A gripping and pungent film noir, in which the hard facts and sharp emotions of a police thriller are softened by a subtle drift toward dreaminess and moody abstraction. [19 Apr 1991, p.C]

This is the most satisfying thriller of the year, capping the Bourne trilogy.

A highly entertaining and visually breathtaking movie, capable at times of rocking and delighting you.

A rich and troubling documentary highlight of the year.

It is a bracing and chaotic and memorable experience.

Not all the anachronisms work, but Corsage works anyway because Krieps makes Elisabeth a dimensional woman for all seasons.

Both the man and his times resist a compact 93 minutes. This much anguished history, and Aleichem's inspired literary response to that history, has difficulties being confined to conventional documentary feature length. Yet Dorman's touch is sure, his pacing fleet and his chorus of voices marvelous.

The movie is a delight in many ways: an unabashed romantic comedy and Capraesque fable that takes Spielberg into realms he's rarely traveled before.

Yang powerfully evokes a world of pervasive greed and brutality, where conventional moral values have gone dangerously awry and life is cheap. [21 Nov 1997, p.M]

Much of the material in “Ennio” will be a revelation to the garden-variety American fan of film music (i.e. me).

Exciting, beautifully shot '60s political western. [10 Apr 1998, p.M]

One of the great movie family sagas, a fascinating revelation of both the dark and bright sides of the American dream. [05 Mar 2000, p.24C]

An exorcism movie for the rest of us, the gripping German drama Requiem contains not a single special effect. It doesn't need one. It has terrific actors fully invested in a casual-seeming, docudramatic brand of storytelling, notably Sandra Hueller.

The film is unusually free of cant and the usual trappings of war docs. There is no voice-over narration and very little dramatic underscoring. Right or wrong, the filmmakers shave matters of political policy and contextual analysis clean off the finished product, which runs a tight 94 minutes.

Clint Eastwood's most entertaining film in years, a whimsical fable about a Wild West showman with a dream of turning his rag-tag employees into one big happy family. Great country music mixed with Eastwood's natural charm. [11 July 1980, p.8]

It's an exciting but brainy, cross-cultural thriller about modern London and life in a contemporary urban pressure cooker, and it depends more on plot, character and atmosphere than it does on chases and gunfire.

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

Australian Judy Davis, one of our finest actresses, gives a brilliant comic performance as a bitter spurned woman venting her spleen on a hapless blind date. Sydney Pollack proves surprisingly effective in a brutal scene where he abuses a bimbo. Husbands and Wives dosen't break new ground in arguing that not breaking up is hard to do; it simply raises the debate with a mix of fine writing and tragic real-life parallels. [18 Sept 1992, p.C]

Fredric March plays the split personality doctor/killer in this stylish early version of Robert Louis Stevenson's shivery classic. [06 Apr 2007, p.7]

Parts of Sunset Song rank with Davies' very best work.

It's the funniest new movie on town. [July 22, 1983]

After the Wedding defies the odds: For once, the bigger the emotion, the truer the moviegoing experience.

The picture has such a sweet spirit, sly wit and buoyant energy that it seems to disarm potential rancor, fear or contentiousness. [16 Oct 1996, p.1]

We meet a variety of interdependent characters, from tuna vendors to rice experts, all in thrall to Jiro and his sons. I really wish Tokyo were closer.

Project Nim is practically irresistible. The story keeps getting odder and richer and more complicated.

What really makes Alias Betty stand out, even from good recent French ensemble films like "Eight Women" and "Venus Beauty Institute," is that ingenious, Rendell-derived story. To kidnap an old phrase, it's a corker.

This largely non-verbal picture uses only as many words (spoken in Mandarin and Tibetan, with English subtitles) as necessary, and draws you in as surely as one of his characters, in an amazing sequence, is drawn into.

It's a simple story with complex reverberations and undercurrents, as secrets keep being revealed.