Stephen Hunter

Anyhow, either as history at its most inspiring or moviemaking at its most exciting, The Tunnel is a trip.

For my generation, Revenge of the Sith is a brilliant consummation to a promise made a long time ago, far, far away, in a galaxy called 1977.

May be too much suspense for some, but it's vividly powerful.

It's a new new thing, classic myth from both literature and the movies, commingled, set to great folk music, and untrammeled by any sense of predictability, urgency, realism or believability but hypnotic, graceful and seductive.

It is in fact a traditional mystery more reminiscent of Agatha Christie than the reigning film noir aesthetic of 1947. But it's fabulously entertaining.

Jon Heder in the magnificent Napoleon Dynamite, is one of the most winning movie creations in years.

Delightful, delicious, de-lovely.

The cutting is so sinuous and breathtaking, the music (by Danny Elfman after too much coffee) so onrushing and the camera so penetrative of the depths and heights of midtown Manhattan at cloud level, that the illusion, despite its artificiality, works. You don't believe it but you "believe" it.

What is so impressive about Welcome to Sarajevo is its cool restraint: Like the best of journalism, it never stoops to sensationalize or sermonize, but merely observes. It's about the facts rather than something called The Truth. [9Jan1998 Pg. D.01]

What emerges is quite extraordinary.

The movie offers one of the great lost pleasures, one we so seldom encounter at the bijou anymore. You watch this monster unreeling in its splendid vitality, its absurd ambition, its wobbly tone, its beauty, its stupidity, its immaturity, its tragedy, its grandeur, and before you know it, close to four hours has blasted by. And when you leave, you seize whoever is up close to you -- friend or foe, stranger or lover -- and begin to talk. You have opinions. You must express yourself. You must be heard. [5 Aug 2001, p.G1]

It's shallow as a puddle, but lots o' fun.

Jungle Fever is so many graceful things, so many angry things, so many truly moving things that its occasional faults are the faults of excess passion, not failure of imagination. Most importantly, it seethes with life, unlike nearly every other movie out of Hollywood these days.

One False Move doesn't make a single false move its own self: It's as tough and gripping as they come. It's the first movie I've seen in months where, when I was walking out, I thought to myself, "Damn! I wanna see that one again!"

No American film this year can touch it. [28 Feb 1992, p.10]

Imagine "The Godfather" through the eyes of a 13-year-old boy just in from the hinterlands of rural Jersey and his dad's pepper farm, and you have an idea of the originality, and the oddity, of the film. [16 Feb 1996]

What makes Lynn Littman's film so devastating -- beyond, that is, the power of Jane Alexander's brilliant performance as the surviving mother -- is its icy control and its complete disavowal of sentimentality and sensationalism. It's a small monument to the principle of understatement. [02 Dec 1983, p.B1]

Lung-bloatingly funny.

The Pixar people have an extreme talent for conjuring imagery that is both soaring in its majesty but also resonant -- it's a stylization but acute enough to carry emotional meaning.

Generally quite amusing, with a brilliant cast.

It's a fine, old-fashioned 2 1/4 hours at the Bijou.

So those seeking a softer approach to the realities of both child- and animal-rearing should search elsewhere. The rest of us, meanwhile, are free to enjoy a well-made family drama pitched to young adults that's honest, tough and surprisingly engaging.

The camera, freed to glide, flows as if through the old man's memory, discovering both the glory of his life and the tragedy.

The Good Shepherd is serious adult moviemaking, a truly surprising effort from De Niro, a man deeply interested in the art, craft and psychology of espionage. He seems to believe that we'd better be interested in it, because it's interested in us.

Unlike so many pagan entertainments that seem to have no moral center as they blow things up, this one in fact does. It's very small, but it's there.

A lot of bigger movies won't provoke you half as much.

It gets frenetic, in the French way, but it never stops getting amusing. This is what happens when you let grown-ups make movies.

Stunningly acted by Liam Cunningham and Orla Brady as the Cloneys.