It's a fine mix of suspense and character study. [02 Mar 1990, p.G41]

If Inside Out doesn’t stack up with the best Pixar movies (Wall-E, Finding Nemo, Toy Story), that’s because there’s less plot here than usual, and even at a lean 95 minutes, the movie starts to drag a bit just before it ends.

What makes it the best movie of the year -- is its insight into human behavior.

Underneath its sometimes frothy and often witty trappings, it’s a wistful meditation on the inevitable losses that accompany growing up and moving on. The real mood is captured perfectly in Judy Garland’s bittersweet rendition of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. [16 Dec 2012]

Sunset Boulevard is one of those films which serve as milestones in the progress of the motion picture toward its goal of an entertainment art. [08 Sep 1950, p.22]

Feels like a miracle, a movie that exceeds even the most formidable expectations without straying from its singular path. All hail this King.

Part of the accomplishment of Carlos is the sheer accumulation of detail the movie amasses, and the longer running time gives you a deeper sense of the terrorist lifestyle, and when and why Ilich gradually succumbed to ego and self-glorification without realizing it.

Here is a celebration of the artistic drive that is also a daring feat of showmanship, as technically accomplished in its own way as “Mad Max Fury Road” or “The Revenant."

Inside Llewyn Davis is one of the Coens’ smallest movies — this one doesn't have the broad appeal of "True Grit" or "No Country For Old Men" — but like Llewyn’s music, it comes from the heart and it is deeply felt. It is also one of their best.

A best picture Oscar winner, and one of the finest of all American films. [04 Aug 1989, p.37]

The fact that that character happens to be so repellent -- and yet so endlessly fascinating -- is one of the film's many strokes of genius.

Brother's Keeper is fascinating. It doesn't answer all the questions, but it illuminates life in a small, strange and in some ways wonderful place. [16 Nov 1992, p.C3]

Spotlight is simply a great story exceedingly well told, through characters whose fingers are perpetually stained with ink.

If Close-Up is not much to look at, it certainly enthralls the mind. [09 Feb 1996, p.16G]

Skillfully straddles an intriguing line between reality and fiction.

Platoon lacks the sweep, the heroic (and anti-heroic) vision of Apocalypse Now, and it lacks that film's signal strength, which was its evocation of the visceral appeal, the sheer romance of war, at least to those not fighting it. Some of Coppola's images in Apocalypse Now were among the most beautiful in contemporary film. Platoon is merely terrifying. [16 Jan 1987, p.6]

A model of pitch and modulation and craft. For two hours, the Coens hold you in their grip so tightly that for long stretches it feels a little hard to breathe.

In The Act of Killing, director Joshua Oppenheimer pulls off the impossible: He confronts great, incomprehensible evil and puts a human face on it.

Jackson's dazzling vision turns the story into a real movie-movie -- one that, unlike too many fantasy films today, is genuinely transporting.

It’s a cry of despair and soul-shaking desperation, leavened with shades of Dostoyevskyan angst.

As film noirs go, this one is a classic.

A worthy and delirious final chapter to this hallowed animation franchise.

The key to the movie's success is that it was made by people who know and doubtless even enjoy rock in all its infinite, often tedious variety. This distinguishes Spinal Tap from the usual run of spoof, created at a distance by bemused outsiders (Johnny Carson in a mop-top wig, etc.). Reiner and company actually understand the media they are lampooning; the result is not only funny, but lethal. [27 Apr 1984, p.D1]

More than once during The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat), it's easy to forget you're watching a movie.

It's a sign of just how much Coppola respects her characters that she doesn't make us privy to that final line: It is only meant for them to share. But like the rest of the ethereal Lost in Translation, you don't need to have it spelled out in order to feel it.

Her argues that sometimes, crazy can be wonderful.

The movie itself is a nominee for Best Animated Feature, and it's good enough to pull a surprise upset over the beloved Finding Nemo. It's a mad masterpiece.

If only Beau Travail had a more dramatic edge, this nicely done film wouldn't have felt so long.