I love it, not simply because I love Chekhov or because I've loved so much of Ceylan's earlier work. I love it because the director, having come into his own as a master international filmmaker years ago, gives us so much to see and think about, so many astringent observations about life's compromises and longings.

Gangster classic. [21 Jan 2005, p.C6]

Through technical virtuosity at every artistic level -- including the brilliant acting debut of playwright Jason Miller as the doubt-filed priest who assists Von Sydow in the exorcism -- The Exorcist becomes more than a shocking movie: a film with a strong, positive force.

One of the great film noirs and a quintessential heist movie, a classic of American hard-boiled storytelling that, though endlessly copied, hasn't been bettered. [27 May 2005, p.C6]

While I may argue with the little guy's taste in musicals, it's remarkable to see any film, in any genre, blend honest sentiment with genuine wit and a visual landscape unlike any other.

One Battle After Another isn’t just an explosive revolutionary text but a story of fatherhood — the values we pass down to the next generation, and how we care for them, with love and generosity; with fear, anxiety, a little bit of hope, and above all, a whole lot of faith.

A wildly original movie with astonishingly varied moods and influences.

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]

This dark, melancholic film is a reminder -- never more necessary than now -- of what the American cinema is capable of, in the way of expressing a mature, morally complex and challenging view of the world. [7 Aug 1992]

The film is a singular achievement, a piece of realist cinema with the pull of a suspense thriller.

Gregg Toland's cinematography here makes you yearn for what he might have done on a Ford Western. [17 Oct 1996, p.11]

Brilliant documentary.

This cast could hardly be bettered and it's a great story as well: a taut, engrossing, highly perceptive scan of the fears, desires, repressions and ugliness boiling under the deceptively quiet surface of pre-war years. Our movies rarely get an American story this rich, evocative and true, and rarely realize it as well. If "Eternity" has dated at all, it's only in a good way; we can only wish our own movies were half as good or reflected American reality half as well. [5 Dec 2003, p.C8]

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

An indelible portrait of an American family at its most blithely macabre.

Marty Supreme is a truly staggering American epic about finally learning that hustle is never going to love you back — even if chasing it can be a thrill, at least for a moment. In this anxiety-riddled portrait of the corrosive nature of American capitalism, sports is merely the vessel, but it’s still the kind of movie that will make you want to stand up and cheer.

This is the Paris -- and the mad, beautiful young Parisienne -- we look for in dreams.

Davies has said that he loves the "poetry of the ordinary." In that sense, he doesn't just wax nostalgic about the good old days, but rather, he makes us question and reevaluate those things we may not remember so readily-not the general, but the specific.

This is a picture that may sound sappy but probably will enrapture audiences lucky enough to catch it. [19 May 1995, p.L]

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

Sensational, grandly sinister and not for the kids, The Dark Knight elevates pulp to a very high level.

It's perhaps only because it can't be seen in its full glory on television that "Lawrence" isn't ranked more highly on some recent all-time "best film" lists. But it belongs near the very top. It's an astonishing, unrepeatable epic.

A mesmerizing drama of sexual obsession...What makes Damage so special-and separates it from a typically American treatment of the same material-is that David Hare's script from Josephine Hart's novel gives equal time to exploring the female psyche in the film.

The screen's most magical tale of the world of theater is this lush, intoxicating period epic: the summit of the collaboration of writer Jacques Prevert and director Carne. [12 Jan 2007, p.C3]

Shadow is the acme of Hitchcock's special principal of dramatic counterpoint. The surface is sunny and buoyant; dark, deadly currents flow underneath. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

A film which should gratify any audience starved for intelligent dialogue, realistic portrayals of romance and lovely, non-cliched open-air photography.

A splendid new movie. [22 Aug 1993, p.3N]

A '60s landmark. [31 Oct 2003, p.C6]

Borat is a rarity: a comedy whose middle name is danger, or as the Kazakhs say, kauwip-kater.

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.

Gordon's documentary proves better than 90 percent of the manufactured stories out this summer. One can breathe a sigh of relief that it was done right and not cobbled into another bad fictional comedy.

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.

This film may be fantastical, outré, at times bizarre, and sexually frank. But ultimately, Poor Things is a traditional heroine’s journey forging its own singular path. That Bella achieves a fully embodied sense of personal liberation makes it a truly radical — and feminist — fairy tale.

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]

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.

A spellbinder: provocatively conceived, gorgeously shot and masterfully executed.

Armstrong and screenwriter Robin Swicord have pared the work's sentimentality and bolstered its intellectual content, [21 Dec 1994]

It's tantalizing, delectable and randy, a movie of melting eroticism and toothsome humor.

What is more striking about the film is that its secondary characters are also real. The acting appears to be non-acting. . . . Karen Black is a letter-perfect Rayette, and Lois Smith, as Robert's sister, gives the most sensitive small performance in the film. (Jack) Nicholson makes it all go. He proves he is more than a character actor with many scenes, especially the confrontation with his father.

A brash romantic comedy that has a serious purpose at its core.

This is a terrific movie: jolting, savage, horrifically funny, nightmarishly exciting but also brainy and compassionate.

Takes a simple story and molds it into something eloquent and menacing.

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

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

For its first hour is as exciting an action picture as the Die Hard films. The tension and humor level tail off a bit toward the conclusion, but Steven Seagal and Chicago director Andy Davis clearly declare themselves as top-flight talent.

Homicide isn't easy to take, but its vision is chillingly persuasive. [18 Oct 1991, p.B]

Sid & Nancy is a movie that features head-bashings, drug overdoses, stabbings and a more-or-less constant round of pointless, stupid violence, and yet its most prominent quality is its sweetness. This is a love story--an unlikely, perverse, disturbing love story, but a genuine one.

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.

It's simply a treat to watch Sandberg's style on display in Annabelle: Creation, filled with circling dolly shots that reveal and conceal evil in torturously teasing ways, effective narrative use of practical lighting for dramatic effect, and heart-pounding sound effects and a score of screaming strings.

With humor, honesty and awe, Feuerzeig's portrait may love Daniel Johnston, but it won't give his parents much hope.

Two suggestions as you watch it: Never take anything for granted, and keep your hand on your wallet as you leave the theater.

Much of the action takes place in the couple's haphazard apartment, but the movie really does feel like a movie, with Farhadi's camera unobtrusively energizing the close-quarters exchanges, both verbal and non-verbal. The acting is splendid.

It's a movie of uncommon eloquence and elegance, acted by a truly gifted cast.

There's a zest and brilliance in Neil Jordan's racy heist thriller The Good Thief that makes it almost intoxicating to watch.

An off-center but exceptional boxing film I prefer in every aspect, especially one: It feels like it comes from real life as well as the movies.

Released one year after John Carpenter's Halloween, Nosferatu was a last gasp for the elegant horror film. It is deliberately paced and virtually bloodless. A feeling of inexorable dread is vividly etched in images such as a skeletal cuckoo clock, an army of rats invading a village, and plague victims enjoying "what little time we have left" by drinking and dancing in the square.

As Nirvana's Kurt Cobain acknowledges in the opening quote, without the Pixies there would be no "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

A vividly acted, dramatically rich depiction, harsh and beautiful, of life and death in 1940s Mississippi, following two families of intertwined destinies.

Has some of the wit, sass and sexual candor of an "Annie Hall." But it covers the same kind of territory with more bite and bile.

Like the modest but wholly winning precursor to “Hamilton” it is, In the Heights works as an essentially apolitical embrace of the American possibility and the American roadblocks to that possibility, in a canny variety of musical styles, from hip hop to salsa

Haneke’s vision is gripping. The craftsmanship, classically shaped narrative and icy visual beauty cannot be denied.

A good and eloquent Wyoming-set love story with a great performance at its heart.

A classic, mythic portrayal of African history, religion and politics by the great Senegalese novelist-filmmaker Sembene, centering on a princess' kidnapping and its aftermath. [18 Sep 1998, p.J]

But the biggest surprise is that Sinise steals scene after scene from Malkovich who has the flashier role. His work also has a quiet power, a tribute to the minimalist acting style that knows the camera can function as an X-ray if the characterization is true. [2 Oct 1992, p.C]

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

With 20 additional minutes of screen time, the director's cut of Richard Kelly's genre-splicing "Donnie Darko" offers new viewers a second chance to discover his mind-bending masterwork.

It's a lot. But if you're at all inclined, it's just right.

Young Goethe in Love wants only to engage an audience with a capital-R Romantic ideal of Goethe's first love. It does so very well. And it was well worth the effort.

This is a true New York movie, though in its ear and eye for atmospheric beauty it feels more French.

Had this ambitious head trip come to pass, it might've made Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" look like "Go, Dog. Go!"

Director Edward Dmytryk, working from a top-notch script adapted from Herman Wouk's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, makes Bogie's gradual breakdown under relentless cross-examination from defense lawyer Jose Ferrer a superb example of screen melodrama. [21 Nov 1986, p.92]

It's a brutally convincing movie about two hell-bent young Turkish-German lovers dancing on the edge of destruction in a Hamburg underworld of drugs and casual sex. Yet it's also compassionate and even tender.

Chabrol's final picture was designed with Depardieu in mind. It's a small work. Yet it's so pleasurably well-made, so obviously the work of major talents in a comfortable groove, why carp about the scale or ambition of the project?

Belongs to that brand of sweeping, conflict-era drama epitomized by "Saving Private Ryan," "Gone with the Wind" and TV miniseries "North and South."

An unusually good adaptation of an unusually good novel.

Dafoe manages to draw us into the mystery, anguish and joy of the holy life. This is anything but another one of those boring biblical costume epics. There is genuine challenge and hope in this movie. [12 Aug 1988, p.A]

A breezy diary from a pair of first-time farmers, as well as a wry rebuke to a nation devoted to eating cheaply but not necessarily well, King Corn makes its points without much finger-wagging.

The movie is a small marvel of contained spaces, exploited beautifully by Kusama and cinematographer Bobby Shore.

Just as Zhao uses his comic gifts to create an affecting human, so Dong's performance as Wu is a triumph of honesty and tact.

The centerpiece for Angel Heart is Mickey Rourke's carefully modulated performance as Harry Angel. Ever a resourceful actor, Rourke is a marvel of complexity here, a blend of innocence and cunning, a mask of streetwise nonchalance over personal torment. [06 Mar 1987, p.F]

A picture about America with the blinders off, a film about heroism that makes you chuckle and feel sad - and a film about childhood that lets us reenter that lost world and see the grass, sky and sunlight the way they once looked, in the golden hours.

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.

The oddly beautiful documentary made by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Gray is subtler and richer than its blunt title suggests.

The acting's so true, and Bahrani's so observant, you find yourself caring about everyone onscreen.

It's a strange, fascinating exercise in what Joel Coen once described as "tone management," job No. 1 for any director.

The musical score by Emile Mosseri of the band The Dig, is very fine stuff, supple and surprising in its blend of classical, jazz and pop strains. It adds to the otherworldly quality established and sustained so well by Talbot, and by the actors.

A beautiful, almost defiant film on an unusual subject: love among the elderly.

With “The Babadook” and now The Nightingale, Kent joins the ranks of a few dozen precious filmmakers able to transport us somewhere awful and beautiful, challenging us every step of the way.

A thoroughly enjoyable Raiders of the Lost Ark inspired adventure film, set in the present and starring Michael Douglas as an American hustler in Columbia who helps uptight romance novelist Kathleen Turner search for buried treasure. [22 June 1984, p.12]

It's a genteel film with a gun in its pocket, but it's also a film with a universal chord of feeling that keeps welling up from the dark surfaces and violent byways of the plot-and a final confession that both warms the heart and chills the blood.

From a terrible epidemic comes a beautiful documentary.

Unstrung Heroes is an extremely moving and surprisingly funny love sonnet to family, tolerance and the joys of individuality.... One of the best films of the year. [15 Sep 1995]

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.

Does Kaurismaki believe in his own fairy tale? The movie, a humble delight, suggests the answer is yes.

I don't see how you can get away from calling Cage’s performance a great one. [10 November 1995, Friday, p.C]

A beautifully acted and deeply compassionate study of ordinary people coping with the vicissitudes of life.

The film recalls Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets" and the minimalism of films such as Lars Von Trier's "The Idiots." Eason and cinematographer Didier Gertsch keep the cameras tight on the actors' bodies and faces, creating palpable unease.

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.