I cannot stress enough how truly stunning the brilliant visuals are in this movie. Laika has again crafted a world that is such an original vision, one that will live on as a new classic in the world of animation.

I'm giving the movie a high rating for its skill and professionalism and because it does the job it says it will do. I am also advising you not to eat before you go to see it.

Joaquin Phoenix has never been shy about going big if the role called for it — and maybe even if the role didn’t necessarily call for it — but his performance here ranks as one of his best because of what happens between the outbursts.

The movie does a harrowing job of showing how, and why, a man might be made to confess to a bombing he didn't commit.

Roughly 60 percent of A Ghost Story is disturbingly beautiful and spiritually challenging and stuck to me like a memory magnet. About 40 percent of A Ghost Story is maddeningly still and achingly self-conscious and just a little too pleased with itself.

Ballast inexorably grows and deepens and gathers power and absorbs us. I always say I hardly ever cry at sad films, but I sometimes do, just a little, at films about good people.

It is refreshing to see Cruz acting in the culture and language that is her own. As it did with Sophia Loren in the 1950s, Hollywood has tried to force Cruz into a series of show-biz categories, when she is obviously most at home playing a woman like the ones she knew, grew up with, could have become.

As always, Steve McQueen is an original and bold storyteller, delivering the goods with dazzling creativity. Even when “Widows” delves into pulpy, blood-soaked material, everything is filtered through the lens of a true artist. This is one of the best movies of the year.

The interesting thing is that Hiller has saved the movie without substantially changing anything in the book.

For every moment of inspiration and hope in the teen-political documentary Boys State, when you find yourself thinking, By gosh, the kids are all right, there are at least two jaw-dropping instances of 16- and 17-year-olds compromising their values with such cynicism you weep for our future.

The movie crackles with energy and life, and with throwaway slang dialogue by Mamet, who takes realistic speech patterns and simplifies them into a kind of hammer-and-nail poetry.

Observant with mannered edits, Jem Cohen’s modest story delivers a character sketch and a traveler’s essay.

The Bad News Bears is, in a way, [Ritchie's] most harrowing portrait of how we'd sometimes rather win than keep our self-respect. He directs scenes for comedy even in the face of his disturbing material and that makes the movie all the more effective; sometimes we laugh, and sometimes we can't, and the movie's working best when we're silent.

An enjoyable film, and yet it left me somehow unsatisfied...there is too much contrivance in the way [Austen] dispatches her men to London when she is done with them.

What happens is that we get vested in the lives of these characters. That's rare in a lot of movies.

What makes the movie so memorable, so good, so strong, is the unvarnished, warts-and-all perspective.

A movie like this touches everyday life in a way that we can recognize as if Turkey were Peoria. I can imagine a similar film being made in America, although Americans might talk more.

A searing portrait of the human condition. [12 Oct 2007, p.B6]

Bong, above all, is a world-class visual stylist, and he proves that again here with a few dazzling flourishes, despite Snowpiercer’s dismal gray palette and train-bound claustrophobia.

The inspirational speech that Pa (Fess Parker) gives his son (Tommy Kirk) may seem sentimental because of its aw-shucks delivery, but there's nothing phony about its lesson: "Now and then, for no good reason a man can figure out, life will just haul off and knock him flat. … But it's not all like that. A lot of it's mighty fine." This is the type of straight talk that is missing from movies aimed at kids today. [24 May 2002, p.13]

Jacques Tati is the great philosophical tinkerer of comedy, taking meticulous care to arrange his films so that they unfold in a series of revelations and effortless delights.

This is Mike Leigh's funniest film since "Life Is Sweet" (1991). Of course he hasn't ever made a completely funny film, and Happy-Go-Lucky has scenes that are not funny, not at all.

This is not your average family cartoon. Shrek is jolly and wicked, filled with sly in-jokes and yet somehow possessing a heart.

As for the movie, I've seen better comedy films and better concert films. It noodles around too much and gets distracted from the music. Michel Gondry, who directed, makes good fiction films but is not an instinctive documentarian and forgets that even a fly on the wall should occasionally find some peanut butter. As the record of a state of mind, however, the film is uncanny.

Because they all seem to be people first and genders second, they see the humor in their bewildering situation as quickly as anyone, and their cheerful ability to rise to a series of implausible occasions makes Victor/Victoria not only a funny movie, but, unexpectedly, a warm and friendly one.

One of the strengths of this film is that it never pauses to explain.

It is a film with a political point of view, but often its characters lose sight of that, in their fascination with each other and with the girl.

It’s a memorably stark and authentic work that is at times so gut-wrenching it’s almost unbearable — but Park deftly weaves in moments of warmth and humor and hope as well. This is a special film.