Director Arnaud Desplechin follows his characters on a languid excursion that is circular and, ultimately, probably pointless (which may itself be the point) -- but the trip is also funny, weepy and charming. Like Paul's life, the movie feels messy but beguiling, jumping from past to present, parading about so many look-alike long-legged, haunting women that it's hard to keep track of who's sleeping with whom. [24 April 1998, p.9G]

Dick Tracy is light on its feet where Batman clomped and wheezed, and it's fantastic -- that's the word -- where Batman was merely well designed. [15 Jun 1990, p.G5]

Tupac Amaru Shakur is riveting in Tupac: Resurrection. The rapper is a compelling, charismatic hero: articulate, well-read, politically radical, and movie-star handsome to boot (he in fact starred in Poetic Justice and Juice). Make that, was riveting.

This is an intentionally fanciful, gossamer movie, extremely personal and heartfelt, influenced in equal parts by Michelangelo Antonioni (although never so elusive) and Gus Van Sant (just not quite so self-conscious).

Monsieur Lazhar doesn't send you home depressed. Instead, the film leaves you hopeful, and even exhilarated, that even the most painful wounds can sometimes heal.

Leigh is obviously a major talent of the English film resurgence, which may already have peaked but nonetheless offers hopes of its own. His loose way of making films -- the wandering camera, the scenes that seem to invent themselves as they go along -- somehow accommodates a genuine comic intelligence, which usually requires the tightest of controls. [2 June 1989, p.7]

Waltz With Bashir isn't only a harrowing anti-war plea, it is also an eloquent and deeply moving argument that it is critical to never forget human atrocity, lest the past be repeated.

There's nothing about United 93 that qualifies as entertainment in the traditional sense: It is an unpleasant, wrenching experience, which is just as it should be.

A big, bold movie that gets at undeniable truths about the way no one, no matter how powerful, is immune from manipulation.

One of the scariest films I've seen in ages, although I cannot in all honesty explain exactly what the movie is about.

From its explosive opening sequence at a terrorist arms bazaar on the Russian border to a knockout climax on a stealth ship on the South China seas, Tomorrow Never Dies delivers what 007 aficionados demand: dynamite action, sharp one-liners and edgy style. [19 Dec 1997, p.4G]

By the end of the movie, when all your questions have been answered, you're left with the exhilarating high of having been manipulated by a gifted artist in a diabolically dark mood.

By shunning the clinical mumbo-jumbo, the movie allows the viewer's imagination to fill in the gaps, making Microcosmos a delightfully entertaining -- and often hilarious -- celebration of nature. [27 Nov 1996, p.4D]

It’s ABOUT something, which has become a rarity in Hollywood pictures. Sometimes, the smallest stories cast the largest shadows.

Broken English takes 30 minutes to do what most romantic comedies manage with a simple montage. That's a good thing, by the way.

This is a romantic comedy that makes the concept of romantic comedies appealing again -- that reminds you how resonant and transporting they can be when they're done right.

The movie isn’t a thriller, but it still generates a strange sort of emotional suspense - an incredibly intense drama that makes you hold your breath, and it builds toward a total knockout of a final scene in which the story is resolved with hardly a word.

She's such a fascinating, faceted character that halfway through "Christine" you almost forget about what's coming.

In fact, by ignoring its McCarthyist roots, The Crucible becomes more expansive and timely. This tale about the Salem witch trials of 1692 no longer seems harnessed to the now-quaint fear of communism that swept America in the 1950s: And its subject -- the power of lies and the dangers of conformity -- seems more symbolic than ever before. [20 Dec 1996, p.5G]

Almodóvar has never been shy about experimenting with plot structure, but Bad Education is the closest he's ever come to a metamovie, the sort of self-reflective, hall-of-mirrors contraption on which Charlie Kaufman has built his career.

By the end, the movie has pulled off a small miracle: You become absorbed in the lives of these people for who they are and not what they own.

A fiendishly subtle horror movie, a goosebump-inducing exercise in suspense that uses your own imagination to scare you silly.

Saraband portrays a sad vision of aging, yet the film is never depressing. For those inclined to search for psychological twists, the film offers plenty of Freudian situations capable of provoking lengthy discussions.

The Grandmaster sets aside traditional story structure in its last 15 minutes and becomes one of the filmmaker’s free-form visual poems, suffused with melancholy and compassion.

Impossible to resist.

Remarkably astute and devastatingly funny.

The film is far from a downer. If anything, more than any of the films in the trilogy, this one may be the most hopeful - and the most affecting.

It's a good, old-fashioned North Pole adventure.