Amazingly cynical and howlingly funny. [13 Jan 1994, p.10]

One of the great screwball comedies. [23 Jan 1998, p.N]

A near-classic, "Woman" is let down only by Bacon's sluggish helming. [15 Aug 1996, p.9A]

A commercially compromised but often brilliant updating of Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent. [27 Sep 2013, p.C6]

Second-best of the "Thin Man" series, after the unbeatable first entry, this sparkling sequel boasts a breezy San Francisco setting and an even better cast, topped by William Powell and Myrna Loy. [30 Dec 2011, p.C2]

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]

Swing Time, a Depression-era Manhattan ballad -- and best of the bunch by a hair over Top Hat -- has Fred as a threadbare gambler named Lucky, Ginger as a saucy dance teacher named Penny and a heart-stopping Kern-Dorothy Fields score that includes The Way You Look Tonight, A Fine Romance, Pick Yourself Up and their masterpiece farewell duet number, Never Gonna Dance. [23 Aug 2005, p.C3]

For sheer lavishness, attention to detail, honesty of purpose, The Great Ziegfeld is to be commended. Where the picture falls down - hard! - is in its fulsomeness. [15 Apr 1936, p.21]

It's a Rafael Sabatini pirate movie with almost everything: galleons, high seas, Olivia de Havilland and a fantastic Errol Flynn-Basil Rathbone swordfight. [15 Aug 1996, p.9A]

The first, and best, of the three versions of Charles Dickens' tale of the French Revolution. [05 Dec 2008, p.C5]

The story is spellbinding, the acting lusty and the spectacle everything you could expect from a Golden Age MGM production--though sometimes it's a bit too much on the monumental side.

In Top Hat's all-time showstopper, to Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek," light-footed Fred and feathery Ginger dance us right into paradise. [23 Aug 2005, p.C3]

A definitive spy thriller and one of the masterpieces of Hitchcock's British years, The 39 Steps is one of those paradigm classics that influence filmmaking for decades afterward. [21 Sep 2007, p.C10]

A marvel of shadows and fog -- literal and psychic. [12 Mar 2010, p.C9]

Two advantages of the British version: It's tauter and much faster. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

The musical evergreen, with Irene Dunne billed over Fred and Ginger. [03 Nov 2006, p.C5]

The movie suffers a bit from the sentimental, violin-underscored valentine approach favored in Selznick movies, but the characterizations, particularly in delivering Dickens' cartoon grotesqueries, are plum. None is better than W. C. Fields, who might be faulted for bringing his own legendary screen persona to Mr. Micawber, but he does so superbly, without sacrificing Dickens' own creation. [13 Aug 1989, p.20C]

First of the classic Fred and Ginger plots. [03 Nov 2006, p.C5]

It's a terrific mix of screwball comedy and detective story, full of wit, romance and suspense. [23 Nov 2007, p.C10]

Fred meets Ginger in this goofy South American romance; they were secondary leads who stole the show. [03 Nov 2006, p.C5]

The Four Marx Brothers -- Groucho the Gabber, Harpo the Honker, Chico the Chiseler and Zeppo the Zero -- were the wildest, most anarchically funny movie comedians of their era. (Of any era.) And this is the high water mark of their unique cinematic insanity: a ferocious satire on government, war and diplomacy that leaves no propriety or pretension unpricked, no sacred cow unslaughtered. [19 Sept 1997, p.O]

Another Universal classic, based on H.G. Wells' tale of an invisible madman. [13 Aug 2007, p.C6]

Busby Berkeley's finest hour comes in this flabbergasting Warners musical, with James Cagney as a Berkeley-like choreographer who directs, for a string of Broadway theaters, a series of "preview" dance numbers that blow your socks off.

42nd Street is the quintessential '30s backstage song and dance movie-and one of the most influential and much-copied movie musicals ever. [09 Mar 2007, p.C6]

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]

An unpretentious, rowdy, lecherous good show. [28 Nov 1999, p.35]

One of the quintessential Hollywood shipboard romances, with William Powell and Kay Francis as the seemingly doomed lovers who meet on the high seas. [26 Mar 2000, p.35]

From Vicki Baum's novel, scrumptiously directed by Goulding, with a constellation of a cast that includes Greta Garbo, John and Lionel Barrymore and Joan Crawford. [28 Nov 1999, p.35]