Roger Ebert

Perhaps some viewpoints WILL be changed by watching this documentary, which carries no distinct political slant and employs an old-fashioned “fly on the wall” technique, thus allowing the footage and the comments from participants on both sides to speak for itself.

The film's extended suspense sequences deserve a place among the great stretches of cinema.

Few achievements in the world of cinema can equal it.

The characters aren’t consistent, and Cliff eventually becomes so unbelievable that we just stop caring. The movie’s ending is an exercise in plot; its beginning and its music deserve better than that.

The high-tech stuff is absorbing. Harrison Ford once again demonstrates what a solid, convincing actor he is, and there's good supporting work from Archer, Thora Birch as the Ryans' precocious daughter, and the irreplaceable James Fox as a British cabinet minister. But at the end, when a character is leaping into a burning speedboat in choppy seas, I wondered if this was exactly what Tom Clancy had in mind.

It would be easy to tear the plot to shreds and catch Kramer in the act of copping out. But why? On its own terms, this film is a joy to see, an evening of superb entertainment.

The reader of a pulp crime thriller might be satisfied simply with the prurient descriptions, and certainly this film visualizes those and has as its victims Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson, who embody paperback covers, but the dominant presence in the film is Lou Ford, and there just doesn’t seem to be anybody at home.

What an affecting film this is. It respects its characters and doesn't use them for its own shabby purposes. How deeply we care about them.

It is a full-bodied silent film of the sort that might have been made by the greatest directors of the 1920s, if such details as the kinky sadomasochism of this film's evil stepmother could have been slipped past the censors.

This is a brave, layered film that challenges the wisdom of victory at any price. Both of its central characters would slip easily into conventional plot formulas, but Bahrani looks deeply into their souls and finds so much more.

This film is a documentary about the young man's devilment. He seems perfectly happy — ecstatic, even — seated at a table in front of a three-sided mirror and practicing card moves over and over and over again. As a kid, he learned moves from his grandfather. He moved away from home in his early teens.

There will be many who find To the Wonder elusive and too effervescent. They'll be dissatisfied by a film that would rather evoke than supply. I understand that, and I think Terrence Malick does, too. But here he has attempted to reach more deeply than that: to reach beneath the surface, and find the soul in need.

The artistry is peaceful and comforting to the eyes but not especially stirring. Given the pictorial extremes that Studio Ghibli has gone to in the past, "Up on Poppy Hill" is weak tea.

The Host is top-heavy with profound, sonorous conversations, all tending to sound like farewells. The movie is so consistently pitched at the same note, indeed, that the structure robs it of possibilities for dramatic tension.

It's a portrait of a time and place, characters keeping company around a simple kitchen table, and the helplessness adolescents feel when faced with the priorities of those in power. What I'll take away from it is the knowledge that now the Fannings have given us two actresses of such potential.

Starting with Le Petit Soldat, Godard was forging his own individualistic art and becoming the most relevant director of our time.

A few great directors have the ability to draw us into their dream world, into their personalities and obsessions and fascinate us with them for a short time. This is the highest level of escapism the movies can provide for us.

Carl Franklin's film is true to the tone and spirit of the book. It is patient and in no hurry. It allows a balanced eye for the people in its hero's family who tug him one way and another.

There's an unlikelihood so large in Future Weather that it nearly derails the film. That was what I admired the most about it.

Imagine music for a sorcery-related plot and then dial it down to ominous forebodings. Without Thomas Newman's score, Side Effects would be a lesser film, even another film.

Sometimes it's all about the casting. The notice of a screening came around, I read the names Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin, and it didn't matter in a way what the movie was about - although it didn't hurt that it was a crime movie.

It is a mystery, this business of life. I can't think of any under cinematic undertaking that allows us to realize that more deeply.

This movie will no doubt be pitched to the same audiences that loved "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel." It even brings Maggie Smith along. But it lacks that film's life, intelligence and spirit. It has a good heart. I'll give it that. Maybe what it needs is more exotic marigolds.

Do we need a fourth film? Yes, I think we do. If you only see one of them, this is the one to choose, because it has the benefit of hindsight.

Here is a film about African Americans that sidesteps all the usual, hopeful cliches and comments on how one failed generation raises another.

A three-year labor of love from a mother for her daughter. It is a touching movie that, at first, might seem like a public service announcement, but eventually takes us into some touching personal struggles.

Part of the greatness of this film is that it not only avoids any simple answers, but it also takes us into the awkward contradictions and internal dishonesties that help us look at the mirror each day.

An unexpected kind of masterpiece by Haneke, whose films have included the enigmatic "Caché" and the earlier Golden Palm winner "The White Ribbon." We don't expect such unflinching seriousness, such profundity from Haneke.