Shawn Levy

It's a celebration of American female screen acting, it's a study of early feminism that feels relevant today, it's a carefully mounted exercise in period filmmaking and it's a beloved novel come to life for the fourth time. [23 Dec 1994]

A near-perfect movie.

The timing and cutting of the film are terrific, the build-up to an absurdly hilarious climax is just right, and the performances are near perfect.

It is affecting, accomplished, witty, poignant and memorable.... Unstrung Heroes is one of the year's best films. [22 Sep 1995]

A stunning film.

Almost more valuable as a piece of foreign policy than as the highly accomplished work of cinema it is.

Eastwood has crafted one of the most powerful American dramas in years.

A spell-binding, engaging and often breathtaking work in which exquisite sets, costumes, photography and music combine with top-notch acting and out-of-this-world fighting scenes.

After Life is a thoroughly original, wholly realized work that leaves a profound and nagging bug in your brain for days after you've seen it: What in your life is worth holding on to? What one thing would you wish never to forget? It's a question as relevant to the lives we live each day as it is to our final moments. [24 Sept 1999, p.26]

This edition -- clean and tight as Scott would have it -- presents a strong case for Alien as both the greatest horror film and the greatest science-fiction film ever made.

In many respects, it's Kurosawa's most sumptuous film, a feast of color, motion and sound: Considering that its brethren include "Kagemusha," "The Seven Samurai" and "Dersu Uzala," the achievement is extraordinary. [01 Dec 2000, p.26]

The animation is even more mind-blowing, if that's possible. The characters and objects seem even more palpable and real than last time. There's a thickness to bodies of the human characters and an amazing attention to detail throughout.

Films don't get more essential than this.

It's so full-blooded, smart, sexy, tense and absorbing, so cleverly written and shot and cut, so filled with superb acting and music, so perfect in its closing moment, that it surely ranks with the most impressive debuts in world cinema.

About as good a movie as you could have hoped for. Really good. Hole-in-one good.

Demanding, harrowing and very, very real. You won't shake its impact easily.

Not a masterpiece, but still fabulous.

We've seen documentaries with more daring themes, greater drama, sharper craft and timelier subject matter. But few have been as affecting as The Real Dirt on Farmer John.

It's a fine, absorbing work, built with brilliance and without excessive showiness or flash. It feels, in fact, like a classic virtually upon its arrival.

An exhilarating slap in the face, bracing and sexy, smart and visceral, stylish and raw -- the advent of a fabulously exciting new moviemaking talent.

Not only does this film make you think, it makes you want to think. Few films -- few works of art of any stripe -- can claim that.

The result is a film that outrages and fills the viewer with poetry that's at once epic and intimate, scandalizing and life-affirming -- a real work of art.

It's hard to recall the last time a big-ticket summer movie delivered so fully on its promise.

Heart of Gold feels like an ample slice of the real America, the one truly worth caring for. And it's such a rare thing in this benighted age that the simple clarity with which it's presented feels like nothing less than a miracle.

I am here to tell you that Greengrass has fashioned one of the most powerful films I have ever seen, and that watching it makes you value your loved ones and your privileges more, perhaps, than you ever have. He has made a film that makes you feel, makes you think and makes you want to connect. And that, finally, might be the greatest thing that art can do.

It's quite possible that Titanic is one of the greatest romantic epics ever filmed.

The film reveals itself to be not so much a historical allegory as an Iliad of the heart. It's sad and smart and beautiful and true.

Brimming with bittersweet wit and emotion and built with deceptively fluent craft.