All of Us Strangers is a lovely way to begin 2024, not because it’s especially seasonal — though one key scene takes place around Christmastime — but because it’s just so beautifully acted and tenderly observant.

Movies about moviemaking usually fall into one of two categories: ones that satirize or debunk the film industry or ones that celebrate it. Irma Vep, a sometimes dazzling French film by writer-director Olivier Assayas, does both. [13 June 1997, p.I]

One might wish - fleetingly - that Parents were a cuddlier film, if for no other reason than it deserves to be seen by the same numbers that flock to such inanities as "Working Girl." Instead, it is uncompromising in its mordant humor, part of an international trend towards uncomfortable, deeply satirical comedy that includes David Lynch's "Blue Velvet," Pedro Almodovar's "Matador" and Colin Gregg's "We Think the World of You." [7 Apr 1989, p.F]

For a film that points out so much wrong with German society and shows such dubious, dangerous behavior, it leaves the audience with high spirits and a sense of crazy exhilaration.

A film that art-house audiences in 1959 loved madly. And who can blame them? A buoyant, searingly colorful retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth set in Rio de Janiero, writer-director's Marcel Camus' movie is a romance heightened by its backdrop.

A riveting adaptation of Scott Turow`s novel about a prosecutor prosecuted for murder. When this film works best, which is often, everything about it seems cramped and uptight and dark.

The movie looks like far more than a million dollars and it offers the kind of smart, picaresque good time you get from books like "The Reivers" and "Huckleberry Finn" and movies like "Bronco Billy" and "Bonnie and Clyde."

The storytelling is episodic, and the film takes a little while to get going, but it hits its stride.

A gargantuan epic, a historical adventure-drama of overwhelming visual grandeur.

Features colorful song-and-dance numbers that look and sound best in surround sound and on a huge screen.

The Wrestler works for the same reason "Rachel Getting Married" works. The way they're acted, shot, edited and scored, both films deploy a loose, rough-hewn documentary style to great dramatic advantage. The corn isn't hyped. The performances click without going for the jugular.

It’s a specific sort of achievement, without the full dimension or larger resonance of a classic. That’s a lot to ask of any film, especially one that does so much so rigorously and well.

This century's Planet of the Apes is a rouser, a screaming-banshee fun house.

These are real characters, fully observed, gutsily written, beautifully acted by the two leads.

Has the kind of super-cinematic qualities and bravura acting that make up for almost anything.

Charlie, who owes an obvious debt to Chuck Jones' Wile E. Coyote, comes equipped with one of the most expressive faces in cartoon history: Bluth keeps his features-ears, snout, mouth, eyes-in constant flux, a beautiful blend of line and volume that represents the pinnacle of the animator's art. [17 Nov 1989]

Rarely does any film, animated or otherwise, immerse you in such a vivid landscape and engage your senses so strongly.

A fascinating study of sexual heat fueled by guns and ammo. [19 Oct 2001, p.C8]

So intense and warm are Leigh's feelings for his characters, that we may remember Hannah and Annie long afterward as old friends -- imperfect yet lovable, pals with whom we've suffered and laughed a lot.

Showing us a world through a child's eyes, A Time for Drunken Horses speaks so truthfully and well that it breaks the heart and scars the conscience.

It's a nerve-wracking visual experience of unusual and paradoxical delicacy. And if your stomach can take it, it's truly something to see.

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.

Hitchcock's most disturbing film. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

Shot with a Peter Greenaway-like austere impudence and edited brilliantly (by Jed Parker), this is an entertaining movie, and a moving one--even if, like me, you're not especially fond of these paintings or that scene.

The movie has a tiny motor of a narrative, but it’s just enough. Nothing is overstated, and a lot of Showing Up isn’t even stated; it’s simply shown, on the fly or with the merest emphasis on what Lizzie goes through as she completes her work.

I prefer my horror with a chaser of wit, and Severance, a modest but very lively British import, serves it up in harsh but high style.

It is a film, often breathtaking without settling for being pretty, filled with nervous silence.

A deceptively simple French film about teaching that keeps enlarging as you watch it, becoming beautiful and inspiring in a way most films never touch.

The kind of well-crafted, character-driven work that wows regional film festival crowds and public television audiences but seldom gets seen outside those circles.

It's a movie that literally makes your mouth water. A smart, sprightly, lip-smacking comedy about a Taipei master chef who's lost his sense of taste and his tangled family problems with three romantically troubled daughters. It crackles with iridescent style and wit.

Get on Up hits all these high points. But the Butterworths fracture the order, fruitfully. They're more interested in making musical and dramatic connections across time and space — something in the '70s triggering a childhood memory, for example — than in laying them out predictably.

More flat-out funny than "Rushmore," but in neither film is the humor joke-based. What you're laughing at is the behavior of characters who are so fixed in their idiosyncratic worldviews that they can't help but careen into each other like out-of-control bumper cars.

Witness" is both exciting and thoughtful.... And just as important to moviegoers, Witness is a genuinely gripping thriller. [08 Feb 1985]

It’s zippier than “Incredibles 2,” and nearly as witty as the first “Lego Movie,” with whom it shares a very funny screenwriter, Phil Lord.

After "Ninotchka," this is the best Billy Wilder-Charles Brackett script filmed by somebody else: a terrific romantic swindle comedy set in Paris, starring Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche and John Barrymore. [26 Sep 2003, p.C5]

Bening shines, and the film shines too.

It's an intellectual family film for literate parents and children, immensely pleasing if not perfect, perhaps a smidgen too brightly evasive and determinedly charming.

Like Robert Altman's "Short Cuts," it is an all-star fresco, but the stars--none of whom carries the movie--get to play the kind of morally ambivalent, sometimes unlikable parts that big-name actors usually avoid.

While there’s little or no outright expression of religious faith in Nomadland, Zhao and company have given us a glancing but evocative state-of-the-nation character study. In its own spiritual fashion, Fern’s story becomes one about the character of a nation, and an America desperately searching for the ribbon of highway (to quote Woody Guthrie) to take us all the way home.

The characters may be speaking Chinese, but such rousing entertainment needs no translation.

A love-hate poem to L.A., and when Mann takes in the streets, the freeways and LAX, he doesn't give us shiny "Lethal Weapon"-style travelogues. He shows us an L.A. that's grim, bare, a bit smoggy and ruled by street smarts. [15 Dec 1995]

After White Hunter there is no doubt that Eastwood is one of our most committed filmmakers, and perhaps our most profoundly introspective. [14 Sep 1990, p.C]

The film has a purposefully repellent but fascinating quality. Bogosian`s performance, based on his stage play, is spectacularly demented.

Roemer's comic style draws brilliantly on the '60s vein of twitchy psychological realism first explored by Mike Nichols and Elaine May, and his humor is backed by a fine eye for sociological detail. [16 Feb 1990, p.C]

Nina Paley's delicious Sita Sings the Blues finds solace in autobiography and an animated gold mine in the caverns of an ancient Sanskrit epic.

Another Universal classic, based on H.G. Wells' tale of an invisible madman. [13 Aug 2007, p.C6]

Gigante represents the sort of artful low-budget accomplishment that could, and should, be coming out of distressingly stingy Chicago once a year — whatever the subject, whatever the sensibility.

It’s his own words, and confronting them now, having lost many of his friends to spats and fights, brings Crosby to his most vulnerable place.

A work about memory and loss, His Secret Life becomes a forum of Antonia's liberation of consciousness and feeling, but there are too many contradictory moods sharing the same space, resulting in a tentativeness and uncertainty.

Its social impact is part of what makes this movie memorable. But as with almost any exceptional, truthful war picture, Days of Glory moves us because we know the soldiers -- because we share their fear, triumph and pain.

Resonates like the best of Southern fiction.

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

In Faraway, So Close we watch a city being reborn, an angel trapped in melodrama and a dream dying. All are moving. [23 Dec 1993, p.10N]

The film has undeniable power, but it's an unusual and unsettling power, a product of a collision between red-hot material and the cool serenity with which Kubrick observes and accepts it. [26 June 1987]

There's only one proper Hollywood ending to this story. Next year, Charlie and the surreal "Donald" Kaufman (listed as co-writers in the playful credits) should win twin Oscars for best adapted screenplay. They've earned it -- really.

You wait for months, sometimes, for a movie to show you something new. "7 Boxes" does exactly that, and while it's no more than a briskly managed bit of escapism, it's a really good example of same.

What the movie has, above all, is a dramatic line, clean and straight. In its faces, its scenery and its plain satisfactions it makes us feel like we've been somewhere, when we get to the end of that line.

One of the pleasures of Magic Mike is its egalitarian spirit and dedication to the ensemble.

Fast, funny, big-hearted.

Family life rarely is portrayed with such warmth, clarity and vibrancy as in In America.

A highly exciting, visually alive thriller.

All three men turn in superb and understated performances.

A modern digitized lollapalooza concocted out of old-fashioned slam-bang space opera elements.

A dear film, sentimental and fond, full of beautifully acted British resolve.

This is an elegant and eloquent love letter from one master filmmaker to two of his prized idols.

About the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it treats war as a cosmic joke and its participants as hapless but recognizably human clowns.

You might not think of this as a family film, but it is a great one. [27 May 1994, p.B]

The acting is wonderful throughout, but Alidoosti creates an especially haunting depiction of one woman's adversities in a country, and a marriage, that may not have her best interests at heart.

Most movingly, Monsieur Ibrahim takes a provocative subject -- friendship and love between a Jew and a Muslim -- and makes it seem natural and wondrous.

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

Works beautifully, both as a social and psychological drama and as a taut, tightly wired thriller.

Fans of true-life crime stories should gain special pleasure from Jagged Edge, because the film does succeed in making its ending unpredictable--even though an unresolved ending would have been better.

Heavily influenced by Sternberg's "Underworld," this is one of Ozu's oddest, most enjoyable departures; it reveals him as a first-rate noir director. [09 Jan 2005, p.C11]

This exercise in racked nerves makes most of the year's thrillers look like flailing maniacs by comparison.

At her best—and even in a hand-me-down project like Point Break—Bigelow is a uniquely talented, uniquely powerful filmmaker. Where the male action directors are still playing with toys-with dolls and models and matte shots-Bigelow has tapped into something primal and strong. She is a sensualist of genius in this most sensual of mediums.

Bi, not yet 30, has made a movie that feels like a visual sigh and, yes, a dream. It’s a reminder of just how expansive the cinema’s boundaries remain.

A rich, shining valentine to the British theater and the eternal joys of Shakespeare,

It’s a lot for everyone to process and I was was drawn in by the conflicting feelings colliding at all once: Mutual grief and joy, but also confusion.

It can be a rare occurrence to find a kid-friendly animated film these days that actually surprises and delights. Dreamworks' Abominable, written and co-directed by Jill Culton, does indeed surprise and delight, all while following a familiar hero's journey tale that borrows from favorite friendly creature films.

Done with an enticing mixture of lacerating comedy, lush Roger Deakins cinematography, robust acting and juicy lines, the Coens' Ladykillers is often glorious fun to watch. It won't please everyone, of course.

Already, McKenna-Bruce can work wonders in terms of assured technique and complicated emotions and she’s magically right as Tara.

Seemingly a simple comedy, it actually -- like all Allen's "simple" comedies -- has a lot to say. Will the audience listen or just dismiss it as minor, out-of-date Woody? If they do, it's their loss.

It's a terrific mix of screwball comedy and detective story, full of wit, romance and suspense. [23 Nov 2007, p.C10]

The work of a remarkable new talent. By the movie's towering, final tracking shot, this imaginative, dazzling film achieves distinction.

This is an intoxicatingly amusing blend of cynical urbane comedy, slick detection and breezy romance. [24 Jun 2005, p.C6]

An exquisitely realized film; a little gem, it keeps its conflicting or varying themes of tranquility and violence, sacred and profane love, recklessness and wisdom, in almost perfect balance.

The easy comparison here is to Hitchcock, but Bong moves at a slower pace, more like Claude Chabrol.

It's rare to find an American movie that works so well structurally from beginning to end, including a second act that withstands the plethora of fast-moving action, and a climax that is satisfying and well earned.

The documentary carrying the same name as Schiele's painting works like a suspense drama and a slippery chronicle of ownership, theft and vaguely unsettling resolution.

The late Mr. Cassavetes directed a film called A Woman Under the Influence. This is a powerful variation on that theme -- a woman tossed every which-way, physically and emotionally. [29 Aug 1997, p.A]

Maxwell Anderson's poetic-political play about crime and fascism, set in a "Petrified Forest"-style ensemble during a Key West hurricane, was turned by Huston and co-writer Richard Brooks into a crackling thriller. [27 Nov 1998, p.Q]

A genuinely charming comedy about real people challenging themselves to create new realities for laughs and a little truth, one made-up scene at a time.

Sunshine is near-classic modern science fiction, hobbled only by a chaotic final reel and some casting missteps in the white-male department.

Watching Loeb opposite Berg, you're reminded of the miracles of chemistry and the luck of the draw when it comes to casting a show -- any show.

Chungking Express is a breezy little Hong Kong movie that has more life, energy, humanity and sheer visual zing than most other shows you'll see in a month or so. And, an hour after watching it, you may indeed be hungry for more. Not necessarily because the show is shallow or unsatisfying, or doesn't leave a strong impression, but because the spontaneity and high energy of it is what's so much fun.

A gripping and original piece of work, itself sure to be remembered as one of the finest films of the year.

Casual moviegoers may enjoy it, too, if they follow a simple rule: Stop looking for the way out and let yourself get lost.