The movie has a deliberately screw-loose feel.

Although you probably haven't heard much about Enemy Mine this season, you might want to check it out. You'll be pleasantly surprised. [23 Dec 1985, p.C2]

It's hard to breathe in Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's Infernal Affairs, a relentlessly taut Hong Kong cop thriller that, unlike many of its cinematic peers, doesn't burn off tension in choreographed action sequences.

It's one of the most faithful movie adaptations of any Dick story to date, and it comes from the scariest of all his books, as well as the truest.

Tony Bill directs a fresh and only occasionally too purple script by Tom Sierchio. [12 Feb 1993, p.C]

Generous in spirit and always engaging as it demonstrates that no matter how difficult life may become, there's no excuse for being drab.

It is, in the best Disney tradition, a story of childhood's end, of leaving the family and accepting adult responsibilities. Bluth relates it through a smooth counterpoint of humor, sadness and horror.

One of the best realistic dramas of the year.

Cooper's performance is his best yet. As is Lawrence's (the more crucial role, in fact).

Torres is one of those screen veterans with a surgically precise relationship to the camera, never pushing, always searching for emotions expressed even as they’re being hidden, or held in check, because someone’s watching.

Elizabeth Taylor, at 12 already a raging beauty, plays Velvet Brown -- the passionate girl who loves horses and wants to win the Grand National; it's perhaps her most perfect performance and one of her best-loved. [16 Nov 2001, p.C1]

Director Maya Angelou, the celebrated author, makes an impressive filmmaking debut by pacing her story slowly enough to make Woodard's transformation credible. [25 Dec 1998, p.A]

A socially conscious prison picture (written by Richard Brooks) that sometimes deliriously suggests a Brooklynesque mating of Jean Genet and Warner Bros. [20 Apr 2007, p.C8]

Pietro Marcello’s sweeping historical Italian epic Martin Eden is a whole lot of movie. It possesses a weight and heft, both cinematically and philosophically, that make it a rare treat. And at the center of the film is a whole lot of movie star: Luca Marinelli’s performance in the title role is an outstanding star turn for the Italian actor.

You will not forget The Piano Teacher. Nor will you forget Isabelle Huppert, a brave, brilliant actress who here plays her masterpiece.

Prince is an exciting entertainer, an equal opportunity employer-especially when it comes to talented women-and his act is a physical tour de force. It's the next best thing to attending one of his concerts and sitting near the stage. [20 Nov 1987, p.A]

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."

An upbeat, thoroughly entertaining street film about an entertainment revolution in the depressed South Bronx, featuring break dancing, graffiti art and record mixing. A black and Puerto Rican version of Saturday Night Fever. [08 June 1984, p.12]

The new Kong is just different enough to be terrific screen company. His relationship with his leading lady, played with heart and panache by Naomi Watts, doesn't feel like an old story retold. It feels like a brand new story.

Mamet is a writer who turns off some audiences, and almost everything that might bother them is in Edmond: foul language, raging machismo, violence and seemingly bigoted tirades. But almost everything audiences like about him is there too: candor, suspense, ideas, crackling slang, vivid characters.

David Fincher's film version of the Gillian Flynn bestseller Gone Girl is a stealthy, snake-like achievement. It's everything the book was and more — more, certainly, in its sinister, brackish atmosphere dominated by mustard-yellow fluorescence, designed to make you squint, recoil and then lean in a little closer.

Poison is not a film that will play the shopping malls, but it remains a most imaginative, exquisite and compassionate piece of work.

Certain things in Three Monkeys can only be described as brilliant.

Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney out West at a boys school/dude ranch. Their best movie musical, adapted from the Ginger Rogers-Ethel Merman stage show, with that great George and Ira Gershwin score. [13 Apr 2007, p.C6]

A real gem: a deadpan fantasy that turns into one of the best pictures ever about the post-"Star Wars" studio moviemaking era.

The result is not a movie of peekaboo titillation, but a studied, original portrait of sexuality and its role in human relationships.

Warts, entrails and all, I had a ball at Zombieland. It’s 81 minutes of my kind of stupid.

OK, it's a formula picture, but the ingredients are lively and combined with style by director Beeban Kidron.

There's scarcely a scene in which the actors, action and sound track aren't cranked up to maximum intensity.

Duma, at its best, reminded me exactly why we loved movies as children: because they told stories like this, with images just as rhapsodically colorful and exciting.

It is so much more than just melodrama — it is myth-making on a grand yet intimate scale, a film that attempts to express a small sliver of the Von Erich legend, and beautifully does justice to Kevin’s personal journey.

Griffith gives the fullest performance of her career; Weaver, the most likable, even though she's the villain of the piece. Michael Nichols directs his best film in years. [23 Dec 1988, Friday, p.A]

Greenaway is a unique filmmaker in that he layers images upon one another in a single frame and doesn't require dialogue to make his films arresting. [18 Jul 1997]

The movie we have is a movie that works, blending seriocomic domestic material with the larger, more pointed social observations about white liberal guilt, code-switching Black authors (Issa Rae is most welcome as Monk’s primary foil) and a lot more.

Engrossing and weirdly funny.

In their cockeyed prime, the Marx Brothers dismantle higher education by taking over Huxley College and setting it on a collision course with football arch-rival Darwin. [30 Dec 2005, p.C4]

A scintillating thriller in which writer/director Gary Sherman takes some familiar sitcom elements and force-marches them in an unexpected and terrifying direction. [11 May 1990, p.D]

Even more enjoyable than the original. [19 June 1981]

The great Christmas western with Duke Wayne, Pedro Armendariz and Harry Carey Jr. as three fugitive outlaws, who, by caring for an abandoned baby, unwittingly become sagebrush equivalents for the Three Wise Men. [04 May 2001, p.C1]

The Trip isn't much, but it's more than enough.

Be forewarned: The movie lasts three hours and 16 minutes, and nearly all of it deals with subjects that polite society (and even rude society) tends to ignore or evade.

You could say that Seraphim Falls, was no better than the typical Westerns of the 1950s and '60s--which I think underrates it. But those typical Westerns were pretty darn good, and so is Seraphim Falls.

Elegant, cheerfully cynical fun of the kind we used to get regularly from Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks and other masters of the classic Hollywood screwball comedy -- all those '30s-'40s movies about rich people sloshed, or acting crazy and running romantically amok.

At times Witcher leans too heavily on the familiar, with the ups and downs of the last half hour growing repetitive and wearisome. But his accomplishment is nonetheless impressive. [14 Mar 1997, p.A]

There's something simple yet miraculous about watching these beautiful animals interact with the wild and each other, even if their actions are being manipulated for the sake of drama. Annaud has taken his film's message to heart: He knows when to get out of nature's way.

Most of the performers have limited acting experience, but they are perfect for their parts, exhibiting the courage, stamina and wariness essential to live in such a harsh environment.

It fascinates both as film history and as a sobering reminder of how little credit a woman like Lamarr received, even at the peak of her popularity.

An Altman classic on a subject he knows well.

Rossen treats the jousts at the pool tables here like mythic battles waged by legendary knights on a playing field composed of nicotine, dirty felt and wasted dreams.

A fine French comedy-drama.

The filmmaker's documentary training pays off in detail after detail.

It's a tribute to the quality of writing, direction and photography in this film that we willingly go along with the story.

It's a far better piece of animation than the dismal Oliver and Company of 1988 and last year's smartly conceived but indifferently executed Little Mermaid. Butoy and Gabriel obviously love their medium, the first Disney directors to do so in years.

The film version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” came out in the year in which An Education is set, and beyond the hairstyles, there’s something of the willful, gleeful Golightly reinvention expert about Jenny.

I don't know if what the Safdies endured growing up was akin to what audiences experience in Daddy Longlegs. But I'm very glad they survived to make a very good film about it.

A story of faith and redemption, as viewed through the blurry and bloodshot eyes of a young man.

The film is mostly light and funny, but it also has a wistful ending that lingers in the mind. Both lead actors are sensational. [21 Oct 1988, p.A]

A word of warning. Big Fish is so strange and so literary that audiences seeking conventional fare may get impatient with it. But it always takes effort to catch the big ones. This one is worth it.

It's also gorgeously acted by all, and while this may not be one of Kiarostami's finest, the craftsmanship nonetheless is so high, it makes everything else currently in theaters look slovenly.

Allen gives us at least half a classic comedy - more than we usually get at the movies these days - while having some elegant fun with an idea that has intrigued poets and smart alecks through the ages: the interchangeability of comedy and tragedy.

A charming, adult-oriented saga of the famous cartoon character that comes alive only when Popeye finds his baby, Swee'pea. [19 Dec 1980, p.10]

An often-wondrous comedy, just as rich and surprising as "L.A. Confidential" but considerably less dark.

Knocked Up is more verbally adroit than it is visually. But Apatow's awfully sharp as a chronicler of contemporary romantic anxieties.

A three-hour delight… The movie generates much of its power by being so life-affirming at a time when people feel nervous about the future. [9 Nov 1990, Friday, p.C]

I've got to admit it's a stunner.

The latest, meticulously atmospheric and wonderfully acted Potter adventure lands happily--broodingly, but happily---near the top of the series heap, just behind Alfonso Cuaron's "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban."

You buy the concept, from start to finish, because it feels strong and purposeful and in sync with Shakespeare's own vision of a malleable, fickle populace and a leader raised by the ultimate stage mother.

Soderbergh pretty much failed in trying to evoke a noir-like nightmare world in the 1919 Prague of "Kafka," his 1991 terror film. But here, he dazzlingly hews out a noir landscape in more unlikely territory: modern-day Austin, Texas. [28 April 1995]

Don't let the fast-and-loose vibe fool you: Right up to its operatic finale, this is one tight one last job.

Watching this movie has an almost hypnotic effect, like being carried along on a river past terrains both familiar and inexplicably, maddeningly odd.

An uplifting, funny and engaging star-studded affair.

Remarkable documentary filmmaking, unflinching and full of unlikely grace.

It is an almost startlingly intimate film, following this strange relationship between these two, as they go through the challenges of life.

The funniest American comedy of the summer.

Highly inventive, full of perverse touches and clever flourishes. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

Vast, riveting, madly audacious movie biography.

It’s one of the essential titles of the year so far, if only for its sheer kinetic assurance.

In a time when American TV is full of stories of missing loved ones, Abduction keenly explores the reactions of an altogether different society and also examines the universal, excruciating pain suffered by such victims and their families everywhere.

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

Bell confronts Smelly, labeling him a cheater. But he also sympathizes with him, explaining, "There is a clash in America between doing the right thing and being the best."

The Artist may not be great art, but it's pearly entertainment.

It's an old lesson, but one well told with fresh faces in Mask.

Blessed with one of the strongest casts of any American movie this year, this bravura film, with its radical structure, is full of risk and reward.

The foulest holiday movie I've ever seen -- and the funniest.

Ultimately, p.s. confirms Kidd's talent without expanding it or achieving the comic/dramatic heights of "Roger Dodger."

One of the best films ever about that game, one of the most exciting, instructive and sheerly entertaining of all chess films.

It makes you sweat, laugh, squirm and self explore like few films -- fictional or documentary -- can.

As an actor (not onscreen here), Kravitz is so effortless, you rarely detect any overt planning or determination in her performances. Her movie’s a different case: a precise visual telling of a tale heading somewhere awful, but also cathartic.

Daring and beautifully made, Zhang Yang's Quitting plays like a Chinese "Rebel Without a Cause."

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).

Shine a Light is one of those lions-in-winter affairs, and Jagger, who has a body fat count of negative 67, can still dance like a maniacal popinjay, and Richards still looks like a satyr who has stayed up all night every night of his adult life.

Each performance in this plaintive work is superb, but Kyoko Koizumi's gently melancholy portrait of the businessman's wife keeps Tokyo Sonata true and affecting, even when the later passages go a little nuts.

Not everything here is perfect; the musical score, by Norwegian composer John Erik Kaada, favors ambient sonic wanderings that smooth over the conflicts on screen. But by the end, you feel as though you’ve truly gotten to know a full range of Kabul residents through their daily routines, joys, recreational diversions (kite-flying, slingshots, the international language of soccer) and bone-deep skepticism about the future.

This is an all-Latino film--a rarity and a pleasure--but what's most curious and refreshing is that Cordero allows the Latinos to naturally embrace their nationalities, accents and cultural peculiarities.

Panahi's simplicity accentuates the movie's power: its sense of life caught unobserved.

Revives the art of smart, scathing movie conversation as it skewers Manhattan's singles scene while providing a goodly number of laughs. Like its subject, the movie may have its prickly moments, but it's awfully fun to watch.