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]