Shawn Levy

This is an awesome performance in an outstanding film, a film worthy, if you can imagine, of the book at its heart.

But the human elements -- jealousy, anger, weakness, fortitude, loyalty, vengeance and honor, all acted out by a resolutely realistic cast -- make the movie extraordinary.

The film is one of the great portraits of the artist as impossibly gifted young snot. [31 Dec 1999]

Flynn is sexy, valiant, athletic and true: a movie star in every sense of the term. [13 Sep 1996, p.30]

It's a triumph of the film that it manages to make Jeffrey Dahmer a human being -- at least a member of the species -- without ever bending toward empathy with or excuses for him.

If Leo's situation seems like a typical opening gambit by the director of "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" and "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!", little else in this tight, quiet, razor-sharp film will feel familiar. [12 Apr 1996]

A masterfully varied set of images, paces and moods.

A masterful treasure trove of hilarious gags and inventive moments. It's so good that a single viewing it might awaken you to the charm of snails, frogs legs and -- heaven help us -- Jerry Lewis. [14 Jul 1995, p.E01]

There aren't many works of art out there that so rupture your sense of the familiar. It may play slowly, but it blazes its way into your head. [14 Jul 2000]

There are levels of complexity and nuance and intellectual rigor in The Hours -- it's clearly a film into which you could gain continued insight after several viewings.

It's so spry and lively and warm that you want to dance to it.

The result is a rare and precious work. The Motorcycle Diaries is an epic road movie with everything you'd want from such a film: laughs, kicks, adventures, pathos, poetry, natural beauty, strange encounters and friendship tested and strengthened.

Del Toro presents one dazzling visual spectacle after another.

The acting is so persuasive as to be transparent.

It's a wonderfully crafted work, handsome, lively, stirring and utterly convincing in its depiction of the perils and thrills of sea life. But I'm not sure that my personal enthusiasm for it will translate entirely for viewers whose favorite movie about the high seas is, for perfectly good reasons, "Pirates of the Caribbean."

So good at what it does that it can exhaust you: In the later going, one big number follows on the heels of another so quickly that it feels more like an opera than a regular musical.

Malle, only 25 when the film was released, bounces confidently among several threads -- classic French policier, juvenile delinquent film, doomy tale of tragic love, clock-ticking thriller.

One of those undeniably beautiful things. The film is, in fact, an encyclopedia of beauty -- the beauty of desire, the beauty of nostalgia, the beauty of music and clothing and smoke and pain, and, chiefly, the beauty of women.

It's the type of film that may be forgiven its imperfections when they are compared with the vastness of its accomplishments.

One of the most alluring and bizarre shapes that Godard's itchy search for truth and meaning took in those heady long-ago days. In comparison, most Hollywood movies are like tiddlywinks.

Beautiful, poetic, mournful, at once rich and spare, Brokeback Mountain takes a daring conceit and creates of it an overwhelming work of art that should speak to anyone capable of love.

Working toward its refreshingly light but utterly apt ending, the film teems with insights into the human condition revealed by an unusually smart script and a wonderfully committed cast. It's a truly fine work.

Watching it isn't easy, but it is definitely worth having waited for.

It's raw, visceral stuff that precious few movies are capable of equaling.

It’s a story that begins in an ancient riddle and ends, perfectly, in the rumble of an oncoming storm. It’s about life, A Serious Man is, and it’s as close, I think, as any American narrative movie of recent vintage has come to touching on the uncanniness of it.

It's a sexy thriller, tautly constructed, deeply acted and heartfelt, despite a cool and knowing tone.

A purely cinematic experience. You've got to see it, in other words, to understand.

It's a movie about having a sibling and all of the pain, joy, love and anxiety that that entails: a movie, in other words, for almost everyone.