A fresh perspective on one of the world’s longest conflicts.

Anyone who’s been a parent will find C’mon C’mon memorable, even transporting. Anyone who’s ever thought about being a parent might find it even more so.

Overlooked on its initial release in 1967, Huston's adaptation of Carson McCullers's novel still feels unsettling and cutting-edge nearly 40 years later. [28 Sep 2006, p.26]

That commendable sense of balance, which Dolgin and Franco use to approach this family reunion, ultimately makes the finished product devastating.

The movie’s of a piece with shaggy recent westerns like “The Sisters Brothers” and “Slow West,” and it owes a debt of gratitude as well to the work of Robert Altman, especially the classic “McCabe and Mrs. Miller.” (That First Cow marks the final appearance of Altman regular and “McCabe” costar Rene Auberjonois is a lovely poetic touch.)

Like much of Godard’s recent work, The Image Book is a rumination on art, politics, history, and mankind’s eternal folly disguised as a cinematic collage. It’s plotless but it has shape; random but with purpose. After initially fighting the movie, one might find oneself giving into its flow, the visuals scudding across one’s retina, the assemblage of quotes and mournful pensees on the soundtrack seducing one into following along in its wake.

Does what too many independent American movies only pretend to do: Takes you to an unnoticed corner of our country and shows what it's like to actually live there.

The strength of Kopple’s film (as opposed to the strength of Sharon Jones, which is mighty) is that it honestly depicts the vulnerabilities of an indomitable woman.

Delightful and original, the film conjures up a corner of Paris distinct and specific, yet fairy-tale fanciful.

The Souvenir demands to be seen. Hogg is a major filmmaker pointing herself in new directions -- the past and future simultaneously – and hashing out the places where memory tells the truth and where it only offers more romanticism, more lies.

Stories We Tell is one of those movies you watch on a screen and replay in your head for days, moving between its many levels of inquiry and touched, always, by Polley’s compassion toward her relatives in particular and people in general.

Most of all, California Typewriter is an elegy. “The truth is, no good typewriters are going to be made again,” Hanks laments. There’s a reason that the title of the first tune on the fine musical soundtrack is “Stolen Moments.”

Stone's film rolls off the screen with affection and authority, even when Morrison's life enters its sodden, bummed-out finale, and Val Kilmer does an uncanny job of identifying with Morrison. [01 Mar 1991]

The new film is slender, and it plays obliquely with the style of the 20th-century Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu: simple shots of simple people revealing universal truths.

One of the smarter, more unexpectedly touching documentaries of the year, and I recommend it to you whether you love Rivers or loathe the very thought of her.

Here's the third classic you'd better know if you're going to know anything about American gangster movies. This one is powered by Paul Muni's thinly disguised and daringly simian take on Al Capone. [01 Nov 1991, p.35]

A hugely enjoyable shambles. It’s a comic deconstruction of that most useless of Hollywood artifacts — the blockbuster sequel — that refuses to take itself seriously on any level, which, face it, is just what we need as the summer boom-boom season shifts into high gear.

A stinging, gorgeously filmed tragicomedy about male insecurity and the power of positive drinking.

As sagas of endurance in the face of ridiculous odds go, this story is up there with Shackleton and ''Into Thin Air.''

While the “Paradise Lost” films captured events as they unfolded in the heat of battle, West of Memphis has the luxury of at least partial closure.

Swinton’s vocal performance as Bell is so vivid and absorbing it could be entered as evidence for the defense. Swinton makes Bell so compelling it’s easy to overlook what a paradoxical figure she was.

A shrewdly acted, bittersweet comedy.

It is hard and empathetic and bleak and often beautiful — not far off from a prairie “400 Blows.”

I don't usually make recommendations of this kind, but if you or your kids have gone to a burger joint in the last few weeks, you really do need to see this movie.

An elegy for a vanishing emblem of what once characterized this country's vitality.

By forgoing actual human beings, the director has made his most charming, least annoyingly fey film - a thing of lovely comic wisdom.

Reveals real feelings.

It'll satisfy genre fans and Lee fans and win new adherents to the Asian-style action film, with its dazzling moves that make conventional Hollywood movies look like cement mixers in low gear. [7 May 1993, p.25]