This is one of the great alternative masterpieces of the American cinema. In many ways, Cassavetes' most important film.

Tati's fabulous comedy about a bumbling French vacationer in Brittany -- the first appearance of his hilarious pipe-smoking alter-ego Hulot -- is almost a silent movie done in sound, with spare dialogue, affectionate characterizations, sunny beach scenes and complex sight gags that recall the genius of Chaplin and Keaton. [19 Dec 1997, p.T]

Rousing, stirring, with a great cast: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, James Coburn. McQueen's performance as "Cooler King" Hilts is undoubtedly his most archetypal. [10 May 2013, p.C6]

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.

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]

David Cronenberg's The Fly is that absolute rarity of the '80s: a film that is at once a pure, personal expression and a superbly successful commercial enterprise. [15 Aug 1986]

Curtiz holds you in his master grip, creating one of those WW II-era California noirs that keeps swinging you from darkness to sunlight, love to hatred, happiness to the pits of despair and death. [18 Nov 2005, p.C6]

Based on Reginald Rose's legendary TV play, under Sidney Lumet's sympathetic hand, this is one of the great '50s actors' showcases. [16 May 1999, p.27]

A rare example of a literary film that preserves the best of its source while creatively filling up on it.

Stirred by the winds of nostalgia, lapped by its ocean of dreams, "The Secret of Roan Inish" is one of the loveliest surprises of the year. [03 Mar 1995, p.C]

Nobody ever gathered together a sharper, more pungent international "Golden Age" cast (including Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Paul Henreid, Conrad Veidt, S.Z. Sakall, Marcel Dalio, Leonid Kinskey, John Qualen and Curt Bois) in a more imperishable exotic movieland cabaret (Rick's) than Warner Bros. producer Hal Wallis and director Michael Curtiz did in this greatest of all Hollywood World War II adventure romances.

Among the finest hours of horror star Boris Karloff. [18 Oct 2005, p.C3]

Truly original and unique: genuine film poetry, full of spellbinding images and sequences. [20 Mar 1998, p.L]

This is a small, tight, starkly claustrophobic film, closer in impact to Elie Wiesel's first-person account of the concentration camps, "Night," than to the artful, slightly suspect emotional catharsis of director Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List."

This French documentary gives us unprecedented intimacy and sweep.

It's a glorious film, in large part because it is a reminder of in what low regard we often hold those of "a certain age." You'll come out of the theater full of respect and admiration for these people.

The Seventh Continent is a calm chronicle of hell, a clinical look at how commonplace people can erupt into despair or violence. Bleak, cool, beautifully controlled, liberatingly intelligent, it chills our hearts as it opens our minds. And it establishes Haneke as one of the more remarkable young contemporary filmmakers.

This one slice of the American experience amounts to one of the best films of the year.

Beautifully wrought, darkly funny and finally devastating, My Own Private Idaho almost single-handedly revives the notion of personal filmmaking in the United States. [18 Oct 1991]

A lesser director, working in a clunky-realism vein with less skilled designers and especially performers, might’ve turned Passing into a conventional something or other. In novel form, and in Hall’s beautiful adaptation, it is anything but conventional.

Stylish, ingenious and gleaming with charm, wit and malice, it's another expert blend of domestic drama and crime thriller, a vivisection of the bourgeoisie.

As magnificent as a high-masted 19th-century British warship, as explosive as a Napoleonic-era ocean battle seen above the cannon's mouth... probably the best movie of its kind ever made.

Despite all the limitations on her life, Rose-Lynn is one of the most free-spirited creatures to ever be put on film.

The stars are at their best and most rambunctious and so is Walsh. If you have any taste for Warner Brothers Golden Age studio classics--and want to catch a gem you may have missed--this one hits the spot. [17 Nov 2006, p.C6]