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.