Carol Reed's Odd Man Out is the rare movie classic that grows more relevant and compelling with every passing year. [29 Dec 2006, p.5C]

The true heartbreak of Maria Full of Grace is that it never comes.

A chilling reminder of the precipice the world stands on nowadays, from a man who looked over the edge more than once.

Romanticism fights stoicism to a draw, and the movie grows ever more static, too. Down to the quasi-ambiguous hate-crime finish, Brokeback Mountain comes as close to being a still life as you can get with human characters.

A stunning documentary that examines life at the ground level in a patch of banally pretty but otherwise nondescript French meadow. [27 Nov 1996]

Bracingly honest and ceaselessly compelling documentary.

Cache is the feel-guilty movie of the new millennium.

Almodovar has created an ecstatic homage to the women who have inspired him all his life.

A big, fat old-fashioned gush of passion as drawn through a post-modernist prism that makes it less easily comprehensible but more beguiling.

Rampling's authority over splintered emotions has the force of revelation.

But the most piercing thing about Heavenly Creatures is Jackson's refusal to forgive the girls. He indeed understands them and empathizes with them. But when he has to, he exposes the horrid squalor and ugliness of the crime, which, after all, was a blood-soaked execution, crude as anything done in Rwanda. [9 Dec 1994]

It's hardly great, but it's completely mesmerizing. [02 Feb 1996]

Offers a welcome continuation of what has proven a fascinating journey both for the film's 11 subjects (three of the 14 opted out of the project this go-round) and its audience.

In a boxing soap-opera way, Eastwood is trying to do for himself as a performer what Sergio Leone did for him in a spaghetti-western way: douse his rough-hewn banality with reflected emotional coloration.

A grand, sweeping nostalgia trip that evokes the sickness of an era even as it tries to find its essential humanity.

An engaging yarn and a moving character study, but it's also a sweet, sad glimpse of everyone's future.

The result is not a first-class film noir but a top-grade acting class. You admire it without enjoying it.

It's every bit as thrilling and engrossing as the best spy thriller or cop flick.

The movie's cinematography is sumptuous, in its own intimate way. But all that's glorious about this film is the flesh tones. There isn't enough flesh and blood.

Too sketchy about her protagonist's interior life, and too fast and loose with the details of this story, to make much of an impact beyond its initial shock.

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

In its peak moments, the movie delivers, all at once, genuine street wisdom and psychology and wrenching expressions of family and friendship.

Best of all, Ponyo never ceases to be a genuine odyssey in short pants.

A thoughtful, bittersweet film biography of the Cuban writer that captures both his irrepressible spirit and his sometimes overwhelming melancholy.

A beautiful display of celluloid bungee-jumping.

Few films combine a dense and tingling atmosphere with the headlong pacing and adventure of The Bourne Ultimatum.

Roman Polanski's new movie may be the greatest historical film centered on an enigmatic character since Lawrence of Arabia.

Though I love McCarthy's movie, The Edge of Heaven - with its virtuoso narrative and frames packed to bursting with unruly life - has the potency of "The Visitor" squared.