In teasing out the complex relationship between life and death in relationship to birth and “Frankenstein,” Moss presents a provocative existential quandary and reminds us that horror stories have been women’s stories all along.

It puts The Cockettes into social, political and popular cultural context and gives the documentary a moving resonance.

Eleven years ago director Campbell made "GoldenEye," the first of the Brosnan Bond pictures. Casino Royale trumps it every which way.

Jack Nicholson's impressive, convoluted and moody sequel to Chinatown. [10 Aug 1990]

One of the best-liked backstage dramas, with Douglas shining as egotistical producer Jonathan Shields (said to be based on David O. Selznick) who ruthlessly sheds friends, lovers and colleagues on his way to the top, only to seek them after his fall. [25 Apr 2003, p.C1]

It is, in fact, Itami's consistent, subtle intimation of mortality that grants Tampopo a resonance beyond simple satire. [11 Sep 1987, p.A]

More effort could have been made to fully flesh out the international perspective on this "people's president," but as a play-by-play look at a modern coup, it's an amazing, insightful film.

Terrifying and darkly funny. [13 Jun 2004, p.C4]

As an adventure movie, it makes good on its promise and its title. It carries us to the edge. [26 Sep 1997, p.A]

Delighted me like few films I've seen recently. It's a sexy, sweet, sumptuously entertaining movie about the huge and wildly eventful wedding reception.

Albert Brooks is one of the few, maybe the only, comic filmmakers making movies today with laughs that hurt. A very funny--and therefore neurotic--young man, Brooks places himself in all sorts of contemporary situations in his movies, situations that force him to whine like a baby to get what he wants. He's the filmmaker for the Baby Boom generation.

David Mamet's fascinating polemic about sexual abuse in the workplace. A college teacher confers with a coed in his office to talk about her poor work, and all hell breaks lose with accusations. What were the teacher's motives? Does the student become the pawn of a feminist study group? This is the kind of all-too-rare picture that creates conversation on the way home from the movie theater.

Natural Born Killers is visually complex and thematically simple. Mixing film and video, black-and-white and color, morphing and animation, Stone breaks visual ground here for a major studio release. [26 Aug 1994, p.B]

An essential Carole Lombard film, it's her one screen pairing with her eventual husband Clark Gable. To call their scenes electric is putting it mildly. [30 Dec 1993, p.9A]

La Cava was famous for improvising his scenes; My Man Godfrey is the most brilliant, unbuttoned example. It's a champagne farce, sparkling and bubbling from the depths of the Depression. [08 Jun 2007, p.C9]

A classic of realistic terror, in which passion and murder can't lie buried.

Strange, funny and powerfully moving… Burton has found a way to move through camp to emotional authenticity, to communicate-through a concentration of style and an innocence of regard-a depth and sincerity of feeling that his deliberately (and often, comically) flat characters could not summon on their own. [14 Dec 1990, Friday, p.C]

There’s a dreamy and poetic side to the visual texture in The Unknown Country, as photographed, often gorgeously, by Andrew Hajek. The Badlands, the snakelike highways, the rippling sunsets step right up and strike their poses, but unselfconsciously.

It's a little of everything: unnerving, funny in just the right way and at the right times, serious about its observations and perspectives on racial animus, straight-up populist when it comes to an increasingly (but not sadistically) violent climax. That's entertainment!

The sociopolitical issues are lost in the action, but it's quite some action. [11 Jan 2002, p.C1]

It's an intelligent and informed look at the preposterous ways our leaders are often picked and sabotaged.

A fine, exciting film that makes a bloody historical event live all over again by showing it through the eyes of children on the edges of the conflict.

The American distributor of John Woo's amazing Hong Kong feature, The Killer, is taking the easy way out and selling the picture as camp. But this movie is no joke: It's one of the most intense, passionate pieces of filmmaking you are ever likely to see. [10 May 1991, p.H]

The movie has an avalanche of eye-popping visual effects, including a bustling Santa's village, nifty "Jimmy Neutron"-type gadgets and "Stars Wars"-like igloo walking robots - and, of course, the requisite heartwarming happy ending.

No halves about it: Half Nelson is a wholly absorbing and delicately shaded portrait of an educator played by Ryan Gosling, a young man harboring an offstage secret.

Earns its happy ending like few other contemporary dramas concerned with the fate of a child. It puts you through hell for that ending, in fact, hell being modern-day Russia.

Sleek, confident and peppered with delicious portraits in pursuit, deceit and evasion, the carnival of papal intrigue known as “Conclave” works like gangbusters.

Prelude to a Kiss is an exquisite film that will long stand on its own. [10 Jul 1992, p.C]