Roger Ebert

The movie is a work of art and whimsy as much as one of science.

This is one of those rare docs, like "Hoop Dreams," where life provides a better ending than the filmmakers could have hoped for. Also like "Hoop Dreams," it's not really a sports film; it's a film that uses sport as a way to see into lives, hopes and fears.

A perplexing and disturbing film of great effect.

Dirty Harry is very effective at the level of a thriller. At another level, it uses the most potent star presence in American movies -- Clint Eastwood -- to lay things on the line. If there aren't mentalities like Dirty Harry's at loose in the land, then the movie is irrelevant. If there are, we should not blame the bearer of the bad news.

The characters have a weight and reality, as if Almodovar has finally taken pity on them--has seen that although their plights may seem ludicrous, they're real enough to hurt. These are people who stand outside conventional life and its rules, and yet affirm them.

A smart, intense and moving film that isn't so much about sports as about the war between intuition and statistics. I walked in knowing what the movie was about, but unprepared for its intelligence and depth.

Seems torn between conflicting possibilities: It's structured like a comedy, but there are undertones of darker themes, and I almost wish they'd allowed the plot to lead them into those shadows.

Tampopo is one of those utterly original movies that seems to exist in no known category. Like the French comedies of Jacques Tati, it's a bemused meditation on human nature in which one humorous situation flows into another offhandedly, as if life were a series of smiles.

Best of all, this movie is inhabited by a real cinematic intelligence. The audience isn't condescended to. In sequences like the one in which Travolta reconstructs a film and sound record of the accident, we're challenged and stimulated: We share the excitement of figuring out how things develop and unfold, when so often the movies only need us as passive witnesses.

The shame is that more accessible Iranian directors are being neglected in the overpraise of Kiarostami.

Now Singleton, too, dares to take a hard look at his community. His characters are a little older, and he is older, too, and less forgiving.

As suspense thrillers go Point Blank is pretty good.

This movie is all elbows. Nothing fits. It doesn't add up. It has some terrific free-standing scenes, but they need more to lean on.

It has more intelligence than heart, and is more clever than enlightening. But it is never boring, and there are moments when it reminds us of how sexy the movies used to be, back in the days when speech was an erogenous zone.

The whole movie is quiet, introspective, thoughtful.

By the end of the film I conceded, yes, there are good performances and the period is well captured, but the movie didn't convince me of the feel and the flavor of its experiences.

Lumet is exploring the clichés, not just using them. And he has a good feel for the big-city crowd that's quickly drawn to the action.

We feel for once we are witnessing the true story of how a movie got made.

The kind of movie you can see twice--first for the questions, the second time for the answers.

Like Water for Chocolate creates its own intense world of passion and romance, and adds a little comedy and a lot of quail, garlic, honey, chiles, mole, cilantro, rose petals and corn meal.

Each character in this movie is given the dramatic opportunity to look inside himself, to question his own motives as well as the motives of others, and to try to improve his own ways of dealing with a troubled situation. Two of the characters do learn how to adjust; the third doesn't. It's not often we get characters who face those kinds of challenges on the screen, nor directors who seek them out. Ordinary People is an intelligent, perceptive, and deeply moving film.

A movie of introspection and defiance.

In countless ways visible and invisible, Sirk's sly subversion skewed American popular culture, and helped launch a new age of irony.

What makes Jackson's film enthralling and frightening is the way it shows these two unhappy girls, creating an alternative world so safe and attractive they thought it was worth killing for.

This is a film with a dread fascination. McKellen occupies it like a poisonous spider in its nest.

A masterpiece, pure and simple, deep and true...The best film of the year.

This series should be sealed in a time capsule. It is on my list of the 10 greatest films of all time, and is a noble use of the medium.

The secret may be that Cronenberg approaches his trashy material with the objectivity of a scientist; it is his detached, cold style that makes the material creepy instead of simply sensational.