Mike Clark

This definitive "life goes on" movie does what Altman does best: juggle 22 characters, deftly switch moods, and offer a comlex warts-and-all characters whose lives seem to extend beyond the screen. Few movies attempt this; Fewer succeed. [1 Oct 1993]

The crucifixion is the strongest such scene of all time. [26 Aug 1988]

This is a great movie, but it needs a sales job because it's in Mandarin.

Director Francis Ford Coppola's revamping of his Vietnam epic, Apocalypse Now, with 49 added minutes, has significantly improved the troubled blockbuster. The film now seems both mellowed and — thanks in part to the most vibrant-looking prints in its 22-year history — revitalized.

Even in the classiest movie summer of the decade, Mob is destined to demand respect for Pfeiffer. [19 Aug 1988]

A premier boxing movie and a forceful Depression remembrance for the socially conscious, Cinderella Man also ices it for stargazers that Russell Crowe is the dominant screen actor working today.

As son Tom Joad, Henry Fonda gave the screen performance of his career. [09 Apr 2004, p.10E]

A perfect fit between filmmaker (Memento's Christopher Nolan) and material (Norway's same-name psycho-chiller from 1997), this remake gets all there is to get out of a peculiar premise with promise.

Judged strictly as a movie (especially a subliminally disturbing movie), Vertigo hasn't lost a thing. You watch this guy going slowly over the brink and realize, good grief, this is Jimmy Stewart. [Restored version; Oct 1996, p.3D]

This is a building-block movie: Its stand-out excellence becomes apparent only gradually.

If artist R. (Robert) Crumb can dispense immediately with his resume in Terry Zwigoff's superb Crumb, we can, too. [21 Apr 1995]

Nothing in John McNaughton's script and direction is exploitative; there isn't a frame of wasted action in what may well remain the year's most tightly constructed movie. As such, you're with this qualified classic all the way, you believe in it all the way, and you're thus forced to take its sporadic atrocities seriously. How many movies (and how long has it been since we've seen one) have really pulled this off? [20 April 1990, p.4D]

Heat is in the cop-movie pantheon with Akira Kurosawa's "High and Low," and that's as "right" as the genre gets.

The generally faithful script is by Anne Rice herself, the director is "The Crying Game"'s Neil Jordan, and both seem true to themselves and as true as they can be to artistic and visceral expectations. [11Nov1994 Pg. 01.D]

One of the rare sports films that devotes extensive screen time to heartbreaking losses is full of other surprises as well. [13 Oct 1994, p.1D]

At 65, Boorman flawlessly handles his actors and expertly orchestrates action in one of the widest-looking black-and-white Panavision frames since 1967's In Cold Blood. [18 Dec 1998, p.13E]

A contender for the year's best film.

Despite the film's sporadic lulls, both director and star are on full beam. The first and third hours of this 20th-century epic are as dazzling as big-scale movies get.

Williams is only adequate, but nearly everyone else here is great, including Jerry Orbach (Ciello mentor) and Bob Balaban (hardball Justice Department creep). [25 May 2007, p.4E]

[Olivier's] greatest Shakespearean movie. [27 Feb 2004]

Albert Finney and Susannah York look impossibly young and attractive, and it's easy to see how Oscar nominations went to four supporting performers; Richardson's chosen style, a self-conscious amalgam of silent films and the French New Wave, somehow worked when it shouldn't have - and still does, to my amazement. [13 Mar 1992, p.3D]

A Casablanca-influenced love story set against a French Resistance backdrop in Martinique. [07 Nov 2003]

If it isn't flawless, neither is "Fantasia"... Here's a live-action/animated marvel with no screen antecedent; “Chinatown” may actually come closest. [22 June 1988]

Campion's script is very well received, but the film finally makes it on cinematics: bleakly beautiful photography, haunting score, and good acting. [12 Nov 1993]

The movie is so fun that it wouldn't need the mystery to be top-notch entertainment.

A movie this diminutive can be easily oversold, but we might see it on some year-end best lists. It eats at you, just like renewed love.

Director Richard Rush's unique moviemaking saga is one of the consummate screen treats of its day, though its offbeat subject matter and tone caused it some problems. [23 Nov 2001, p.8E]

The best news the G rating has had since the ratings system was instituted in 1968.

The only things missing from making this showdown worthy of a Western is Murrow's sheriff's badge, a dusty street and maybe a spittoon for McCarthy's infamous invectives.

His (Cameron) movie may not be perfect, but visually and viscerally, it pretty well is.

A timeless story. [07 Oct 2005, p.8E]

Great cinema - and also a whopping good time. [19 September 1990, Life, p.1D]

Michael Mann , directs with his standard prejudice toward the sheer physical. The result, almost musical, has only a couple recent movie precedents. [25 Sep 1992, p.1D]

Bugsy is a gangster film around the edges, a '40s love song down the middle, and the year's breeziest live-actor movie through and through. [13 Dec 1991, p.1D]

The Crucible shrewdly saves its most potent ammo for the end, audience-friendly showmanship to further signify a bang-up movie. [27 Nov 1996]

It's at once funny, exciting, tearful and tuneful. [13 Nov 1991, p.1D]

Rain is a 126-minute genre movie stacked for effect; when you see Douglas racing his motorcycle at the beginning, you know what the climax will be. Scott, though, may be the definitive state-of-the-art moviemaker right now - and violent Rain is the most aggressively cinematic movie in a while. [22 Sep 1989, p.1D]

The rawest, most sustained screen portrayal of 20th century combat.

Emma is the peak of the recent Austen pack and a star-maker, too -- an antidote to a summer in which even good movies have subordinated writing and characters to special effects. [02 Aug 1996, Pg.01.D]

Half-factual, half-fanciful and all funny, this labor of love is also unexpectedly touching. [28 September 1994, Life, p.5D]

It has always been around and easy to take for granted. But its lack of pretension weathers years nicely. [09 Mar 2007, p.12D]

Though Weaver is by all accounts (mine included) in the real-life “none-nicer'” class, I've always suspected she might be great as a shrew. She is. [21 Dec 1988, Life, p.1D]

More than any other example in recent memory, Chicago shows how much the element of surprise is missing from today's movies.

A singular accomplishment so specifically keyed to Spacey's talents that it mandates going out on a limb to say it contains the performance that will ultimately be regarded as "the one."

Forman finesses the story's grimmer aspects as he did in "Cuckoo's Nest," and his ability to switch moods on a dime remains unsurpassed.

For a brutal black comedy about L.A. hitmen, Pulp Fiction bursts out of its binding with loopy delights. [14 Oct 1994]

Happily, there's nothing to misconstrue about the film: It's fabulous.

After watching Pfeiffer and Day-Lewis submerge molten 19th-century sparks here, it is now conceivable that Scorsese could make compelling cinema out of “Three Blind Mice.” [17 Sept 1993, Life, p.1D]

Cassavetes wrote and directed on his standard improvisational shoestring. The oft-shattering result, which runs 2 1/2 hours, is so uneasily lifelike that the academy temporarily ignored its prejudice against independent productions by rewarding Rowlands and Cassavetes with Oscar nominations. [18 Sep 1992, p.3D]

Tucker is the best Capra movie since Capra quit making them himself. [12 Aug 1988]

There've been few screen moments more moving this year than Cruise's initial reaction to his brother's almost superhuman math prowess. [16 Dec 1988]

As the suddenly somber Hickey, the traveling salesman who rudely stops regaling assorted skid-row barflies with flip patter in 1912 New York, Lee Marvin is very good in a role that Jason Robards always owned. Otherwise, the actors are all on a "wow" level. [04 Apr 2003]

This is the kind of people-driven story that the movies used to give us - before special effects took over.

Stripped of all bravado, Cruise delivers a raw and probably detractor-proof performance. Spielberg does what he did right in creating a novel milieu for "A.I. Artificial Intelligence," but this time the writing is fresher and anything but unwieldy.

A great movie just got greater, thanks to this thorough restoration. [Director's Cut; 27 June 1997, p.D3]

Another great 1950s John Wayne Western from Warner Bros. [25 May 2007, p.4E]

The most powerful of all recent wayward-youth sagas; indeed, it's tough to recall the last such drama that packed as much emotional clout.

Express is 80 tight minutes of railroad intrigue, an Oscar winner for cinematography (there's none better) and the film with the enduring line: "It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily." [22 Oct 1993, p.3D]

Fearless mix of classical music and animation, the one movie to satisfy that oft-misused adjective ''unique.'' [01 Nov 1991, p.3D]

Humor, poignancy and social criticism converge for an even better movie than the recent one it brings to mind: Gosford Park. [23 Jan 2004]

Black Hawk turns nightmare into great cinema.

As good as "Unforgiven." Or, to put it another way, as good as any movie Eastwood has ever directed.

An instant classic, an Oscar-worthy showcase for Jeremy Irons, and a tightrope ballet over dicey screen material… A subtle movie - and thus a disturbing one. Like “Vertigo,” “The Night of the Hunter,” “Repulsion” and a few others, it finds beauty in morbidity - then nags you to come back for a second dose. [23 Sept 1988]

Michelle Pfeiffer would easily steal The Fabulous Baker Boys were it not for a hefty payoff on the long overdue teaming of Jeff and Beau Bridges. Then again, the fabulous Bridges boys would steal the picture if not for Pfeiffer. Filmmaker Steve Kloves, who has all but come out of nowhere, must be living right. [13 Oct 1989, p.4D]

One of the year's best movies and certainly its most delightful screen surprise.

Edited with whiplash intensity into 92 of the movie year's tightest minutes, Room is arguably the breeziest political documentary ever. [3 Nov 1993, p.7D]

Though his film is like no other baseball movie, it may remind you of Paul Newman's hockey comedy Slap Shot: a knowing look at sport's underbelly - punctuated by jelly-belly laughs. [15 June 1988]

Though the movie may not change many minds about McNamara, it richly humanizes him, a valuable feat atop all the fascinating reflection.

Topically relevant and emotionally overwhelming, John Ford's memory-movie concerns the devastation of a Welsh coal-mining family after mine owners impose cutbacks. [16 Jun 1992, p.6D]

It's slick, melodramatic, even inherently trashy - but a blue-chip moviegoer investment. [11 Dec 1987, p.1D]

The definitive time capsule of mid-'60s swinging London. [05 Dec 2003]

Screenwriter Alan Sharp's dialogue, as edgy as his name, combines with Penn's incisive direction to create memorable characters played by Hackman, Ward, Jennifer Warren and a young James Woods as an auto mechanic you don't want messing with your points and plugs. [22 July 2005, p.6E]

Joins company with "Sullivan's Travels" and "Sunset Boulevard" as the quintessential Hollywood peek-a-boos...[and] Tim Robbins' modulated performance rates rhapsodic praise. [10 Apr 1992]

The Little Mermaid, or Hans Christian Andersen Goes Hip, is the most thoroughly socko kiddie cartoon feature in decades. [15 Nov 1989, p.1D]

Shanghai Triad concludes the sublime seven-movie collaboration of Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou and actress Gong Li with a bang worthy of the most jubilant New Year's Eve.

A masterpiece. (9 Jan 1998, p.3D)

Tempers moments of despair with deliriously romantic passages abetted by James Horner's traditionally lush score and photography by John Toll ("Legends of the Fall's" Oscar winner).

Still mesmerizes on the strength of George C. Scott's chew-your-behind performance. [5 Nov. 1999, p.6E]

Manhattan Murder Mystery may be lightweight Woody, but it's also a mile-wide grin with a surprisingly satisfying mystery angle. [18 Aug 1993, p.1D]

Boasts a classic screwball script by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. [10 May 1995, p.5D]

Tightly constructed and controlled.

With flawless precision, the movie flows seamlessly between a virtual newsreel approach (to chronicle senseless, arbitrary atrocities on the people) and a slightly more direct narrative technique that characterized the film's three dominant characters - each one cast to perfection. [15 Dec 1993]

The most un-MGM movie that the studio ever made gave Dracula director Tod Browning the chance to tell a story that horrified audiences. [13 Aug 2004, p.4E]

Produced by HBO but too good not to play theaters, this soon-to-be minor classic is the best movie about society's untrendiest since "Ghost World" exactly two years ago.

It's hard to recall the last movie that has left such an emotionally searing question dangling in the mind: "What if ... ?"

Rafael Sabatini's 17th-century surgeon goes from slave to swashbuckler, Michael Curtiz directs to Erich Wolfgang Korngold music, and a major studio takes an unprecedented gamble on two unknowns to star: Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. [15 Apr 2005]

Cold and cut to the bone, the film is a primer in screen virtuosity. Standard action film clichés, like a face getting hit with a chair, get turned inside out; both film and actors somehow manage to seem realistic and stylized at the same time. [21 Sept 1990, Life, p.6D]

The most provocative miscarried-justice movie ever. [26 Aug 1988]

With gorgeous Australian outback photography and minimal dialogue co-defining it as "pure" cinema, Nicolas Roeg's masterpiece was once designated by Premiere magazine as its "most wanted" movie on video. [04 Apr 1997, p.3D]

Like too many others, I resisted seeing (or at least, rushing out to) this film, fully expecting a stolid, respectable bummer; what I found, without the filmmakers ever having cheapened the material, is one of 1989's most entertaining movies. There is even, I swear, a barroom brawl that's out (and worthy) of John Ford. [3 Jan 1990, p.4D]

Conceived as froth with an edge and a smash on both counts. [11 May 2007, p.4D]

Pearson's scenes with Garfield are among the most supercharged ever. [28 May 2004, p.6E]

This twisted space opera serves up carcasses in six-digit figures but is foremost a sendup for the ages.

Violence is in the spirit of the hardest-hitting film noir offerings from the '50s, but far more explicit. It's also in the spirit of the Western.

With songs Triplets, Dancing in the Dark and Shine on Your Shoes, it's my fave musical. [18 Mar 2005, p.6E]

The chief delight is Kasdan. “Body Heat” was appropriately slick, but “The Big Chill” and “Silverado” too much so. Tourist is edgier - also the work of a genuine craftsman. Frankly, I didn't think Kasdan had it in him. [23 Dec 1988, Life, p.1D]

This subject demands consummate screen treatment and now has absolutely gotten it from director/producer Spike Lee. [10 Jul 1997, Pg.02.D]

Minnelli's other Oscar-winning perennial. [19 Sep 2008, p.4D]

With special effects so convincing you don't even think about them, a head-case hero and a three-dimensional villain who is his equal, socko Spider-Man 2 has something for everyone.

Not since "Memento" has a movie served up such a provocative mind-bender, and the Sundance winner by first-time filmmaker Andrew Jarecki has the advantage of being true.

This is a fascinating movie experience. [30 June 1989, Life, p.1D]

Blethyn is so astonishing that you forget you're seeing a performance.

Quiz Show is half-a-dozen movies, nearly all exceptional, and a lion's share assemblage of the year's top male performances. A watershed scandal revisited, it's also a riveting revenge story motivated by seething resentment. [14 Sept 1994, p.1D]

A precisely modulated and mostly mesmerizing 2¾-hour suspense movie, in part because it's one of the most bravely disturbing screen works ever attempted about thoughts withheld by even the most devoted marriage partners and the ramifications of voicing them.

It's a heart-wrenching portrayal of unfulfilled Wyoming love, but this time, we don't mean Alan Ladd and Jean Arthur in "Shane."

This breezy farce has lost just enough of its luster to seem no longer disproportionately funnier than its oft-televised Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis remake You're Never Too Young. [29 May 1998]

The "Age of Innocence" oozes anthropological dazzle, but Dazed and Confused may some day rate its own Smithsonian showings for clinically re-creating the High School Experience 1976. [20 Sept 1993]

Ultimately grim, Liam is ripe in humanity --and even comedy.

Has the unanticipated craft and artfully ambiguous appeal of last year's "Croupier," a movie whose art-house word-of-mouth success could be duplicated here.

The relaxed and confident Crusade is the first Jones outing to benefit from actual characterizations. [24 May 1989, Life, p.1D]

Jaded samurai Toshiro Mifune shows younger warriors the ropes, just as John Wayne used to toughen up tenderfoots on the range. [21 Apr 1995, p.3D]

Director James Foley deftly juggles expressionistic actor closeups with drab widescreen shots that convey abject seediness. [30 Sep 1992, p.1D]

The result is a foot-stomping rouser. Where else can you get a cop in his underwear boogalooing with skyscraper terrorists? [15 July 1988, Life, p.4D]

The most imperfect of the year's best movies, Magnolia's flaws are easily forgiven because they are the result of go-for-broke ambition.

Like the first half of "Best in Show," the movie is so deadpan that sometimes you have to pinch yourself to realize how potently satirical it is.

Sissy Spacek goes vengefully telekinetic in one of director Brian De Palma's best movies, and her scenes with mom Piper Laurie (both actresses were Oscar-nominated) release a lot of energy themselves. [29 Jun 2004]

Overstuffed but exuberantly humane.

With this 2002 Cannes Film Festival best-picture winner, Polanski skips the quirky flourishes and simply brings history to life.

The first movie Montgomery Clift made (but second released) was Howard Hawks' all-time Western Red River. In the interim, director Fred Zinnemann stole some thunder by showcasing the actor in this semi-documentary about European children left homeless and without parents after World War II, filmed on location in the then-U.S. Occupied Zone of Germany. [23 Oct 2009, p.3D]

Ray could not have been made without star Jamie Foxx.

A cool and clinical reportorial remembrance whose very title reminds us who Solanas was. [3 May 1996, p. 10D]

The filmmaker keeps upping the ante with surprises until the plot-twist beaut that concludes the picture - a shocker that, upon reflection, is probably the one ending that wouldn't have fallen a little flat.

The movie is more fun than Breathless, a minority (though not sacrilegious) opinion. [10 Jan 2003]

In a role as tailor-made for him as the story is for its writer and director, Nicolas Cage anchors the movie with one of his best performances.

This is one inspiring movie despite extremely tricky subject matter -- better than "Shine" and among the most affecting ever made about co-existing with mental demons.

Accessibly brainy screen charmer.

Robert De Niro is so good as a politically blacklisted filmmaker in Guilty by Suspicion that even his hair seems right. [15 Mar 1991, p.4D]

A little movie almost perfectly realized.

Watching this movie, it seems to be the next level down from great -- maybe too episodic. But it burns in the memory weeks after you see it.

Some caper movies build suspense, while others tweak the genre with tongue lancing cheek. But this lesbian caper pic (how's that for a rarefied subgenre?) often pulls off both feats in the same scene, even simultaneously. [04 Oct 1996 Pg.04.D]

Still the definitive 20th-century Texas movie. [13 June 2003, p.8E]

Ahead of its time in its attitude toward unwed motherhood, director Otto Preminger's psychological drama has always gotten the same pro/con reaction that typifies Preminger's career. On the chilly side, it also has a great understated Olivier performance, an effective Paul Glass score and some of the era's best widescreen black-and-white photography. [28 Jan 2005, p.4D]

Leisen's direction here is more than smooth. [02 May 2008, p.6E]

To its credit, the ravenously awaited film version of Presumed Innocent should engross and reward two distinct audiences: Those who've read Scott Turow's 1987 best seller, and those who haven't. But remember: Engross and reward isn't quite synonymous with a cinematic trip to the moon. [27 July 1990]

Lots of sand but no day at the beach for its characters -- and not, from all appearances, the actors, either. Among the best of director Sidney Lumet's movies not set in New York. [08 Jun 2007, p.8E]

Uniformly robust acting puts still more feathers in the caps of Rush, Winslet and Caine.

This is a very bloody fantasy (reds do eke their way into the black-and-blues), but it's hard to think of another film with as many severed heads whose overall tone is so sweet.

David Lean's classic Cliffs Notes telescoping of Charles Dickens took Oscars for Guy Green's black-and-white photography and John Bryan's art direction, and you know right off that this is going to be a visual stunner as you watch fleeing prisoner Magwitch (Finlay Currie) dart across Green's spookily lit marshes. [22 Jan 1999]

Bedroom succeeds with performances that get some of their power from imaginative casting.

A summer crowd-pleaser worthy of its wind.

A 2-hour classic wrongfully stretched into three.

Its interpersonal dynamics are constructed with care to equal chef Lung's elaborate concoctions. [19 Aug 1994]

Oft-touted as director Walter Hill's best film, this is probably tops of umpteen Westerns about the James-Younger-Miller outlaw clans. [24 Feb 1995, p.14D]

This sleeper never caught on with the masses but became a cult movie after making a lot of the year's 10-best lists. [19 Sept 1997, p.13D]

Welcome to the summer's first pleasant surprise. [20 July 1990, p.1D]

Spielberg's must-see is so wondrous at depicting things that go crunch in the night that its human characterizations and pokey exposition seem astonishingly halfhearted… On a "people" level, Park isn't “Jaws,” but on a jolt level - oh, yes, it is. [11 June 1993, Life, p.1D]

At its best, hard-hitting grown-up cinema (rare these days) and a movie blessed with a villain (Big Tobacco) for which all gloves can be removed and heaved into the next county.

You still get Tim Curry in drag, young Susan Sarandon in her skimpies and an enthusiastic score. [16 Nov 1990, p.3D]

This grade-A sleeper sends you out with an unexpected smile. [25 Nov 1992]

The movies are so much fun that even detractors of Charlton Heston (Cardinal Richelieu) and Raquel Welch (taking pratfalls as "Constance") readily admit that both carry more than their load here. [01 May 1998]

Paradis is a most striking subject, but the movie is a winner as well, starting with a story full of black-comic possibilities exploited fully by the great French director Patrice Leconte.

There is enough mirthful good will generated to justify even another sequel. May we suggest: "License to Shag," "You Only Shag Twice" or "Thundershag."

Bout No. 2 is among the best closed-quarters screen fights ever, as good as (and longer than) Frank Sinatra vs. Henry Silva in The Manchurian Candidate. And Hannah does more for an eyepatch than anyone since the late Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan.

This is one movie in which you don't feel the long-ish running time, in part because there always seems to be a surprise (as well as a new street guerrilla) around every corner.

A flop in its day despite France's rhapsodic reaction, but a movie I've always loved even before its knockout finale, which even detractors admit redeems a lot. [29 Jun 2007, p.10E]

Even though Batman's Tim Burton is a better filmmaker than Beatty will ever be, Dick Tracy is the movie - of all screen attempts - that most convinces me I'm watching a live-action cartoon. [14 Jun 1990]

Hunt is coldly clinical rather than emotionally resonant; so is the measured ensemble work of a super cast. [2 Mar 1990, Life, p.1D]

Cameron Crowe's Singles is such an unabashed joy that some viewers may find themselves blinking. Can a ''twentysomething'' comedy so modestly conceived offer up captivating memories for days? It can, it does, and it figures. [18 Sept 1992, p.5D]

Filmed during that great early period of his career when he played heels better than anyone ever had, Kirk Douglas is the morally tortured 21st Precinct New York cop who lets unbridled hatred for street scum poison his marriage. [28 Oct 2005]

Proves there are Holocaust stories still to be told.

One of the greatest mixes ever of gritty war drama and roll-on-the-floor hilarity. [29 Mar 2002, p.2A]

A smooth mix of humanism and keen filmmaking instincts.

An intimate three-hour epic adapted less from Frank's diary than the Broadway version. [06 Feb 2004, p.6E]

Smart, satisfying and compact but so modest in scale that only true-blue fans will sense - immediately - that it's Woody Allen's best outing in many years.

It's modest - but within its own framework, tough to beat. [14 Aug 1991, p.4D]

Sexy, snotty, vulnerable and above all contentious, she's (Winslet) the catalyst in a movie that creates more man-woman electricity than any other movie this year.

This is a rare twisted crowd-pleaser for longtime fans as well as novices -- or for those that don't know an arachnid from an insect.

Kline is one of the rare major actors not afraid to look like hell. And given his character's plight, his willingness to get physically unpleasant matches the emotion he brings to the part.

A movie that rudely flings feces at the breakfast table isn't for everyone.

A Johnny Cash biopic equally packed with music and frustrated love, Walk the Line goes from compelling to enthralling.

Consistently fun, and even sporadically powerful. [08 Dec 1989, p.3D]

Burt Lancaster's second movie also gave Hume Cronyn his most memorable screen role. [31 Jan 1996, p.5D]

Sleeper is the best Schrader-directed film since the dashed promise of his Blue Collar debut in 1978. [21 Aug 1992, p.4D]

A delightfully robust fable about two passions that matter (sex and food). [17 May 1993, p.4D]

Among the great cult movies of the '60s, this was director John Boorman's second feature and first of note after his debut with the Dave Clark Five's Having a Wild Weekend. [08 Jul 2005]

The big story here is Kristin Scott Thomas' captivating performance.

Has enough tasty bait to satisfy an array of moviegoers: Burton fans, Albert Finney fans, fans of tall tales well spun by experts and fans of movies that don't look like any other.

In just three months, Wincer has gone from one of the worst IMAX movies ever (The Young Black Stallion) to one of the best. This time, and in all ways, he has more horsepower.

One of the best football movies ever, Nights in the end celebrates the game.

Robert Altman's oddball send up of the late Raymond Chandler got a rigidly polarized response, but I love it. [21 Jun 1991, p.3D]

Despite its title, Punch-Drunk Love is never heavy-handed. The jabs it employs are short, carefully placed and dead-center.

Michelangelo Antonioni's famed mod mystery (complete with a funny scene with The Yardbirds) examines the nature of reality-or-not as captured by photography -- throwing in sexual titillation and brilliant use of sound on the side. [20 Feb 2004, p.13D]

A super cast injects it with Teddy Roosevelt vitality. [17 Nov 1995, p.D1]

Nicholson has at least three magnificent moments in Hour 2. The best is a wedding toast that comes after another that will painfully remind you of every banal wedding toast you've ever heard.

Though the power of some Holocaust documentaries is in part a product of their epic scope and epic running times, The Last Days overwhelms at just 87 minutes. [05 Feb 1999]

This is a smart and often tense work whose ultimate merit isn't completely calculable now.

Funny... and the payoff is the most provocative Hollywood concoction in a while.

True to the book's squalor but also finding honest humor where it can.

August's direction, as usual, is a tad glacial, but at its frequent best, the film soars to explosive heights. [31 Jul 1992, p.6D]

Despite little dialogue, the story and screenplay were Oscar-nominated -- and, at 50, Wilde's physique is amazing for an actor who once played Chopin. [18 Jan 2008, p.4D]

Underrated Jerry Schatzberg directed (he later did Pacino's 1973 Scarecrow), and the script is by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, so it's smart. [22 Jun 2007, p.3D]

The three principals re-screen the Fellini masterpiece at Ekberg's country villa, and it's the kind of privileged moment only the movies can supply. You can bet Scorsese couldn't resist it, and I can't either. [20 Nov 1992, p.4D]

It plays even more like a bent version of Meredith Willson's "The Music Man" for the new millennium. Slinging a line of bull but displaying genuine affection for the youngsters he's bamboozling.

Shake it all up and you get Collateral, a movie with only one conceivable flaw: its disinclination to break new ground, though no one held that against "The Fugitive" more than a decade of Augusts ago.

Warren Beatty's uproariously rude Bulworth is 90% triumph.

It's so exhilarating (and already such a hit) that even the fogies who choose which documentaries are nominated for Oscars may have to acknowledge its existence. [15 Aug 1991, p.5D]

This is still a great Carney performance and inspired casting by writer/director Paul Mazursky. [16 Sep 2005]

Federico Fellini's first film (co-directed with Alberto Lattuada) would make a compatible living room double bill with FF's 1986 Ginger and Fred...Pleasing all the way through. [17 Mar 1989, p.3D]

To see someone even attempt bittersweet treatment of this subject is surprising, but to largely pull it off is a major feat.

I'd give this Howard Hawks perennial four stars (like everyone else) if I didn't find the climactic jailhouse scene so labored. [5 May 1989, p.3D]

This is a filmmaker who instinctively knows that a shot of Santa sitting at a bar as Ricky Nelson sings Jingle Bells will be no-frills funny.

The rap sequences are shot and edited with the excitement of a crisply broadcast sporting event, which in a way they are.

Director Roman Polanski co-stars with and directs wife Sharon Tate in their only collaboration. That's one reason this box office bomb, which came out less than two years before Tate was murdered by Charles Manson's crew, has picked up a following. [08 Oct 2004, p.4E]

If Martin Scorsese's staggeringly ambitious one-of-a-kind finally has too many flaws to be great, it has as much greatness in it as any movie this year.

Doesn't sound like a very prepossessing title, but prepare to be taken aback by "what's in a name." [6 July 1994, Life, p.1D]

Here's an ''opened-up'' film of a fragile, sentimental play that doesn't overemphasize every dramatic point, and doesn't tromp on every minefield in the material. [13 Dec 1989, p.1D]

Filmmakers of Bernardo Bertolucci's magnitude don't often take on sexual coming-of-age movies, but judging from the pleasures of Stealing Beauty, maybe more of them should. [14 Jun 1996 Pg.04.D]

The gritty, Oscar-nominated "Traffic" is a limo ride compared with the bloodletting in this year's foreign-film nominee from Mexico.

Blisteringly fast, Bourne also has a strong or striking supporting actor around every corner: Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles and Clive Owen in roles that range from meaty to amazingly small.

This sleek adaptation of James Ellroy's dauntingly complex novel has the black-and-white tabloid soul of an old "Confidential" magazine.

Damon convincingly matches Williams recrimination for recrimination in this portrayal of mutual tough love, even with the latter giving what may be the best performance of his career.

You get the sense that there's probably more to the story than you get here. But the movie's moral will soon be indelible: You just can't fake it in the Internet age.

Haphazard in its narrative but consistently mesmerizing until an overdose of communist rah-rah in the late going. [08 Dec 2005, p.4E]

If the movie finally doesn't know when to quit, its flaws are those of enthusiasm and heart. The central character may be a bus, but the story is really saying, "walk a mile in my shoes." [16 Oct 1996]

Romantic comedies with two low-key leads can be asking for trouble, but one senses that the actors must have clicked on some fundamental level.

Bill re-establishes that Tarantino ranks with "Boogie Nights'" Paul Thomas Anderson as one of the few Hollywood filmmakers of the past 25 years with the stuff to win a lifetime achievement award.

A small jewel. [05 May 2006, p.4E]

News is right, completely right, until it slips just a bit at the end.By that time it hardly matters because you've seen the best of the holiday films, as well as the most all-around entertaining movie of 1987 - a bittersweet media comedy-drama that surpasses its potential. [16 Dec 1987, p.1D]

If Silver is superb, Irons is transcendent. As some forgotten comic once said of George Sanders: A grapefruit wouldn't dare squirt in his eye. [17 Oct 1990]

There isn't much depth to The Fugitive, but you'll never know it (or care). In addition to a spectacular train/bus smashup and an exciting sewer chase, there's one of the funniest public confrontations since Cary Grant broke up the art auction in North by Northwest. Result: Warner Bros. has what it had last August with Unforgiven - a commercial movie with real class. [6 Aug 1993, p.1D]

As for the breathless 45-minute climax, no screen fantasy adventure in memory can match the showmanship.

Though the comedy is sometimes more frenetic than inspired and viewer emotions are rarely touched to any notable degree, the movie is as visually inventive as its Pixar predecessors.

Sweet (maybe) - but also painful (for sure). So painful that it's initially easy to resist this slice-of-Middlesex-life from Brit director Mike Leigh. Yet gradually, a mom, a dad and late-teen twins prove overwhelmingly winning through sheer willpower. Theirs, and the willpower of an idiosyncratic filmmaker who loves his characters no matter what. [24 Dec. 1991, p.4D]

Welcome to the Dollhouse does, with accessible dark comedy and chilling honesty, reminding us right off that school-cafeteria agonies only begin with the cuisine. [24 May 1996 Pg.04.D]

A rousing state-of-the-art cartoon capped by an aerial-combat climax that, to its credit, isn't anti-climactic. [2 July 1996, p.D1]

Majidi tells his simple story with dazzling vision.

Linney is a match for Neeson, and the only thing that might keep Lithgow from getting a supporting-Oscar nomination is the brevity of the part.

This is the most enjoyable film of its type in recent memory.

This is a very funny picture, though it's never burlesqued and is, in fact, occasionally poignant.

Bernard Herrmann's great score punches up a brutal urban crime pic suddenly turned tender romance between a tough cop (Robert Ryan) and a blind woman (Ida Lupino). [21 Jul 2006, p.14D]

In a watershed year for black filmmakers, Singleton has made the punchiest feature debut in recent memory. Those who complain that Lee's characters tangle up his plots will savor Singleton's flawlessly crafted edges. [12 July 1991]

Not since Tuesday Weld in "Pretty Poison" has an actress so played off her fresh-faced beauty for such pointed black-comic effect.

A weeper poised to endure as one of the dominant independent features of the year.

The movie, a Technicolor remake of Gable's own 1932 smash Red Dust...is among Gable's best, and it also has underrated Gardner's best performance. [23 Jun 2006, p.8E]

Twenty years ago, you could view early works of big-splash directors and often tell where they were coming from - or going. Yet Soderbergh and his debut project are mysteries. What can possibly come next? You won't be able to drag me out of line opening night. [4 Aug 1989, Life, p.1D]

Both the material and the way it's delivered by the movie's comic quartet are so funny.

This thorough original is a wall-to-wall exercise in gallows humor, a movie whose full funny/sad effect doesn't hit until you reflect upon the subject and the cast of characters.

With his coolly objective moon's-eye view serving a story that's bizarre by even his long-established career standards, the great documentarian Errol Morris examines the perils of vanity - though others will understandably make more sinister interpretations.

One of the most challenging movies in years.

A long movie that almost wears out its 21/4-hour welcome, yet it's full of surprises.

Goldoni is spectacular here as a light-skinned black woman with a white admirer and an apartment full of her brother's hooligan buddies. And, oh, what shots of the era's New York movie marquees. [22 May 1998, p.6E]

This is one of the best re-creations ever of the early-'50s Midwest. [11 Sept 1987, Life, p.3D]

So original that it'll be years before a major filmmaker attempts another one. We're talking black-belt cult-movie status here. [30 Mar 1988]

An emotionally honest low-ebber that builds to a satisfying wrap-up.

Mitchum's celebrated skill with dialects has never been more evident. [02 Feb 2007, p.10D]

A robustly imaginative sleeper

The movie grows on you, lingers in the mind and may pick up a cult. Take away Heat and Dust, Howards End and The Remains of the Day, and it's as satisfying as any movie the filmmaking team's ever made. [18 Sep 1998, Pg.03.E]

This is the definitive cinematic Cyrano; only the pickiest critics or peasants will dare or care to thumb their noses at it. [16 Nov 1990, p.4D]

Though the music is helping market the movie, it's really an omnipresent backdrop to the two intersecting stories. Audibly and visibly, Kansas City nearly equals Ed Wood for period verisimilitude. Yet it's also character-driven, in particular by the women stars. [16 Aug 1996, p.4D]

Though Roger & Me's editing plays somewhat fast and loose with the juxtaposition of real-life events, it qualifies as an event itself. For once, have-nots get to lambaste haves in a documentary likely to be seen. [20 Dec 1989, p.5D]

An easy movie to pick apart, but it lives, breathes and switches moods from humor to despair better than any American release this year.

The picture is solidly crafted, performed to the hilt and full of humor.

So with its smart writing delivered by an in-synch quartet, savor Duplicity as the ideal spring gift.

An intimate portrait of the Bringing It All Back Home Bob Dylan during his final acoustic tour through England, it hits with escalating emotional force as the decades go by, capturing a fleeting musical period as brilliantly as any movie ever has. [07 Jan 2000]

Writer-director Andre Techine, who's been on a recent roll with Wild Reeds and Ma Saison Preferee (also with Deneuve and Auteuil), is in even better form here. [23 Dec 1996]

Breakdown exploits so many traditional thriller situations that any suspense fan vet can easily devote a hand to counting off the predecessors it plunders. [02May1997 Pg 12.D]

Sci- fi classic. [20 Dec 1991, p.3D]