A beautifully done adaptation of the novel, polished, elegant and completely cinematic. It is also a bit distant, a film that doesn't wear its feelings on its sleeve, but given the effects it's after, that would be counterproductive. [17 Sept 1993, Calendar, p.F-1]

Director Ben Masters’ compelling, gorgeously shot, super-timely documentary The River and the Wall should be required viewing of anyone charged with making a public case for or against a border wall between the United States and Mexico.

A memory play and a sleight of hand, Eternal Sunshine is more than anything else deeply sincere. Like Spike Jonze, who directed "Adaptation" and "Being John Malkovich," Gondry succeeds principally by balancing Kaufman's churning skepticism with unflinching hope.

Through an economy of exposition, Eyimofe, (translated as “This is My Desire”) delivers a timeless, universal portrait of human resilience while establishing Arie and Chuko as a welcome new addition to the filmmaking brood.

Those who see it will, quite frankly, not believe their luck. It is that satisfying, that engrossing, that good.

It is one of those scorching films that burns through emotions, uses up actors, wrings out audiences. And the jazz, well, it has its own moments of brutal, breathtaking fusion.

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]

It convincingly demonstrates that when done right, moral and political quandaries can be the most intensely dramatic dilemmas of all.

House of Flying Daggers finds the great Chinese director at his most romantic in this thrilling martial arts epic that involves a conflict between love and duty carried out to its fullest expression.

While some individuals are inevitably more compelling than others, as a whole the entire series, and 63 Up in particular, is completely enveloping as it draws us into the latest happenings of these people we’ve followed for so long.

Minding the Gap is an essay that never feels like an essay, an intelligent and compassionate grappling with some of the most painful issues presently haunting the body politic: toxic masculinity and domestic violence, economic depression and a deep, existential despair. But Liu doesn’t contrive a simplistic thesis on Middle American misery to suit himself and his friends.

A provocative political thriller that is as troubling today as when it came out in 1970. Maybe more so.

Writer-director Steven Zaillian proves as much of a prodigy as his chess-playing subject, turning out a film that is a beautifully calibrated model of honestly sentimental filmmaking, made with delicacy, restraint and unmistakable emotional power. The feelings it goes for are almost never the easy or obvious ones, and the levers it presses are all the more effective because of that.

That Two Days, One Night retains such an organic sensibility, even with a major star in the lead, is credit to both filmmakers and actress.

If “Killers” miscalibrates its balance of perspectives, it also discovers, in the luminous recesses of Gladstone’s performance, a quality of contemplation that beautifully suffuses and modulates Scorsese’s faster, more frenetic rhythms.

In a time when so many documentary filmmakers take on advocacy roles, National Gallery represents the heart of what Wiseman does best — step back and let the place and its people lead the story.

This is a police procedural, if you will, about what's been called the artistic crime of the century.

Echoes the unmistakable freshness and excitement of the Nouvelle Vague, the sense of joy in being alive and making movies, that made those works distinctive and unforgettable.

What makes the famous 1949 Raoul Walsh gangster film White Heat a classic is its crackling tension that derives from Walsh's breakneck pace and the developing psychological complexity of James Cagney's Cody Jarrett. [21 Oct 1990, p.6]

Elle is a gripping whodunit, a tour de force of psychological suspense and a wickedly droll comedy of manners.

This small gem of a movie always feels true and real as it gently reveals the quiet moments that define our lives.

Impressively, Gangs of Wasseypur manages its sprawling story lines deftly and maintains a brisk pace throughout its daunting length. The performances are uniformly excellent, even if no character in Part 1 is at all likable.

With his corrosive brand of take-no-prisoners humor that scalds on contact, Cohen is the most intentionally provocative comedian since Lenny Bruce and early Richard Pryor, with a difference. For unlike those predecessors, there is a mean-spiritedness, an every-man-for-himself coldness about his humor. The one kind of laughter you won't find in Borat is that which acknowledges shared humanity. Instead, there is that pitiless staple of reality TV, watching others humiliate themselves for our viewing pleasure.

For all the struggle that takes place in this movie, it is its quiet grace that you most remember. Minari shares its secrets with a whisper, and as it unfolds, you find yourself leaning into it, enraptured.

With exquisite poise, wry humor and delicate swells of feeling, The Farewell addresses and gently critiques the stoicism that Asians and Asian Americans are often taught to project as a matter of pride and dignity.

Such is the intensity of Ceylan's vision that a perfectly natural, even casual, course of events, which is what the film consists of, makes Kasaba utterly compelling. [30 Sep 2004, p.E13]

The movie’s moxie makes it impossible not to get caught up in Marty’s crusade. We’re giddy even when he’s miserable.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is a marvel of Japanese animation, a hand-drawn, painterly epic that submerges us in a world of beauty.

A film that both treasures the life span of a lit match and respects the patience it takes to endure a prison term, “Great Freedom” makes an exquisite case for the impossibility of caging the heart, even when love itself is criminalized.

The result, narrated in a grave monotone by Campbell Scott, is a catalog of horrors so absurd and relentless it verges on farce, or Greek tragedy.

As if to prove that the unlikeliest material can make for the best films, The Madness of King George, directed by Nicholas Hytner from Alan Bennett's prize-winning play, has taken this footnote to history and transformed it into one of the triumphs of the year--potent, engrossing and even thrilling to experience.

Phoenix is an intoxicating witches' brew, equal parts melodrama and moral parable, that audaciously mixes diverse elements to compelling, disturbing effect.

With a breathtaking eye for one-shot scenes and unwavering confidence in the demands he makes on our monkey-brained attention spans, Diaz has crafted a stunning piece of time travel, its languidness and exquisitely hued imagery working in perfect sync.

Its style is spare, rigorous, almost anti-dramatic, but it deals thoughtfully with some of the most complex elements of the human equation.

Kossakovsky doesn’t anthropomorphize the animals; if anything, he zoomorphizes us.

Campion handles the story with puzzle-box precision, but the power of this movie goes beyond its clockwork plotting and startling, deeply satisfying denouement.

Twenty-four years later -- digitally spruced up, with some scenes shaved and others padded with previously cut material -- Scott's film still shreds nerves.

What’s remarkable about this wondrously assured debut is that technique never overwhelms feeling, in part because Kogonada makes the two seem inextricably, harmoniously linked.

It combines delightful humor and charm with what movies at their best have always conveyed: the honest power of pure emotion. It is a movie love story and a love note to the movies, all at the same time.

Of course, Yankee Doodle Dandy is short on answers -- picture biographies from the '40s tended to ignore facts, opting instead for more emotional entertainment -- but that doesn't dissuade us. Curtiz and Cagney make their point, that dreamland America can be a helluva place, especially for gutter snipes (like Cagney) turned glitter stars (like Cohan). [30 Jun 1994, p.16]

It's one of Hitchcock's most inventive works, a great favorite of French director Jean Renoir. [24 Sep 1995, p.71]

Give yourself some time to adjust and Martel's style, at once immersive and disorienting, starts to feel like a corrective, a clearer way of seeing and hearing. The physical world here is not some abstract commodity; it is fiercely, palpably present, and utterly indifferent to the whims of men arrogant enough to think they can tame it into submission.

The most memorable section of the film is the chilling quarter-hour devoted to the apprehension and eventual murder of the Clutter family. Captured in unblinking, neo-documentary detail, it freezes the blood just as they did all those decades ago.

It takes exceptional acting to enable a story like this to take hold, and Campion has gotten it here. [19 Nov 1993]

In ways both subtle and overt, the movie continually draws our attention to the human consciousness guiding every shot, the hand that is gently yet unmistakably manipulating the image.

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.

This is a funny film about death, which is to say it’s a wrenching film about life.

Brooding, beautifully made and almost impossible for Americans to see -- Quai des Orfèvres, makes a triumphant reappearance on theatrical screens after an absence of about 50 years.

The Quiet Girl is both the best reason movies should look to more compact narratives for adaptation and, in a few instances, indicative of where cinematic choices can leave unnecessary footprints. But everything in this heartfelt tale is made with the deepest sincerity, and gently packed with soulful portrayals and lovely imagery.

Letters From Iwo Jima, takes audiences to a place that would seem unimaginable for an American director. Daring and significant, it presents a picture from life's other side, not only showing what wartime was like for our Japanese adversaries on that island in the Pacific but also actually telling the story in their language. Which turns out to be no small thing.

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.

By far the most approachable of the director's recent films, with an emotional depth that's true to life and a streamlined narrative that for long stretches barely contains a word.

The heart of The Conversation’s appeal, then and now, is the way it combines an exceptional character study, a thriller plot and an ability to superbly convey the unease of a society where blanket surveillance is getting to be the norm.

It is a stylish, durable piece of epic Americana, replete with some of the most beloved songs in musical theater and rich in its sense of period. [15 Jul 1985, p.2]

A sense of disorientation is a wholly appropriate response to a movie in which the past is both irretrievable and unshakable. But even at its most openly baffling, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” never loses its seductive pull.

Three Minutes: A Lengthening is a snapshot, a memorial, a knotty philosophical detective story and a devastating account of Nazi atrocities. It’s also an extended rumination on the illusory, entropic nature of the cinematic medium itself.

Even with its flaws, this latest Disney animated feature once again delivers what its audience wants.

Director Spike Lee has made some of the most hard-edged and unsettling American films on racism and its effects. Yet none has been as moving as this. [24 Oct 1997, Pg.F2]

Crime + Punishment is a quiet documentary but a potent one. Though its approach is low key, its passion, drama and concern for exposing wrongdoing is unmistakable.

Its sentimentality is ragged at times, but the overall quilt of the film is well constructed. [09 Apr 1992, p.15]

To the less patient viewer, the lack of clarity on the finer points of high finance and characters’ backgrounds and not getting period-orienting news updates about the political situation, might seem confounding. But Azor works without them, because those details would only disrupt the artfully portentous chill Fontana gets from the pitch-perfect performances and design, and Gabriel Sandru’s cinematography.

It's an exquisite reminder of the wondrous things that can happen when a storyteller of boundless imagination avails himself of some rigorous discipline.

Impudent, grandiose, a multilevel crowd-pleaser--almost returns the Disney animated features to their glory traditions of the '30s and '40s.

With City Hall, his 45th feature, he [Wiseman] has composed another epic from a series of intricate, carefully arranged miniatures, a four-and-a-half-hour sprawl of a movie that will leave you admiring its agility and concision.

Writer-directors Joel and Ethan have seized the opportunity afforded by the Oscar-winning success of "No Country for Old Men," to make their most personal, most intensely Jewish film, a pitch-perfect comedy of despair that, against some odds, turns out to be one of their most universal as well.

Miller and Futterman avoid the pitfalls of the genre by refusing to mythologize the artist, plunging instead into the soul of the man.

Iannucci's take-no-prisoners directorial style is perfect for this blackest of farces.

The effortlessly orchestrated dialogue scenes are riveting, but what’s remarkable is that, no matter how talkative Samet and his cohorts are, they often don’t say what they mean. The characters argue politics, worldviews or how to handle the disturbing accusations leveled against Samet and Kenan at school, but their rhetorical jousting masks unspoken resentments and disappointments.

This is a difficult film to pigeonhole, an indefinable mixture of genres and attitudes that is by turns off-the-wall and serious, comic and sad.

Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths invites you to spend an hour and a half with the most insufferable woman in the world. (If you personally know a worse one, my condolences.) That the unpleasantness turns out to be time well spent is a credit to Leigh’s curiosity about miserable jerks and the joy-sucking traps they set for themselves and others.

In the hands of uncommon writer-director Martin McDonagh and a splendid cast toplined by Frances McDormand in what could be the role of her rich and varied career, the how and why of those billboards becomes a savage film, even a dangerous one, the blackest take-no-prisoners farce in quite some time.

Olshefski excerpts and shapes the passing years with a fluent intimacy that makes the calamitous intrusion of random gun violence, and its lasting effect on the Raineys’ daughter, PJ, all the more shocking.

It has the subtlety and devastating impact of Renoir’s prophetic classic Rules of the Game, and it is suffused with the calm, detached tragic irony and inevitability of the ancient Greek plays.

Things to Come holds us completely. A life is unfolding here, under our eyes, and we never lose sight of how special that is.

The writer-director's familiar style blends with a group of unexpected factors to create a magnificently cockeyed entertainment.

Told with an unassuming, gentle simplicity that grows into an accumulating emotional power, the film manages to feel very small and specific while also vast and expansive.

Like so much of Ceylan's work, Winter Sleep is a haunting piece.

The result is a show business rush so pure it would be illegal if it were a drug. Though the film’s peek behind the celebrity-curtain love story inevitably falters a bit in the second half, the emotional waves it has already created manage to carry us over the rough spots.

Citizenfour is a formidable viewing experience, but it's not necessarily a problem-free film.

Not just an especially subtle and thoughtful psychological drama, it's a provocative, even an unnerving one as well.

Poignant, wise and unafraid -- just the sort of film for a young person, or any person, for that matter, to make.

One of the show’s more obvious lessons is that history is a living, breathing entity, and that the cyclical rise-and-fall narratives of leaders and empires can be studied and recounted in ways that uncover bold new patterns of meaning. This film, a straightforward capture of a momentous work of art, illuminates those patterns in ways both sobering and thrilling.

A magnificent film almost no one knows about, this hidden classic offers a wider variety of pleasures than most contemporary works can even aspire to.

The moment-to-moment pleasures of trying to decipher the plot give way to crushing futility; you’re left sifting through the pieces of a puzzle that’s almost too painful to solve.

An intricate, dazzling cinematic dance, Foxtrot goes both deeper in and further out than standard-issue cinema. It's profound and moving and wild and crazy at the same time, simultaneously telling a specific story and offering an emotional snapshot of a country whose very soul seems to be at risk.

Because it is confident of its story and its powers, “Howards End” takes the time to establish itself, to allow its characters the space to demonstrate subtlety and complexity.

One of the scariest films ever made. Deborah Kerr gives one of her greatest performances as a rather high-strung governess. [15 Aug 2003, p.18]

After watching Charles Ferguson's powerhouse documentary about the global economic crisis, you will more than understand what went down - you will be thunderstruck and boiling with rage.

While many familiar tropes are present, including murder, mayhem, a tough lawman and a tentative posse, Thornton uses them to tell a 20th century outback story and offer sharp, pointed commentary on relations between whites and indigenous peoples.

Fiercely involving in a way we're not used to, made with sensitivity and honesty by director/co-writer Debra Granik, it tells its emotional story of a father and daughter living dangerously off the grid in a way that is unnerving and uncompromising yet completely satisfying.

Never loses its priceless stamp of individuality. Reduced to its essence, this is a joke told by a person, not a corporation--and that makes all the difference.

“Donnie Darko" was one of the best pictures released in 2001. Now that it has returned in a 20-minute longer--and richer -- director's cut, it seems sure to be ranked as one of the key American films of the decade.

The gift of The King's Speech is that it allows us to look on as a pair of masterful actors re-create a monumental test of wills.

With the perfect assist from their actors, all of whom are well in on the joke, this affectionate look at the frozen North brings the Coens back in from the cold.

The genius of Parallel Mothers lies in the way it gathers up so many of its maker’s preoccupations — the heroic fortitude of women, the tragic absence of men — and rewires them in an unexpected and entirely necessary direction. It finds Almodóvar doing something new by doing what he has always done well: finding grace and beauty amid suffering, and keeping memory alive.

That Hell or High Water makes you empathize with and understand (though not excuse) each member of this disparate quartet is a tribute to the way Taylor Sheridan’s screenplay works equally well as a thriller, character study and pointed social commentary.

Rarely has any film, let alone an animated one powered by the logic of dream and fantasy, been able to move so successfully -- and so effortlessly -- through so many different kinds of cinematic territory.

A knotty detective yarn, a funny valentine to Singapore and one of the year’s most ardent expressions of movie love, it tells a story of cinematic theft, and in the process, becomes an entrancing feat of cinematic reclamation.