Michael Wilmington

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

Of all the movies I've seen in the past several years, this is one of the ones I love the most.

The film is truly special, truly different -- a wondrous talky roundelay about and for people who love life.

As silly movies go, this one is at least pretty exciting. But in the end, Typhoon leaves you feeling as exiled from the two Koreas as Sin is.

This cast could hardly be bettered and it's a great story as well: a taut, engrossing, highly perceptive scan of the fears, desires, repressions and ugliness boiling under the deceptively quiet surface of pre-war years. Our movies rarely get an American story this rich, evocative and true, and rarely realize it as well. If "Eternity" has dated at all, it's only in a good way; we can only wish our own movies were half as good or reflected American reality half as well. [5 Dec 2003, p.C8]

Honest, poignant and very funny, full of memorable, moving moments.

A great movie on a powerful, essential subject -- the Holocaust years in Poland -- directed with such artistry and skill that, as we watch, the barriers of the screen seem to melt away.

An Altman classic on a subject he knows well.

If you have any taste for film noir -- that Chandler-esque American style that had its heyday in the '40s and '50s -- this film is a must: one of the classics of the genre. [02 Jun 1987, p.8]

Jafar Panahi of Iran is one of his country's great filmmakers, and Offside is his best movie to date.

El Dorado is essentially a darker remake of Rio Bravo, with Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Hunnicutt and James Caan as the now archetypal quartet. But, though the situation is the same, the mood is crisper, tenser, with a heightened sense of pain, loss and death underlying the humor and action.

The most purely enjoyable of all the great Ford films. [18 Sep 1998, p.J]

A beautiful, intensely moving film.

The results are spine-tingling. There's only one thing to say about this movie and its rescuers, recovered from the dead--and the Dead: Rock on.

An exquisitely realized film; a little gem, it keeps its conflicting or varying themes of tranquility and violence, sacred and profane love, recklessness and wisdom, in almost perfect balance.

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]

Cat People is an admirable first entry into the brainy, elegant, spooky world of Val Lewton. [09 Sep 2005, p.C4]

This is a first-class muckraking melodrama: an admirable picture.

This is a superb film and one of Nicholson's great performances, tamped down but magnetic.

Be forewarned: The movie lasts three hours and 16 minutes, and nearly all of it deals with subjects that polite society (and even rude society) tends to ignore or evade.

One of the great film noirs and a quintessential heist movie, a classic of American hard-boiled storytelling that, though endlessly copied, hasn't been bettered. [27 May 2005, p.C6]

Swooningly beautiful, furious and thrilling, Zhang Yimou's Hero is an action movie for the ages.

Jam-packed mishmash of wall-to-wall music, trenchant character study, slick sociology and sly witty-Brit comedy.

As he was dying, Tarkovsky fashioned this great valedictory about a family in the first stages of nuclear apocalypse and a father's ultimate sacrifice. [31 Jan 2003, p.C4]

Taking Care of Business is a curious achievement: a laughless comedy starring Belushi and Grodin, two actors who are almost always funny.

even in the notable ranks of Leigh's movie, TV and theater work-an oeuvre embracing high comedy, biting comment and shivering pathos-Naked is extraordinary. In the hands of Leigh and his magnificently gifted, gutsy cast, these days and nights on London's streets burn themselves on our minds.

With Maura delivering an explosive performance, Almodovar presents Pepa's tale with real gusto--with vibrant colors, gaudy personality, mad jokes and a sexiness that erupts off the screen.

The Last Days, despite its great subject, is not quite a great non-fiction film. It's too reserved and careful in tone to reach the heights of Alain Resnais' Night and Fog or Claude Lanzmann's Shoah. [12 Feb 1999, p.I]