Happy-Go-Lucky isn't one of Leigh's epic social canvases like "Secrets & Lies" or even "Topsy-Turvy"; rather, it's an edgy character study whose message only gradually emerges.

The stakes in the film are high enough for some plot, but low enough to maintain healthy blood pressure. There is a delicious lack of exposition — and plenty of inside jokes for the true fans.

What starts out as a beautifully depopulated filmic exercise - it's 14 minutes into the movie before Guzman introduces any people - becomes toward the end a nearly unbearable examination of good and bad in the human heart.

Richly textured, beautifully acted.

It's a powerful depth charge of a film about reinvented family values. In Denis's hands, this urgent, loving brother and sister act is lyrical, exhilarating, flecked with mystery. [24 Oct 1997, p.C6]

A quirky, welcome addition to Disney's cavalcade of animated stars.

An electrifying, at times heartbreaking documentary from the Egyptian-born, Harvard-educated documentarian Jehane Noujaim (“Control Room”).

Miguel Arteta's Star Maps is an uneven first feature, but what's good in it is very good. It's got invigorating rawness to spare, making its low budget work in its favor. [22 Aug 1997, p.F5]

What Moreau does with this role is as inscrutably moving as anything Séraphine Louis painted.

Finally, a summer action movie that delivers the goods!

The actors turn in great work, but the true stars of “Blitz” are the production design by Adam Stockhausen and the cinematography by Yorick Le Saux. Collectively, they put you inside the Tube stations and shelters that were occupied by Londoners trying to escape the Blitz.

Anvil! is one of the sweetest, funniest films I've seen this year. Also the loudest and most foulmouthed.

The Nightingale strives to be an epic and pulls it off, even if there are one or two false summits before the final scenes. It’s painful to watch because the truth is often painful, especially when so many myths of empire have accreted around it.

The ambiguous finale provides neither certainty nor respite, and may prove frustrating for some. I had no idea where Hamaguchi’s cautionary tale was taking me, but I remained intrigued until the bitter end.

A perfect example of a small, well-made, and (in its central role) rivetingly acted film.

Braga has hardly stopped working since, on either continent, but Aquarius is a comeback, a homecoming, and a character film in which both the heroine and the actress playing her are characters of the first order.

The movie has you from its nearly wordless opening sequence.

The best movie Steven Seagal never made. Except that Statham, while just as marked for death, is harder to kill.

Outrageous controversialist meets brilliant attorney, and fact intertwines with fiction.

It's a small, profoundly satisfying movie that keeps echoing long after it's over.

Like Anderson, many directors claim to value local color, but few have gone as far, or achieved such impressive results, as has Chris Smith in The Pool.

Judy Irving's terrific documentary 'The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill is ostensibly about birds, but only in the way that a game of Scrabble is about tiles.

If you don't get hooked on the storytelling in Fried Green Tomatoes, you'll surely be charmed by its five terrific actresses. Fried Green Tomatoes can't match the dramatic focus and rich texture of Rambling Rose, it's far more appealingly nuanced than Steel Magnolias - and with actresses like Tandy, Masterson, Bates, Parker and Tyson on the job, it's downright irresistible. [10 Jan 1992, p.73]

It is an uncompromising family tale, one that's dark but lyrical and moving in its rendering of the ties that bind even the most dysfunctional families, despite valiant efforts to destroy them.

Tarantino and Rodriguez want you to cover your eyes in disbelief and get the unholy giggles at the same time. You do, but in two very different ways, and that's the movie's strength.

I can't think of another movie this year that made me laugh or weep harder for the whole lumpy business of being - the compromises and connections that get us through the day and somehow add up to entire lives.

No, Black Panther isn’t the greatest movie ever made. It’s probably not even the greatest superhero movie ever made. But it’s very, very good — in its best scenes, exhilarating.

Once the case comes to trial, Anatomy of a Fall becomes an engrossing courtroom drama, but not for the reason you think. The French court is a vessel for grandstanding and verbal sparring matches; it’s far less stodgy than the American ones we see in even the most absurd courtroom movies.