There isn't a moment in the movie where you don't feel Spielberg's passion, and this time, the film is worthy of his enthusiasm. It's a knockout.

This is not the sort of movie you can just leave behind in the theater. And like any true finale to a trilogy, the picture doesn't work nearly as well if you haven't seen the previous two installments: It's not designed to stand alone, and it pays off all that has come before with an exuberant, thrilling high.

If it had been a drama, The Wolf of Wall Street might have been unwatchable: There’s simply too much of everything. But Scorsese and screenwriter Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire) hit on the genius idea to turn the story into a riotous comedy, one that keeps topping itself everytime you think it can’t possibly get crazier.

Movies that demand to be seen by everyone -- not only for their entertainment value, but for what they say -- are precious rarities. Spike Lee's Get On the Bus is one of those films. You walk out of it feeling the world's axis has tilted ever so slightly: No matter who you are, or what your perspective was going in, the movie will make you look at last year's Million Man March -- and all of black America -- through different eyes. [16 Oct 1996, p.1D]

Though not on the epic scale of Fantasia or Bambi, Lady and the Tramp is one of the more charming animated features ever made and has depth enough to keep adults as well as children occupied, if not enthralled. [15 Feb 1986, p.C6]

One of the many pleasures of this beautifully composed, measured movie is how it reminds you of the power of pure storytelling -- an art that's too often overlooked in contemporary films in the rush for sensation and excitement.

Has the feel of an instant classic, a melodrama with an exacting precision and a visceral, propulsive energy.

Delivers the heady, rib-tickling rush of an action picture, and it gradually builds to an emotional wallop that blindsides you.

The movie is an absolute triumph of culturally relevant filmmaking – a film that will thrill and fascinate sport junkies and non-fans alike. If you like baseball, you will love this movie. If you hate baseball, you will still love this movie.

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.

So Woody Allen has turned nostalgic for at least a movie. He remembers the old days. He knows it's a cliche to think of those old days, whenever they were, as simpler, sweeter times. But Allen can turn the cliche on its head, and convince us that they were indeed, if not more innocent, more interesting times. And not just for him. [30 Jan 1987, p.D1]

An extraordinary movie that ruffled many feathers when it first came out. Almost 40 years later, it retains the poignancy it delivered back then. Its message is not lost in our present state of affairs.

The Little Mermaid is teeming with life, and best of all, it may show the young ones that the oceans are, too. [17 Nov 1989, p.G4]

Remains a remarkable, almost timeless study.

The new version is a glorious, thrilling throwback that never sacrifices its solid roots in the western genre despite a sharp modern update that actually improves on the original.

The movie gives you what you think you want, and then gives you some more, and just when you think things can't get any worse, Haneke swoops in and smashes the wall between fiction and reality, turning the viewer into a direct accomplice to what's transpiring onscreen. It is an astonishing film, sure to be controversial, and quite simply unforgettable. [30 Jan. 1998, p.6G]

Raising Arizona is the best comedy about kidnapping ever made. Small category, admittedly. This is a film that gets a laugh -- legitimate, unqualified, not a sick laugh at all -- out of a running gag in which a baby is left in the middle of an Arizona highway by thugs on the lam. Cars bear down, a "biker from Hell" attacks. How many filmmakers could get away with baby-in-jeopardy jokes? [10 Apr 1987, p.D1]

In Rappeneau's hands -- and in his choice of the face of Gerard Depardieu as Cyrano -- self-hatred, not a nose, ultimately becomes Cyrano's nemesis. Nothing in the middle of Depardieu's beautiful face -- no protuberance, no scar, no blemish -- could destroy the nobility and honesty of his eyes. [21 Dec 1990, p.G11]

This is a story that in hindsight we can see was waiting for Scorsese to come along. He did. The result is wonderful. [17 Sept 1993, p.G5]

A rich, marvelous movie -- the kind that enchants on so many different levels, it leaves you feeling giddy.

Her argues that sometimes, crazy can be wonderful.

The good news is you’re feeling stuff, you know? And you’ve got to hold on to that. You get older, and you don’t feel as much, your skin gets tough.” This remarkable, wonderful movie helps you remember.

Makes the Columbine shootings seem both abstract yet more painful and vivid. It also gets you excited all over again about the things movies can do.

Seydoux says that when the film was completed and released shortly after the end of the war, it became a symbol of freedom.

If ever a movie may be said to have perfect pitch, then Eight Men Out is the one. It is a triumph of ensemble playing, so intent on giving each player equal time that in the beginning it is a little difficult to keep them all straight. But this approach pays dividends in the end when we understand and feel for them all, the ringleaders as well as the more innocent victims. [08 Sept 1988, p.D3]

It's a beautiful, strange tone poem about childhood and innocence, set in a strange but still recognizable world where the polar ice caps are melting, crayfish shacks float down rivers and enormous aurochs, an extinct breed of bison, are sloughing their way toward our tiny, adorable narrator.

This is a big, beautifully designed movie in which the filmmakers' intelligence is everywhere; it's the product of a special vision. And Brian De Palma continues to be good news from Hollywood. [3 June 1987, p.D1]

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.