Stone is spectacular, and she's reason enough to see La La Land. Chazelle is a born filmmaker, and he doesn't settle for rehashing familiar bits from musicals we already love. He's too busy giving us reasons to fall for this one.

Watching Lady Bird is like flipping through a high school yearbook with an old friend, with each page leading to another anecdote, another sweet-and-sour memory. It’s a tonic to see any movie, especially in this late-Harvey Weinstein era, that does right by its female characters, that explores what it means to be a young woman on the cusp of adulthood, and that speaks the languages of sincerity and wit.

Irons' Von Bulow is easily the most attractive and entertaining movie heavy since James Mason's villain in ''North by Northwest,'' a figure with whom he shares a taste for elegant homes and wry understatement. [17 Oct 1990]

Bravo shines with humor and character. [28 Jul 2006, p.C10]

This is sublime work, with poetry and prose in unerring balance, thanks to writer-director Payal Kapadia.

One of the quintessential '60s foreign art films, a bizarre melange of pop music, revolution, sex, movie allusions and poetry. It's a masterpiece of sorts by one of the most important European filmmakers of that era. But it's also a movie that can drive you crazy.

The Four Marx Brothers -- Groucho the Gabber, Harpo the Honker, Chico the Chiseler and Zeppo the Zero -- were the wildest, most anarchically funny movie comedians of their era. (Of any era.) And this is the high water mark of their unique cinematic insanity: a ferocious satire on government, war and diplomacy that leaves no propriety or pretension unpricked, no sacred cow unslaughtered. [19 Sept 1997, p.O]

A definitive spy thriller and one of the masterpieces of Hitchcock's British years, The 39 Steps is one of those paradigm classics that influence filmmaking for decades afterward. [21 Sep 2007, p.C10]

It has found a considerable, gratefully discombobulated audience all around the world, and it deserves one here.

It’s a riveting and humane experience pulled from the rubble of a never-ending war.

The latest nerve-shredder from Josh and Benny Safdie is worth seeing, even if it’s not their finest two hours, and even if half of any given audience will resent the hell out of it. Adam Sandler’s excellent.

Altman's dreamy, snowy northwestern about wily operator McCabe (Warren Beatty), sexy Madame Miller (Julie Christie) and a bittersweet tale of how the West was unzipped. [04 May 2007, p.C2]

Folk standards such "500 Miles," "The Death of Queen Anne" and "Dink's Song" infuse the movie, and as in the Coens' "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" T Bone Burnett has done first-rate work supervising the musical landscape. The film, I think, falls just a tick or two below the Coens' best work, which for me lies inside "A Serious Man" and "Fargo."

The great "coming home" film of World War II. [28 Nov 2008, p.C7]

Blends a love of semi-trashy pop entertainment with a love of poetry, art and high moral seriousness. It's a young person's movie (Godard was 34 and Karina 24 in 1964) that retains its mysterious pull even as the film and we get older.

Superb performances by John Wayne, Claire Trevor and Thomas Mitchell -- who won the Oscar for best supporting actor -- make for an authentic classic that has been copied but never equaled. [25 Feb 2008, p.C8]

Sometimes cinema's highest achievements become clear only in retrospect. Days of Being Wild--now clearly revealed as one of the peaks of Hong Kong filmmaking and a masterwork of contemporary cinema giant Wong.

As written by Field and modulated, brilliantly, by Blanchett, Lydia becomes a rhapsody in contrasts, controlling, fastidious, witty, steely, imperious, hubristic. It’s a huge, showy role, and the beautiful paradox — one among many here — is that Blanchett has never been subtler.

Day-Lewis... the role of a lifetime.

This is a sumptuous work, from its unconventional title sequence of a woman dancing hard in the streets to its provocative ending with conflicting quotes from Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr .[30 June 1989, Friday, p.A]

Nina Paley's delicious Sita Sings the Blues finds solace in autobiography and an animated gold mine in the caverns of an ancient Sanskrit epic.

In Top Hat's all-time showstopper, to Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek," light-footed Fred and feathery Ginger dance us right into paradise. [23 Aug 2005, p.C3]

Aided by a splendid, understated score, by Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, Brother's Keeper captures the story of how Munnsville saved Delbert from the slammer with probity and elegance. It also slyly suggests how the experience, even the presence of the documentary camera, socialized Delbert and his brothers. [26 Mar 1993, p.C2]

The splendid new documentary Crumb, a sympathetic yet woundingly candid portrait, catches the artist with much the same skill. [26 May 1995]

Thirty years after its premiere, despite being in black and white and despite the irritating lip-flap from the Italian penchant for post-dubbing dialogue, Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 is a remarkably fresh film, a landmark of cinema that seems to defy dating. [07 May 1993, p.H]

One of the great samurai pictures, its darkly brilliant premise--the cynical mercenary/master swordsman or yojimbo (bodyguard) who walks into a town feud and plays both evil sides against each other--has been copied frequently, most notably in the Sergio Leone-Clint Eastwood A Fistful of Dollars. But Kurosawa's treatment remains the most savage, thrilling, smart and hideously funny. [26 Jan 2007, p.C2]

Director and co-writer Tom McCarthy played a weasel of a journalist in "The Wire." Now he has made a meticulous, exacting procedural on real-life journalists who excelled at their job; had the resources to do it properly; and in early 2002, published the first in a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of grim, carefully detailed stories of pedophile priests.

An amazing celluloid poem by a filmmaker whom Ingmar Bergman called "the greatest." He very nearly was. He was also, perhaps, too pure a creator and reckless a citizen to survive unscathed.

The actors who play these parts--Chishu Ryu as the father and Setsuko Hara as the daughter--are the most emblematic members of Ozu's famous stock company. Her warm beauty and his stoic rigor--and the frequent smiles both use to cover their feelings--convey oceans of meaning beneath the drama's polite, humorous, carefully etched surface, where immaculate interiors and lovely scenery reflect a world in very delicate balance. [07 Jan 2005, p.C2]

One of the greatest films--Akira Kurosawa's poignant 1952 masterpiece Ikiru...is both a tragicomedy about how our best intentions are misinterpreted and a profound meditation on an old man's reactions to impending death. [26 Sep 2003, p.C2]

Like many Hollywood classics, Oz benefited from happy accidents: Happiest of all was the casting, as Dorothy, of MGM teenage songbird Garland, whose wide-eyed emoting and passionate singing make the movie. Behind her is a near-perfect supporting cast. [18 Jun 1999, p.I]

It is wonderful: a rhapsodic adaptation of a memoir, a visual marvel that wraps its subject in screen romanticism without romanticizing his affliction. It left me feeling euphoric.

Incredibly chilling, this Don Siegel movie still delivers a powerful punch. [04 Sept 1987, p.54C]

This is one of the screen's most rewarding explorations of the teacher/student relationship in any language.

Platoon is filled with one fine performance after another, and one can only wish that every person who saw the cartoonish war fantasy that was Rambo would buy a ticket to Platoon and bear witness to something closer to the truth.

As pure craftsmanship, No Country for Old Men is as good as we’ve ever gotten from Joel and Ethan Coen. Only “Fargo” is more satisfying (it’s also a comedy, which this one isn’t).

Los Angeles has always been the capital city of film noir..., but few movies present a darker, bleaker view of the city than Roman Polanski's 1974 Chinatown. [17 Oct 1997, p.o]

A film that lets life flood into our souls.

Leigh is an artist not at all blind to the world's darkness and pain. But the generosity and togetherness he and his company show in Secrets and Lies is something the movies -- and the world -- truly need. [25 October 1996, Friday, p.A]

A dazzling mosaic, alert to the ebb and flow of human resilience in the face of everyday crises.

The script is by Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth) and the mixture of dry wit and terror is expert. Hitchcock, who was 73 when he directed, demonstrates all his old skill and romantic pessimism. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

Noel Coward's much-loved thwarted romance. [14 Nov 2008, p.C7]

It's based on a novel by a real chain-gang inmate, but the movie itself often seems slick and arch, like a conformist's yearning tribute to non-conformity. Yet the cast is superb: Paul Newman as the rebellious Luke, George Kennedy as his brutish sidekick, Strother Martin as a jailer ("failure to communicate") and about a dozen supporting actors who became widely familiar faces over the next decade. [16 Jan 2009, p.C6]

I have written elsewhere that love stories seem to be in short supply these days, as they have been in the last decade of American movies. . . . But the hunger for love on the screen is there, and director Spielberg gives it to us in "E.T.," and because the lovers are a little boy and a little creature, we accept it. Of such simple concepts, timeless entertainments are made.

Beautifully remastered and containing Cocteau's long-unseen special prologue and credits -- is as much a feat of feverish delight as it was in the dark days of Vichy and WWII.

Magnificent to look at, thrilling, ingenious, spellbinding and superbly done on every level, this is not just one of the best films of the year or the decade, but of all time.

It’s heartbreakingly good.

An extraordinary work, grandly conceived, brilliantly executed and wildly entertaining. It's a hobbit's dream, a wizard's delight. And, of course, it's only the beginning.

Quiz Show is one of the year's very finest films. [16 Sept 1994, p.B]

It's a small story set in a memorably desolate location. The actors, all quite magnificent, enlarge it, just as cinematographer Mikhail Krichman illuminates the vistas and roadways and even the furtive kitchen table glances between clandestine lovers.

Watching Le Cercle Rouge, we're caught up in a world that, however improbable some of its twists and turns seem, strikes us as a perfect, imaginative creation.

Though uneven and less witty than the first two, Toy Story 3 delivers quite enough in two dimensions.

Deserves an encore anyway for its invaluable contributions to the vocabulary of rock'n' roll and pop culture.

All of the performances are first-rate; Pesci stands out, though, with his seemingly unscripted manner. GoodFellas is easily one of the year's best films. [21 September 1990, Friday, p.C]

Painful and unforgettable — a serious and honorable form, perhaps the highest, of "gotcha" journalism imaginable.

For Mendonça Filho, who has poured his love for his city, his country and its people into this masterpiece of a film, his favorite way to process anything is through making and watching movies. It’s his best film, and the best film of the year.

A languorous, catlike psychological puzzle from one of the essential international masters, Lee Chang-dong.

For a century and more, film directors have explored crosscurrents between art and life, and how one informs the other. Hamaguchi makes that exploration a fully humanized one. His actors, one and all, are so good, you’re simply grateful for their screen company.

A beautiful picture with a great heart, a classic-to-be with a common touch.

Above all Saint Omer is a singularly moving courtroom drama.

A landmark movie that becomes a priceless entryway into a distant land and its people, few of whom will ever seem as foreign and far away again.

A movie bull's-eye: noir with an attitude, a thriller packing punches. It gives up its evil secrets with a smile.

Bradley’s film is a lyrical documentary, a piece that feels like a poem or a prayer, an almost meditative experience, set to a plaintive piano score.

Forty years later, The Killing has lost little of its punch. It's both vintage '50s noir and a stunning introduction to a killer director. [22 Jul 1998, p.L]

Swing Time, a Depression-era Manhattan ballad -- and best of the bunch by a hair over Top Hat -- has Fred as a threadbare gambler named Lucky, Ginger as a saucy dance teacher named Penny and a heart-stopping Kern-Dorothy Fields score that includes The Way You Look Tonight, A Fine Romance, Pick Yourself Up and their masterpiece farewell duet number, Never Gonna Dance. [23 Aug 2005, p.C3]

Dislocated from their native country and former lives, Bob and Charlotte come to establish a language of their own. Coppola has done the same, proving she boasts one of today's truly distinct filmmaking voices.

One of the most beautiful and profound films to emerge from Japan during the past decade.

This is a small, tight, starkly claustrophobic film, closer in impact to Elie Wiesel's first-person account of the concentration camps, "Night," than to the artful, slightly suspect emotional catharsis of director Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List."

For its influence alone, this is a movie that more than deserves its classic status. [23 June 2000, p.M]

A delicate, droll masterwork, writer-director Spike Jonze's Her sticks its neck out, all the way out, asserting that what the world needs now and evermore is love, sweet love. Preferably between humans, but you can't have everything all the time.

I doubt Gerwig read the 1868 Tribune classifieds, but her film is, in fact, fresh, sparkling, natural and full of soul.

It's impossible, when we watch "I Am Cuba" today, not to see some poignance in its soaring shots, sadness to its thrilling vistas. [08 Dec 1995, p.C]

An incredibly silly film of great humor, brilliant design and epic insanity.

An adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's tale of the follies of adventure--beautifully directed and shot (by Oswald Morris) and perfectly cast. [11 July 2003, p.C5]

It remains an anti-war masterpiece. [09 Feb 2007, p.C6]

Nickel Boys is a subtly radical act of adaptation, with a striking intuitive and meticulous visual strategy, and the result is fully equal to Whitehead’s achievement but in a new direction.

What can we impart to future generations? Can we trust them to keep the balance of the universe? These big questions drive the meaning and the purpose of The Boy and the Heron, yet another masterpiece from Miyazaki that helps us to see the beauty of life around us and contemplate the future of the universe more profoundly.

From its initial first-person, behind-the-wheel viewpoint to its final implication of all-pervasive surveillance, Panahi creates a fascinating hybrid that becomes a microcosm of Tehran.

One of the year's gems.

The film is a gem — a supple, unpredictably structured and deeply personal portrait of its primary subject, the photographer, visual artist and activist Nan Goldin.

You may not like Beau Travail - which is, after all, a quintessential "critic's film" - but I think you'll have to admit it's been almost perfectly executed.

It is personal filmmaking of the highest order, recognized with an Academy Award nomination for best foreign film.

The film works best in its most acutely observed details of daily life in the trenches.

A late classic that revisits old territory with masterly serenity and acceptance. [29 May 2009, p.C4]

It’s not perfect, but Anora is a touching comic and dramatic odyssey, driven by a terrific performance by Mikey Madison in the title role.

The result is a splendid black comedy that marks a stylistic leap for its director. Second only this year to the upcoming “Roma,” it’s a reminder of how the movies can imagine a highly specific yet deeply idiosyncratic vision of the past.

Don't see Halloween in an empty theater on a weekday afternoon. See it on a weekend night in a packed house. Halloween is a film to be enjoyed with a boisterous crowd; it's an "audience picture," a film designed to get specific reactions from an audience at specific moments. With Halloween, the most often desired reaction is screaming. It's a beautifully made thriller -- more shocking than bloody -- that will have you screaming with regularity. Halloween was directed by John Carpenter, 30, a natural filmmaker and a name worth remembering. [22 Nov 1978]

Masterpiece is the right word for The Sweet Hereafter. It is extraordinary: a poem of familial pain, a song of broken embraces. [25 December 1997, Tempo, p.1]

What I did like unreservedly was the acting. Enid, as enacted by the sometimes astonishing Birch, is one of the more convincing, no-nonsense teens in recent movies.

This is a great and necessary document in support of a two-state solution. Even those who don't believe in such a solution may find their minds changed by The Gatekeepers.

The Brutalist is many things: some blunt, others loose and dangling, still others richly provocative, most of them remarkable.

This is a romance with minimal physical contact and sex--and that's part of what makes it work so well as a love story.

The movie suffers a bit from the sentimental, violin-underscored valentine approach favored in Selznick movies, but the characterizations, particularly in delivering Dickens' cartoon grotesqueries, are plum. None is better than W. C. Fields, who might be faulted for bringing his own legendary screen persona to Mr. Micawber, but he does so superbly, without sacrificing Dickens' own creation. [13 Aug 1989, p.20C]

A watershed picture, for both Spielberg and war movies.

It’s a beautiful film to soak up as a visual and musical memory of a place that remains, and a time long gone.

A crackling good movie. [18 Dec 1992]

Lean's masterly film of the classic Charles Dickens novel of success, romance and their dark underpinnings. [18 Jun 2010, p.C3]

In Reichardt films ranging from “Wendy and Lucy” to “Meek’s Cutoff” to “Certain Women,” the lives of outsiders are defined by the natural world, economic circumstance and by their own dreams of connection. First Cow is one of her very best.