Michael Sragow

Unfolds amid the mechanized carnage of World War I. Yet everything in it is personal. That's why it's a masterpiece.

What emerges is a fallen warrior's tale: the inside story of a man bloodied and bowed.

A great adventure.

A pop masterpiece.

It moves so confidently and brightly that it's ticklish as well as chilling - and, in its own dark way, enthralling.

Barbershop 2 makes you want to know what happens next. In its own way, it's the Ivory Soap of sequels: 99 and 44/100% pure.

Supple, eloquent and enchanting.

Watching this movie, you can dream with open eyes.

The ovation that Hudson wins from the movie's audience is one of those miraculous moments when a performer's artistry breaks through the screen and makes you feel part of a live audience. I haven't experienced anything like it since Barbra Streisand sang "My Man" at the end of her astonishing debut in Funny Girl.

The result is harrowing and inspiring. As escapist entertainment, it's the movie of the year.

A genuine odyssey: a journey to self-knowledge.

Brad Pitt's sensitive performance helps make 'Benjamin Button' a timeless masterpiece.

A spellbinder of the rarest kind and quality. It opens audiences up to an infinite variety of emotional and intellectual nuances.

This movie is both sad and inspiring. It offers proof that Lennon's wit and art are everlasting.

Ratatouille is a sublime dish of a movie, and the company's piece de resistance.

A gorgeous flirt of a murder movie.

By turns breathtaking and heartbreaking.

In The History Boys, as in all of Bennett's work, irony is what the characters live and breathe - and I mean irony in its truest sense, of using language to present opposite and often sly alternatives to accepted wisdom.

For audiences, two things keep the tension from becoming too excruciating: the presence of the survivors in front of us and the knowledge that in the grip of Macdonald's humane, lucid filmmaking, we're in the best of hands.

The movie is emotionally tumultuous and evenhanded and serene. It celebrates the odd pockets of imagination and individuality that can be nurtured in middle-class suburbia. [2002 re-release]

Spider-Man 2 offers one emotional or action-packed aria after another; at the end you feel like giving it a standing O.

Funny Girl is old-fashioned; it is also exhilarating.

Under its leathery hide is a genuine compulsion to de-romanticize Western gunfighting. Every bullet in this movie matters, and by the end Munny's alcohol-fuelled, satanic purposefulness is shocking: in the climax, even his choice of victims has a crazy excess. [10 Aug 1992, p.70]

When it comes to the oft-doomed genre of seafaring adventure, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is a spectacular throwback and a great leap forward.

With a surgical saw instead of a hatchet, del Toro takes apart patriarchy and opportunistic religion as well as fascism.

In its entirety, Hairspray has the funny tilt that only a director-choreographer like Shankman can give to a movie.

It's both irrefutably concrete and irresistibly uplifting.

Strangers With Candy -- a perfect title -- is filled with straight-faced loonies. It's a nutcake you actually want to eat.