Ingrid Bergman makes a charming and beautiful refugee and Paul Henried gives a convincing performance in the role of the ardent anti-Nazi leader. Claude Rains gives one of his best performances as the police chief and Conrad Veidt is properly menacing as the Nazi officer. Sydney Greestreet is wonderful as the slick proprietor of the Blue Parrot and Rick’s rival in the cafe business.

This bold movie may sound like a stunt, but it’s so much more than that. Linklater is an effortless, genial auteur, and his passions are woven through “Dazed and Confused,” “School of Rock” and the “Before Sunrise” trilogy. Here, his mellow groove becomes an everyday rhythm.

An artistic triumph for the master of mystery.

In this picture, the screen’s greatest dancer contributes some of his art of choreography for the special pleasure of movie audiences.

It's a white-knuckler all the way, with most of that tension coming from the smallest facial expressions exchanged in uneasy silence between compatriots who knew what they were getting into, but were nevertheless unprepared for the moral and emotional fallout of their patriotic actions.

We're exhausted because we laughed so much and so heartily at City Lights that we feel considerably weakened. Here's praying that we fast regain our strength so that we may journey to the George M. Cohan theatre to see Charlie again - and again - in this new heart-breaking masterpiece of comedy which he offers pantomimically to a worldful of movie-goers...City Lights is excruciatingly funny and terribly, terribly sad. It makes you chuckle hysterically. You have the greatest time imaginable, and yet, occasionally you find little hurty lumps in your throat.

Even when the storytelling falters - several crucial scenes take place in between the various segments, with major events happening off-screen - Jenkins' sharp eye and his film's beautiful cinematography keeps us watching.

Walt Disney has waved his magic wand over Collodi's world-famous fairy story, Pinocchio, and presto! he has changed it into the most enchanting film ever brought to the screen.

It's impossible to imagine how the action genre would have developed without Akira Kurosawa's watershed 1954 movie Seven Samurai.

The movie elevated the basic gangster picture into what became known as the niche genre of poetic realism. And, aside from Garbo, never have key lights on a star's face caused so much swooning among fans.

A critic trots out the word "masterpiece" at his own peril, but there it is.

The funniest comedy I’ve seen in years. There aren’t many of the hundred and four minutes of running time that doesn’t find the audience laughing its head off at the antics of Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe.

All About Eve is not only a brilliant and clever portrait of an actress, it is a downright funny film, from its opening scene to the final fadeout.

It took the German restorers four years to ready this print using dupe negatives and old prints found in archives around the world. Their work speaks for itself. Each frame of this classic is drop-dead stunning, the more so now that the movie no longer hiccups its way across the screen.

The picture is real, full of vitality and of so much human waywardness and nobility of spirit that it tears your heart out in sympathy with its tender and tragic passages and makes you want to shout with joy at its hearty humor.

Remains funnier than almost any comedy made in this generation. And since we are, once again, embarked in global warfare, it's as timely as it has ever been. [24 Apr 2004, p.67]

The obvious thing to say is that Hitch has done it again; that the suspense of his picture builds up slowly but surely to an almost unbearable pitch of excitement. Psycho is a murder mystery. It isn’t Hitchcock’s usual terrifier, a shocker of the nervous system; it’s a mind-teaser.

This year’s foreign language Oscar scandal – there is always at least one – is the snub of director Cristian Mungiu’s disturbing, masterful realist drama following two college roommates as they carry out plans for one’s black market abortion in Communist Romania.

Turns everything we know about the contemporary world on its head, and substitutes it with one in which spirits, monsters, magicians and animals mix it up in a carnival of energy, good humor and freewheeling illusion.

McQueen has made a film comparable to “Schindler’s List” — art that may be hard to watch, but which is an essential look at man’s inhumanity to man. It is wrenching, but 12 Years a Slave earns its tears in a way few films ever do.

Despite his draw to tragic subjects, Lonergan holds onto a sharp, dark, Irish sense of humor, and a feel for the absurd that comes out at the most unexpected times. A playwright's sense of what actors do, too. Affleck gives a career-best performance here.

As joyously energetic now as the day it arrived.

Polanski’s direction is smooth and the film itself happily understated. The tension created is practically unbearable.

A gorgeous, wonderfully inventive computer-animated comedy.

Perfectly delightful screen entertainment. The film is as charming as it is novel in conception and execution and it is so bound to appeal as strongly to grown-ups as to youngsters.

A thrill ride with a brain.

The movie is set in a gloriously creepy and crumbling Venice. It's the off-season, and every deserted canal and alleyway reeks of bad vibes. Roeg plays masterfully with this menacing atmosphere, jangling the nerves with quick cuts and quixotic possibilities. [16 Oct 1998, p.72]

A work deeper than its nickname, "The Facebook Movie," hints at - coils around your brain. Weeks after seeing it, moments from it will haunt you.

The picture sparkles with witty dialogue, titilates with droll situations, stirs the heart with its story of the metamorphosis of a London guttersnipe in a fine lady, and its romantic intervals glow with warmth and charm that fascinates the audience.

Small victories that turn into defeats, long walks to gain little ground, little wounds that get deeper every day - growing old is a war, and movies rarely go there. Michael Haneke's amazing, dignified Amour is the exception.

What you'll remember most will be Renner's remarkably complex commander. By the time we finally figure him out, it's become clear we've witnessed a star-making performance, in a movie that deserves to stand as one of the defining films of the decade.

What finally sticks in the mind about "ZDT" is its precision. What the film says about getting information from terrorism suspects in an era of high-tech surveillance depends on your point of view. What is unquestionable is how powerful its full scope is.

Together and apart, Hatami and Maadi are magnetic. Hatami, a star in Iranian cinema, lets us see Simin's intelligence and defiant sense of self-worth often with nothing more than a gesture.

Rotates around a rusty little robotic hero who's built, as the movie is, with such emotion, brains and humor that whole universes exist in his whirring tones and binocular eyes.

It's really a movie about love at first sight, about the dizzying early days of a relationship, about a passion so strong it can't be described, or denied. And that's something everyone can identify with. If they're lucky.

Delpy and Hawke, who’ve invested this trilogy with the fine shadings of life lived, do extraordinary things with small moments.

Let other directors play with toy soldiers and computer effects. This is big-time, old-school filmmaking. Dunkirk isn’t overdone. It’s simply done epically...But it’s also human. It has room for small acts of heroism, of kindness, of forgiveness. And for a single, simple important, timeless message of resilience: Take what comes. Do what you can. Never surrender.

What finally makes the movie so compelling is director Martin Scorsese's scathing vision of New York as a fiery inferno of neon lights and relentlessly hostile populace.

Passes like an evening spent with friends.

Spall is best known for his supporting performances (Winston Churchill in “The King’s Speech,” Peter Pettigrew in the “Harry Potter” films). But he’s among the highest class of character actor, able to make a role of any size his own. Leigh has given Spall the gift of a lifetime in J.M.W. Turner.

Handsome, passionate and fun. It's everything we go to the movies for.

Inside Out is the year’s best film so far. After you see it, you’ll say that’s a no-brainer.

The best comedy of 2004. In fact, it's so far the best movie of the year.

It is a realistic drama, conceived and written into a brilliant and provocative screen play. [11 Aug 1950, p.52]

Production and direction wise, Wilder sustains his usual excellence. But his story is controversial and I am not one of those who can quite see The Apartment as the great comedy-drama he evidently intended it to be. He oversteps the bounds of good taste.

Coppola, with his bravura style of direction, has created a movie of harrowing intensity and staggering power. But if you accept the belief that art should enlighten and illuminate as well as arouse the emotions, I’m afraid that Apocalypse Now does not qualify as great art.

The most emotionally satisfying because, in addition to having both more intimate drama and more spectacular battles, it resolves all of the issues raised before.

The sex scene between the men is super sensual, just like the rest of the film, but still subtle.

Assayas - whose previous work, though noteworthy, never hinted at this kind of ambition - gives the film a journalistic quality, while admitting that only a recombination of facts and fiction could do the story justice. It certainly results in explosive viewing.

The French Connection is pure dynamite. Its trigger-fast, explosive scenes and high-tension chase sequences (the one in “Bullitt” pales by comparison) will have you literally gasping for breath.

Stone, who wowed on Broadway in “Cabaret,” again shows off some beautiful pipes. She captivates completely from her first frame. Then again, so does La La Land — a singing love letter to musicals, romance and the City of Angels that feels almost like a gift from above.

Greta Gerwig is spreading her wings as a filmmaker — and she soars with Lady Bird.

An evocative vision of self-destruction, a gorgeously crafted time capsule, and a fantastic showcase for Oscar Isaac in the title role.

The dialogue is superb and the situations natural. The comedy touches are delightful. They spring from the inherent character of the people in the story, rather than the obvious contriving of playwright and director...A satisfying, heart-warming, deeply moving picture.

The strangely mesmerizing dance contest in "Pulp Fiction" was born of Jean-Luc Godard's 1964 New Wave classic Band of Outsiders.

With a grating symphonic score by ­Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood and the constant sense of danger following Plainview, "Blood" does not release its grip on the audience until its last, bizarrely crazy minutes.

In the final analysis, the best thing one can say for Lee is that he takes risks, like all true artists. For unlike most of today's film makers, he's not afraid to really challenge a movie audience to do some serious thinking.

Akira Kurosawa's talent for analysis, interpretation and projection is again apparent in "To Live." [30 Jan 1960, p.22]

Judy Garland is perfectly cast as Dorothy. She is as clever a little actress as she is a singer and her special style of vocalizing is ideally adapted to the music of the picture.

Take us on an indelible tour through the highest and lowest points of the human experience.

This mercilessly intense movie is definitely not for the faint of heart. The atmosphere remains highly charged from beginning to end. There’s no letup, nary a suggestion of humor to break the tension. The viewer remains as stunned and repelled by the action as the movie’s well-bred narrator, an idealistic young volunteer (played effectively by Charlie Sheen) who naively expects to find himself by sharing the mud with the mostly poor and uneducated grunts.

If the structure is a tad out of whack, "No Country" does not lack for action or suspense. Some of the scenes of Chigurh's stalking of Moss are nearly unbearably tense. Bring your worry beads.

There is never a shortage of options if you're looking for an intimate foreign drama about family bonds. But the eloquent insights of director Claire Denis stand alone.

King Kong, as spectacular a bolt of celluloid as has thrilled audiences in a couple of sophisticated seasons, is the product of a number of vivid imaginations...We've got to admit that there's a certain tenseness about King Kong which defies you to glance away from the screen before the entire tale is told. It fascinates, to be sure.

Universally appealing story that plays as well now as it did on opening day a half-century ago. Maybe better.

The movie's Islamists aren't true believers but a bunch of thugs. A madwoman who dismisses them with a blunt word has much greater moral authority.

Can’t-look-away stuff, though it’s tough to believe your eyes and ears.

Spielberg's direction and Melissa Mathison's script never lose sight of the realistic, low center of gravity world of childhood, in which such marvelous adventures happen every day that an alien knocking around the garage is not really such an unusual occurrence. [2002 re-release]

Given the near total absence of intellectually ambitious American movies today, a critic's first impulse after seeing Francis Ford Coppola's reedited Apocalypse Now may be to treat it as the new, improved version he says it is and proclaim it a masterpiece - if not in 1979, then now. But it's not that simple: Apocalypse Now Redux is not a new movie, and neither is it necessarily improved.

There are moments when it seems Allen’s comic muse has temporarily deserted him - but it has been replaced by something much greater. Annie Hall touches the heart.

For Hobbitués and adventure fans of all other ages, it's the year's best thrill ride -- maybe the best film.

No wonder the vodka bottle beckons in this wrenchingly acted, remorseless modern masterpiece.

If you've got the patience, this is still one of the all-time exercises in cinematic cool.

While the vocal performances of Hanks, Allen and company make up a perfect ensemble, and its visual leaps astound, TS3's real power sneaks up on you.

It's a deceptively simple tale that tackles, serenely and with surprising humor, issues of gender, power, custom and change.

Don't miss The Fast Runner. If you do, you will deprive yourself of not only one of the most intriguing feature-film projects in decades and enough plain-spoken anthropology for three credits at Harvard, but one of the most flat-out entertaining movies of the year.

A juicy noir stew of amorality that's the best thing since "Chinatown."

A smartly written, confidently directed film that delivers big laughs while developing two of the year's most earnest characters and some of its most rewarding sentiments.

The memories recalled here aren't epic tales, just moments that make life worth living. Like seeing a good movie. [12 May 1999, p.44]

Will you relate more to the bitter, or embrace the sweet? The choice itself is Jonze’s ultimate gift to us: an invitation to leave his film ready to communicate, debate and, most crucially of all, connect.

An insanely delicious animated feature.

The film is a mystery uncovered like a detective story, wrapped in a love letter.

Outstanding performances are turned in by Karl Malden in the role of a priest who makes the waterfront characters his particular charge, by Lee J. Cobb, as the big bully who bosses the boys, by Rod Steiger, John Hamilton and a couple of well-known pugilists, Tony Galento and Tami Mauriello.

Ida is photographed in gorgeous black-and-white cinematography. A deep focus allows every corner of the simple, serene compositions to be seen clearly. The economy of story and dialogue extends to the running time — at barely 90 minutes, the movie feels full, yet free of excess.

"Chocolat" was just a warmup for the stunning display of the male form against National Geographic settings in her new Beau Travail.

This animated documentary, from former Israeli soldier Ari Folman, blends both tactics to devastating effect. Perhaps only animation could give us the distance that makes his subject bearable: the personal cost of his own participation in the 1982 Lebanon War.

Funny, insightful, unpredictable and blessed with pitch-perfect performances, Ghost World is one of the year's best movies.

A fascinating and informative, if sometimes stodgy, documentary about the most secret wing of Israel's anti-espionage unit.

The naturalistic dialogue is a masterful bit of writing, credited to Linklater and his "Sunrise" co-writer Kim Krizan, as well as to the two stars.

Steven Spielberg's best war film -- and one of the two or three best movies the director has made.

The race alone is well worth the price of admission.

Strap in, load up and hang on because Mad Max: Fury Road is a freaky, ballsy, phenomenal ride.

Amid all the hokey hill stuff, Lawrence's hard eyes and manner draw us in.

In some ways, The Queen is a comedy of manners - bad, good and archaic. The formal bowing and scraping surrounding Her Majesty is as hilarious as it is (apparently) accurate.

The Godfather PART II is the most ambitious American movie in terms of size and scope in recent memory. It goes much deeper than “The Godfather” in analyzing the twisted mentalities of these men who pervert the capitalist system for their own gain. The film is richer in texture and gives more evidence of social awareness.

Surges forward with barely a respite. It's like watching a propane factory burn, waiting for the tanks inside to explode, and when they do, we're right in the middle of it.

Overlong and dramatically thin.

As inventive as "Being John Malkovich," as psychologically quirky as "Ghost World" and as honest as the day is long.