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.