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.

It's a candy-flavored blast of a movie. But though children may love it, they shouldn't monopolize it. Adults will want to eat this peach, or ride it to Manhattan, just as much.

Streep once again unnecessarily proves she’s the best in the business with her performance, delivering more in a single quiet line delivery than most actors can achieve.

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.