Marjorie Baumgarten

As all his films have shown, Cuarón is clearly one of the most original filmmakers working today, and Children of Men should solidify his place at the top of those ranks. With a great script, there should be no stopping him.

Spielmann’s deft storytelling is coupled with immaculate compositions that constrain the characters as confidently as any prison bars. Revanche reveals Spielmann as a true master of his craft.

Sumptuous to behold, although one will not leave the theatre with a much deeper knowledge and understanding of this great Spanish painter's career.

Director Chen and screenwriters Lilian Lee and Lu Wei (based on Lee's original novel) create a tapestry of detail woven with visual spectacle, historical saga and human drama. At over 2 1/2 hours running time, Farewell My Concubine is both too brief and too luxurious.

Disturbing and grim in its portraits, Wise Blood is nevertheless marvelous storytelling and its performances are virtually divine.

What the series means in the long run is anybody's guess; I just know I sleep better at night knowing it's out there.

The film is historical yet its characters are fictional. Well-captured is the controlled chaos of some of the political actions.

Pierces through your tear ducts in its ultimate path toward your heart.

Haynes brings the emotional underbelly to the surface, he also tricks up the visual surface with elaborate color schemes that provide unspoken clues regarding the characters’ frames of mind.

A movie that amply delivers on the epic promise of its title, entertaining, enlightening, and emboldening viewers with its deceptively simple premise and execution.

Drawn from the true adventures of the Washington Post reporters and their illustrious editor Ben Bradlee, the movie heroically recounts the dogged journalistic sleuthing that cracked the story of the Watergate break-in and cover-up.

This is the way this ground-breaking monument was meant to be seen: in mind-boggling 70mm.

Haneke (Caché) has created a morality tale that concludes with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand: one more example of a solitary act of violence that unleashes a cataclysm.

As good as it ever was, and improved slightly by hindsight, experience, and extra cash.

The film aims to be a cautionary tale, but it doesn’t seem that the filmmakers have absorbed the lesson.

Dry, ironic humor is also one of the primary ingredients of The Other Side of Hope, and one of Kaurismäki’s signature elements.

Maddeningly, A Ghost Story can seem more like a creative exercise than a fully formed narrative construct.

Raimunda believes that dirty linen should be washed at home: Thank goodness Almodóvar hangs some of it up on the screen to dry.

At every turn, corruption oozes from the pores of this thriller, and although the film’s tone keeps us on edge, Widows also hits a few perfunctory pits in the road.

An absorbing, delightful, and nuanced movie with laugh-out-loud humor, and though it often plays events broadly where you might have preferred subtlety, it's not a movie that could have settled for muffled silence.

Director James Cameron and producer Gale Anne Hurd (both of whom co-wrote the script) demonstrate their storytelling virtuosity.

Tennessee Williams’ study of a crumbling Southern patriarchy is riveting stuff. Although the word homosexuality is never uttered, this Hollywood reworking brings a certain understanding of the son’s latent “immaturity” and his wife’s childlessness. Bolstered by extraordinary performances, this tale’s a summer sizzler.

No background material is going to help the viewer who isn't already aware of why a Fugees reunion is such a cool thing to witness, but it's impossible not to get caught up in this party's good vibe.

Maleonn somehow finds an anchor of optimism amidst the situation, despite his father’s steady memory decline. That, too, is part of this film’s gift.

In so many ways, The Quiet American speaks volumes.

Arthur overextends its welcome and relies too much on prop comedy.

The Cove exposes the dark secrets that underpin the world’s dolphin mania, whether it’s our enjoyment of the animals performing circus tricks in aquariums, the swimming-with-dolphins industry, or the government recruitment of the sea mammals’ intelligence, communication, and sonar abilities for military applications.

Wonderful performances anchor this biopic of country star Loretta Lynn's rise to fame. In a time before the TV music channels made star biographies into such a formulaic joke, Coal Miner's Daughter was the real deal.

Together's portrait of its social moment is right-on.

It's a movie perfectly designed for tossing back popcorn (the jumbo kind so you don't have to leave your seat during the show); not until later do you get the empty feeling that you've swallowed an entire bucket of popped air.

Since so many of De Palma’s films have become part and parcel with the American cultural consciousness of the last 50 years, I can’t imagine this filmmaker’s insights not providing every viewer with some memorable takeaways.

This Romeo & Juliet is a rich visual feast, besotted with the fervor of its acrobatic camerawork and kinetic staging and its mind-bending aggregation of unrelated but resonant fragments of 20th-century iconography.

Probably the ultimate writers' film, but it's also a brash, daring, and dynamic film -- as delicate as an orchid but as durable and malleable as the species.

[A] prescient and sharply drawn comedy about the depths to which one unscrupulous station will sink.

The on-target performances, along with the unceasing barrage of popular music and daring narrative gambles, combine to make Trainspotting one of the grand movie rushes of 1996.

This film is more a love story about the marriage between Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife, Alma Reville (Helen Mirren), rather than a historically accurate backstage look at the making of this important movie in the Hitchcock filmography and the American psyche.

This one misses the boat by several nautical miles.

Last Chance Harvey is so much an "actors' film" that the hand of the director seems hidden until it bursts into view with something clunky.

In many ways, Animal Kingdom could have become a stylish but routine cops-and-robbers tale. Instead, Michôd shapes this film into a memorable character study about uncaged beasts.

Although a nip and a tuck here and there might improve Hugo's overall pace, there is no denying that this love letter to the movies is something to cherish.

Like the disco sounds that accompany the end of Gloria, this film seems a bit superficial.

A stunningly impassioned and articulate study of a writer's life and the censorial demons that can strangle that voice.

Heinzerling allows us to read whatever we want into this picture. The endless struggle for money and professional recognition is either a curse or a raison d’être.

The Reason I Jump will be revelatory for viewers who know little about the subject, and affirmative for caregivers and parents of children on the autism spectrum. What everyone, however, can take away from the film is the knowledge that just because someone is unexpressive, it doesn’t mean they are without thoughts and ideas; and just because someone’s bodily motions may appear odd and eccentric, it doesn’t mean they are possessed or unmanageable.

A compendium of really neat stuff and nifty sequences, and it will just have to do until Vol. 3 or reunification comes along.

In an era in which too many of us automatically accept women's right to choose, Vera Drake reminds us that the time for complacency is not now.

Some have remarked that The Post is the story of Kay transforming into Katharine Graham, which is pretty on the mark.

This is a film that skims the surface layer of politesse from human interactions and reveals us as the blustering bundles of ego that we all are.

The Roberts are unforgettable figures, and their insiders' perspective and ultimate survival and rebirth provide an exhilarating example of how wondrous things can emerge from the flood.

Birbiglia’s acute perspective will pertain to almost any industry in which a few are chosen to advance and the vast majority are left to wonder, “Why not me?”

The sexual chemistry between Hepburn and Grant, when set against Charade's tumultuous backdrop of shifting identities, makes this movie an enduring favorite.

Once you've seen it all once I bet you'll wish you were watching "Groundhog Day" -- again.

Episodically eventful but utterly unsuspenseful, the film is a diversion that requires little attention and satisfies the film-going needs of a wide variety of viewers.

Still, for a film that is so much about the healing power of words expressed and feeling brought into the light of day, Monsieur is strangely reticent.

An amazing, bracing, funny, audacious, tender, and sobering piece of filmmaking. Few movies have ever dared to be this remorseless in their portraits of addiction.

Despite these biases, the movie helps the average American understand the nature of the shell games perpetuated by Enron and how "synergistic corruptions" can corrupt absolutely.

Brie Larson is a revelation as the linchpin of Short Term 12. An industrious young actress, her performance here is remarkably natural and understated.

A History of Violence poses the right question: Are those who don't study history doomed to repeat it?

Nightmare’s macabre humor is very adult, yet the storytelling is woefully simplistic.

As moving wallpaper, Winged Migration is the cat’s meow: One almost wishes the wondrous images had been filmed in the even bigger IMAX format. But as an informative documentary, Winged Migration’s birdbrain comes to the fore.

I'm not sure if this is a failing of the play, the actor, the director, or whatever, but it's a nagging perplexity at the center of this story. Yet there's so much else going on here, ideas and lines of thought that it engenders, that it's difficult not to enjoy the experiences. It's also bitingly funny.

La Promesse is a penetrating coming-of-age story, one that argues that adulthood begins with the emergence of moral convictions.

This is witty romantic comedy with barbed social commentary.

Hedges has demonstrated his sensitivity to internecine family conflicts and the tenor of small-time life. However, The Odd Life of Timothy Green seems always to be straining for whimsy and wonder.

The languages spoken throughout Certified Copy slide easily amongst Italian, French, and English, further creating the sense of none of them being authentic.

This Danish film is an alternately funny and harrowing look at a family crisis, a meltdown that blends the needs of the truthsayers with the instincts of the let's-bury-our-heads-in-the-sand-and-pretend-none-of-this-is-happening types.

An additional treat is seeing Hollywood good guy Henry Fonda playing one of the nastiest curs in the West. Once Upon a Time in the West is one of the great films in cinema history. (8/30/2000 Review)

Most striking is Macdonald's deft use of music and Marley's lyrics (many of them obscure) to illustrate the film's points. So thoughtful is this counterpoint that it almost makes up for Macdonald never showing any one song in a complete performance.

Without really understanding what drove these two men to attempt the risky climb in the first place, it’s hard to extend the requisite sympathy for their plight. A void was definitely touched in this movie, and it was inside me.

The film is really a story about community and how it unites for something it deems important. But more, it is a story about mood and tone. Kaurismäki's mordant humor – part verbal, part visual – remains intact.

There's a serious teen angst movie somewhere in all this as well as an unflinching look at suburbia.

The film is also comic, mysterious, and structurally ambitious, while offering numerous points of entry and perspective.

One of the most original movies of the year.

When compared with most of what passes for honest teen drama these days, My Summer of Love is a real reprieve.

Exciting to watch: The audio disruptions of Carla putting in or taking out her hearing aids and the inventiveness of the way the heist plot is revealed are just a couple of the film's treats.

The subtlety and restraint in the way Reichardt links the vignettes is also commendable. It’s as if she’s reminding us that we’re all part of the grander scheme of things but at the same time disconnected from one another.

Frozen River skates matter-of-factly on thin ice.

Boasts a smart screenplay by Robert Benton and David and Leslie Newman, striking cinematography by Geoffrey Unsworth (especially in the Smallville sequence), bright comic turns by Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman, and of course, that winning performance by Christopher Reeve in the title role. Believe a man can fly? You bet!

Certainly one of the best drug movies ever made.... Great performances make this dispassionate study a memorable experience.

Scores its ultimate coup de grace though its interviews. Macdonald has lined up an amazing collection of interviewees.

One of the most exciting movies of this, or any other, year. It's smart, funny, and wonderfully crafted and performed.

With Captain Phillips we get a viable thriller whose conclusion is already known, and a character who reacts to circumstances rather than a personal, heroic code. And now, it’s a story preserved in brine.

A war movie with a conscience, an action movie with a funny bone, a caper movie with a shifting agenda.

Meticulous and abstruse, Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color is an idiosyncratic film that invites explication but defies total understanding.

An intriguing psychological study that, more or less, leaves out the psychology and presents us with surface behavior.

Sicario is at its best when its borderlines are fluid and indistinct.

Director David Gordon Green has made a work of uncommon beauty and intelligence, one that is smart enough to trust its characters and the technical contributions of its crew.

The music by Raphael Saadiq also belongs in the film’s plus column, helping to make Step one of the feel-good documentaries of the year.

If Wadjda, this Muslim girl, calls up film memories of adolescent Marjane Satrapi in "Persepolis", whose Western-loving lifestyle is uprooted by Iran’s Islamic Revolution, or the young women in Jafar Panahi’s "Offside," who countermand the rules that forbid them from entering stadiums to watch men’s soccer matches, you wouldn’t be far off the mark.

Usually, I am not so persnickety about such things, especially with first-timers, but the accumulation of mis-matched shots is so great that you have to wonder why some of the more experienced crew members weren't climbing the rafters to say “Whoa, Mel.”

The film is wickedly hilarious but more in a droll and knowing kind of sense than a har-de-har-har manner.

Everywhere in America these days, people pay lip service to the idea of conducting open and honest conversations about race. Due to a fluke of timing and its entertaining quality, Top Five should help get the ball rolling.