William Arnold

The film is a hugely compelling tribute to the French Resistance movement in World War II, staged with a genuine epic flair but in the icy, downbeat, film-noir style of the director's celebrated policiers.

An undisputed masterpiece and a one-of-a-kind experience: a wise, poignant, wryly funny, tenderly open-hearted comedy-drama that shrewdly portrays a microcosm of French society on the brink of WWII through an ensemble of love affairs taking place at a country estate over one hectic weekend. [09 Mar 2007, p.6]

The final scene of Balthazar's demise is one of cinema's most moving and haunting moments.

Above all, the film is a classic of "poetic realism," that distinct brand of pessimistic '30s French urban drama that gave lyrical, sometimes even surrealistic, interpretations to working-class romances and underworld characters, settings and dramas.

The granddaddy of all caper/heist movies. The work that defined the genre for the subsequent four decades of filmmakers, none of whom was able to surpass it for style or suspense.

It's essentially a propaganda film, but Eisenstein's stirring (and, for the history of cinema, truly revolutionary) montages of men in action still are uniquely powerful. [04 Jun 1999]

Has the power to transport us to a different place. The spark of special anime magic here is unmistakable and hard to resist.

The French are very much the villains of the saga and, naturally, have always hated the movie (it was banned in Paris until 1971); and it remains controversial in other quarters as well because it seems to embrace, even celebrate, terrorism as a political tool.

It's a magical film -- an exquisitely made and exceedingly wise family drama that communicates a touching sense of the universality of the human condition, and leaves us with the rich emotional satisfaction we just don't seem to get often at the movies anymore.

It is long, mediocre and rather pointless. [07 Apr 1995]

Wise, entertaining and often very funny.

As powerful as the movie remains and as much as I enjoyed this new cut, I have to say that the additional footage -- material that Coppola felt he had to excise 20 years ago to reach a commercial length -- has turned out to be something of a mixed blessing.

First and foremost, it soars because its grand design and numerous story problems were worked out half a century ago by a guy named Tolkien, and Jackson was smart enough to realize this.

A suspenseful, elegant entertainment.

It's cumulatively entertaining, and a fascinating and nostalgic time capsule of its era. Watch for the cameo by Brigitte Bardot.

McCabe is simply one of the most poetic and beautiful films ever made. [18 Feb 1994]

An unusual, visually hypnotic, American Gothic historical epic that traces the rise and tragic fall of a Western mining magnate of the Gilded Age.

The film is an extraordinarily complex, well-rounded and multileveled portrait of how Crumb got to be the way he is, as well as a tribute to how he was miraculously able to rise above his dysfunctional roots by putting his demons into his art. [16 Jun 1995]

The movie never falls into gushy moments of inspiration and Schnabel never tries to manipulate any particular response from the audience. We're left to make of it what we will.

His persona clicks, the physical comedy amuses, and its comic vision is tantalizing enough to make us suspect the Old Master still may have at least one masterpiece in him trying to get out.

The film's single downside is a certain nagging sense of deja vu: the fact that so many of the elements of the story -- the dark force, the all-empowering object, etc. -- have been usurped over the years (by "Star Wars" and others) that you feel as if you've been down this road many, many times before.

This is still a director's movie and the real success belongs to Redford, whose overall confidence and command as a director have never been this impressive. He gets a little extra out of every scene and every performance, and he brings the film's diverse themes and story strands together with the special touch of the master filmmaker he has clearly become. [16 Sept 1994]

For all of its genre awkwardness, "I Am Cuba" has to be considered as one of the most striking visual epics of the 1960s - in the same imaginative league as "Spartacus," "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Dr. Zhivago." [23 Jun 1995]

Most of the magic of this unusual movie comes from the freshness, imagination and sweet spirit of its animation, which is blissfully its own thing and does not show the influence of any of the reigning forces in the art form.

It is a fairly routine exercise in New Millennium movie mayhem.

A funny, sad, scary and ultimately tragic coming-of-age drama/black comedy that skillfully -- and uncompromisingly -- creates its own world and uniquely pessimistic vision.

Culturally, the film is a fascinating document because it's so obviously a conscious amalgam of Hollywood gangster movie conventions, reflecting the retro sensibility of writer-director Melville, an incorrigible fan of American culture. [25 Apr 1997]

So magnificent in so many ways that, for the first time, it seems to raise the docudrama to high art.