Phil Hall

Whereas "Cuckoo’s Nest" is a brilliantly over-the-top accomplishment, The Passenger is more brilliant with the most effortless underplaying one can ever hope to witness on screen.

Quite simply, House of Flying Daggers is a film that sets several new standards for production and entertainment values. It is a wild riot of color, music, passion, action, mystery, pure old-fashioned thrills and even dancing.

While it would be foolish to expect a completely faithful Shakespeare adaptation from Godard, there is no pleasure in being fooled into thinking that this vague, obscure, annoying, cacophonous wreck of a film is anything but a joke being played by a self-indulgent filmmaker.

Little more than a travelogue designed to show off the grandeur of the Hermitage, with the silly actors in fancy costumes getting in the way of the paintings and sculptures on display.

Do not, under any circumstance, approach this film lightly. Prepare to be depressed, agitated and shocked. And prepare to see a brilliant work of cinematic art.

This much-ballyhooed gay cowboy melodrama is an inert disappointment.

At the risk of being called an anti-Semite, I would like to propose a moratorium on Holocaust movies -- While it would be crass to discount the importance of the subject, at the same time one has to admit there is some degree of excess going on here.

This is a curious example of taking a hair-raising story and draining the drama from every corner, leaving it a bit flat and ultimately forgettable.

Rich with wonderful music and images.

One of the year's best films. It is an extraordinary triumph of nonfiction filmmaking, presenting a wild mind game that leaves the viewer invigorated by its sheer audacity and complexity.

Offers the Iraqis a rare chance to share their anger and their lives with the outside world. The resulting production is a raw and powerful film that demands to be seen.

The new bad movie from Clint Eastwood which takes Dennis Lehane's best-selling thriller and turns it into an inert mess that clocks in at 137 minutes but feels like 137 hours.

The film's screenplay is thick with major lapses in logic, resulting in a story that ultimately makes little sense.

Alas, the big screen also magnifies the problems with Once Upon a Time in the West. Specifically, Leone’s insistence on style trumped the need for substance. The film is basically a B-Western stretched an agonizing 165 minutes.

A stirring and touching production, and it is difficult not to be moved by the women’s medical progress. However, it suffers from a somewhat leisurely pacing.

It seems as if every possible cliche and story twist from any seafaring picture of the past 80 years made its way into this flick.

One of the most towering and extraordinary films to grace the screen.

Chicago is a failure, but that should not come as a surprise. Bob Fosse, who directed and choreographed the original 1975 Broadway production, was long baffled in making a film of the show and eventually gave up trying.

Such garbage that taking a shower at the Bates Motel is a more appealing alternative.

This is an excellent movie -- by all means, flock to it!

One could literally milk a thesaurus in trying to find the right words to lavish on Saraband: brilliant, towering, majestic, challenging, remarkable.

Achieves the impossible by taking one of the most compelling and harrowing stories imaginable and channeling it into one of the most ordinary movies of the year.

While the film is admittedly imperfect, it nonetheless deserves to be seen by all Americans to provide a clear understanding of what kind of a country we are currently at war within.

Offers a remarkable tribute to one of the few people who genuinely deserves to be known as a pioneer of filmmaking. In the genre of films about films, In the Mirror of Maya Deren is among the best.

Clooney has littered his film with such a high quantity of mistakes that it is hard to know where exactly to begin finding fault.

An extraordinary achievement on all possible levels.

Provides lethal evidence of what becomes of those who deposit their sincerity into the command of a religious lunatic.

The film presents the Rwandans in the worst possible way: venal, corrupt, vicious, stupid, barbaric and completely incapable of governing themselves. Honestly, I've seen more intelligent and sympathetic depictions of Africans in Tarzan movies.