Michael Wilmington

It's permeated with a sweetness and vulnerability unusual for any crime movie. [29 May 1998, p.N]

One of the great movie horror tales, with one of the greatest of all movie villains, appeared to relatively little fanfare in 1955 when actor Charles Laughton released his sole movie directorial effort: a startlingly Gothic visualization of Davis Grubb's Southern nightmare novel The Night of the Hunter.[23 Nov 2001, p.C5]

Sunset Blvd. remains one of the best, truest, funniest, saddest and scariest of all movies about Hollywood. [09 Jun 2006, p.C8]

One of the screen's great portrayals of the hell-raising and malaise of young men in their 20s, hit Italy like a comic thunderbolt when it was released there in 1953 -- and it struck the American art-house audience in much the same way when it premiered here in 1956. Now it returns, and unlike its five aging-boy protagonists, this movie hasn't lost its first youth.

One of the screen's supreme works and perhaps Ingmar Bergman's finest film, "Persona" is also his most radical in form and technique.

Los Angeles has always been the capital city of film noir..., but few movies present a darker, bleaker view of the city than Roman Polanski's 1974 Chinatown. [17 Oct 1997, p.o]

Achieves a mellowness and melancholy that recalls the jazzy dissonance of director (and here, composer) Eastwood's best work: "The Outlaw Josey Wales," "Bird," "Unforgiven" and "Mystic River."

Brilliant adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's 20th Century comic-erotic classic. [08 Jul 2005, p.C2]

One of the greatest films--Akira Kurosawa's poignant 1952 masterpiece Ikiru...is both a tragicomedy about how our best intentions are misinterpreted and a profound meditation on an old man's reactions to impending death. [26 Sep 2003, p.C2]

Director Otto Preminger excelled at intellectual thrillers and he's at his peak here. [07 Feb 2007, p.C12]

A landmark movie that becomes a priceless entryway into a distant land and its people, few of whom will ever seem as foreign and far away again.

Egypt's foremost filmmaker Chahine directs and stars in the movie most beloved by Egyptian audiences: a vibrant, lower-depths saga of the working community at a Cairo train station: concessionaires, porters and baggage-handlers, beset by bosses and torn by inner conflicts. [09 Jul 1999, p.L]

It's a movie of such jaw-dropping violence, wild improbability and dazzling style it overpowers all resistance.

Eisenstein's incandescent creativity remains strikingly obvious. The most brilliant of all Soviet silent films. [30 Jan 1998, p.N]

A movie bull's-eye: noir with an attitude, a thriller packing punches. It gives up its evil secrets with a smile.

A deeply moving blend of cold terror and rapturous hilarity. Lovingly crafted by Italy's top comedian and most popular filmmaker, it's that rare comedy that takes on a daring and ambitious subject and proves worthy of it.

A stunner: a fiercely brilliant film of such wrenching impact, nonstop drive and unpredictability that watching it becomes an exhilarating ride.

As these three rowdies carouse, bond and then break apart, Towne and Ashby give us an indelible portrait of the moral chaos and bitterness of the Vietnam years, true to the last detail. [14 Aug 1998, p.M]

Takes the raw truth and makes it jubilantly, terrifically entertaining.

The sheer stark speed and measured violence of On the Run catch us up quickly--and the film becomes a searing portrait of a killer-idealist lost out of time.

Kobayashi's great, laceratingly exciting 1962 Japanese samurai revenge saga, once voted by Japanese critics their country's all-time best film. [03 Mar 2006, p.C5]

Nobody Knows, by the often excellent Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, is one of those special movies that can give us a new way of seeing.

Brims with intelligence, compassion and sensuous delight in the textures, sights and sounds of life--all the way from the Taj Mahal to Pearl Jam.

Clean up the language, and this little roach of a movie could play the bottom half of a double bill with Rowan and Martin's “The Maltese Bippy.” [26 March 1999, Life, p.9E]

Still packs a wallop. It's also a movie with no easy passage to its dark heart.

Like a Visconti epic gone mad, explosive, beautiful, unforgettable. [08 Dec 2006, p.C8]

Imamura, like many older directors, has evolved a style of wonderful simplicity, lucidity and economy, cutting to the marrow of events, switching moods with effortless ease. [11 Sep 1998, p.F]

In this movie, Auteuil ("Jean de Florette") and Binoche ("Chocolat") are such marvelous actors, they can shift us in almost any emotional direction with a speech or a glance.