Amazingly, it's not all the visual splendor or killer action sequences that elevate Spider-Man 2 above its predecessor and almost every superhero movie that has come before.

By the end of this white-knuckle movie, you stand in awe at the depth of man's will to survive. Touching the Void leaves you emotionally and physically spent, and grateful it was only a movie, not a mountain, you had to endure.

Every character--not just the kids, but the teachers as well--comes alive with a complexity worthy of Jean Renoir. The lyricism of Wild Reeds doesn't cast a smoke screen of nostalgia, it brings us closer to the experience of adolescence.

A meticulous, spellbinding, provocative depiction of the final days of the Third Reich.

Why is this movie Hitchcock's masterpiece? Because no movie plunges us more deeply into the dizzying heart of erotic obsession...The older you get, and the m ore times you see it, the more strange, chillingly romantic thriller pierces your heart.

A haunted thriller of disturbing power.

A gripping, utterly unexpected noir, glinting with bits of poetry and a hard, deadpan humor.

A film as rich as a sauce béarnaise, as refreshing as a raspberry sorbet.

Shot in stunning color by a gifted cinematographer named Caleb Deschanel, beautifully scored by Carmine Coppola in moods ranging from Arabian Nights impressionism to Wagnerian exaltation, the first hour of The Black Stallion is a state-of-the-art demonstration of film as a purely visual medium, a formal exercise that is nonetheless suffused with feeling. [29 Oct 1979, p.105]

I don't know how a movie this original got made today, but thank God for wonderful aberrations.

This complex tale is told with great buoyancy and wit thanks to the splendid performances.

Eastwood is at his effortless, slyboots best and the film is as preposterous as it is delightful.

This powerful, precision-made movie offers hope as well -- an act of kindness from a German officer that saves the pianist’s life, the music that sustains his soul.

For anyone who grew up worshiping at the shrine of Julie Christie, the notion that she could be playing a white-haired woman drifting into senility is a jolt to the system. But her radiance, beauty and talent are undiminished: she's hauntingly, heartbreakingly good.

It's a deliciously outrageous premise, and director Barry Levinson and writers David Mamet and Hilary Henkin know just how to spin it, savaging Washington and Hollywood with merciless wit. It's a hoot.

It's a tribute to Newell's seductive filmmaking, and to the delicious wit of the sterling cast, that this unlikely romantic idyll casts so potent a spell. A sweet pipe dream, Enchanted April won't bear much scrutiny; just bask in it indulgently like a spring sun.

Anyone who cares about ravishing filmmaking, superb acting and movies willing to dive into the mystery of unconditional love will leave this dark romance both shaken and invigorated.

Depp is subtly winning as a man-child oblivious to his own pent-up rage. But the performance that will take your breath away is DiCaprio's. A lot of actors have taken flashy stabs at playing retarded characters and no one, old or young, has ever done it better. He's exasperatingly, heartbreakingly real. This 19-year-old, who shone earlier this year in "This Boy's Life," seems to have a bottomless talent.

Greystoke is entertaining, intelligent, even touching in its broad-scale treatment of a story that has always provided common ground for children and grown-ups. The main problem with this movie is that it's too short. [26 Mar 1984, p.74]

Traffic doesn’t quite come to a full emotional boil at the end. Soderbergh is too knowing to offer easy solutions. But what a journey it takes us on: disturbing, exciting, completely absorbing.

What sets Jerry Maguire above any other romantic comedy this year is Crowe's writing. He captures the venal, high-stakes world of pro sports with deadly wit and an ex-journalist's sense of detail.

A schlock horror movie made for a pittance by 30-year-old John Carpenter, which happens to be the most frightening flick in years. Halloween is a superb exercise in the art of suspense, and it has no socially redeeming value whatsoever. Nasty, voyeuristic, relentless, it aims at nothing but to scare the hell out of you. [4 Dec 1978, p.116]

The best movie of the last 20 years about young people in love is 1989’s.

With a mad doctor like Ken Russell at the helm, one happily follows this movie to hell and back. [29 Dec 1980, p.65]

And as Lucy, 19-year-old newcomer Helena Bonham Carter (whose great grandfather was British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith) is like a charming, flustered Alice grown up into the more dangerous wonderland of reality. [10 March 1986, p.74]

Rabbit Hole deftly sidesteps sentimentality and still wrenches your heart.

Think of it as an epic poem, in which Scorsese's swirling, headlong baroque camera searches paradoxically for the stillness at the meditative heart of Buddhism. [22 December 1997, p. 86]

Urgent, gritty, sometimes weirdly funny, The Fighter might be considered his first feel-good movie. But Russell's too honest and acute an observer to serve up affirmation without leaving a subversive aftertaste of ambivalence and unease.