Mitch Winehouse has disavowed this movie and his portrayal in it, but it’s hard to argue with the scene where he shows up on St. Lucia, where Amy has fled from the hounds of the global media, with a reality-show camera crew of his own.

As a flawed but lovably lionhearted woman, Barrymore triumphantly comes of age as an actress.

A bracing, highly enjoyable mix of medieval intrigue and epic action.

What Happened Was nails contemporary isolation as few films do. It's filled with acute insights and observations of the wary yet hopeful circling that people do in conversation on a first date. It's a gem of a chamber play. [17 Sep 1994, p.37]

A slick, twisty, top-of-the-line crime thriller with gorgeously sensual textures and a screenful of wickedly faceted performances.

It's a wrenching, ennobling essay on teamwork and the hard struggle to change one's life.

A richly detailed sexual and emotional coming of age story, the movie’s based on a novel and it unfolds novelistically, through glances and asides and slowly accreting observations.

In many ways, Son of Rambow plays like a pint-size, even cheekier version of the recent Michel Gondry film "Be Kind Rewind." Both are stories about people making movies not because it's their job but because doing so brings a vast sense of play into their lives.

The performances are uniformly excellent, but pride of place goes to Bennett’s Sir James, an upper class twit of Pythonesque proportions. Rarely has a character this moronic been this happy.

Hollywood filmmaking at its best, brimming over with feeling, texture, spirit, and several kinds of keenness that transmute experience into big pop myth.

Newman is an American classic, one of the few actors Hollywood has allowed to age and deepen. He and Nobody's Fool don't so much shine as glow softly and steadily. [13 Jan 1995, p.73]

The word bears repeating, so everyone from Andrew Weil to Stephen Hawking to Mikhail Gorbachev is here to speak the still-inconvenient truth. The filmmaking, however, is far more relentless than in that Oscar-winning Al Gore slide show.

A straight-up drama and thus the only film in "The Trilogy" not forced into a genre straitjacket -- suspense thriller ("On the Run") or farce ("An Amazing Couple") -- "Life" is also the finest of the three. This isn't a coincidence.

Low-budget, sure of itself, and creepy as hell, the film actually scores quite low on the gore meter. Like the best nightmares, though, it proves nearly impossible to shake.

Haunting, powerfully acted, penetratingly written, it's about people coming home -- and not coming home -- to their marriages.

There’s a reason this movie was a critical and popular success in Brazil: It resonates. And despite the beauty of the weathered local faces this movie celebrates, it resonates for anyone, anywhere, watching it. “What do they call the inhabitants of Bacurau?” a young boy is asked. “People!” he responds. Just so.

"No God and no religion can survive ridicule," wrote Mark Twain, but for once the sage of Hannibal was wrong.

As powerful as it is as social commentary, Gett triumphs most as an examination of human relationships.

Roughly translated, Touchez pas au Grisbi means ''don't touch the loot.'' But in literal terms, this film version of Albert Simonin's blockbuster really couldn't care less who ends up with the cash.

Going All the Way is a familiar story told with daring and unsentimental eloquence. At a time when it is rare for exceptional books to become exceptional films, Pellington's debut arrives as a pleasant and welcome exception. [10 Oct 1997, p.C5]

The first three-quarters of Ida are as astonishing as anything you’ll see at the movies this year.

Ladybird, Ladybird is full of heart and compassion, but it's also uncompromising and unconsoling. [10 Mar 1995, p.52]

"Adorable" is not an adjective I’ve often applied to a movie, but “K-Pops!” earns it. It will play well on the big screen, and make you forget about your troubles for two hours.

By centering Fair Play on a working woman who (at least at first) bends over backward to soothe the anxieties of the men surrounding her, Domont nods to the erotic thrillers of yore and then speeds past them, creating something sexy and exciting, but also gleefully modern.

Depardieu and Rappeneau have not so much revived Cyrano as restored it. [25 Dec 1990, p.87p]

Mank is one of the year’s best movies if you’re the kind of person who genuinely loves movies and damn close if you’re not.

Friday is funnier and funkier than "Bad Boys," more homegrown-seeming, less manufactured. It plays like "House Party" with attitude. [26 Apr 1995]

Abrams understands what George Lucas never quite figured out: that we’re less interested in the science fiction future than we are in revisiting the past. We don’t really want to see what happens next in that galaxy far, far away. We want to recapture what it felt like the first time we arrived, in 1977, with a movie called “Star Wars.” We want to go home. Star Wars: The Force Awakens takes us there.