McDormand is a bit too spartan and sealed off in the role. Her steeliness doesn’t have enough emotional levels.

This restraint of acting and filmmaking results in a story that's all the more powerful. While many films try to force the audience into laughing and crying in the right places, Au Revoir les enfants invites us simply to watch, think, and feel according to our own perceptions. The result is touching in a way no manipulative film could equal. [12 Feb 1988, p.21]

Huppert never loses sight of the fact that Nathalie’s wounded heart often overrules her steel-trap mind.

Gustave’s protégé, the “lobby boy” Zero Moustafa (played as a young man by Tony Revolori and as an adult by F. Murray Abraham), is as much an enigma as Gustave.

The paradox of Train Dreams is that we are looking at a vanishing way of life that, at the same time, has a startling immediacy. That immediacy is more than a matter of careful observation. In its widest sense, the movie is asking what makes life worth living.

Winter Sleep, winner of last year’s Palme d’Or in Cannes, runs almost 3-1/2 hours. These will be some of the best three-plus hours you will spend at any movie this year. I’ve seen movies half that length that felt twice as long.

The surprise is that, at least for its first half, this newest A Star Is Born is so powerfully fresh.

The larger point in Citizenfour is that dictatorships have always relied on the massive gathering of information in order to control their populations. In this brave new cyber world, it is all too easy for democracies to cross the line, too.

Cantet has rich insights into this material, and brings them alive through sensitive acting and powerful filmmaking.

Given the subject, the movie is too romanticized, and Christie's eyes remain too sharp here to convincingly convey someone whose memory is fast slipping away. Much of it is powerful anyway.

It's a marvelous performance in a marvelous movie, one that sneaks up on you while you're watching it.

With scrupulous fairness, Ferguson meticulously lays out for us the whole sordid mess.

Everybody connected to this movie appears to be operating on the same wavelength: They want to do justice to the lives of the people that we see. To a remarkable degree, they do.

The suspense isn't exactly breathtaking, but there are some mighty fine laughs in this clever Claymation cartoon.Family fun for all.

The director's cut of this 2001 cult fantasy is a deliriously subtle exploration of storytelling possibilities, and a deliciously wry teen-pic to boot. Brilliant.

A remarkable movie about a remarkable friendship. It honors the audience's intelligence, which makes it a double rarity.

A lean, efficient modern Western that is so satisfyingly constructed I’m tempted to say it’s just about perfect. There’s a special pleasure in watching a movie that knows exactly what it’s after and then, in scene after scene, gets it.

As a piece of poetic compression, it ranks with the opening of Orson Welles's "The Magnificent Ambersons."

It’s a charming, wistful movie, and I trust Tan will not have to wait another 20 years to direct her next film.

A mix of war film, road movie, and romantic comedy-drama, this peripatetic yarn is less resonant than Ghobadi's beautiful "A Time for Drunken Horses," but it has enough energy to keep your eyes popping and your toes tapping.

Back to the Future doesn't exactly leap out of the starting gate, and some scenes are strung out by gimmicky editing. But the story picks up steam as it goes along, and the last third is especially full of speedy surprises. [3 July 1985, p.23]

The story is surprising, the screenplay is witty, and the animation is wonderfully creative. A super sequel.

It’s easily the best of the Marvel superhero movies but it’s also a film that foregrounds a cornucopia of powerful black faces, garbs, traditions, and conflicts. It’s a stealth movie: Like “Get Out,” it’s a genre film jam-packed with social relevancy.

It’s possible to be heartwarming and tough-minded, as this wonderful film demonstrates. And it’s possible to be both “old-fashioned” and vibrant, too. It’s the best new/old movie in town.

What makes this film different from numerous other such movies is that, in many instances, it utilizes footage never before seen publicly.

Abrasive at times, delving into bewildering behaviors and moral complexities that the characters sadly fail to understand. What's undeniable is the propulsive honesty and unstoppable energy of their black-and-white images and the foreshadowing they provide of later Cassavetes movies. [14 Mar 1996]

Most moviegoers will leave buzzing about the climactic Battle of Helm's Deep. But in my eyes, this is Gollum's show more than anyone else's, even the special-effects wizards behind the scenes.

Sonia may seem happy-go-lucky at the start, but grief steels her. It makes her grow up very fast. She becomes a kind of heroine in the course of the film, which ultimately owes its stature to her presence.