Peter Rainer

The most deeply and mysteriously satisfying animated feature to come along in ages.

Perhaps the most cogent and straightforward dissection of the Bush Administration missteps leading up to the current Iraq nightmare.

Troell, at 78, continues to turn out films that will last for as long as there are movies. No wonder he feels such a deep connection to Maria in Everlasting Moments. The film is one hero's salute to another.

The Ballad of Wallis Island is both modest and magical. One of its co-stars, Carey Mulligan, has described its tone as a “gentle euphoria.” That phrase perfectly expresses how this wonderful movie – directed by James Griffiths from a script by Tom Basden and Tim Key – transports us.

Gunda is one of the most immersive and eye-widening documentaries I’ve ever seen.

It’s the ultimate time-travel movie into the future, a “flowing time sculpture,” in Linklater’s own words.

The film medium has often been discussed in academic terms as a vehicle to contain the passage of time. But “Three Minutes” does much more than that. Although it raises all sorts of issues about the nature of the film image and how it can affect us, it is also the least theoretical of movies. We are bearing witness.

Baker is a humanist – there is nothing exploitative about what he does here. He’s after deeper emotional truths.

Jackson has a genuine epic gift: Few filmmakers have ever given gross-outs such resplendence.

There is no need for Murmelstein to break down here. In The Last of the Unjust, it’s as if the whole world is weeping.

I also wonder if the film’s central thesis – that the debates kicked off the subjective TV news slant we have today – is a bit oversold. If these debates had never happened, I think we would very likely still have exactly what we have today. Partisan hollering sells.

The result is an unprecedented voyage into the tortuous life of our greatest actor, with the actor himself serving as narrator and navigator, as dissembler and penitent.

The Red Turtle benefits from being open to all sorts of possibilities and interpretations because we sense that Dudok de Wit respects our imaginings. He allows them to take shape right alongside his own.

Fan's camera moves sinuously through these people's lives and gives a human face to a national panorama.

A first-rate crime thriller from 1960.

Leviathan is, in the widest sense, a horror film.

As the film plays out its melancholy story, we realize that what we are watching is far rarer than the usual sports flick.

Says Lauro: "This is about as close as you can get to the way it sounded during slavery days." Lauro and McGlynn understand, too, that these clips must be experienced whole. They let the music unfold in real time, not snippets.

In tone, Pan's Labyrinth resembles a cross between "Alice in Wonderland" and H.P. Lovecraft, with some Buñuel thrown in for good measure. It is a tribute to - as well as a prime example of - the disturbing power of imagination.

Montgomery Clift is at his very best as Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt, a career soldier stationed in Honolulu just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, in this 1953 adaptation of James Jones's classic novel, directed by Fred Zinnemann with the utmost grace. [3 March 2006, p.12]

Brokeback Mountain is a tragedy because these men have found something that many people, of whatever sexual persuasion, never find - true love. And they can't do anything about it.

A feel-good musical that, for a change, actually makes you feel good.

The enchanting French-Belgian animated feature Ernest & Celestine is so liltingly sweet and graceful that, a day or two after I saw it, it seemed almost as if I had dreamed it.

It’s possible to be heartwarming and tough-minded, as this wonderful film demonstrates. And it’s possible to be both “old-fashioned” and vibrant, too. It’s the best new/old movie in town.

I hate to sound blurby, but Borat is the funniest comedy I've seen since I don't know when.

It's a giddy nightmare. Nothing is quite what it seems in I Served the King of England, and this is poetically appropriate. The world it depicts is too dangerous and too lovely to classify.

These paintings speak to us; they both compress and elongate time. In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Herzog is reaching for ways to comprehend what he imagines to be the emblems of the birth of the modern soul.

There's plenty for us to feast on in Under the Sea 3D without drawing a single drop of blood. If you have small children, you'd be crazy not to take them to this film.