Meek's Cutoff is more an experience than a story. It has personality conflicts, but isn't about them. The suspicions and angers of the group are essentially irrelevant to their overwhelming reality. Reichardt has the courage to establish that.

After the curtains close on The Long Day Closes, its special light lingers, sending us back to the beginning for another "hearing." Such is the singular intensity of Davies' vision; even the rug has much to say. [30 July 1993, p.40]

The intimacy of debut writer-director Ryan Coogler’s approach to the film and the no-frills, believably real quality of the main performances combine to drive the senselessness of Oscar’s killing home with visceral impact.

Based on a true story, this is a tribute to the strength of a matriarch who doesn’t have time to grieve or feel sorry for herself. She has children to love and protect.

A friend asked: "Wouldn't you love to attend a wedding like that?" In a way, I felt I had. Yes, I began to feel absorbed in the experience. A few movies can do that, can slip you out of your mind and into theirs.

In Spielberg's Schindler's List there are the famous shots of the little girl in the red coat (in a film otherwise shot in black and white). Her coat acts as a marker, allowing us to follow the fate of one among millions. The Last Days, directed by James Moll, is in a way all about red coats--about a handful of survivors, and what happened to them.

The Circle is all the more depressing when we consider that Iran is relatively liberal compared to, say, Afghanistan under the Taliban.

Tells a story of conventional melodrama, and makes it extraordinary because of the acting.

What makes Atlantic City sweet -- and that's the word for it -- is the gentleness with which Lou handles his last chance at amounting to something, and the wisdom with which Sally handles Lou.

It’s a beautifully filmed, wonderfully challenging, multi-layered tale of trickery upon trickery, short con upon long con, deception upon deception.

This is a breathless, exciting story, heartbreaking and exhilarating at the same time.

For long stretches A Christmas Tale seems to be going nowhere in particular and using a lot of dialogue to do so. These are not boring stretches. The movie is 151 minutes long and doesn't feel especially lengthy. The actors are individually good. They work together to feel like a family.

The first film to build on the enormously influential "Pulp Fiction" instead of simply mimicking it. It has the games with time, the low-life dialogue, the absurd violent situations, but it also has its own texture.

Perhaps it is not supposed to be clear; perhaps the movie's air of confusion is part of its paranoid vision. There are individual moments that create sharp images (shock troops drilling through a ceiling, De Niro wrestling with the almost obscene wiring and tubing inside a wall, the movie's obsession with bizarre duct work), but there seems to be no sure hand at the controls.

These astronauts are still alive, but as long as mankind survives, their journeys will be seen as the turning point -- to what, it is still to be seen.

A crisp, smart, cynical film about dishonor among thieves.

What makes Get on the Bus extraordinary is the truth and feeling that go into its episodes. Spike Lee and his actors face one hard truth after another, in scenes of great power.

The music probably sounds fine on a CD. Certainly it is well-rehearsed. But the overall sense of the film is of good riddance to a bad time.

While it took all these decades for “Are You There, God?” to finally gets its day in theaters, it was worth the wait, as writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig (“The Edge of Seventeen”) has delivered a near-perfect adaptation of Blume’s novel that wisely retains its 1970 setting yet no doubt will be as relevant as ever to audiences of all ages.

The performances are crucial, because all of these characters have so completely internalized their world that they make it palpable, and themselves utterly convincing.

Broadcast News has a lot of interesting things to say about television. But the thing it does best is look into a certain kind of personality and a certain kind of relationship.

Revanche involves a rare coming together of a male's criminal nature and a female's deep needs, entwined with a first-rate thriller. It is also perceptive in observing characters, including a proud old man. Rare is the thriller that is more about the reasons of people instead of the needs of the plot.

A very funny, sometimes very sad documentary.

At the end of The Man Without a Past, I felt a deep but indefinable contentment. I'd seen a comedy that found its humor in the paradoxes of existence, in the way that things may work out strangely, but they do work out.

But what Husbands and Wives argues is that many "rational" relationships are actually not as durable as they seem, because somewhere inside every person is a child crying me! me! me! We say we want the other person to be happy. What we mean is, we want them to be happy with us, just as we are, on our terms.

In certain elements of tone and structure, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood has echoes of "Pulp Fiction" and "Jackie Brown," but it is alive and electric with a beat all its own.

Yes, we know these events are less than likely, and the film's entire world is fantastical. But what happens in a fantasy can be more involving than what happens in life, and thank goodness for that.

You can freeze almost any frame of this film and be looking at a striking still photograph. Nothing is done casually.