Peter Bradshaw

This is an unmissable commentary on Hollywood's rejection of its silent past: a kind of Sobbin' in the Rain.

It's still luminous, 52 years on.

A film that needs to be seen on the big screen.

It is a beguiling and unique piece of work.

The film, with its transcendentally beautiful visuals...is a rich and rewarding experience. [1 Sept. 2011]

This heart-meltingly romantic and sad movie from Korean-Canadian dramatist and filmmaker Celine Song left me wrung out and empty and weirdly euphoric, as if I’d lived through an 18-month affair in the course of an hour and three-quarters.

Playing Falstaff might have been Welles’s creative and physical destiny: in the character he found a dignity and sensuality in his, by then, overweight form. The confidence and panache of his staging is a treat.

An unmissable, transcendentally beautiful classic. [28 Aug. 1998]

There is such tenderness to this film. I was overwhelmed by it.

This wonderfully sweet, sad and funny film simply delivers more moment-by-moment pleasure than anything else around.

The final moments of The French Connection are a powerful, even magnificent repudiation of the modern piety of redemption and sympathy. It is a stunningly nihilist ending, one to set alongside Polanski's Chinatown.

It is not free of plot-holes...but what a supremely stylish and watchable picture it is.

I was utterly absorbed by this movie’s simple storytelling verve and the terrific lead performances from Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone who are both excellent – particularly Stone, who has never been better.

Céline Sciamma’s beautiful fairytale reverie is occasioned by the dual mysteries of memory and the future: simple, elegant and very moving.

There is a freshness and emotional clarity in Payal Kapadia’s Cannes competition selection, an enriching humanity and gentleness which coexist with fervent, languorous eroticism and finally something epiphanic in the later scenes and mysterious final moments.

There is no moment where Byrne dramatically opens up, either on stage or off, but perhaps that’s not the point. It’s a treat for Byrne fans, and could well make converts.

It is a movie made up of delicate brushstrokes: details, moments, looks and smiles.

The sheer silliness is inspired.

It is witty, daring and exuberant; like his hero, Hitchcock shows himself to be energetic and resourceful in dealing with changes in locale. [11 Apr 2008, p.10]

The film is very funny – but asks its audience to wonder if being funny, if wanting to make people laugh, and particularly if using comedy for family-bonding, really is the sign of being relaxed and life-affirming in the way people who are talented at comedy often assume.

A sombre, sobering work.

It’s a cinema of pure energy and grungy voltage, and the Safdies make it look very easy. This will be the year’s most exciting film. You can take that to the bank.

Brilliantly written, terrifically acted, superbly designed and shot; it's a sweet, sad, funny picture about the lost world of folk music which effortlessly immerses us in the period.

This glorious film is about the greatest mystery of all: how old people were once young, and how young people are in the process of becoming old.

No one but Blanchett could have delivered the imperious hauteur necessary for portraying a great musician heading for a crackup or a creative epiphany. No one but Blanchett has the right way of wearing a two-piece black suit with an open-necked white shirt, the way of shaking her hair loose at moments of abandon, the way of letting her face become a Tutankhamun mask of contempt.

This is a dark, uncompromising film, thrillingly original and distinctive, with a visionary passion. It is a movie against which all directors, and all moviegoers, will want to measure themselves.

Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 ode to a Texan small town is still a masterpiece whichever way you look at it.

Hard to Be a God creates its own uncanny world: it is beautiful, brilliant and bizarre.