Peter Brunette

The landscapes are so gorgeous, the philosophy so richly appealing, the narrative so epically sweeping, and the characters so intense.

A lovely piece of work.

Egoyan's films have always been about the intricacies and basic strangeness of human relationships, rather than about plot or snappy one-liners, but a new moral urgency seems to invigorate this film.

An exceptionally intense movie whose sheer filmmaking power ultimately transcends all its (many) limitations.

Its evocation of the politics and Zeitgeist of the late '60s is so right on, as we used to say, that it left me stunned.

It's a masterpiece, a sublime tone poem that shows what cinema is capable of when it tries to do more than just tell a story.

Stoppard's luxuriant, richly comic language cascades and washes over you, and, for once, more than keeps pace with the sprightly pictures.

Funny and wise, lively and contemplative, intriguingly postmodern and powerfully moving, all at the same time. It's not to be missed.

One of the weirdest, hardest-to-place studio films I've seen in years.

Richard Farnsworth shines as Alvin Straight, a role, one gets the feeling, that he has been preparing for all his life.

It's a superb example of the genre of the self-expressive documentary.

With Before Night Falls, Schnabel has moved to an entirely new plane of cinematic achievement.

One of the best pictures I've seen all year. Funny, touching, even inspiring at times.

The fact that this film, so sensitive to woman's plight, was made by a man is perhaps cause for a little hope.

Hilarious and often moving.

Hilarious, slightly sick, and super-edgy ...the acting of its two principals, Annette Bening and Kevin Spacey, is so sublime that it's worth seeing on that grounds alone.

The titillating sense of out-of-controlness provoked by the camera is echoed in the film's narrative situations, and you simply, and deliciously, haven't a clue as to what he's going to throw at you next.

The dialogue is sparkingly witty, and Phoenix and Winslet are excellent in what are, after all, meant to be fairly one-dimensional roles.

Despite the first-rate acting, the narrative is the star of this show, so much so that you feel yourself occasionally losing interest in the travails of the characters. Instead, you hang on every word and every tiny object, every cut and bruise in the frame, looking for clues that will help you make sense of what's going on.

One Day in September does "being there" very well -- I just wish director Macdonald had spent a little more time explaining why we should want to be there in the first place.

Temple's wonderfully entertaining film brings the era back in all its confused and tentatively revolutionary glory, and bracingly demonstrates that the Pistols still have the power to shock.

One of the most troubling views of the human race I've seen in years. Luckily for us, its depressing, almost pathologically ironic vision is redeemed by the sublimity of Solondz' filmmaking. I first saw the film at Cannes last May and it's haunted me, both for its nastiness and its brilliance, ever since.

It's blatantly manipulative pairing of an adorable young boy and a selfish, honesty-challenged older woman [is] so calculating that I could never get emotionally involved.

While it has its scary moments, and while its central conceit is refreshingly imaginative, there's ultimately not much there there.

A completely different order of cinematic existence than any other film you're likely to see in the near or distant future.

It makes us realize, suddenly, and with immense regret, what the rest of contemporary cinema so sorely lacks.

We marvel at the almost perfect realization of a character whom we're not necessarily meant to like.

Much more mythic and risk-taking than the usual Hollywood product.