Maurice's slow, agonized dawning of his true nature and its consequences are as beautifully evoked on the screen as it is on the printed page, thanks to James Wilby's wonderfully unaffected portrayal of Maurice and to Ivory and his co-adapter Kit Hesketh-Harvey's graceful yet succinct script, a miracle of both apt selectivity and development that does full honor to its distinguished source. [01 Oct 1987]

With Manhunter, there seems to be some danger that style has overrun content, leaving behind a vast, chic, well-cast wasteland. [15 Aug 1986]

Grant and Kermani skillfully keep the audience in suspense from start to finish, even if it’s just by withholding what the heck is actually happening.

Zhang’s own authorial touch is unmistakable in the mazelike palace intrigues, the phalanxes of armed soldiers and the ferocious bursts of action, plus the climactic nationalist overtones of a story that pits the will of several individuals against the fate of an empire.

Titane is nothing if not a triumph of engineering, to the point where the slickness and sophistication of its technique sometimes threaten to overwhelm the rigor of its ideas. Still, it’s hard not to admire the sheer verve with which Ducournau ultimately welds those ideas together.

Both riveting character study and experiential glimpse at the Africa-to-Europe sex slave trade, Austrian-Iranian filmmaker Sudabeh Mortezai’s “Joy” builds its reservoir of sadness with pulsing efficiency.

Robert Stephens is Sherlock, Colin Blakely is Watson, and the movie is one of Wilder's least cynical and most romantic, a sadly elegant celebration of gaslit sleuthery. [09 Apr 1989, p.4]

McQuarrie is adept at keeping things moving and has overseen two areas where "Rogue Nation" stands out from the crowd.

A soulful, atmospheric travelogue that toggles between immersing in and removing itself from the chaotic beauty of teeming humanity, El Said's movie gives a humming, on-the-edge metropolis its heart-pumping, reflective due.

If the details of “Kidnapped” aren’t familiar, do yourself the favor of withholding an online search until the full thunder and rigor of Bellocchio’s dramatic instincts can work you over — equivalent to a lavish ’60s period costume drama burnished into an engine of galvanizing narrative intention.

Frozen is fabulous.

Like many great monster movies, Hatching uses its creature as a metaphor for repressed emotion, and the one at the center of this film is one of the most uniquely grotesque creations seen on screen in a long time.

Alternately heart-wrenching, dismaying, raw and even funny, Solas is ultimately a wonderfully warm and embracing experience.

Reveals its secrets slowly and with coy deliberation. The storytelling has the quality of a striptease, so that by the end of the film, Le Roux looks radically different from how he appears at the start.

Although its storytelling is at times naggingly staid, its central characterizations teem with complexity and sensitivity, and for that, it’s a modest coming-of-age gem.

Its madcap delirium can’t hide its insistent politics, its disdain for sham populism and its compassion for the disenfranchised. Diamantino is no less committed to these ideas than it is to its own uneven, unforgettable lunacy.

True History of the Kelly Gang, for its part, strikes just the right balance of scary and crazy, and it subjects both to an impressive measure of discipline.

[Williams] spent two years on this project, and the trust everyone involved placed in him allowed for an emotional honesty that is Life, Animated's greatest strength.

An emotional horror story, both the play and the film triggered controversy and challenged the status quo.

Reed insists on pursuing difficult questions, and this is a film not easily forgotten.

One of the better movies to come along this year.

Maybe this picture is just a string of wacky ideas, with no deeper meaning. But for those who take the ride, it’s an hour and 17 minutes they’re unlikely to forget.

A chilling documentary that firmly positions McVeigh not as some delusional loner but rather as a product of a far-right subculture that looked on the U.S. federal government as one of the most dangerous forces on the face of the Earth.

Newman's direction is quiet and unfussy, and the film's plainness only enhances its clarity, but he also makes room for some unexpected humor and (in Rachel's death-haunted reveries) touches of macabre poetry. No less than Newman, Woodward resists melodrama at every turn, and she makes a familiar character more complicated than first impressions suggest. [15 Feb 2009, p.E10]

At a time when extremes in discourse always seem loudest, the modest pleasures of The Monk and the Gun are appealingly reasonable. Brandishing new ways doesn’t have to mean holstering old ones.

An enjoyably involving mystery-thriller.

"It is extremely difficult to be like a mountain, to create stillness in the middle of hell," is how Abramovic describes her task. The most resonant part of this surprisingly emotional film demonstrates how powerful this interaction is, how it expresses something that is no less moving for being, literally, beyond words.

Claude Chabrol makes his particular kind of unnerving, deliciously amoral thrillers look easy. Once you've made as many of them as he has, they probably are.