After a leisurely first half, The Devil's Backbone becomes utterly spellbinding, its tension mounting in steady increments, its story taking one dark turn after another, and its bittersweet resolution destined to haunt you long after you've left the theater.

We never get much insight into this rather mysterious composer, a difficult task but one the movie seems to promise. [04 Feb 1994, p.G21]

If only more romantic comedies played out as charmingly and perceptively as this one.

Those rigorously moral and humanistic underpinnings give 28 Weeks Later a kind of power that 100 Saws and Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes could never achieve.

So thoroughly absorbing while it's unfolding that later, when you play the movie back in your head, it's surprising to realize how ordinary it is. That's a testament to Nolan's talent: He's able to make even the hoariest clichés feel fresh.

While House of Mirth is well done as a period piece, it has such an eerie contemporary resonance that you nearly forget about the horses and corsets and lamplight.

Gas, Food, Lodging should send plenty of movie offers in Balk's direction. She's a perceptive and subtle actress, comfortable at playing both adolescent giddiness and terror in the same unmannered style. It is her performance, and the touching character she creates, that ultimately makes this movie worth seeing. [9 Nov 1982, p.E3]

Taylor is effective as a woman struggling to take control of her life, but Ambrose's work feels shallow in comparison.

What ensues is a love story ringed by barbed wire and etched in blood with the jagged neck of a broken beer bottle.

If you haven't caught Lightning on PBS already, find a theater with a good sound system, sit back and be grateful the music endures.

Glory leaves you with not just the sense of its characters' triumph over injustice, but their destruction by the very system that empowered them to begin with. There's no escaping that story, either -- even if Glory doesn't really tell it. [12 Jan 1990, p.G5]

Swinton single-handedly carries The Deep End past its nagging ambiguities.

Nothing overly dramatic happens during the course of The Taste of Others but the characters prove to be engaging and their quite real human emotions are enough to carry it.

A film of rare beauty, lifted by some of the best acting you may see in any film this year.

Democrats will enjoy The War Room more than anyone: Other parties unavoidably receive short shrift here, and Bush barbs (some of them hilariously pointed) fly constantly. Regardless of your party ties, however, The War Room is riveting viewing -- proof once again that when it comes to politics, the movies have nothing over reality. [26 Feb 1994, p.G5]

This bruising, harrowing movie would be impossible to sit through without at least a hint of light at the end of its astonishingly dark tunnel.

Groening doesn't judge the monks' actions, nor does he tell us much about their reasons for choosing such a life. Yet the film brings us into their lives not as an observer but almost as a fellow hermit, making you realize how hard -- or easy -- it would be to commit yourself to such a life.

Blue Jasmine, which is easily Allen’s best and most powerful movie since 2005’s "Match Point", is filled with terrific performances, including Hawkins as the sweet-natured Ginger.

It's a dry, mundane title. It's also the only thing about the film that doesn't blow your mind right out of its comfortable, I've-seen-all-this-before rut.

The cast is uniformly spectacular, infusing the characters with nuance and complexity.

What strikes you the most about this well put-together film is how little you're drawn to either character or really understand where either is coming from.

The story is worth telling, one that begs the question: Has anything changed?

The film is art in all its visual splendor, and no matter how confusing the historic story line may be to Westerners -- and it is -- the images on screen more than compensate for the faults.

Often, the movie leaves you wishing Briski had found a way to document more of her subjects' day-to-day lives.

Breathe is empathetic and humane — the movie cares equally about both girls, each damaged in her own way — and it ends with a brusque, unexpected reminder that kindness and patience can easily curdle.

The Freshman isn't big at all, but it's no bauble, and it's no genre piece. It's quite unhinged, in fact -- the film seems continuously on the verge of spinning off into madness. It never does, which is kind of too bad. But it's never dull, and it's never cute, and it's not at all what Brando thought it was. [27 July 1990, p.G5]

Near Dark never drags. When it is funny, it can be wonderfully dark, and when it's scary it is wonderfully mean. Bigelow has a rough-trade sensibility that shows through just often enough. None of the romance of the vampire legend for her and Red; just blood and guts and weird trouble from that odd family down the road. The ensemble cast (three of whom, Henriksen, Paxton and Goldstein are veterans of Aliens) treats it all like red-blooded fun, the effects are swell, and Bigelow is just mean enough to bear watching. [9 Oct 1987, p.D1]

Though there is certainly more to the film than its voluptuous second half -- Babette is an agent of redemption in more ways than one, for instance -- there's no overlooking the simple appeal of the climactic serving. [10 Feb 1988, p.D6]