It's a movie of such jaw-dropping violence, wild improbability and dazzling style it overpowers all resistance.

What gives the movie real flesh and fantasy is the actress playing this part, the incandescent Morton.

Amid this conundrum of a movie, the actors provide what the facile screenplay cannot: a human pulse, shrewdly underscored by composer Alexandre Desplat’s time-traveling musical landscape.

Argentinean filmmaker Lucrecia Martel takes fundamental risks with form and style, and it pays off brilliantly.

Another important, risk-taking film from Spike Lee.

In many ways, it's a painful story, but it's also full of curious triumphs and outlandish redemptions.

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."

Ultimately, all audiences can find something to enjoy in Zootopia, though adults may find more to sink their teeth into, which is always refreshing.

For sheer laughs, Willard and Piddock take the trophy.

The message of this movie could not be any clearer: America is no heaven on earth.

An unashamed art picture, the kind of film where extreme aestheticism mixes with nightmare dread, where the story resembles a bad dream and where Freudian symbols cluster around the events like a swarm of insects. It's a very pretty film, but it's also lean, enigmatic and so obscure.

The beautifully told but predictable story of two athletes who competed in the 100-meter dash for England in the 1924 Olympics...The film has received choruses of praise prior to its nationwide opening this week. Although it is extremely well made, I frankly don't understand what the shouting is about. Good, yes; great, no. [25 Dec 1981, p.56]

Save for a questionable ending, it's one of the year's best films. [16 Oct 1987, p.A-N]

This is one of those poetical nonfiction eyefuls determined to make its primary subjects seem like they were alone with their thoughts, their camera equipment and their expectant yearning.

The love story that is The Eight Mountains expresses this ineffable relationship between those who know us best and the places in which we find ourselves with a rough-hewed grace and profound knowingness.

The first-rate cast, Lee Garmes' camerawork and the tense, excellent script (by Phil Yordan and, uncredited, Dashiell Hammett), all help build toward an unsurprising but memorable climax. [16 Oct 1996, p.2]

It plays as a comedy in its structure, and a drama in the margins, on the sidelines. Minor, clever, wonderfully acted, Non-Fiction makes room for jokes about “Star Wars,” Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” and, at one point, Binoche herself. It’s funny that way.

By bringing Newton alive, Smith opens the door for further exploration of this colorful, insightful figure.

A classic comedy. [25 May 2007, p.C7]

The movie assumes its multiculturalism with grace and humor, moving between its various worlds with a delighted eye for distinguishing features and a rich sense of character. [14 Feb 1992, p.B7]

Finally! A romantic comedy that works. And not just because of Shakespeare.

Fundamentally the film succeeds because the musicians themselves are good storytellers.

It's "Rear Window" with kids, and it's gorgeously shot with long, looming, twisted perspectives on actual New York locations, by cinematographer-turned-director Tetzlaff ("Notorious"). [27 Feb 2000, p.27C]

Ruthless People contains some of the biggest laughs of 1986.

All of these folks are damaged souls, trying their best to find purpose and forgiveness.

Albert Brooks is one of the few, maybe the only, comic filmmakers making movies today with laughs that hurt. A very funny--and therefore neurotic--young man, Brooks places himself in all sorts of contemporary situations in his movies, situations that force him to whine like a baby to get what he wants. He's the filmmaker for the Baby Boom generation.

Spontaneous allows Langford’s Mara, blasé swagger incarnate, and Plummer’s stealth charmer enough unaffected sincerity to make it stick. Onto that sticky stuff, the script applies comforting reminders: Stuff happens. We don’t know how long we have. Seize the day.

Buoyed by Rex Maidment's fine, lush photography - it was shot around Portofino - and uniformly superb performances, Enchanted April is a wonderfully lovely, sweet, bright (and sometimes funnny) BBC film that is uplifting without being sappy. [7 Aug 1992, p.L]

The picture's visual style is clean, exact and beautifully photographed by Yorgos Arvanitis.

It's a work for specialized tastes: for audiences who adore old movies, dark jokes and some high camp.

Wasikowska is wonderful here, unaffected and affecting, but then she has long been a young actress conveying a rich and shadowy interior life on screen. She humanized the Tim Burton "Alice in Wonderland," so clearly she can do nearly anything.

One of the most engaging rock biographies ever filmed. [31 Jan 1988, p.18C]

The kind of brilliantly weirdo picture that, by all rights, shouldn't have gotten made at all but this time, miraculously, was.

It’s a provocative, serious, ridiculous, screwy concoction about whiteface, cultural code-switching, African-American identities and twisted new forms of wage slavery, beyond previously known ethical limits.

Graciously filmed by Martin Brest and imaginatively performed by Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin, the tired concept yields a steady stream of little discoveries and surprising insights that add up to some uncommonly rich comedy. [20 July 1988]

It is not an easy film to watch, nor should it be. It is, however, beautifully made. Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern, the co-directors, wrangle their information and lay it out clearly, vividly and with a sharp sense of focus.

Somewhat illogical but full of terrifyingly sustained sado-masochistic emotion. [05 Dec 1997, p.L]

[Moore's] gripping in ways the rest of the picture is not, transcending the thesis points and comic exaggerations simply by playing against the comic extremes and holding a card or two, always, in reserve. She reminds us here how good, and tough, she is at her best, when she gets half a chance.

A movie I loved on first sight and, even more important, love in remembrance. Taken all in all, there's only one last thing to say about it. Go.

Lucidity, austerity and quiet compassion are peculiar virtues to ascribe to a movie about a horrific real-life murder case, but those are among the best qualities of Jean-Pierre Denis' Murderous Maids.

Darin is an actor who's really consummate at suggesting two simultaneous levels of character.

The movie’s engagement is more about casual precision than cinematic exuberance, and the banter’s democratically distributed among all its characters, right on the edge of caricature.

It's a candy-flavored blast of a movie. But though children may love it, they shouldn't monopolize it. Adults will want to eat this peach, or ride it to Manhattan, just as much.

Transfixing? A bore? I cannot answer for you. If think Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” is as far out as you go with this sort of setting, this is not your thing. Undeniably, though, High Life is an organic achievement.

iIt's a film for art- and foreign-movie devotees. But it's also a movie for audiences who simply want to get turned on.

Amazingly cynical and howlingly funny. [13 Jan 1994, p.10]

Chow's savagely funny cinematic love letter places Hong Kong legends Yuen Wah, Leung Siu Lung and former Bond girl Yuen Qiu in well-cast pivotal parts, establishing Kung Fu Hustle not only as an endearing homage to a genre's history, but an astonishing piece of cinema in its own right.

It's a nail-biter and knuckle whitener of the first rank: a super real life techno thriller that reduces the fantasies of Tom Clancy and his clones to ground zero.

Tilda Swinton’s a tightly wound riot as Copperfield’s snappish aunt, living seaside and fending off stray donkeys while her serenely mad lodger Mr. Dick resides in his own universe. He is played by Hugh Laurie, beautifully, as if Bertie Wooster had taken a few wrong turns.

Beautifully wrought, darkly funny and finally devastating, My Own Private Idaho almost single-handedly revives the notion of personal filmmaking in the United States. [18 Oct 1991]

Graced by bleak, stylized direction and an insightful ending that suggests that nothing ever really ends, this first feature film by "Northern Exposure" and "Homicide" writer and producer Bromell is a promising debut.

Sumptuously exciting, glowing with expertise, seething with life, gorgeously designed and thrillingly articulated.

A Secret Love doesn't dwell much on queer history or activism, as laser-focused as it is on Terry and Pat, and the bond between them. The film beautifully illustrates each of their spirits: the sweet and bubbly Terry, always ready with a signed baseball card, and the stern and protective Pat, who only lets her guard down under duress, but wrote pages of love poems to Terry, and still asks for a morning kiss from her love.

All I can tell you is this: It’s more than movie enough to justify the theatrical experience.

One of the most remarkable English-language feature debuts of recent years.

It's a great film that, sadly, may be ignored by all but the most dedicated, knowledgable filmgoers.

Loony, but spellbinding. [28 Apr 2006, p.C9]

A film driven by an elusive plot buried like a cryptogram under the action. It's a delightfully screwy ethnographic murder mystery, beautifully photographed in translucent naturalistic color.

The story isn’t complicated, and it’s one we know well, rendered with spooky, atmospheric aesthetics and intensely gnarly violence that provide cover for the thin premise, nagging plot holes and flimsy characterization in the script, which traffics in poorly explained archetypes. It’s sufficient enough, but the strength of the filmmaking is not in the writing, but in Barker’s command of style, pace and performance.

The best, eeriest parts of director Jordan’s Peele’s third feature, “Nope,” are as good as anything in “Get Out” or “Us,” and they’re very different from either of those earlier triumphs of imagination. This one is a three-fifths triumph, which means whatever you want that to mean. To me, it means go.

The visual personality of the movie is fantastically vivid and bright, the story itself, less so.

Kubrick's contributions are his wit and his eye. The wit, too much at times, is as biting as in "Dr. Strangelove," and the production, while of another order, is as spectacular as in "2001." [11 Feb 1972]

Rescue Dawn is Herzog's first English-language screenplay, and this is part of its problem: The hushed conversations between prisoners sound only fitfully idiomatic. Also--crucially--Herzog can't find a way to make his own big finish feel authentic, even if things did happen roughly this way.

No Way Out emerges, paradoxically, as a film that is better than it has to be and not as good as it ought to be, but there is skill here, as well as an admirable willingness to try something new.

A lot of director George Miller's film is gorgeous and exciting. Its craftsmanship and ambition put it a continent ahead of nearly every other animated feature of the last couple of years.

Notoriety, they won. The revolution, they didn't. That perhaps is the secret message of the film. Dylan was right. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Sleeper has plenty of bald spots, lacks the inspired silent comedy of Take the Money and Run, but, these days, comedy beggars can't be choosers.

We meet a variety of interdependent characters, from tuna vendors to rice experts, all in thrall to Jiro and his sons. I really wish Tokyo were closer.

All three leading performers are scarily convincing on the film's own tight, clammy terms.

The three people we meet here have worked every side of every street, by necessity: They’re artists of self-invention, activists of serious intent and just plain good company on screen.

Perry may never make a movie for the masses, whoever they are. But his truest work burrows into weird, blackly comic places few other filmmakers would dare explore.

Any movie that manages to work in a dig at the National Theatre's heavier pretensions — in a subway sequence, Paddington trots by a National poster for a (fake) play with the amusingly dour title "Damned by Despair" — is OK with me.

Reynolds and Mendelsohn could not be more different actors, but in this pairing they are perfect.

It's quite funny, though not in a predictably irreverent way, and it moves along briskly - a little too briskly toward the end.

Has an assured air, rich with scenes of affection, anger and reconciliation, along with moments of unfeigned humor.

Harris and Harden have real on-screen sympatico, in their nasty battles and good times alike.

The film has a compelling way about it. All five of the immediate Block family members emerge in full and affecting portraits.

Both the man and his times resist a compact 93 minutes. This much anguished history, and Aleichem's inspired literary response to that history, has difficulties being confined to conventional documentary feature length. Yet Dorman's touch is sure, his pacing fleet and his chorus of voices marvelous.

This richly remembered tale of Christmas past, with writer Jean Shepherd recalling the days when a Red Ryder BB gun really meant something, is already something of a Christmas perennial.

This is perhaps the quintessential stiff-upper-lip homefront drama, with Minivers Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon at their noblest, Teresa Wright at her most adolescently angelic and assorted English-Hollywood expatriates (Dame May Whitty, Reginald Owen, Peter Lawford) at their hardiest. [11 Oct 1996, p.J]

The film strongly asserts Ronstadt’s rock ’n’ roll bona fides as a trailblazing and wildly successful solo female artist in the man’s world of late ’60s and early ’70s country rock.

Like a series pilot, Stand and Deliver has a strong character, a promising situation and not a lot of story-it seems to be setting things up for future episodes.

Green has made two very different, extraordinarily efficient and compact movies in a row. That, too, may look easy but is anything but — unless you’re a filmmaker and writer of her particular gifts.

A thoroughly entertaining thriller about a teenage video game freak who almost starts World War III. A clever warning against nuclear weapons and too much reliance on computers. Only a preachy scientist hurts a fine entertainment. [22 July 1983, p.3-10]

There isn't a moment in Shanghai Triad that celebrates or revels in violence, and by movie's end, Zhang has portrayed the Shanghai underworld as a place of irredeemable evil.

From its opening shot-of little girls with huge hairdos-Hairspray is a relentlessly silly, crude and hilarious lampoon of modes and mores in teenage America, 1962. But it's also more than that. By closing credits, it has made some provocative observations about the influence of rock music on race relations in America, about how the '50s became the '60s and about the volatility of fashion and politics. [26b Feb 1988, p.F]

Few adventure movies have such a heightened atmosphere of beauty, excitement and fun. [18 Apr 1999, p.34C]

Flaws and all, it really does show a star being born.

An emotionally honest character piece that avoids moralizing or offering soggy excuses.

You may not want to accept what you see here; you may be unable to accept it. But it's doubtful you'll leave this film unmoved.

Polanski turns a conventional conspiracy thriller into a triumph of tone, ensemble playing and atmospheric menace.

Murphy isn't afraid to play with color and light and text and music, or to let her characters dance like no one is watching, and often. That energy, embodied in the filmmaking and in the performances, is what puts this coming-of-age film into a class all its own.

Director Jon Favreau's voice cast for the animals is tiptop.

From its first moments, the new documentary The Hunting Ground instills a sense of dread that is very, very tough to shake.

As Cornelia's revered documentary filmmaker father, a crusty truth-teller in the Frederick Wiseman mold, Charles Grodin provides a master class in minimalism.

Dickinson, who became a heartthrob in movies like “Beach Rats,” “Triangle of Sadness” and “Babygirl,” announces that he’s much more than a pretty face, he’s got something to say, and the message of humanist compassion he delivers in “Urchin” is incredibly powerful.

Porumboiu's picture, small and pungent, lacks the resonance of "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu," Cristi Puiu's masterpiece of contemporary Romanian malaise released in the U.S. last year. But this one's less forbidding, and it has a satisfying shape and fullness.

A seriously entertaining highlight of the fall season.