A racily entertaining, wonderfully sly and goofy comic film noir with more twists than a mountain road-or, to darken the metaphor, than a cartrunk full of rattlesnakes.

A gleefully gory, pitch-perfect parody of George Romero's zombie films. But this isn't a movie about other movies. Shaun of the Dead stands on its own.

The movie is beautiful without wasting its time on cliched beauty. Kogonada, who edited as well as wrote and directed, collaborates intuitively with cinematographer Elisha Christian, who’s as good with faces as he is with sharp modernist edges etched in concrete.

Wonderful spirit, humanity and humor.

John Badham's exciting thriller about an L.A. detective (Roy Scheider) who battles against the government creeps who have created a monstrous helicopter to be used for 1984-style crowd control. Great action in a David-versus-Goliath story. [22 July 1983, p.10]

Rivets and amazes, even if it falls just frustratingly short of the mind-expanding grandeur it could have had.

They're lifelike, I suppose, in that you believe and become invested in what happens to everyone. But they're poetic, too, in that Reichardt and her first-rate ensemble find intersections of the mundane and the mysterious all around this broad, blustery landscape.

It may be the most serene and optimistic film Rivette has made in France. Yet even the art-house audience may undervalue it, miss the beauty, style and wit.

Museo is the work of a genuinely creative directorial talent, and the early family scenes, richly detailed and shrewdly acted, provide just the right emotional context for this squabbling, indecisive gang of two.

It's a beautifully proportioned, wonderfully complete movie.

It's a clever premise that is fully realized with old songs, old TV performers and new ones, too. This could become as big a cult movie as Pee- wee's Big Adventure. It certainly is more entertaining than that film and even more fun than Grease.

This is an inspirational true story worried less about turning dramatic screws than earning its feeling through character.

In The Lion King, the savannas gleam and the meerkats swing. And when the animators click, their lions sing tonight. [24 June 1994, p.C]

The Forty-Year-Old-Version is that rarest of films: funny, wry, incisive, sexy and sincere.

Hallstrom gives us a genial interpretation and a supremely good-humored film.

What's remarkable as we watch Lilya's plunge (and the brief, false rays of light that illuminate it) is how real Moodysson makes her plight, how intensely he makes us empathize with Lilya.

Much-loved 1942 piece of super-romantic schmaltz. [19 Jul 2005, p.C3]

Such a triumph of simplicity, subtlety and tact--and of the eroticism in words, looks and glances--that the actors ravish us with sheer talent and intelligence.

So, yes, it’s an epic of sorts. But many years have passed since a Scorsese movie found so much life in such small moments: at a bowling alley, around a dinner table, at a telephone in the room next to the dining room, where a killer stumbles through a sympathy call to the wife of Jimmy Hoffa, missing presumed dead.

Even with its limitations it's one of the necessary films of 2013.

Disney TV star Bridgit Mendler brings an effective if limited friendliness to Arrietty; Will Arnett and Amy Poehler are relatively restrained as her parents; Carol Burnett runs through a career's worth of vocal flourishes and aural panic attacks as the housekeeper.

A classy triple shot of film erotica from three brilliant writer-directors.

It's funny, moving and true, and it respects the audience's intelligence as much as the characters'. That combination, no matter the movie's label, deserves to be treasured.

A rich and surprisingly old-fashioned musical biopic, The Runaways has neither the bloat nor the blather of your average Hollywood treatment of stars on the rise.

There’s life, lived with serenity and purpose and, yes, plenty of money and property, in the lives depicted in Hung’s film. Binoche and Magimel see to it in every scene, with or without utensils.

The movie sidesteps the conventional breadth of a documentary subject’s resume. We learn nothing about Sakamoto’s early years, and little about his private life. Yet simply by lingering with his pensive, compelling subject at the keyboard, or engaging Sakamoto (discreetly) in his thoughts on his life and his music, Schible casts a spell and captures the spirit of a uniquely gifted composer.

With a crucial performance from Adam Pearson to complement Stan’s fine work, the film is well worth seeing. It is, in fact, a serious joke about the act of seeing.

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.

Most films would take pains to spell out the answers, eventually. “Aftersun” works more obliquely and poetically, leaving prosaic touches to other filmmakers.

Yes, Steve Carell can carry a movie. Yes, Judd Apatow can direct a movie. Yes, we'll all relate to a middle-aged virgin. And yes, when an aesthetician yells to her assistant "we're gonna need more wax," you best run.

Intoxicatingly well-crafted entertainment about hunting down your enemy.

Swift, vicious and grimly imaginative, the zombie film 28 Weeks Later exceeds its predecessor, "28 Days Later," in every way.

Bone-dry but completely assured, both in its visual strategy and its wry deconstruction of the workplace comedy genre.

The acting -- especially by Borrows, Ian Hart and Hackett -- is strong and transparent, utterly convincing. The whole movie has a seamless flow and an utterly convincing sense of time and place.

It's a movie drama with a surface so bleak and an interior so hot with eroticism that it twists your guts to watch it.

Creates an atmosphere of frenzy that is both powerful and unforgettable, providing neither solace nor comfort.

Whereas Stallone with "Rambo" is messing around with real places and real events, in Rocky IV we all know that this is pure Hollywood, pure fantasy. And very well made Hollywood fantasy, indeed.

Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser is quite probably the finest documentary about jazz ever made. [08 Dec 1989, p.C]

No movie car ride quite matches the horrific pursuit of salesman Dennis Weaver by that implacable smoke-belching truck in Spielberg's made-for-TV classic. [12 Apr 2002, p.C1]

The new film works. It's rousing.

McKay has worked mostly in episodic television in recent years, and “On the Seventh Day” marks his confident, neatly ordered but freshly observed return to feature filmmaking. He’s working with nonactors here, in a fruitful halfway point between documentary and conventional fictional narrative.

Ron Howard's first-rate dramatic comedy Parenthood, with Steve Martin headlining a first-rate cast in a most clever script about the joy and pain of being both a parent and a child. [4 Aug 1989, p.A]

For some of us, Anderson's LA lamentation is a siren song, and there's no more ardent and poetic chronicler of California mythology.

Matt Damon narrates, and I do wish the narration didn't end on such a generalized, throw-the-bums-out note, over footage of the Statue of Liberty.

In relation to the well-made and sensitive confines of "The Messenger," Rampart required a more unruly visual approach. Beginning and ending with Harrelson, this sophomore effort is full of malignant life.

This film--one of the best and most memorable documentaries of the year so far--brings that truth-teller to us once again.

It is a fine little old-school thriller.

This filmmaker has earned the right to make a movie about why he makes movies the way he does. And with Williams and Dano, especially, he gets performances that can match the technique.

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]

BlackBerry doesn’t sermonize or push the comedy or falsify the dramatic dynamics of wildly contrasting personalities. It’s a small but quite beautiful achievement, which you could also say about the smartphone that could, and did. For a while.

Once again, as love dies and illusions crumble, this natural actress (Isabelle Huppert) shines with human fire. [26 March 1999, Friday, p.B]

Dafoe never begs for attention or sympathy; he’s there, like the seasoned, craftsmanlike actor he is, as a conduit and a sort of medium.

It's a movie imbued with a fierce intimacy -- a tone and style similar to cinema verite documentary -- but it's not a banal realism, even if the characters and settings in contemporary working-class Liege initially seem mundane.

It feels fresh and unpredictable, as quietly strange as the remarkable musical score from first-time feature film composer Mica Levi.

It's a wonderful New York story, and Eastwood takes care to make it a story about the many different people who made it a miracle. That is the emotional core of the film, a celebration of the simple act of reaching out a helping hand without a second thought.

The beauty of The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack lies in its ability to transform itself into a sad tale of loss, regret and missed opportunities while it also remains a solid documentary about a once-influential artist seeking his place in the sun.

One of those welcome visitors, a movie that turns out to be much more than we expected.

With its lilting Lerner-Loewe score and great Kelly dance numbers, this is almost a Hollywood musical masterpiece. But it's sabotaged by the airless "outdoor" studio sets mandated by MGM. [13 Mar 1998, p.L]

The movie scrambles our responses and covers so much ground, with such zest, that its two and a half hours race past like a firestorm.

It’s a modest film, but a very good one, and by the end I was quite moved by its valiant belief in decency and in the duo’s eternal appeal.

Perhaps the most startling part is the realization that, in the turn-off-your-brain season of summer, you've just experienced an uncommonly serious-minded movie that's brave enough to engage our deepest emotions on issues of death, madness, illusion and forgiveness. That's the biggest thrill of them all.

Black Bag may be modest, and frivolous, but it’s sharp-witted. Every performance feels right.

A Perfect World proves again, if it needs proving, that Eastwood's directorial signature is among the strongest and surest in American movies. [24 Nov 1993, p.1C]

Infusion of comedy elements keeps the story light, without dragging it into the cartoonish.

That’s Blindspotting all over: an exuberant, brightly colored, zigzagging portrait of a city, an uneasy transformation and a friendship.

An old nightmare, made shiny new.

Amuses and unnerves in equal measure.

A smart, funny and hip adventure film in a summer of car wrecks and explosions. [4 July 1997]

It's a film objet d'art to contemplate and treasure.

The first, and best, of the three versions of Charles Dickens' tale of the French Revolution. [05 Dec 2008, p.C5]

Honest, poignant and very funny, full of memorable, moving moments.

This magnificent pair are the heart of Techine's film, and the sense of frayed, aging beauty and handsomeness they now carry helps project the picture's main theme: the imperishability of true love.

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

The sister writing team of Perry and Randy Howze enlivens what sounds like a gimmicky story. Their last film was the delightful "Mystic Pizza," and the characters in Chances Are seem equally fresh, even though there is nothing new about the situations in which they find themselves. [10 March 1989, p.A]

A film made by a master, with a simplicity that is really revolutionary. It's a work capable of changing the ways you look at the movies - and at life.

While the protracted third act doesn't kill the two-hour, 23-minute picture, "Casino Royale" remains the best of the recent Bonds, with Skyfall just a notch below it.

Everything about Kung Fu Panda is a little better, a little sharper, a little funnier than the animated run of the mill.

Delivers the perfect union - a vivid, sublime parody and valentine to the superhero genre.

The film is a master class in reactivity, and Calamy manages it with perfect dramatic pitch.

It’s an unnerving portrait in forbidden desire and matched wills, sometimes acting as one barely controlled organism, often at fierce odds.

As an actor, Fraser’s second act has been a sight to behold, and he is the emotional anchor of this wonderfully life-affirming and quietly resonant film about the importance of being together that announces Hikari as a major talent to watch.

Overall, Baadasssss! succeeds marvelously at evoking the passion and frantic energy behind "Sweetback" and putting it all in the context of its politically charged era.

A contemporary Russian movie that you could honestly call revolutionary, more for its style than its politics.

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

It's an odd, hermetic and fascinating picture.

Whether Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One turns out to be a massive hit or merely a hit, it’s certainly the franchise action picture of the year, the one that truly knows what it’s doing, front to back.

This is the second feature from Maoz; his first, the superb “Lebanon” (2009), is one of the essential war pictures of the young century. Foxtrot qualifies as a war film as well, and as in all such pictures made by, and for, grown-ups, the psychic battles are no less intense than the literal carnage.

A movie with surprises, some of which you should discover for yourself. But its main surprises may be the power of Collette's performance and the beautifully controlled mood and atmosphere Brooks creates.

Love in the Afternoon is a 1957 romantic comedy by writer-director Billy Wilder that fondly re-created the atmosphere--the brio, wit, star personality and sardonic joie de vivre--of the great Hollywood-continental comic romances of the 1930s. And there's an obvious reason: It's a tribute from one movie comic master to the man who taught him how to do it. [15 Oct 1997, p.1]

With braces on her teeth and preteen gawkiness, Eliza's a nerdy girl on the surface, but her backbone and chutzpah manage to save human and animal family alike. Move over Bond; this girl deserves a sequel.

The movie proceeds in quiet, reflective tones, subtly energized by a fully realized visual environment and a clever variety of editing rhythms. Nine Days transcends the potential limitation and occasional strain of its premise.

Best of all: the musical score by Alfonso de Vilallonga. It's terrific — witty, symphonically lush and shrewdly informed by flamenco strains throughout.

The beauties of Shower lie in its human observation, in its funny interplay, candor, lusty acting and hearty simplicity - and also in its warm imagery and the fascinating symbolic use it makes of water.

It's hard to watch and listen to Together without, in some sense, having your heart lifted by its music.

The four stars of Sisterhood are back for this smart, confident second act, based on novels by Anne Brashares.

I greatly prefer this cleverly sustained and efficiently relentless remake to the '73 edition. It is lean and simple.

The movie can still make temperatures rise -- though for musical rather than political reasons.

In The Weather Man, Nicolas Cage, a great oddball movie star who sometimes takes enormous risks, has a good, risky part again.