In several scenes, the camera stays close to Dyer’s dazzling array of expressions at the computer keyboard, while Alice processes the latest rabbit hole or interior dilemma. Maine knows a pitch-perfect performance when she sees one.

Like Charles Ferguson's excellent Iraq documentary "No End in Sight," "Countdown to Zero" has an agenda but has the cogent, reasoned rhetoric to support it.

Separate interviews with Flansburgh and Linnell inject the most life and gentle conflict into the film, peeling back their unique musical marriage and friendship.

Exotica may be a gloomy journey up river, but it's a trip worth taking. See it with a friend. One who has something to say. [03 Mar 1995, p.J]

A Real Pain, shadowed by the Holocaust and the grandmother we never see, may be a modestly scaled second feature, but Eisenberg makes an enormous leap forward, coming off his promising directorial debut, “When You Finish Saving the World.”

While Tattoo borrows heavily from both "Seven" and "The Silence of the Lambs," it manages to maintain both a level of sophisticated intrigue and human-scale characters that suck the audience in.

Rather than go for the throat, its central friendship makes room for feeling, but also for listening, and watching, and reflection. You may cry or you may not. But the movie is up to far more than making sure you do.

It treats Freddie not as a problem to be solved, but as a peripatetic life to be followed. What begins as two weeks in another town, in search of the past Freddie never knew, becomes a reminder that there are feelings, longings, connections in life that remain not impossible, but certainly elusive, and precarious.

One of the best-loved '50s sci-fi movies, with a plot boldly cribbed from Shakespeare's The Tempest. [30 Jun 2006, p.C7]

It's a Rafael Sabatini pirate movie with almost everything: galleons, high seas, Olivia de Havilland and a fantastic Errol Flynn-Basil Rathbone swordfight. [15 Aug 1996, p.9A]

The film is a singular achievement.

The movie world could use more stunts as entertaining and innovative as this one.

Beautiful little film.

For all these self-effacing but highly valuable reasons, when the triumphs of the human, agricultural and engineering spirits arrive, they work. It’s moving, and it’s earned. Ejiofor is off and running as a director.

May not have the size and grandeur of some of the biographical and political epics being released this fall, but I defy you to find a better written, more honest -- or yes, more satisfying and delicious -- movie this year. [27 September 1996, Friday, p.C]

Steep is one of those rare endeavors able to touch on the human condition without neglecting the film’s true star: big-mountain skiing.

Their story is deeply involving, all the more so because it isn’t simple or straightforward.

Bannon may think he's constantly manipulating the media, but in this film, Klayman uses the tools of documentary filmmaking to reveal his inherent emptiness.

Sin City is an evil place, full of awful people, an obsessive movie full of monomaniacal tough guys. Yet when Miller and Rodriguez move it into gear, noir lives.

Generates genuine tension because it's propelled by actual human feeling, which, these days, turns out to be a surprisingly thrilling prospect. [11 Dec 1998]

It’s full of life, guided by first-time screen performers portraying versions of themselves. And because Esparza’s a dramatist, not a melodramatist, the experience of watching Life and Nothing More becomes truth, and nothing less.

The film is about bargains made and broken and re-negotiated. You watch it in an anxious, protective state, regarding the fate of these characters, and this fallout.

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]

The actors and writing lend unexpected dimension to all of the characters, and Lopez's Harry is an indelible antagonist, one who manages to be genuinely big-hearted and evil.

Thornton and his excellent company summon up for us the long rides, dangerous companions, rites of passage, the mad love and, most of all, the special relationship between the man/boys that rode over the border and the horses that carried them there.

The result is a narrow slice of a much, much larger story, somewhat akin to the hands-off, eyes-wide-open documentary approach of Frederick Wiseman — if Wiseman were a war correspondent. Rarely has recent global history seemed so far away, yet so present. It’s one of the year’s essential documents.

An eliptical puzzle that comes together beautifully in the last five minutes. Challenging, disturbing and at times brilliant. [21 Oct 1994]

A small jewel about a most common experience-a first date. Writer-director Tom Noonan also stars as a quirky, shy guy who comes over to the Manhattan loft apartment of a co-worker (Karen Sillas) for a first date. Their dance of engagement is absolutely riveting and sad. Created as a stage play, it also works on film. A true sleeper. [09 Dec 1994, p.B]

Kulig comes with everything the role of this sullen, reckless siren demands, and then some.

A more threatening embodiment of that idea, of new times that seem like old times, comes to subtly provocative life in Transit, one of the most intriguing films of the new year. Written and directed by German filmmaker Christian Petzold, it’s an audacious reminder that there’s more than one way to adapt a so-called “period” novel for a new era.

Bennett also co-wrote the script, based loosely on her own experiences, and is the best thing about the film. A physical cross between Holly Hunter and Christine Lahti, she's quite convincing as she tries to figure out what has gone wrong in her personal life - and how she can fix it before it is too late.

Like all the Dardenne s' films, L'Enfant embraces a peculiarly ascetic brand of what, in other filmmakers' hands, might seem like cheap melodrama.

A romance incandescent, a fiery pageant of l'amour fou. Whatever its historical transgressions, it opens up a vein and lets life and blood pour out.

Movies about literary lives don't always catch fire, but Henry Fool is a glorious exception: an austerely funny, brilliantly written and acted serio-comic tale of two writers. [17 Jul 1998]

Walsh and producer Mark Hellinger's classic ultra-tough gangster opus about World War I, Prohibition and good-hearted mobster Jimmy Cagney's breezy rise and grim fall. [18 Feb 2005, p.C6]

Such a stylistic inconsistency might be bothersome in another film, but here it's just part of the texture.

So troubling and unflinchingly honest that watching it becomes a test of empathy and compassion.

Huston gives one of her very best performances as a strong lady who can con almost everyone but herself. Her manner on the screen in this picture and in Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors'' marks Huston as the one contemporary actress who comes closest to having the power of classic female dramatic stars of years past. [25 Jan 1991]

A better film about love delayed than "Sleepless in Seattle." It's funnier, more credible, more bittersweet and the characters are a whole lot brighter. Naturally, it won't be as big a hit. [18 March 1994, Friday, p.C]

It's a genuine shocker - a dazzler of a film - a hellishly funny picture.

[Mitchell’s] celebration of these films is seriously entertaining.

A dark subject certainly, but in Murray's bouquet-bearing hands, it can still hand us a laugh.

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]

A recently resurfaced noir classic, in which an ex-con (Gene Nelson) is trapped between his criminal ex-buddies (Charles Bronson, Ted De Corsia and Timothy Carey), pulling him back into the underworld and the tough, toothpick-chewing L.A. cop (Sterling Hayden) who wants to make him a stoolie. Harsh, rough, sharp as a knife. [24 Oct 1997, p.L]

A seductive revisiting of an old classic - one that helps us see these lovers and their world with renewed passion.

All the accolades Lyne got for "Fatal Attraction" -- and didn't really merit -- he deserves here.

Ellen Page is key to its success, as much as Cody, or director Jason Reitman.

An unusually good documentary about an outlandish miscarriage of justice.

Complex, knotty and at times even uncomfortable; its world has a weight and heft that makes its ultimate romanticism seem genuinely transcendant, genuinely magical. [14 April 1989]

Judas and the Black Messiah is my kind of dramatized Chicago history. It’s a real movie, for one thing — brash, narratively risky, full of life and sneaky wit (even if the dominant tone is one of foreboding) and brimming with terrific actors.

In teasing out the complex relationship between life and death in relationship to birth and “Frankenstein,” Moss presents a provocative existential quandary and reminds us that horror stories have been women’s stories all along.

It puts The Cockettes into social, political and popular cultural context and gives the documentary a moving resonance.

Eleven years ago director Campbell made "GoldenEye," the first of the Brosnan Bond pictures. Casino Royale trumps it every which way.

Jack Nicholson's impressive, convoluted and moody sequel to Chinatown. [10 Aug 1990]

One of the best-liked backstage dramas, with Douglas shining as egotistical producer Jonathan Shields (said to be based on David O. Selznick) who ruthlessly sheds friends, lovers and colleagues on his way to the top, only to seek them after his fall. [25 Apr 2003, p.C1]

It is, in fact, Itami's consistent, subtle intimation of mortality that grants Tampopo a resonance beyond simple satire. [11 Sep 1987, p.A]

More effort could have been made to fully flesh out the international perspective on this "people's president," but as a play-by-play look at a modern coup, it's an amazing, insightful film.

Terrifying and darkly funny. [13 Jun 2004, p.C4]

As an adventure movie, it makes good on its promise and its title. It carries us to the edge. [26 Sep 1997, p.A]

Delighted me like few films I've seen recently. It's a sexy, sweet, sumptuously entertaining movie about the huge and wildly eventful wedding reception.

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.

David Mamet's fascinating polemic about sexual abuse in the workplace. A college teacher confers with a coed in his office to talk about her poor work, and all hell breaks lose with accusations. What were the teacher's motives? Does the student become the pawn of a feminist study group? This is the kind of all-too-rare picture that creates conversation on the way home from the movie theater.

Natural Born Killers is visually complex and thematically simple. Mixing film and video, black-and-white and color, morphing and animation, Stone breaks visual ground here for a major studio release. [26 Aug 1994, p.B]

An essential Carole Lombard film, it's her one screen pairing with her eventual husband Clark Gable. To call their scenes electric is putting it mildly. [30 Dec 1993, p.9A]

La Cava was famous for improvising his scenes; My Man Godfrey is the most brilliant, unbuttoned example. It's a champagne farce, sparkling and bubbling from the depths of the Depression. [08 Jun 2007, p.C9]

A classic of realistic terror, in which passion and murder can't lie buried.

Strange, funny and powerfully moving… Burton has found a way to move through camp to emotional authenticity, to communicate-through a concentration of style and an innocence of regard-a depth and sincerity of feeling that his deliberately (and often, comically) flat characters could not summon on their own. [14 Dec 1990, Friday, p.C]

There’s a dreamy and poetic side to the visual texture in The Unknown Country, as photographed, often gorgeously, by Andrew Hajek. The Badlands, the snakelike highways, the rippling sunsets step right up and strike their poses, but unselfconsciously.

It's a little of everything: unnerving, funny in just the right way and at the right times, serious about its observations and perspectives on racial animus, straight-up populist when it comes to an increasingly (but not sadistically) violent climax. That's entertainment!

The sociopolitical issues are lost in the action, but it's quite some action. [11 Jan 2002, p.C1]

It's an intelligent and informed look at the preposterous ways our leaders are often picked and sabotaged.

A fine, exciting film that makes a bloody historical event live all over again by showing it through the eyes of children on the edges of the conflict.

The American distributor of John Woo's amazing Hong Kong feature, The Killer, is taking the easy way out and selling the picture as camp. But this movie is no joke: It's one of the most intense, passionate pieces of filmmaking you are ever likely to see. [10 May 1991, p.H]

The movie has an avalanche of eye-popping visual effects, including a bustling Santa's village, nifty "Jimmy Neutron"-type gadgets and "Stars Wars"-like igloo walking robots - and, of course, the requisite heartwarming happy ending.

No halves about it: Half Nelson is a wholly absorbing and delicately shaded portrait of an educator played by Ryan Gosling, a young man harboring an offstage secret.

Earns its happy ending like few other contemporary dramas concerned with the fate of a child. It puts you through hell for that ending, in fact, hell being modern-day Russia.

Sleek, confident and peppered with delicious portraits in pursuit, deceit and evasion, the carnival of papal intrigue known as “Conclave” works like gangbusters.

Prelude to a Kiss is an exquisite film that will long stand on its own. [10 Jul 1992, p.C]

Miller's quiet artistry is at its peak, and though "Lili" is not as subtle, profound or moving a work as Chekhov's play, it's an intelligent, first-rate piece of cinema.

Without undue fawning, Neville’s moving portrait does a lovely job of presenting Rogers as two people, the public figure and the private one, sharing the same closet full of zip-up sweaters.

Not up to one of the greatest of all novels, of course, but a terrific movie romance with a great ballroom scene. [16 Mar 2007, p.C4]

You may watch Frances Ha relating to little of it, or a lot of it, but this "road movie with apartments," as the director (shooting here in velvety black-and-white, recalling Woody Allen's "Manhattan" in its texture) so aptly put it, is informed by a buoyant, resilient spirit.

Scene after scene in Calle 54 just knocks you out.

Washington, typically, is rock-solid in front of the camera, conveying ample warmth and sympathy. Behind the camera, he's a relatively straightforward storyteller, strategic in his use of lyrical touches.

Ozu is often wrongly characterized as a "soft" director preoccupied with middle-class home life, but this late film tackles extreme subject matter--spousal abuse and abortion--with unflinching skill. [18 Nov 2005, p.C6]

Michael Patrick King's screenplay hits all the right notes, building on the warmth and familiarity of the series (which King also wrote).

It's a refreshing spin on this type of film that's usually quite white and heteronormative.

Grace and Quaid imbue what could have been caricatures--with heart, intelligence and great comic timing.

As in last year's "Bridesmaids," an authentic, dimensional human element animates the jokes and the characters with whom we spend a couple of highly satisfying hours.

A lovely, sprawling romance that turns out to be as much a success story for Keanu Reeves, as he matures into stardom, as it is for Mexican director Alfonso Arau, who proves equal to his first big Hollywood budget. [11 Aug 1995, p.B2]

A funny valentine by an old master, woos us into the dance.

A horror-comedy about cute little Christmas toy/pets who turn into murderous monsters wreaking havoc on a Norman Rockwellian town. There's a moral there someplace.

Though it's not the great film "Grand Illusion" is, and though it may strike some as a little schmaltzy, it still has some of that earlier film's deep feeling and empathy for soldiers trapped in the jaws of war and for the joys of Christmas--for believers and non-believers alike.

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.

The perfect bait-and-switch of a film. Its light, sweetly frisky exterior and easygoing pace camouflages what a subtle and brilliant piece of bracing social commentary it is; a deft portrait of sisterhood existing under the thumb of capitalistic patriarchy.

Acutely perceptive and slyly quick-witted.

It's one of the most comforting science fiction films in years.

The new martial-arts picture The Last Dragon is first and foremost a romantic comedy, and a very sweet one at that, and that's why it's martial-arts combat scenes work so well. We've been given enough time to care about who's kicking the stuffing out of whom.