Rick Groen

This is a rare adaptation where the script (by McGrath himself) heads straight for the novel's horrible essence, reproducing it non-verbally and in an even more concentrated form.

This much is inarguable: In the more than two flamboyant hours of Across the Universe, Julie Taymor doesn't cheat us for a single second.

Lincoln is directed by Steven Spielberg but, to his great credit, few will mistake this for a Steven Spielberg film. Rather, it's a Tony Kushner film, the playwright who conjured up the wordy but intricately layered script; and it's a Daniel Day-Lewis film, the actor who so richly embodies the iconic title role.

No filmmaker, in any cinematic culture, has a better eye or ear for the working class than director Mike Leigh.

Much like Robert Altman during his forays into the genre, writer/director Asghar Farhadi isn't really interested in the answers. Instead, he keeps expanding the questions, until that singular title comes to seem a misnomer.

A deceptively light and impeccably structured comedy that owes a clear cinematic debt to others -- Ernst Lubitsch, Woody Allen and Whit Stillman among them -- yet still manages to speak with a fresh and distinctive voice. [21 Aug. 1998, p.D4]

Admittedly, near the end, the picture loses some of its energy and compelling ambiguity (about a half-star's worth, I'd say). Still, by then, the big gains have been made. At its best, The Nightmare Before Christmas occupies the imaginative ground held by the likes of White and Dahl and Seuss - that lovely place where, for shining moments, parents and children can travel on the same passport and smile for the same reasons. [22 Oct 1993]

Good ain't the half of it in this case - it's funny, it's endearing, it's strangely touching. [19 Aug 1994]

It has a schlocky title and a rocky start, but then something happens - The Man Without a Face finds its rhythm and its grip, seizing the audience and propelling us straight through to the dewy climax. [25 Aug 1993, p.C2]

The reality measures up to the rep.

Simultaneously a spectacular act of movie-making and a slight movie. Or is that impossible: When the means are so gloriously abundant, can the end ever be merely trivial?

Lethal Weapon sinks an unexpectedly sharp hook at a delightfully unique angle, and never once lets up. A purposefully off- kilter flick, it fakes one way and moves another, thwarting our conditioned responses and fuelling our happy surprise. [6 Mar 1987, p.D1]

Norman is the "freak" bullied and ostracized and otherwise degraded by the alive-and-well crowd. Such is the outcast fate of most heroes in the best children's tales. And ParaNorman, a ghoulishly delightful exercise in stop-motion animation, is a very good children's tale indeed.

Life is Sweet is sweet indeed - and comic and quirky and, on those occasions when the tone deftly shifts, just a little sad... Leigh's work, and the quotidian life it depicts, is sometimes slim but never insubstantial, occasionally sweet but never a sugary confection. And always worth celebrating. [24 Jan. 1992]

TERRIFIC cast, imaginative direction - Patriot Games is such an enjoyable film that you keep hoping it will go the extra mile, that it will transcend the action-genre and progress from an intelligently made picture to an intelligently themed picture, That it doesn't - not quite, anyway - is mildly disappointing but easily forgiven; there's a lot to be grateful for here. [9 June 1992]

The result is a rare treat, a revival of a period piece that doesn't descend into mere quaintness or prettiness, and that manages to capture the spirit of an earlier time without sacrificing the perspective of our own.

Most movies have music, some movies are musicals, but very few movies combine the two with the grace and pure eloquence of Once.

Persepolis is as modern as tomorrow's headlines and as classic as an ancient myth.

Haneke is best known for "The Piano Teacher." His latest, Caché (or Hidden) is a quieter but equally provocative attack. It's less in your face, more in your head and under your skin.

Some movies, a very few, possess the purity of myth, and they don't have to be great to be greatly important. "The Wild One" is an example; "Saturday Night Fever" is another. Now add 8 Mile to that short list.

Sophisticated and unsentimental political film.

John Sayles's heartrending new film is a many-splendoured thing.

Add it all up, including the nifty twist at the end, and what we have here is a fun Hollywood flick with a good head on its shoulders.

Mock-heroic yet still lyrical, faux-mythic but honest too, uniquely and absurdly and often hilariously Canadian, My Winnipeg is like no documentary you've ever seen.

A powerful, brutal, funny, tragic, vibrant, very human movie.

Sure, the premise is identical age-reversal comedies, but this one uses a much higher octane, animating a tired idea with a timeless script, and the result is pop humor at its most appealing - wit and charm spiced with a measured pinch of farce and just the right hint of melancholy. [3 Jun 1988, p.E1]

A powerful and affecting piece of work.

Succeeding where most docudramas fail, it turns a slice of recent history into a revealingly intelligent entertainment, without being didactic at one extreme or sentimental at the other.