Tootsie, the story of a man who liberates himself by masquerading as a woman, is the funniest, most revealing comedy since "Annie Hall." [17 Dec 1982]

As full of joy as pain, it's a perspective we need to see more often.

There is not only artistry in the development of the story - there is beauty, sympathy and emotional appeal in almost every scene.

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 best mainstream film since "E.T.," is an uplifting reminder that Hollywood can still produce truly great entertainment...The plot is so exquisitely developed that divulging anything beyond the basic outline might diminish the joyous surprises that await an audience thirsting for originality in a reactionary medium. [03 July 1985, p.57]

Everything you could want in a sequel. It satisfyingly regenerates the characters and qualities that made the first film so popular. And then it moves them forward into newer, fresher, more elaborate, more involving territory.

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.

The Human Voice is a banquet disguised as a light lunch, heady with flavors; you come away blissfully sated and hungry for more.

Crowley and his creative team — cinematographer Yves Bélanger, designer François Séguin, composer Michael Brook, costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux — build a cinematic snow-globe of nostalgia, a portrait of two worlds that aches with family lost and freedoms found. It is a beautiful film to experience.

Spare and elegant and harrowing, it's an ode to childhood trust being stretched until it snaps.

Nobody makes films as sympathetic to struggling working-class types as Mike Leigh, and nobody makes them as uncondescendingly. Although uneven, Leigh's latest, Life Is Sweet, is a honey of a film, one of the few to feel good about in this dismal year. [22 Nov. 1991, p.35]

The miracle is that 'The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is better: tighter, smarter, funnier.

The arrival of closing credits feels like a trap door. The film is over, and, suddenly, we have to leave these people. The directors make no guarantee for their futures, but the strength of their filmmaking inspires you to hope for the best.

This is a movie whose power comes from the alignment both of Mija's discovery with ours and of a tremendous writer and director with his star.

Baldwin knew that hope is the engine that takes us to the future, to a changed and better day, and whether that hope is embodied in action, in expression, or in a child is immaterial. If Beale Street Could Talk is a stained-glass window looking out onto what could still be.

Birdman finds Iñárritu in the mood for play, and with a mighty cast that fields every pitch he throws.

[The novel's] themes have never not been fresh and they gleam here under the sympathetic and enlivening touch of Armstrong and her cast, who move through the events with sunny assurance and complete immersion in character. [21 Dec 1994]

This is a modest marvel of grace and framing that unfolds with the patience of a cloud and is driven more by wonder than pure emotion. It doesn't have the exuberance of Francois Truffaut 's "Small Change." Instead, it's that movie's antonym, yet just as wondrous.

In addition to its other strengths — serving as a reminder of the kind of small, satisfying movie they don’t make anymore, showcasing the depths of Melissa McCarthy’s talents — Can You Ever Forgive Me? celebrates a hardy but endangered species: the Nasty New Yorker. It’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed spending so much time with someone so unpleasant.

His film aspires to a poetry about barbarism that will not let us forget.

Laugh if you want at Imitation of Life or any of Sirk’s primal cinematic operas. Although if you can laugh at the film’s end, when Mahalia Jackson herself sings “Trouble of the World,” I can’t help you. Just understand that when you laugh, you’re really laughing at yourself, and you’re laughing to keep from crying.

Just to remind us that he’s Almodóvar — and to make it up to us that Serrano looks so implausibly different from Cruz — the movie ends with a bravura, meta-movie flourish that’s at once dazzling and matter of fact. It’s one more example here of Almodóvar’s ability to take pairs — not just people, but concepts (like, say, present and past, or pain and glory) — and happily join them.

Who most of these exquisitely costumed people are I have no idea, but they brush past the camera in such rapids of jubilation it's a wonder they don't knock the thing over. I watched most of the film exhilarated, but depressed that I'm not a big Russophile.

Both a staggering realist thriller and a jeremiad.

Familiar Touch accomplishes a lot in just around 90 minutes. By no means should you expect a wallow in misery. Like its protagonist, the film refuses to go gentle into that good night. Its defiance is tempered with dignity and grace.

Nothing momentous happens here, but Philibert has a magical sense of how to find the simple poetry lurking in the universal routine of being a kid. A lot of the film's lyricism is extracurricular.