It's an archetypal '70s political movie: hard-core melodrama wedded to an important social issue, with slick direction (James Bridges) and big stars (Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas) playing valiant underdogs and reporters. [29 Oct 2004, p.C3]

Norma Rae is not a bad film, just one that made me angry for what it might have been. Imagine another, more skillful actor, say Dustin Hoffman or Al Pacino, in Leibman's part; then strip away some of the more broadly drawn scenes, and Norma Rae could have been yet another fine film by director Martin Ritt ("Hud," "Sounder," and "Conrack"). [2 March 1979, p.4-12]

What distinguishes The Deer Hunter most is its many rich characters and the size of its vision. This is a big film, dealing with big issues, made on a grand scale. Much of it, including some casting decisions, suggest inspiration by "The Godfather." [9 Mar 1979]

A hideously violent shocker about a woman who is repeatedly raped and castrates her victims. [18 July 1980, p.8]

There's a certain quirky charm to the young Hopkins in his creep-out role as Corky, a shy, failed stand-up magician. [25 Apr 2006, p.3]

Don't see Halloween in an empty theater on a weekday afternoon. See it on a weekend night in a packed house. Halloween is a film to be enjoyed with a boisterous crowd; it's an "audience picture," a film designed to get specific reactions from an audience at specific moments. With Halloween, the most often desired reaction is screaming. It's a beautifully made thriller -- more shocking than bloody -- that will have you screaming with regularity. Halloween was directed by John Carpenter, 30, a natural filmmaker and a name worth remembering. [22 Nov 1978]

The protracted scenes of eating, cooking and cleaning carry neo-realism to its end point -- and to a violent climax which emerges logically and terrifyingly from the welter of daily trivia preceding it. [24 Oct 1997, p.L]

Days of Heaven is the grand climax of the whole "Bonnie and Clyde"-"Badlands" tradition of outlaw-lovers-on-the-run movies. Shot by Nestor Almendros and the uncredited Haskell Wexler, it's a cinematographic masterpiece. [20 March 1998]

there are times when Grease really kicks in. I'm fond of Channing singing "Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee, rotten with virginity" and then telling an imaginary Troy Donahue, "I know what you wanna do." And most of the big musical numbers work, especially the showstopper: the sunlit Danny-Sandy duet to "Summer Dreams." Greasy kid stuff it all may be, but just like rock 'n' roll, it'll probably never die. [27 Mar 1998, p.A]

For a film about deep water terror, Jaws 2 is really quite shallow. [16 June 1978, p.3-2]

Early in the movie, Hal Holbrook (as the paranoid NASA administrator who sets the fake-out in motion) unloads an expository speech on Brolin (as one of the astronauts the administrator needs to convince to go along with his insane ruse). Is it a long speech? Dear reader, “long” doesn’t quite measure it. It’s endless. It’s an event horizon of a monologue and by the time it’s over, you can’t believe the coronavirus hasn’t left yet.

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

The greatest rock concert movie ever made -- and maybe the best rock movie, period.

What makes Eraserhead great-and still, perhaps the best of all Lynch's films? Intensity. Nightmare clarity. And perhaps also it's the single-mindedness of its vision; Lynch's complete control over this material, where, working on a shoestring, he served as director, producer, writer, editor and sound designer.

One minute into Saturday Night Fever you know this picture is onto something, that it knows what it's talking about. [15 Oct 1999, Siskel Years, p.6]

Like a Visconti epic gone mad, explosive, beautiful, unforgettable. [08 Dec 2006, p.C8]

This is a Wenders masterwork--a chilling tale of painting, crime and forgery. [19 Jan 2007, p.C5]

Made after Visconti's second paralyzing stroke, in darkly splendid Roman interiors, this is a somber, meditative, confessional work about corruption and mortality, the ways the world and desire batter down even the most protected doors. [17 Oct 1994, p.5C]

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]

Another great domestic comedy-drama. [08 May 2009, p.C2]

Star Wars is not a great movie in the sense that it describes the human condition. It simply is a fun picture that will appeal to those who enjoy Buck Rogers-style adventures. What places it a sizable cut about the routine is its spectacular visual effects, the best since Stanley Kubrick's "2001." [27 May 1977]

A possessed-car film that beat Christine by a few years but is a much inferior version. [02 Feb 1993, p.3C]

If May's script is brilliant, so is the vivid, raw acting -- which suggests heavy Cassavetes influence. [30 Jul 1999, p.O]

A great movie? Hardly. Stallone as the next Brando? You've got to be kidding. A nice little fantasy picture? Maybe. That's the hype and reality of Rocky, the flatout schmaltzy saga of a Philadelphia club boxer who, on New Year's Day of our Bicentennial Year, gets a chance to fight for the heavyweight championship of the world. . . .

A curiously cool, but very intelligent movie. [02 Jan 2000, p.19C]

A voluptuously shot horror movie, with Piper Laurie (as Carrie's fanatically religious mom) and some nasty teens played by Amy Irving, Nancy Allen and John Travolta.

An amazing celluloid poem by a filmmaker whom Ingmar Bergman called "the greatest." He very nearly was. He was also, perhaps, too pure a creator and reckless a citizen to survive unscathed.

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

This edgy but highly polished movie established the modern myth of journalists-as-heroes: crusaders in the service of the Constitution. [14 Nov 2008, p.C7]

Kubrick's beautiful adaptation of the William Thackeray novel follows a young Irish gambler, rogue and romantic adventurer (Ryan O'Neal) though a painterly 18th Century English landscape of frozen elegance and upper-class hypocrisy.

An adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's tale of the follies of adventure--beautifully directed and shot (by Oswald Morris) and perfectly cast. [11 July 2003, p.C5]

What this movie is about, and where it succeeds best, is the primordial level of fear. The characters, for the most part, and the non-fish elements in the story, are comparatively weak and not believable. [20 June 1975]

Altman's great kaleidoscopic ensemble comedy-drama about a frenzied few days in country music's capital, with an unlikely, quirky, explosive crowd of musicians, hangers-on and politicos all converging on a fateful concert crossroads.

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

Few adventure movies have such a heightened atmosphere of beauty, excitement and fun. [25 Jan 2002, p.C1]

The best of Brooks' movie parodies: a high-style sendup of Universal's James Whale-directed Boris Karloff "Frankenstein" movies. [26 Oct 2007, p.C3]

This magnificent 1974 sequel, the centerpiece of Coppola and writer Mario Puzo's 20th Century gangster saga, is still one of the most ambitious and brilliantly executed American films, a landmark work from one of Hollywood's top cinema eras.

That sort of depth is rare in most movies; it's the trademark, however, of John Cassavetes.

An unusual subject for Ozu, white-collar adultery, handled with his customary deep observation. [28 Jan 2005, p.C2]

An Altman classic on a subject he knows well.

Hollywood legends introduce a collection of moments from the finest MGM musicals, ranging from the first all-sound musical -- Broadway Melody of 1930 -- to the climactic ballet from An American in Paris. [02 Dec 2011, p.3]

Los Angeles has always been the capital city of film noir..., but few movies present a darker, bleaker view of the city than Roman Polanski's 1974 Chinatown. [17 Oct 1997, p.o]

The quintessential Wertmuller couple--sad-eyed Giancarlo Giannini and maneater Mariangela Melato--rev up this lively, devilish Faustian comedy about a hapless industrial worker caught in the Mafia's universal machine. [17 Oct 1995, p.3C]

Miniatures in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, created by Ray Harryhausen, may appear at first glance to be worlds away from the CGI creatures in The Phantom Menace and Jurassic Park. But it was Harryhausen's work that taught such filmmakers as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to dream of creating ever-more-perfect fantasy worlds. [22 Feb 2008, p.C2]

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

Wistful Depression-era Bonnie and Clyde romantic noir. [04 May 2007, p.C2]

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.

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.

As these three rowdies carouse, bond and then break apart, Towne and Ashby give us an indelible portrait of the moral chaos and bitterness of the Vietnam years, true to the last detail. [14 Aug 1998, p.M]

More a triumph of tone and texture than of storytelling....But what makes Don't Look Now one of the creepiest movies of all time is the artful way director Roeg leads us around blind corners and down dark alleys (both literally and figuratively), straddling the line between reality and mysticism. [4 May 2001, p.4]

Between the funky Alain Goraguer soundtrack, the sexy outfits, the surreal landscapes and the heavily metaphorical plot, the film still looks and sounds unlike anything else, either in animation or in sci-fi. [21 Jun 2016, p.C3]

If you liked El Topo, this is more of the same, with less violence. [02 Mar 2007, p.C5]

One of the best American Film Theatre production is a potent transcription of Eugene O'Neill's great barroom drama, set in 1912, with Lee Marvin as doomed gladhander Hickey--a role made famous on stage by Jason Robards--and a matchless supporting cast. [31 Oct 2003, p.C5]

Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds and Charles Bronson -- the '70s' three reigning American action movie superstars -- had their thunder stolen when top action director Siegel cast rumpled, baleful-eyed comic sourpuss Walter Matthau in this classic '70s thriller. [09 May 1999, p.C9]

Badlands is about a landscape as much as the couple fleeing across it. Watching it, you sense that Malick finds his outlaw lovers beautiful and terrible, pathetic and monstrous, funny and overwhelmingly sad. [27 March 1998]

For anyone who wants to see pure cinema, it should be an experience both wrenching and inspiring. [22 Jan 1999, p.H]

Action superstar Bruce Lee's consensus best movie and biggest international hit. Lee is a secret agent inflitrating a sinister island kung fu kingdom, battling John Saxton, Jim Kelly and the nefarious martial arts lord Shih Fien in famous set-pieces like the hall of mirror showdown.

A combination of toughness and sentimentality with John Wayne. [21 May 2000, p.38C]

Totally original and personal, this is a vast modern comic/poetic epic, lyrical, austere and strange. Despite its failure, Playtime is now regarded by many critics as one of the century's film masterpieces. [09 Jan 1998, p.M]

Set the standard for the black woman (Pam Grier) as the aggressor in motion pictures. [04 May 2012, p.C3]

Impure Chandler it may be, but it's pure Altman and one of his nose-thumbing '70s maverick classics. [25 May 2007, p.C5]

Despite the direction of John Huston, this story of a self-appointed Western judge (Paul Newman) isn't one of anyone's best. [06 Apr 1990, p.71]

Regarded in Japan as one of Ozu's masterworks, Early Summer is another tale of a dutiful daughter, Noriko (again played by Setsuko Hara), the machinations around her marriage and the quiet havoc it wreaks in her family. [17 Apr 2009, p.C4]

Based on Leonard Gardner's California-set novel, full of brilliant low-key acting, accurate vernacular and precise low-life observation, it stars Stacy Keach as a nearly over-the-hill old pro and Jeff Bridges as a young pug starting out. [19 May 2006, p.C7]

The actors who play these parts--Chishu Ryu as the father and Setsuko Hara as the daughter--are the most emblematic members of Ozu's famous stock company. Her warm beauty and his stoic rigor--and the frequent smiles both use to cover their feelings--convey oceans of meaning beneath the drama's polite, humorous, carefully etched surface, where immaculate interiors and lovely scenery reflect a world in very delicate balance. [07 Jan 2005, p.C2]

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]

It is a story of eerie beauty, overpowering fear and almost no solace at all -- save perhaps for a few jazzy chords on the night club piano and the chirp of the bullfinch in that empty, empty room. [06 Jun 1997, p.C]

The script is by Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth) and the mixture of dry wit and terror is expert. Hitchcock, who was 73 when he directed, demonstrates all his old skill and romantic pessimism. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

Slick adaptation of Woody Allen's play.

Brando made Don Vito something we rarely see in movies: a tragicomic villain-hero, a vulnerable hood. The don is so close to a comic character -- the movie itself is so close to comedy -- that Brando's capacity to move us in the role is doubly impressive. At the end, it is the older Godfather's tenderness and sagacity we recall. [21 Mar 1997, Friday, p.A]

Acted with transparent subtlety and grace, brilliantly written and beautifully shot from Ozu's customary low camera angles, this superb film is one of cinema history's now universally accepted masterpieces. [14 Jan 2005, p.C6]

Special-effects wiz Douglas Trumbull made his directorial debut on this flawed movie. Its ecological sensibilities, however noble, emerge as severely dated just 16 years later. Nevertheless, this is nifty robovideo. [21 Apr 1988, p.95]

The wild L.A. romance of a museum curator and a parking lot attendant. [09 Jan 1998, p.C]

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]

The movie is a paean to outsiders and reckless love.

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]

There is only one problem with the excitement generated by this film. After it is over, you will walk out of the theater and, as I did, curse the tedium of your own life. I kept looking for someone who I could throw up against a wall. [8 November 1971]

The Murder of Fred Hampton is a remarkable film in many ways. It keeps alive an incident which has become a symbol of repression to a lot of people.

A classic adventure movie. [07 Mar 2008, p.C8]

The definitive Sunday ride/Sunday race motorcycle film. Released in 1971 by famed surf documentary pioneer Bruce Brown, it showed the broad expanse of the motorcycling experience in the America of that time, from serious racers to enthusiasts such as movie star Steve McQueen. [07 Nov 2014, p.C6]

While some of the second-generation road movies are interesting, few have retained the hypnotic force of Two Lane Blacktop, an intense curio of a troubled era.

The transition from cinematographer to director can be a bumpy ride, but few have navigated it as well as British filmmaker Nicolas Roeg. [08 Mar 2002, p.C6]

Altman's dreamy, snowy northwestern about wily operator McCabe (Warren Beatty), sexy Madame Miller (Julie Christie) and a bittersweet tale of how the West was unzipped. [04 May 2007, p.C2]

Children will not quibble over the fine points, and The Aristocats remains a first-rate entertainment for little ones. Compared to Saturday- morning television, the animation seems truly magical, although even in very young minds it probably will not linger with the same weight as "Snow White" or "Pinocchio." [13 Apr 1987, p.C3]

Nothing Altman made before or after Brewster McCloud is quite so heightened with enjoyably sophomoric and bizarre humor.

One of the classic midnight movies of the Pink Flamingos -- Rocky Horror era, star-director Jodorowsky's metaphysical western about a violent wanderer plays like an especially gun-crazy Sergio Leone saga filtered through several layers of radical European/Latin American cinema and Christian and Buddhist mysticism. Zero cool in its day, it remains a striking film oddity. [16 Feb 2007, p.C4]

One of the most honest movies ever made about male friendship. [13 Feb 1998, p.N]

A bittersweet comedy about the great sleuth's great love and the one case he couldn't handle. [07 Jan 2000, p.L]

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 glorious work. [26 Dec 2008, p.C7]

The movie holds up far better than its detractors guessed - splendidly, in fact - not only thanks to Scott's spellbinding acting, but to the epic imagery, Coppola's (and Edmund North's) highly intelligent script and Schaffner's lucid, perfectly controlled direction.

Hitch's most plausible, least suspenseful spy thriller, based on Leon Uris' reality-inspired novel of intrigue in Cuba and France. [23 Jun 2006, p.C2]

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

Tune in, turn on and drop out with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda as two down-and-out motorcyclists in this classic road film about the 1960s counterculture. Joining them on their cross-country trip is a young Jack Nicholson, whose charismatic performance keeps the movie rolling through some of its more experimental moments. [22 Jun 2012, p.C6]

It's an easygoing epic -- and John Wayne, as the one-eyed, booze-swilling bounty hunter who tracks the baddies down, gives a lusty, amusingly overripe performance. [08 Oct 2000, p.49]

There is no question that this film is flawed by the inclusion of the party scene and Ratzo's dream, but I cannot recall a more marvelous pair of acting performances in any one film. Dustin Hoffman deserves the Oscar for a role that is prickly on the outside, but tender on the inside.

Celebrated cinema verite chronicle of a quartet of door-to-door bible salesman, pitching their wares with slick expertise or threadbare urgency. [03 Dec 1999, p.L]

With no live dialogue, Waters relied on his vast knowledge of music to move this feature along. Snatches of Elvis Presley, R&B, Lou Christie, doo-wop and more carry Mondo Trasho through cinematic moments of nude hitchhikers, foot fetishists and the struggle of always striving to be "truly divi-i-i-ne." [30 Sep 1988, p.66]