This stirring children's movie about separation anxiety is swimming with comic references only adults will catch, thus greatly expanding the potential audience.

A hive of broad, brilliant performances.

Gloriously inventive, delightfully nutty comic treasure is unlike anything you've ever seen. It's lunatic.

Clever, buoyant and surprisingly human.

Rahim and Arestrup are both so outstanding that if this were an English-language film, they'd probably be nominated for Oscars, too.

A great movie -- and the best movie ever about the '70s rock era.

A sunny-looking movie about the darkest paranoia.

Once isn't especially complex, but the chemistry between its appealing leads (who contribute to the lovely score) feels deeply true. You'd have to look awfully hard to find such sincerity in a Hollywood romance.

Paramount may have made a more appealing, more tenderly human and amusing picture than Going My Way, during its many years of film-making, but if so, I have missed it.

Paterson is poetic.

This is melodrama with broad theatrical flourishes, but Dietrich's sensuality is still a natural wonder, and with a new print, the Film Forum run offers a rare opportunity to see it big-screen-size.

There is no denying the emotional power of these scenes, but one wishes that Scorsese would end his Italian-American guilt trip and stop exposing mean-tempered, self-destructive characters like La Motta, whose personality problems, he apparently feels, stem from their cultural environment. Raging Bull ultimately has a numbing effect on the brain as if one's head had been pummeled by La Motta's so-called "girlish" fists.

The Gold Rush collars you, plays quickly upon your emotions and leaves you in that mood where you can't laugh without a sob tearing through, or sob without a laugh bubbling up from the depths of the understanding of laugh. [17 Aug 1925, p.79]

I wouldn't recommend the movie to anyone, but if the families of the victims take something positive from it, as their cooperation with Greengrass suggests they do, that's justification enough.

This extraordinary film refracts truth through the prism of memory, until what you get is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, full of sacrifice and betrayal.

There’s a great fever-dream quality to David O. Russell’s American Hustle that instantly reels you in.

Star Wars is somewhat grounded by a malfunctioning script and hopelessly infantile dialogue, but from a technical standpoint, it is an absolutely breathtaking achievement.

The black-and-white animation won't dazzle your eyes, but everything else about Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's adaptation of Satrapi's graphic comic book series Persepolis will hold you in its thrall.

In ferociously intense, chillingly brutal scenes, this bravely innovative, kingsized movie (one should be warned that it runs over three hours) enables one to fully understand why this particular war not only destroyed the hopes and dreams of America’s young men, but why it left so many of them permanently shattered and alienated from society.

A masterpiece? Probably. Ingenious? Absolutely! Unforgettable? I'll see you at the 10th-year anniversary.

After all the observations on heartache, politics, art, commerce, passion, identity, mortality, even mental health, six hours begin to seem downright compact.

Teller delivers a career-making performance as Andrew Neyman, a 19-year-old jazz drummer who wants to be great. Like Buddy Rich great.

Except for Hempf, every character is under incredible duress, and the performances are exceptional. With his first feature, an Oscar nominee for foreign-language film, von Donnersmarck has certainly left his mark.

The most gorgeous movie of the year. This smashing martial-arts romance from Chinese director Zhang Yimou is stunning in other ways, too, like the eroticism that ripples just beneath the surface.

Newton's eye-rolling Silver has been much impersonated but never equaled. Disney's first live-action feature was vividly shot in Technicolor by Freddie Young. [10 Nov 2002]

History has made his midair stroll meaningful, but the film shows how even then, everyone - from Petit to his accomplices to the cops who were waiting for him atop the North Tower - recognized the stunt's crazy poetry.

Like watching an American teen-sex comedy through a glass darkly.

An usually insightful rendering of an ordinary family, Hirokazu Kore-eda's contemplative Japanese drama is the sort of movie that makes its greatest impact long after you've seen it.

Though Borat has been likened to "Jackass," there's a huge difference. The "Jackass" movies are about extreme stunts. Borat is about interaction and gullibility, and its success is unique to both Cohen and to this one-time-only movie.

This adaptation of a 10th-century folk tale is less sumptuous than Ghibli maestro Hiyao Miyazaki’s surreal classics, yet it’s also more affecting than most of them. An allegory about the irrecoverable joys of childhood, it may make parents hug their kids now.

The most compelling and least partisan of all the Iraq documentaries.

The film is too sprawling in extent, too noisy as to background music and voices and much too obvious in the application of its social significance notes. But while it isn’t the best picture to come out of Hollywood this year, nor is it Capra’s masterpiece, it tells a good story and its conclusion has a heart-warming effect on the audience.

In this film, a single word is worth more than all the expensive effects imaginable.

"Letters" isn't about numbers or the battle or even the morality of war. It's about the sanctity of life and how we value our own.

The film’s thoughtful script and astounding craft portray a tragic inner psychological battle.

You can reexperience the humor and magic -- and the essence of Streisand -- in this William Wyler classic.

With this moving, contemplative portrait of an artist who has suddenly become an old man, de Oliveira refuses to patronize either his hero or his audience.

Pure, eye-popping pleasure.

The dialogue follows the quaint Welsh dialect of the book and the picture is as faithful a transcription of novel to screen as it is possible for a scenarist and director to achieve. The screen play, by Philip Dunne, retains all the honest vigor and tender charm of the book.

Audiences of all ages are bound to fall in love with this bubbly, thoroughly enchanting fish story.

The humor is sharp and so are the judgments, which pile on until the characters are nearly suffocated under the weight of so much disdain.

What "Capote" fails to reveal to the audience is the sense of a homoerotic attraction between the author and Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.). It is more than implied that one exists, but there isn't a scene between them that supports it or even makes it believable.

It is light, it is charming, it is delightfully funny and completely captivating. It is all that, and something more. It has an undefinable spiritual quality that raises the spirits of the beholder into a happy, hopeful mood.

In the end, it's all about McDormand, who’s great at playing ordinary women in extraordinary circumstances.

Though made 31 years after D-Day, the dramatic scenes have the period look of a '40s movie, which links them perfectly with the stunning archival footage.

A kind of historical detective story made up of haunting montages, including a theater performance featuring a heartbroken musician that's absolutely chilling.

The result is a film almost too reliant on its players to push it through.

Winter Sleep won’t appeal to action lovers, but if you like endless verbal warfare, this is a joy.

So is he a martyred patriot or a misguided traitor? And is it possible he’s both? Poitras comes down firmly on one side, and she makes a strong case. But the movie would have been stronger still if she’d acknowledged the alternative view.

A well-crafted indictment of the dark side of the modern work ethic.

Even those who've long noted Polley's intelligence on screen will be amazed by the perception she displays as a filmmaker.

Ferguson doesn't aim to entertain; he wants answers, and talks to many of the enabling weasels.

Funny, even thrilling.

Immensely moving and strikingly original, Kelly's story of a brilliant, disturbed teen (Jake Gyllenhaal) drowning in the cultural morass of the 1980s now feels bloated.

Despite being about a royal family at a critical moment in history, The King's Speech doesn't shout about its many strengths. Rather, it urges you to lean in close, where its intelligence and heart come through loud and clear.

The terrific Hell or High Water is like a gritty new retelling of the Frank and Jesse James story — only with getaway cars instead of horses, and assault rifles replacing six-shooters.

While their latest achievement can't quite one-up "WALL-E," it offers soaring highs that are bound to enchant viewers of any age.

It's part grim Beckett-like drama, part joyous picaresque, and all quite mesmerizing.

Kids and parents alike are gonna dig this wonderful fantasy.

With its agile, clever script and winning characters, Toy Story 2 is that rare thing -- an excellent children's movie with no upper age limit.

Grumpy T'Challa may be on the throne, but it’s the women who rule. And Michael B. Jordan adds fire as Killmonger.

Brilliant performances are to be credited to Alec Guinness, as the British colonel, who insists on sticking to the rules of the Geneva Conference governing prisoners of war, and Sessue Hayakawa as the stubborn, cruel, proud Japanese officer.

Gradually the film turns its very specific story of one immigrant into a moving group portrait.

Excellent, troubling social commentary based on a true story.

The Two Towers moves faster, covers more ground, has more action and -- with the introduction of the marvelous character Gollum -- packs some much-appreciated laughs.

Powerfully uplifting precisely because it's so horrifying.

It’s undeniably thrilling to watch Gonzalez Iñárritu and Keaton aiming so high. Whenever they’re brave enough to leap into the unknown, Birdman soars.

A sublimely uplifting movie.

The direction is excellent. Frank Capra never lets his picture lag for a moment. It is never very exciting, but it moves along snappily and it is full of amusing situations.

This chronicle is impossible not to watch.

Amadeus is about as close to perfection as movies get. [2002 Director's Cut]

A technical and visual tour-de-force.

Exhibiting the same sort of patience as his sensible hero, Philibert has created an extraordinarily humane portrait of a partnership between one adult and his very fortunate charges.

A love story told from the point of impact, at the heart, and no conventional resolution could be more profound.

For film buffs and Lynch fans, this is a glorious high.

It’s not just “Impossible,” it’s irresistible.

If French film makers would consider the story they have to tell as paramount to the technique of telling it, I'm sure they would interest a wider audience than they do now. [05 Sep 1962, p.37]

Though some see Treadwell as an idealistic martyr who made the ultimate sacrifice for his passion, others vilify him as an arrogant fool who courted his own end.

It's phenomenal! A rare case in film history that a series projecting the same character, with the same star, improves as it goes along. The James Bond movies do. The first, "Dr. No," was good; the second, "From Russia With Love," was better; the best and the wildest is Goldfinger, a fun galore thriller that is one of the brightest lights of the holiday offerings on screens of De Mille and Coronet Theatres.

It is a stunningly effective thriller, as cleverly engineered by director Steven Spielberg (with considerable assist from film editor, Verna Fields) as the mechanical sharks that everyone knows by now play the great white shark.

A charming coming-of-age drama.

A gentle comic stew of monster movies, adding dashes of Bugs Bunny irreverence and British gentility.

About Elly is remarkable for both its universal observations about human nature and its specifics.

Busy British newcomer Bel Powley is extraordinary as the teen finding her identity in mid-1970s San Francisco.

The history lesson in Steven Spielberg's austere, engrossing Lincoln is less about the revered President himself but his method for justice.

Redford will surely earn a well-deserved Oscar nomination for this role, to which he commits with unerring dedication. But the real star is writer/director Chandor, whose painstaking approach is exquisite in its spare integrity.

The result is fascinating. That goes both for acting students, since we get insights into Brando’s craft, and those looking for gossip.

Gideon’s Army does what the best documentaries have always done: It makes us think about something we’d rather not.

If Lazarescu's experience is typical in the former Soviet bloc, democracy hasn't done much to humanize the bureaucracy.

Accomplishes two great things on what was undoubtedly a minuscule budget. It breathes life into a small story that has larger ramifications. It also shows that America, as represented by Jackson Heights, is still the promised land for people about whom movies are rarely made.

Inordinately clever, sprightly romantic comedy.

The film's greatest strength is its inadvertent timeliness. Parallels between LBJ's Vietnam policy and George W. Bush's Iraq policy go off in your head like flares.

Gently unfolds into an epic, heartbreaking love story that's far greater than the sum of its parts.

It's miles away from big-budget, pop-culture entertainment, but you may be surprised by its impact.

The picture is forceful, realistic and horrible. It is badly edited, since it is allowed to run for two hours and a quarter, but in spite of this, and a few other minor defects, the case of the crew against the insane cruelty and avariciousness of Capt. Bligh is so powerfully presented that the injustice done to the men gets under one's skin to stir up a variety of emotion.

The final “beams” are the most exciting depictions of science on film since “Apollo 13.”

Tarnation represents a breakthrough in the possibilities of the personal film as a mix of poetry and journalism. It's also harrowing as hell.

When it comes to sports movies, there's nothing like the real thing, and there's never been anything quite as real as the documentary Murderball.