Writer-director Ray has a no-fuss style that is quietly, thoroughly gripping.

The actors are wonderful, especially the women who play El Hadji's first two wives - ladies of magisterial personality, social shrewdness and sexual pride. The wedding sequence in Xala makes the one in "Godfather I" look like a wedding party at McDonald's. This allegory of impotence in the body politic shows Sembene on his way to becoming an African Moliere. [13 Oct 1975]

Moore’s stunning, subtle performance as a woman trapped in the conventions of her time encapsulates the film’s brave, double-edged beauty.

[De Palma] is a superb visual artist, but more important, his visual patterns express the moral dislocations of a troubled society. In Body Double, De Palma has never been more perversely brilliant in his tracking of the pervasive lust -- for sex, for money, for power -- that floats through our culture like some poisoned aerosol of desire. [29 Oct 1984, p.134]

With her Doc Martens and her spiky, fire-engine hair, Franka Potente makes a perfect Lola. Like the film itself, her tough, flashy exterior cloaks a warm emotional center.

Jacquet's movie is as visually ravishing as "Winged Migration," and more gripping.

The beauty of Welcome to the Dollhouse is its pokerfaced objectivity, which neither condescends to its pubescent victim nor romantically inflates her plight.

Marvelous, and surprisingly intimate.

Most of the time, Demme's deliberately unstable mixture of moods and genres produces electric results. Rachel Getting Married takes a familiar subject--the raw nerves of American family life with--and draws fresh blood.

Press and Blunt are major discoveries: in this sly and wonderfully atmospheric gem, they conjure up the role-playing raptures of youth with perfect poetic pitch.

Star 80 is very strong stuff. Fosse is one of our best moviemakers; he shows us better than anyone the perverse beauty in decadence and the decadence that we can't seem to burn out of our dreams of beauty. [14 Nov 1983, p.98]

A welcome paradox--an intelligent, rousing adventure for grown-up kids. [17 Apr 1995, p.66]

A pretty damn good summer movie.

The result is a film of rare restraint and surprising power.

Being There's dry, dark humor sneaks up on you: until Chauncey arrives at Douglas's home you may not even know it is a comedy. That's Ashby's method, and his confidence pays off in one of the year's most unusual and engrossing films. [31 Dec 1979, p.48]

Hilarious, affectionate spoof.

Gripping from start to finish.

A marvelous comedy from deep in left field -- immaculately written, unexpectedly touching and pure of heart.

This swiftly paced comedy is a deliciously impure compound of old-fashioned "women's film" formulas and up-to-the-minute sexual mores. It is, from moment to moment, trashy and touching, literate and ludicrous, bitchily funny and as full of sharp, sophisticated insights as it is of appalling blind spots. Part soap opera, part comedy of manners, it refurbishes shopworn cliches into a gloriously unrespectable entertainment. [12 Oct 1981, p.98]

Peirce's taut, sure-footed first film sidesteps sensationalism without sacrificing any of the story's wonder and horror

It is a dark, spellbinding dream, full of murmurs and whispers, byzantine plots and messianic fevers. It finds its iconography of the future deep in the past. It's not always easy to follow, but it's even harder to get out of your system. For better and for worse, it takes more artistic chances than any major American movie around. [10 Dec 1984, p.93]

It is, first and foremost, a visual delight, a Victorian picture book come to life, from its brief prologue in India through its darkly enchanted recreation of Misselthwaite Manor on the Yorkshire moors.

A smart and wicked delight.

The sweet, funny, funky screenplay by Darryl Ponicsan (from Terry Davis's novel) is beautifully directed by Harold Becker ("The Onion Field," "Taps"), who gets performances so true and winning from his actors that you're smiling through the entire film. [25 Feb 1985, p.85]

A deep, powerful and rivetingly complex study of Tienanmen - and, ironically, it's far more evenhanded in its account of the massacre that killed more than a thousand protesters than the Chinese government might suspect.

It's at once an embittered lament and a poignant elegy, much like his masterwork Citizen Kane, which muses on a lost time.

An extraordinary documentary.

If there's a problem with this film, it lies in its hieratic, almost operatic style, which at times veers dangerously close to the self-absorbed and sanctimonious. But the sheer scope and significance of the story win the day, and Joffe and his actors score some stunning achievements. [3 Nov 1986, p.81]