Kevin Thomas

Late Marriage will assuredly rank as one of the cleverest, most deceptively amusing comedies of the year.

An exceptionally adroit adaptation of a play to the screen. As a film, it flows beautifully under Randa Haines' direction and has considerable humor as well as dramatic intensity. It is a classic love story--romantic, passionate, involving vibrant characters.

L’Innocente is the kind of opulent, passionate drama that risks folly to attain the sublime. Giannini and Antonelli are equal to the challenge while O’Neill, who looks ravishing, provides a dispassionate counterpoint.

Working with cinematographers Giorgos Arvanitis and Andreas Sinanos and composer Eleni Karaindrou, whose beautiful and stirring score greatly reinforces the film's impact, Angelopoulos has created another masterpiece, one that recalls such classics as Bergman's Wild Strawberries and Kurosawa's Ikiru (To Live). [28 May 1999, p.F6]

In only his second feature, Frammartino has found a fresh and ravishingly poetic and beautiful way to explore the relationship between the spirit, man and nature.

This 1946 version became a key film in postwar Hollywood film noir. Directed by Tay Garnett, it remains one of Lana Turner's (right) very best films. [02 Feb 1997, p.78]

In its vitality and finesse, Maria Full of Grace is all of a piece -- and both artistically and spiritually itself full of grace.

Lemmons' command of cinematic style, her appreciation of the chimerical aspects of life and her ability to inspire actors to give remarkably faceted portrayals mark Eve's Bayou a first film of exceptional promise.

A masterpiece by any measure, is fresh, immediate and contemporary, but its wintry yet warm perspective is suffused with the wisdom and experience of a great filmmaker who turns 85 on June 2.

The film is a glittering triumph of personal expression at its most elegant and opulent.

A brilliantly conceived epic fable.

Offers breathtaking comic-action fantasy….Exhilarating and sharp, it never stops for a second. [9 April 1999, Calendar, p.F-6]

Never was Tati's mastery of sound effects more inspired than in Playtime, a commercial disaster at the time of its release that nevertheless may be Tati's true masterpiece. [14 May 1998, p.F18]

Chungking Express ravishingly, seductively exudes the immediacy of everyday life as its spins its classically timeless tales of love lost and almost regained.

Hawks' direction is his very best: crisp, humane and full of humor. [26 Jul 1998, p.4]

A dazzlingly imaginative work with awesome production values and special effects that bear comparison to those of "2001."

Among the most sophisticated, fully realized and satisfying films of the year.

As splendid as John Wayne is in these films, the elegiac She Wore a Yellow Ribbon provides him with one of his finest roles. [19 May 1996, p.72]

An elegiac saga of the decline and fall of a rich small-town American family, based on a Booth Tarkington novel.

The extraordinary quality of White's script and Arteta's direction lifts the meticulously cast actors to the height of their abilities. "Friends" star Aniston digs deep but is never showy. Reilly reveals the tenderness, vulnerability and hidden depth that can lurk within a slob, and Nelson has some of the film's most outrageously funny and inspired moments.

It's simply the best, funniest Grand Guignol horror picture to come along in ages.

Few filmmakers juxtapose cruelty and beauty as audaciously as Japan's Takashi Miike. A master director with great style and panache, Miike's latest, 13 Assassins, is a classic samurai movie, right up there among the finest in the genre.

In its masterful use of evocative imagery and music, Road to Nowhere is flawless.

Superb -- Crammed with incident, and bristles with passion and energy. Tavernier treats his actors, every last one of them impressive, as an ensemble.

Every element of The Mother, directed by Roger Michell and written by Hanif Kureishi, fits together with perfection. The film's staging -- the way its settings create a world that allows for striking images that echo the psychological interplay of its people, the way in which every performance could not be any better -- is awe-inspiring.

The Cruise validates beautifully a life that is its own validation.

Anthony LaPaglia and Sigourney Weaver are superb in this moving adaptation of the post-Sept. 11 play.

Almereyda imagines Hamlet taking place in present-day Manhattan with such vigor, insight and originality that the power and immediacy of his film makes Shakespeare accessible in an exciting and provocative manner beyond all expectations.

The Sting, that unalloyed delight...A pure entertainment film, it is impeccably crafted and well-deserving of its immense popularity.[25 Aug 1985, p.5]

Ran, which translates as "chaos" or "turmoil," is at once brisk and vital, elegiac and contemplative, intimate and epic, tragic yet shot through with humor. It combines the energy of youth with the perspective of maturity. It encompasses all of human nature in its folly and grandeur, and it does so in images as beautiful and terrifying as any ever captured on film and in performances that are impeccable.

Unquestionalby it's an instant classic, probably the grisliest well-made movie ever. [26 May 1983]

May well be Imamura's funniest film; it is also one of his most accomplished. It is the work of a mature artist who has kept his adventurous spirit alive, which he has expressed in a complex and risky work carried off with an effortlessness that comes only from wisdom and experience.

The City of Lost Children is a stunningly surreal fantasy, a fable of longing and danger, of heroic deeds and bravery, set in a brilliantly realized world of its own. It is one of the most audacious, original films of the year. [22 Dec 1995]

Mean Streets is a jazzy riff of a movie, zigging and zagging as if to the beat of snapping fingers. Its greatness lies in its leanness, with nary a word, a move, a gesture that's nonessential.

A constant, idiosyncratic pleasure that leaves us eager to see what the Goodmans and Logue will do next.

Anubhav Sinha's exhilarating fantasy Ra.One is Bollywood at its best. It has energy, spectacle and humor, song and dance, but razzle-dazzle special effects and action stunts never overwhelm its story of enduring love that unfolds amid an intricate and inspired sci-fi odyssey.

Lutz's dialogue is consistently sharp and snappy, and the large cast forms a sparkling ensemble under Junger's adept direction.

For 20 years, Claire Denis has been among France's foremost filmmakers with her acute yet subtle observations of the ebbs and flows within relationships. Her perception and understanding seem to grow only richer over the years, and her newest film, 35 Shots of Rum, is surely one of her finest -- and thereby one of the best films of the year.

Boasting one of the most exciting all-star casts ever assembled, glittering with authentic glamour, this MGM hit is one of those happy instances when art and entertainment are one. [17 Jun 1991, p.F9]

In short, Wonderland is an extraordinary film, as entertaining as it is observant, about ordinary people.

Of course, "It Happens One Night" comes to mind, but The Sure Thing is so sparkling and original in its humor, so perceptive about human nature in its own right, that its key elements seem classic, not carbons.

It has the subtlety and devastating impact of Renoir’s prophetic classic Rules of the Game, and it is suffused with the calm, detached tragic irony and inevitability of the ancient Greek plays.

It's hard to imagine many films surpassing or even equaling the effect of this supple, breathtakingly direct, small French film.

Watching Marwencol, Jeff Malmberg's probing documentary on Hogancamp's undertaking, is an exhilarating, utterly unique experience.

A period chamber drama drawn from a Joseph Conrad short story and of such intensity and passion that it transcends a specificity of time and place to achieve timelessness and universality.

MGM's 1940 Pride and Prejudice holds up better than you might expect as a prime example of Hollywood studio gentility in the '30s and '40s. [11 Aug 1996, p.74]

A little movie with big truths, a work of such fierce intelligence and emotional honesty that it blows away the competition when it comes to contemporary romantic comedy.

“Donnie Darko" was one of the best pictures released in 2001. Now that it has returned in a 20-minute longer--and richer -- director's cut, it seems sure to be ranked as one of the key American films of the decade.

Sankofa unfolds as a kind of oratorio--the film’s music in itself is incredibly rich and intoxicating--in which people deal with terrible cruelty through ritual and incantations of the African gods. It is a celebration of the strength of black people, in drawing upon their spiritual roots, to defy their oppressors--past and present alike.

A gritty, deceptively low-key, no-fuss, no-frills movie of consistent originality and surprise in which suspense arises straight up from the heroine's evolving character.

It was this ineffably poignant semiautobiographical reverie that unleashed fully Fellini's shimmering, flowing poetic style, echoed perfectly in a plaintive score by Fellini's potently evocative collaborator, Nino Rota.

Jacques Rivette has brought the Balzac short story to screen as a superb chamber drama. His is a graceful work of austerity and formality that perfectly captures the chaos of repressed emotions that see beneath the rigid conventions of aristocratic society.

Filmmaking at its most fearless, with Ostergaard creating a suspenseful, harrowing account of his original key subject, known only as "Joshua."

The film's immense cast and crew, headed by director Michael Bay, writer Randall Wallace and stars Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale, blend artistry and technology to create a blockbuster entertainment that has passion, valor and tremendous action.

David Lynch's superb and subtly ironic 1980 film reveals the shining humanity in a horribly disfigured--and horribly mistreated--young man who actually lived in England in the late 19th Century and was rescued by an enlightened Victorian physician.

A superlative work, offering a rich emotional experience that at the same time calls attention to the seemingly endless suffering of the Afghan people.

The older it gets, and we with it, the more we're able to see in it. As few American films have, Gone With the Wind succeeds both as historical epic and as intimate drama.

Incisive yet supple, wrenching yet deeply pleasurable, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada easily ranks among the year's best pictures.

A thoroughly original accomplishment of a high artistic order, Northfork features flawless, spare production design by Ichelle Spitzig and the Polish brothers' father, Del, and cinematographer M. David Mullen's striking images slide effortlessly into Dalí-like Surrealism.

By the time this irresistible treat is over, it has created some of the funniest moments and most inspired visual humor and design we may expect to experience at the movies all year. [30 Mar 1988]

Superb.

An unforgettable experience from yet another filmmaker who is making South Korean cinema one of the most vibrant of any emerging on the international scene.

Sunrise reminds us that the silent film was reaching its artistic heights just as sound was arriving. [29 Apr 1985, p.2]

A great gangster film...Shanghai Triad is one of the lushest-looking, most stunningly photographed (by Lu Yue) films of the year, but its depiction of unabashed material splendor is instantly eclipsed by the natural beauty of this island retreat with its swaying pampas grass, magnificent skies and modest structures of simple beauty.

An enduring film of enchanting and provocative revelation. [09 Jan 2009, p.E15]

Cookie's Fortune, which knows how to treat serious matters with humor, is to be treasured as an utterly distinctive work by one of America's finest filmmakers. [2 April 1999, Calendar, p.F-1]

With this masterful, flawless film, Xiaoshuai emerges in the front ranks of China's now numerous, world-renowned filmmakers.

Charged by a passion for life, A Home at the End of the World is a major achievement.

It's been brought to the screen by director John Schlesinger and writer Malcolm Bradbury with such deftness, giving it a life of its own, that it's not necessary for audiences to be familiar with the literature it satirizes.

A brilliant, often grotesquely bizarre allegory on life in Hungary from World War II to the present.

House of Flying Daggers finds the great Chinese director at his most romantic in this thrilling martial arts epic that involves a conflict between love and duty carried out to its fullest expression.

A string of unlikely events and coincidences set off Night Falls, and Lumet makes them believable the old-fashioned way: through interaction with a screen full of strongly drawn, fully dimensioned, psychologically valid characters.

Assayas has made a great film from Jacques Chardonne's classic novel. Although far different in tone, time, place and temperament, it brings to mind "Gone With the Wind" in its depth and scope and in its love story, which unfolds over a turbulent era.

On the screen, the rip-roaring rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch retains all the excitement and energy it had on stage while adding depth, clarity and emotional texture.

Silent Souls is a marvel. Fedorchenko's expressive powers and his visual prowess are astonishing, and though the film's conclusion is abrupt and confounding, it feels right.

Deliciously funny and fiendishly clever con-man comedy that begins on a note of ingenuity that it then sustains with the tension of a high-wire act.

Seems every bit the masterpiece it was when first released by Paramount. In this dazzling film, Bertolucci manages to combine the bravura style of Fellini, the acute sense of period of Visconti and the fervent political commitment of Elio Petri -- and, better still, a lack of self-indulgence.

Never has Denis demanded so much from audiences as with this shimmering enigma, at once intimate and epic, but it's worth the effort and then some.

The musical biography of comedian Fanny Brice emerges as a true classic, as enthralling as the day it was released in 1968. It is a superb example of Hollywood craftsmanship in which all elements have been blended to perfection with inspired artistry.

A beautiful film that flows with a luminous ease and assurance.

Armstrong, screenplay adapter/co-producer Robin Swicord and their colleagues have got everything just right. [23 Dec 1994]

Once Bitten is that extreme rarity, a youth movie that's made the grown-up discovery of how sexy and amusing a situation can be if you leave things to the imagination.

A teen comedy that actually puts a priority on intelligence and values and spans generations in its appeal, emerging as a special delight for anyone for whom high school was something less than nirvana. [29 Jan 1999, p.6]

Secret Ballot, which has a rich, spare score by Michael Galasso that blends Eastern and Western motifs, is funny, provocative, well-paced and leaves a memorable bittersweet aftertaste.

A gorgeous film with a vision strong enough to sustain heart-tugging, heightened by San Bao's romantic score, that verges on the sentimental.

Alternately heart-wrenching, dismaying, raw and even funny, Solas is ultimately a wonderfully warm and embracing experience.

This witty and tender 1966 gem remains as timeless and fresh as ever.

The sweeping, confounding conclusion therefore unfolds with a beauty and an ease that seem truly organic. The Way We Laughed has that feeling of being a work of art.

Scary, yet darkly funny, this thriller of the supernatural from the director of the terrific Fright Night moves with the speed of a bullet train and with style to burn. The film is a stunner--in all senses of the word.

Anderson, his superb ensemble cast and inspired cinematographer Uta Briesewitz, appeal at once to the intellect and the emotions as they build suspense and tension mercilessly.

In his feature debut, writer-director John Mangold brings remarkably sensitive powers of observation to bear upon ordinary people living ordinary lives.

A most-affecting experience, an impressive accomplishment in all its aspects.

As a dramatist Eason has a classicist's sense of structure and movement to complement his sense of the cinematic. Manito, which has a special grand jury prize from Sundance among its 10 awards, is a small film with a big impact.

A work of art whose beauty has the eternal power of redemption.

An across-the-board winner, an exuberant crowd-pleaser that marks its writer-director-star Cheech Marin's first effort apart from his longtime partner Tommy Chong.

An across-the-board delight featuring a spot-on ensemble cast that treats the most awkward and embarrassing moments in the rites of passage with affectionate hilarity.

Terrific escapist fare, stylish, outrageous and compelling.

A handsome work of authoritative yet understated style, responsive to mood, subtleties and nuance in exploring its especially well-drawn and intelligent lovers.