The climax, featuring what's essentially a suspended roller coaster of closet doors, is as thrilling as it is imaginative.

An uneven special effects extravaganza about a little boy who winds up traveling through world history along with five midgets. Together they meet and frustrate the great and the near-great. Including Napoleon, Robin Hood, and the devil. Unfortunately, there are just too many visits to famous people. The film was created by some of the people responsible for the Monty Python comedies. [25 Dec 1981, p.12]

Of all the movies culminating in a rite of exorcism, Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu's remarkable Beyond the Hills stands alone.

The British hated it (because their soldiers took Burma), but this is a rock-solid Walsh actioner, with Errol Flynn, James Brown and Henry Hull. [06 Apr 2007, p.C7]

John Hawkes is wonderful as O'Brien, as is Helen Hunt as the surrogate whose sessions with O'Brien form the crux of the film. The results are extremely moving and, in general, low on egregiously yanked heartstrings or the usual biopic filler.

It’s best taken, I think, as a romantic gesture to a writer who loved movies. Well, two, really: Herman J. Mankiewicz, and Jack Fincher.

Mostly it's an incredible tale of ritual and perseverance.

Brimming over with affection and humanity, this memory drama about the destruction of one family and the birth of another is nostalgic in a good sense: funny, bittersweet, poignant.

Not too many actors last year bettered or equaled Beatty and Schreiber here, separately or (better yet) together. It's a pleasure and a privilege to watch them work.

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 movie feels torn between styles and intentions. It’s trippier than “Ex Machina,” and Garland makes a valiant go of its concerns, but Annihilation feels like a short-story amount of story pulled and twisted into feature length.

A visual and aural feast that combines elements of classic gangster melodramas, crime epics such as "The Godfather" and playful non-linear narratives such as "Amores Perros," City of God explores a deadly culture while feeling more alive than anything that's hit the big screen in years.

The payoffs here begin and end with Oduye, and as we see this character confront her obstacles with bravery, grace and resolve, "Pariah" exhibits many of the same traits, for which filmgoers can be thankful.

A racily entertaining, wonderfully sly and goofy comic film noir with more twists than a mountain road-or, to darken the metaphor, than a cartrunk full of rattlesnakes.

Brilliant adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's 20th Century comic-erotic classic. [08 Jul 2005, p.C2]

Featuring an all-black cast, this little film is a revelation, primarily because it provides black faces with the most natural dialogue they've had in years. She`s Gotta Have It is neither a crime story nor a heavy message movie, and the conversations in it are therefore free of the shackles of most minority-oriented stories.

Parts of Pride are shamelessly escapist, as when party-mad Jonathan (Dominic West) busts loose with a disco routine, surely the most outre thing ever to hit Onllwyn. But nearly all of it's engaging.

Not a striking film visually. It's deliberately plain looking, focused on the appalling events with an almost documentary immediacy.

Kidman rises to the occasion, and while one-note mediocrities like “The Substance” offer gallons of fake blood where the provocations should be, Reijn’s film — seen the second time, at least – only needs its nerve and its interest in what Kidman can do, which is more than I even realized.

Never feels inflated -- and it builds to an ending of unusual power.

With resources that took five years to assemble, [Rappeneau] has turned out a Cyrano that should prove definitive for many years to come. [25 Dec 1990, p.11C]

A gripping documentary.

A spectacular, engrossing, big-hearted film based on one of Korea's great national epics and made by that country's top filmmaker.

A film that uses beautiful tableaux and convincingly raw actors to build to a climax of shatteringly understated poignancy and power.

Easily cracks the top five list of reasons to go to the movies these days - and defies categories in doing so.

It's a strong reminder of the times, then and now.

You buy the concept, from start to finish, because it feels strong and purposeful and in sync with Shakespeare's own vision of a malleable, fickle populace and a leader raised by the ultimate stage mother.

The movie itself is more of a square than a circle — straightforward and honorific, peppered with old and newer archival footage.