The Sting, that unalloyed delight...A pure entertainment film, it is impeccably crafted and well-deserving of its immense popularity.[25 Aug 1985, p.5]

The movie remains a devastating portrait of grief, a master class in disjunctive editing and a haunting disquisition on the use of the color red.

Director Rene Laloux and his co-writer, illustrator Roland Topor, in adapting Stefan Wul's science-fiction novel Oms en Serie, have created a surreal nightmare worthy of Dali, one that is filled with seemingly magical phenomena and bizarre and dangerous flora and fauna. [09 Oct 1998, p.F18]

More than three decades later, Jodorowsky’s vision of chaos has acquired a powerful aura of prophecy.

Though Lee Marvin doesn't quite work as the salesman Hickey, the film features amazing performances from Robert Ryan and, in his last film role, Fredric March. [20 Mar 1994, p.5]

Mean Streets is a jazzy riff of a movie, zigging and zagging as if to the beat of snapping fingers. Its greatness lies in its leanness, with nary a word, a move, a gesture that's nonessential.

A demanding, harrowing drama of agonized love laced with sardonic humor. [19 Apr 1992, p.9]

The film is at once of its time--simultaneously the fullest flowering of the French New Wave and the shattering of its male chauvinist tendencies--and utterly timeless in its perception of love, sex and human nature.

An amiable 1973 John Wayne movie, typical of his later Westerns. [09 Oct 1988, p.4]

Never was Tati's mastery of sound effects more inspired than in Playtime, a commercial disaster at the time of its release that nevertheless may be Tati's true masterpiece. [14 May 1998, p.F18]

A masterful performance by Warren Oates in the title role, but the film emerges as trite and hollow anyway. [19 Aug 1990, p.4]

Visually, by today's standards, The Legend of Hell House is pretty tame, but what it may lack in visual acuity is more than made up for in atmosphere and sheer creepiness. [29 Oct 1992, p.30]

A splendid, unjustly neglected 1973 British film in which Sean Connery, at his very best under Sidney Lumet's direction, plays a veteran police sergeant haunted by years of contact with terrible crimes and on the brink of a total breakdown. [27 May 1990, p.10]

A jaundiced look at the CIA, bolstered by a terrific cast. [14 Sep 1986, p.6]

A triumph of stylish, witty Grand Guignol, it allows Price to range richly between humor and pathos as a crazed Shakespearean actor. It's not too much to say that if horror pictures were taken seriously Price would have been a 1973 Oscar contender. [24 Mar 2005, p.E15]

The first full flowering of the De Palma style, the film cleverly uses split-screens and cross-cutting to string the audience along while heightening the emotions of any given scene nearly to the point of parody. The movie is playful and provocative -- at once one of the scariest and funniest horror movies of the '70s. [21 Oct 2018, p.E7]

Paul Newman has lots of fun playing the legendary hanging judge, and Ava Gardner is a ravishing Lily Langtry, the object of Bean's unrequited love. [18 Aug 1991, p.6]

Far from seeming dated, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie seems timelier than ever, downright prophetic, for that matter.

The film, which also stars Billy Dee Williams and Richard Pryor, plays fast and loose with the facts, but there's no denying Ross' powerful turn as the troubled singer -- she received a best actress Oscar nomination. [08 Nov 2005, p.E5]

Once again, Ozu's script, co-written with constant colleague Kogo Noda, is a marvel of organic detail and deceptive naturalism. Ozu's late style -- the serene, easy flow, the smooth succession of floor-level interior shots, the quietly restrained acting, the mastery of intimate psychology and the subtle portrayal of Japanese society in transition -- are all in place. [24 Mar 1989, p.23]

Stacy Keach, Jeff Bridges and Susan Tyrrell are all superb in this downbeat boxing drama adapted by Leonard Gardner from his novel. Conrad Hall supplied the gorgeously stark cinematography. [16 Dec 2002, p.8]

Ozu cherishes tradition but accepts the inevitability of loss and change, and is as all-embracing as Jean Renoir. His people may judge and not forgive, often understandably, but as one of the greatest filmmakers he does not do so. [04 Oct 2007, p.E13]

Le Samourai is a film of few words but many vivid images and, above all, impeccable style. [09 Jul 1998, p.F18]

It's a satisfying comedy in which the humor actually develops from character rather than plot. [15 Mar 1987, p.5]

Lively entertainment underlined by some stinging social comment. [04 May 1972, p.17]

Contemporary viewers are more likely to find Fritz the Cat a mildly amusing period piece, as dated as a Nehru jacket.

Overflowing with life, rich with all the grand emotions and vital juices of existence, up to and including blood. And its deaths, like that of Hotspur in "Henry IV, Part I," continue to shock no matter how often we've watched them coming. [16 Mar 1997, Calendar, p.7]

One thing you can say for Pink Flamingos, it has a frat party chumminess, even at its most repulsive. In the late '60s and through the '70s, Waters used the same gang of pals for his ensemble, and that created a kind of "let's get down and dirty together" camaraderie.

The movie...remains perhaps the wisest of family dramas, an experience as wrenching as it is restorative.

The film is a cultivated taste -- hilarious to some, silly to others. The 94-minute romp holds up well with Madeline Kahn in her first film role and Streisand showing off her likable comic abilities. [19 Feb 1993, p.F24]

Spielberg reveals his budding genius as he builds suspense in an excruciating series of scenes and seeming non-events. To the credit of the direction, the cinematography and Weaver's acting, you start to believe the truck has a sinister life of its own. Your imagination runs away with you because virtually all you can see is the truck grille in Weaver's rear-view mirror. [21 Jan 1993, p.28]

Surely one of the most exciting -- and brutal -- movies ever made...This is slam-bang, suspenseful, sardonically funny, furious-paced melodrama culminating in the justly famous chase sequence. [21 July 1985, p.5]

It’s the rare film that decades later can seem as timely as it was the day it came out. The searing documentary The Murder of Fred Hampton is such a film.

The remarkable script by Pierre Marton manages to be great fun while laying bare the evils of the institution of slavery. [11 Aug 1991, p.6]

One of the better old-regime Disney stories. [12 Apr 1992, p.7]

The film features some real mystery and suspense, a few laughably outlandish touches, one of Jacqueline Bisset's more watchable early roles, lots of Liszt and a reasonable amount of not-too-graphic scary fun. [07 Jul 1989, p.20]

George C. Scott plays a gentle wacko who thinks he's Sherlock Holmes. He's being treated by a psychiatrist (Joanne Woodward) named Dr. Watson. If you think that's funny, then this movie is for you. The point of all this is that losers can be winners. The cast labors valiantly in a lost cause. [24 Apr 1987, p.19]

The plot does little more than link a string of vaguely related episodes, intended to provide comedy, excitement and music. But even at their least original, the Disney artists provide better animation--and more entertainment--than the recent animated features

Unfortunately, Jodorowsky is no Bunuel -- nor a Leone, for that matter -- and El Topo’s bloody odyssey, involving endless heavily symbolic encounters with the bizarre and fantastic, expresses the eternal tug of war between the savage and the spiritual in human nature on the most obvious level and in the most ponderous fashion.

Empathy shades into sympathy turns to morbid fascination. You can’t stop watching, even if you want to.

Robert Stephens is Sherlock, Colin Blakely is Watson, and the movie is one of Wilder's least cynical and most romantic, a sadly elegant celebration of gaslit sleuthery. [09 Apr 1989, p.4]

Seems every bit the masterpiece it was when first released by Paramount. In this dazzling film, Bertolucci manages to combine the bravura style of Fellini, the acute sense of period of Visconti and the fervent political commitment of Elio Petri -- and, better still, a lack of self-indulgence.

This big-scale work, directed by Martin Ritt, is of solid craftsmanship but little style. James Earl Jones' Johnson is, however, intensely vital and larger-than-life. [10 Dec 1989, p.2]

An enduring film of enchanting and provocative revelation. [09 Jan 2009, p.E15]

The film is never just some glassy exercise in the idly loaded’s languorous cruelty, though. In each magnetic performance (especially Schneider’s), in the sparse but piquant lines from the script co-written with the great, recently departed screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière (working from an Alain Page story), and in Deray’s attention to emotional humidity, lies something resolutely curious about human frailty in relationships.

Because its gimmick lays bare the evils of racism so easily, the movie works for a while, but it becomes so predictable that it runs out of gas long before the end. [13 Oct 1985, p.5]

Now, as ever, "Woodstock" is not just a great slice-of-time documentary but still the ultimate rock concert movie: A quarter-century of advances hasn't brought about any real improvements on the multiple-camera filming techniques or even significantly dated the split-screen effects and varying aspect ratio tricks. The advent of digital sound, on the other hand, has given the remixed soundtrack a theatrical glory unknown a generation ago. At this pristine volume, Jimi Hendrix's concluding bit may not be quite suitable for anyone with a heart condition, which would constitute more of the Woodstock nation than some of us might like to consider. [29 June 1994, p.F6]

Whatever its legacy, the film remains a gripping drama. [09 Nov 2008, p.E10]

Written by Francis Coppola and Edmund H. North and directed impeccably by Franklin Schaffner, Patton is extraordinary for its mix of action and deft illumination of an amazingly complex man, brought to proud, robust life unforgettably by George C. Scott. [10 Jul 1988, p.2]

The film's not for everyone's tastes but is extremely well done. [04 Aug 2003, p.3]

Ritt's film does not follow predictable lines, nor does it tidy up the personalities it examines. In the end, that unflinching honesty lends the The Molly Maguires pertinence and power. [08 Apr 1993, p.21]

This film, deftly directed by Mark Rydell (Cinderella Liberty, The Rose, On Golden Pond), is a celebration of simpler times and gentler hearts. It is an absolute joy to watch. [24 Sep 1992, p.12]

Intense and affecting. [24 Jun 1990, p.67]

Irresistible 1969 Hal Wallis-Henry Hathaway Western that won John Wayne his long overdue Oscar as a rip-snorting federal marshal who meets his match in Kim Darby's doughty little girl. [06 Oct 1991, p.8]

The marvelously sexy and witty Diana Rigg is seen to great advantage in this overlooked 1969 British gem derived from a Jack London story in which Rigg plays a turn-of-the-century liberationist bent on destroying London journalism's male exclusivity by uncovering an organization of paid killers. [06 May 1990, p.3]

Campy horror at its very best, courtesy of Hammer Films, director Freddie Francis and the incomparable Christopher Lee in his third outing as the bloody Count. Sexy, baroque and completely inconsequential. [29 Oct 1998, p.F45]

The plot is bare and a little cliched, but the film's dramatic scenes, usually shot with a roving camera and lighted in fairly crude ways, are realistically, almost voyeuristicly, staged. [04 Jul 1991, p.13]

John Sturges directed this overlong but intermittently entertaining action-thriller. [24 Jul 2002, p.2]

Not to go all Pauline Kael on you, but Bullitt -- the 1968 crime drama starring a Ford Mustang GT390 and some guy named Steve McQueen -- is a fairly tedious bit of Aquarian cinema: the chicka-chicka-waah soundtrack, the inscrutable plot, the anaerobic dullness of every second that McQueen is off-camera. Bullitt scrabbles to its minor footnote status in film history on two counts. The first: It marks the only time any man ever looked cool in a cardigan -- McQueen should have gotten the academy's knitwear award. The second is the movie's remarkable seven-minute chase scene, with real cars (the Mustang and a black Dodge Charger), real drivers and real stunts, no special effects.

A taut and incisive thriller, stylishly incorporating a multi-image technique and a stream-of-conscious narrative. [12 Aug 1999, p.F15]

The musical biography of comedian Fanny Brice emerges as a true classic, as enthralling as the day it was released in 1968. It is a superb example of Hollywood craftsmanship in which all elements have been blended to perfection with inspired artistry.

Newman's direction is quiet and unfussy, and the film's plainness only enhances its clarity, but he also makes room for some unexpected humor and (in Rachel's death-haunted reveries) touches of macabre poetry. No less than Newman, Woodward resists melodrama at every turn, and she makes a familiar character more complicated than first impressions suggest. [15 Feb 2009, p.E10]

Just as Baird is sustained by his self-mockery, this tender and witty film is saved from sentimentality by its satirical edge. [19 Apr 1998, p.3]

In between rehearsals, they discuss their lives, from facing the draft board, to their small hometowns, with a fascinating frankness.

[Sellers] pulls off the physical comedy, which ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous, with ease. [03 Jan 1991, p.7]

An excellent but often overlooked 1968 Western about a kindly sheriff (James Stewart) battling a gang of bad guys, with Henry Fonda playing the chief villain. [03 Jun 1994, p.F22]

Everything that ensues is laughably predictable and silly, but primitive as it is, Spider Baby is a professional effort in which Hill makes an attempt at style, aided by Al Taylor's shadowy black-and-white cinematography and Chaney's willingness to play straight. [01 Apr 1994, p.F8]

Looked at now (2017), The Graduate is frankly a film you admire more than actually enjoy experiencing. Dark, pitiless and despairing, it plays stranger and more distant to me today than it did back in the day. So much so that one wonders if that was the plan from the beginning, when the fact that its mildly transgressive attitude seemed fresh and new disguised its essential nature.

an American classic: poetically bloody, madly comic, infernally beautiful. [16 Aug 1987, p.3]

Though director Richard Rush’s Hells Angels on Wheels is thin on plot, it had a few aces up its sleeve in cinematographer László Kovács (credited as Leslie Kovacs), lead actor Jack Nicholson, and an air of authenticity because of the presence of some real Angels as extras, including the notorious Sonny Barger serving as a technical adviser.

A rollicking 1967 Burt Kennedy work, stars John Wayne and features an ingeniously planned heist plot. [21 May 1995, p.6]

A meditation on aging, friendship, betrayal and coming to terms with life's profound contradictions, interspersed with antic humor and some of the greatest battle scenes ever filmed. [01 Jan 2016, p.E4]

This witty and tender 1966 gem remains as timeless and fresh as ever.

If in Bresson's films nothing ever seems out of place or superfluous it's because he strove to find the essential truth of the image. Not an image or sound is wasted -- or offered up in self-glorification -- and from such seeming simplicity there arises a world of feeling.

The 1966 version of the much-remade Foreign Legion warhorse is more violent, less romantic and less watchable than others -- and its stars (Doug McClure, Telly Savalas) aren't exactly Gary Cooper (who was in the 1939 film) either. [08 Apr 1988, p.16]

From our current vantage point, the film's appeal has less to do with surrealism than nostalgia. It's a movie that potently evokes bygone attitudes and aesthetics -- a relic of the age of pre-digital effects, a product of both Cold War paranoia and midcentury techno-utopianism. [03 Jun 2007, p.E19]

Director Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back) moves the comedic action along at a rapid- pace. [02 Jul 2006, p.E13]

An emotional horror story, both the play and the film triggered controversy and challenged the status quo.

Cleverly written by William and Tania Rose, it's become a cold-war curio. [28 May 1989, p.2]

The glossy Stanley Donen thriller offers one surprise after another and lots of romantic byplay between Peck and Loren, including a sensational shower scene. [30 Sep 1990, p.85]

With a lovely, evocative score composed by Satyajit Ray, Shakespeare Wallah is a tribute to the gallantry, talent and courage of the Kendals. Its gentle humor, however, has a Chekhovian cast.

The wonderful thing about Band of Outsiders is that the daring elements that jazzed audiences then have the same power to intoxicate all these years later.

Remains a timeless, major work of a master.

The film now seems less urbane and innovative, more coldly flashy and bluntly affected -- full of sound and Furie, signifying little. [2 June 1987, p.Cal-1]

Notable for its on-screen vigor and two off-screen bits of drama: star John Wayne's recovery from lung cancer and supporting player Dennis Hopper's reunion with Hathaway after their legendary 78-take standoff in the 1958 From Hell to Texas. [23 Jul 1989, p.2]

Like a preliminary sketch for a vast and splendid mural, it unfolds Fellini's wonderful vision of life in all its joy and sadness, hope and fear, triumph and defeat, that emerges fully in the later movies. [20 May 2004, p.E13]

When the film stays simple, and concentrates on the actors--as in Juano Hernandez's withering bit as the old man who wants to talk--it's almost great. [28 July 1996, p.74]

The last great action movie filmed in black and white. [04 Nov 1994, p.F17]

It enables us to recapture exactly the delightful sensations felt all those years ago when we and the world were young and exciting together.

This may not be exact history, but it certainly makes an impression.

From Russia with Love, the second of the Bonds, remains one of the best. It finds Sean Connery's 007 going up against a diabolical Lotte Lenya and a psychopathic bleached blond, Robert Shaw. All the usual ingredients have been blended in just the right proportions under Terence Young's direction. [10 Apr 1988, p.2]

Even if the story of a widower (the great Chishû Ryû) and his daughter weren’t such a naturally compelling variation on Ozu’s themes of family, devotion and sacrifice, the exquisite balance of hues and textures in every shot would render it essential viewing.

Glaciers might be melting, the polar caps might be crumbling, but not even the passage of half a century has taken the frozen edge off this brilliantly icy film.

A terrific campy wallow from 1964 starring Bette Davis as twins. And double the Davis means double the fun. [08 Aug 2004, p.E14]

After suffering through two screenings of Dr. Strangelove, I would sooner drink hemlock.... To me, Dr. Strangelove is an evil thing about an evil thing; you will have to make up your own mind about it.

Elia Kazan drew from the experiences of his own uncle in this profound and exhilharating 19th-Century immigrant saga, made in 1963 and expressing passionately a love of this country. [27 Feb 1994, p.6]

Structurally, High and Low, which is remarkable in many ways--the camera work alone could serve as a primer in film technique--is quite a departure for Kurosawa.

There are plenty of brawls -- the stars end up in a mud pit and O'Hara runs through the town in her undergarments with Wayne on the case -- along with romance and fun. McLintock! certainly isn't subtle, but it was and is one of Wayne's most popular vehicles. [09 Oct 2005, p.E13]