On a par with Bridges' acting, and a sine qua non for Crazy Heart's success, is the excellent music he sings.

Lo’s humane film helps us glimpse the lives of those who are often overlooked, whether they walk the streets of Istanbul on four legs or two.

De Palma's biggest asset, not surprisingly, is the man himself. A formidable talker who is invariably smart, candid and acerbic, De Palma is a person of considerable self-confidence, and listening to him hold forth gives us an always-involving glimpse inside a singular cinematic mind.

Cuaron perfectly understands how a combination of simplicity and restraint help to create a sense of wonder on screen. Under his sure, quiet direction, A Little Princess casts the type of spell most family films can only dream about. [10 May 1995, p.1]

There’s an acting master class to savor, as one might expect from a cast that includes Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne, each of them in career-best form.

Custody can be difficult, even wrenching to watch, but it always plays fair with the audience, and the experience, worth every minute expended, is impossible to forget.

The movie is first fascinating, then terrifying.

It's typical of the nerve, the bravado, the sheer giddy playfulness and sense of fun that characterize what has to be the boldest and most imaginative studio film of the year.

Director Amir Bar-Lev finds a way to mix the personal, the philosophical and the historical into a complex human document, something that's funny, moving and sad.

A near-classic, balanced evenly between camp and carnality.

The Snapper is amiability itself. Good-humored and sassy, it is one of those charmingly off-the-cuff films that doesn't let its small scale stand in the way of pleasure. [03 Dec 1993, p.F1]

This exercise in beauty, derangement and memory can be contemplative or silly. Often it's both, in just the right proportions.

Rather than observing this family, we feel we are part of it, and that draws us in as nothing else can.

Exuberant and pitiless, profane yet eloquent, flush with the ability to create laughter out of unspeakable situations, Trainspotting is a drop-dead look at a dead-end lifestyle that has all the strength of its considerable contradictions.

With his ability to understand and convey these absurdist scenarios in both adult and preteen terms, writer-director Solondz catches the unlooked-for humor in poignant, hurtful situations.

Among other things, “The Disciple” is a decades-spanning chronicle of an entertainment industry in constant technological flux, which means it’s fascinated by the ephemeral as well as the eternal.

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.

Kreutzer, who wrote the screenplay, proves especially adept, in conjunction with editor Ulrike Kofler, at the natural suspense of pinging between Lola’s professional and personal lives, and where the vulnerabilities in one bleed into the other. It’s a steady tension that’s greatly enhanced by Kreutzer’s spatially conscious visual style.

What’s quietly miraculous about Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, considering its added tragic weight, is what the force of Hassona’s personality and Farsi’s filmmaking choices still manage to do: speak to what’s ineffably beautiful about our human capacity for hope and connection.

A comedy about learning to live with grief, Between the Temples has a lot going on in its head and heart.

To see The Wind Rises is to simultaneously marvel at the work of a master and regret that this film is likely his last.

A pleasantly cerebral experience, exhilarating and fizzy, that goes to your head like too much Champagne.

An offbeat and life-affirming triumph, “Limbo” is the kind of original work of art that moves the needle on an issue by interrogating the human factor rather than hanging out on the impersonal surface. A movie born of our times but destined to outlive them, it deserves to cross the threshold from festival darling to audience favorite.

In the Loop is no precious show dog. It's a snarling, frothing little beastie straining at its leash.

What results is a thoughtful, analytical yet still emotional film, meticulously investigated and absolutely compelling.

The most important thing is that it is genuinely great, a singular and moving glimpse of loneliness, community and finding the strength to face another day.

The lingering lesson of Soul, a lovely, imperfect movie about life’s lovely imperfections, is that every moment is worth living to the fullest, this one very much included.

It's a film of high energy, punctuated by rock music and a dark wit, yet it is capable of profound reflection and tragic irony.