The film has a marvelous first half. All of Zinnemann's best qualities -- tact, taste, integrity, quiet intellect and idealism -- shine through in the convent scenes, as does the acting. However, good as Peter Finch is (as an agnostic doctor), the second half seems hurried, over-reticent. [25 Mar 1988, p.22]

[A] tender, harrowing and beautifully modulated coming-of-age drama.

Thanks to Cruise and Kosinski’s unfashionable insistence on practical filmmaking and their refusal to lean too heavily on computer-generated visual effects, their sequel plays like a throwback in more than one sense. But the era that produced the first film has shifted, and “Top Gun: Maverick” is especially poignant in the ways, both subtle and overt, that it acknowledges the passage of time, the fading of youth and the shifting of its own status as a pop cultural phenomenon.

What emerges from the electronic noise and fussy aesthetic of “BlackBerry” is a compelling portrait of a company that flew too close to the sun.

If that wistful, cleareyed melancholy were its primary mood, Gas Food Lodging might have been a little masterpiece. It isn't -- but it's good enough. Anders gets the externals of her vision of Laramie: a world of high skies, searing deserts, dusty stores and roads that vanish into a flat horizon. And the internals: the bickering, hurts, dreams and little everyday epiphanies. If many movies avoid or disguise the world, shining it up beyond recognition, Gas Food Lodging takes the opposite approach, a better one. It jumps right into life, faces it with careless affection, clarity and courage. [14 Aug 1982, p.F8]

Intelligent, involving and conspicuously adult, Starting Out in the Evening is almost shocking in its distinctiveness, its ability to create high drama from an unlikely source.

I think that the filmmakers’ pessimism is inseparable from their compassion and that their compassion is inseparable from their rage.

To describe 3 Faces as a multi-generational portrait would not be entirely inaccurate, though it would risk divesting the movie of its quotidian poetry, its deep reserves of mystery and its rich rewards for an open-hearted audience. Sometimes, as these characters understand by journey’s end, it’s important to go and discover the truth for yourself.

Amore satisfying use of the medium would be difficult to imagine.

Sun-drenched Luzzu is an unaffected triumph with a simmering power, the type of deceivingly familiar film that helps us sail into a place and a lifestyle most of us ignore but that are made vividly compelling in the hand of a new storyteller with classically honed sensibilities.

In a superb cast of mostly unknowns -- with the exception of Matthew Modine and Dorain Harewood -- D'Onofrio, who put on 60 pounds for this pivotal role, and Ermey are exceptional. [26 June 1987]

Stanwyck deftly handles the film’s mix of pathos, comedy and romance. Remember the Night also demonstrates how capable MacMurray could be as leading man.

Impeccably made, uncompromising in its implacable vision of the deranging power of love, sex and controlled substances, this savage and staggering film knows how to take our breath away.

Unlike many “adult” moviemakers, Henson believed his core audience capable of appreciating wit, irony, topical humor, idealism, intense emotion and bemused reflections on real life and all its complexity. All these, and more, are present in The Witches.

One terrific concert film.

Each new segment of All That’s Left of You is its own self-contained drama, but they build on one another, the past’s invisible weight bearing down on children who cannot fully comprehend the sorrow that came before, but have grown up knowing nothing else.

Warfare is strictly the facts, and those alone are terrible, brave, intense, random, tedious and captivating.

An eloquent, heart-tugging Civil War epic about the first black infantry regiment to march off to battle for the Union. And epic is the word. Not since John Ford has a film maker created such dramatic large-scale Civil War battle scenes in a major theatrical film.

Exquisitely made with a mesmerizing sense of style, it shows the wonderful things that can happen when traditional material is both handled with care and adroitly updated.

It could have done with fewer plot devices, but it is ultimately far more satisfying than countless less ambitious and risky films.

All of this romantic back and forth unfolds gradually and in charming ensemble style. As the characters think about seducing each other, as they inevitably complicate their lives without being able to help themselves, the film is simultaneously seducing us.

Writer-director Jay Bulger combines warts-heavy interview footage of Baker with vivid archival bits, concert clips, jaunty animation and chats with various musical greats to paint a lively portrait of yet another brilliant but wildly self-destructive artist.

Women Who Kill is delightfully specific in its approach to its characters and their community. It takes a familiar theme of romantic comedies — the fear of commitment — and gives it new life by adding a morbid element to the mix.

Intimate in the telling, sweeping in the implications, Loznitsa has created an unusually incisive film.

What A Bug's Life demonstrates is that when it comes to bugs, the most fun ones to hang out with hang exclusively with the gang at Pixar.

A documentary that's admirably frank about the difficulties of insightfully portraying such a widely lauded — and subtly cagey and habitually self-effacing — figure.

The Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside of the Arkansas governor’s presidential campaign, with Carville playing Huck Finn to Stephanopoulos’ Tom Sawyer, these lively presences lit up Clinton’s drive to the White House and turn The War Room into a tiptop political documentary that offers a candid and entertaining backstage look at a most unlikely electoral Juggernaut.

Nothing quite prepares you for the rough-cut diamond that is Precious. A rare blend of pure entertainment and dark social commentary, this shockingly raw, surprisingly irreverent and absolutely unforgettable story.