What distinguishes The Deer Hunter most is its many rich characters and the size of its vision. This is a big film, dealing with big issues, made on a grand scale. Much of it, including some casting decisions, suggest inspiration by "The Godfather." [9 Mar 1979]

A hideously violent shocker about a woman who is repeatedly raped and castrates her victims. [18 July 1980, p.8]

There's a certain quirky charm to the young Hopkins in his creep-out role as Corky, a shy, failed stand-up magician. [25 Apr 2006, p.3]

Don't see Halloween in an empty theater on a weekday afternoon. See it on a weekend night in a packed house. Halloween is a film to be enjoyed with a boisterous crowd; it's an "audience picture," a film designed to get specific reactions from an audience at specific moments. With Halloween, the most often desired reaction is screaming. It's a beautifully made thriller -- more shocking than bloody -- that will have you screaming with regularity. Halloween was directed by John Carpenter, 30, a natural filmmaker and a name worth remembering. [22 Nov 1978]

The protracted scenes of eating, cooking and cleaning carry neo-realism to its end point -- and to a violent climax which emerges logically and terrifyingly from the welter of daily trivia preceding it. [24 Oct 1997, p.L]

Days of Heaven is the grand climax of the whole "Bonnie and Clyde"-"Badlands" tradition of outlaw-lovers-on-the-run movies. Shot by Nestor Almendros and the uncredited Haskell Wexler, it's a cinematographic masterpiece. [20 March 1998]

there are times when Grease really kicks in. I'm fond of Channing singing "Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee, rotten with virginity" and then telling an imaginary Troy Donahue, "I know what you wanna do." And most of the big musical numbers work, especially the showstopper: the sunlit Danny-Sandy duet to "Summer Dreams." Greasy kid stuff it all may be, but just like rock 'n' roll, it'll probably never die. [27 Mar 1998, p.A]

For a film about deep water terror, Jaws 2 is really quite shallow. [16 June 1978, p.3-2]

Early in the movie, Hal Holbrook (as the paranoid NASA administrator who sets the fake-out in motion) unloads an expository speech on Brolin (as one of the astronauts the administrator needs to convince to go along with his insane ruse). Is it a long speech? Dear reader, “long” doesn’t quite measure it. It’s endless. It’s an event horizon of a monologue and by the time it’s over, you can’t believe the coronavirus hasn’t left yet.

One of the most engaging rock biographies ever filmed. [31 Jan 1988, p.18C]

The greatest rock concert movie ever made -- and maybe the best rock movie, period.

What makes Eraserhead great-and still, perhaps the best of all Lynch's films? Intensity. Nightmare clarity. And perhaps also it's the single-mindedness of its vision; Lynch's complete control over this material, where, working on a shoestring, he served as director, producer, writer, editor and sound designer.

One minute into Saturday Night Fever you know this picture is onto something, that it knows what it's talking about. [15 Oct 1999, Siskel Years, p.6]

Like a Visconti epic gone mad, explosive, beautiful, unforgettable. [08 Dec 2006, p.C8]

This is a Wenders masterwork--a chilling tale of painting, crime and forgery. [19 Jan 2007, p.C5]

Made after Visconti's second paralyzing stroke, in darkly splendid Roman interiors, this is a somber, meditative, confessional work about corruption and mortality, the ways the world and desire batter down even the most protected doors. [17 Oct 1994, p.5C]

A classic, mythic portrayal of African history, religion and politics by the great Senegalese novelist-filmmaker Sembene, centering on a princess' kidnapping and its aftermath. [18 Sep 1998, p.J]

Another great domestic comedy-drama. [08 May 2009, p.C2]

Star Wars is not a great movie in the sense that it describes the human condition. It simply is a fun picture that will appeal to those who enjoy Buck Rogers-style adventures. What places it a sizable cut about the routine is its spectacular visual effects, the best since Stanley Kubrick's "2001." [27 May 1977]

A possessed-car film that beat Christine by a few years but is a much inferior version. [02 Feb 1993, p.3C]

If May's script is brilliant, so is the vivid, raw acting -- which suggests heavy Cassavetes influence. [30 Jul 1999, p.O]

A great movie? Hardly. Stallone as the next Brando? You've got to be kidding. A nice little fantasy picture? Maybe. That's the hype and reality of Rocky, the flatout schmaltzy saga of a Philadelphia club boxer who, on New Year's Day of our Bicentennial Year, gets a chance to fight for the heavyweight championship of the world. . . .

A curiously cool, but very intelligent movie. [02 Jan 2000, p.19C]

A voluptuously shot horror movie, with Piper Laurie (as Carrie's fanatically religious mom) and some nasty teens played by Amy Irving, Nancy Allen and John Travolta.

An amazing celluloid poem by a filmmaker whom Ingmar Bergman called "the greatest." He very nearly was. He was also, perhaps, too pure a creator and reckless a citizen to survive unscathed.

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

This edgy but highly polished movie established the modern myth of journalists-as-heroes: crusaders in the service of the Constitution. [14 Nov 2008, p.C7]

Kubrick's beautiful adaptation of the William Thackeray novel follows a young Irish gambler, rogue and romantic adventurer (Ryan O'Neal) though a painterly 18th Century English landscape of frozen elegance and upper-class hypocrisy.