is also loads of fun.