Faces, torsos and other parts of the human anatomy go into gory meltdown in Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers. But his remake of of a sci-fi classic that already has been brilliantly remade leaves you wondering why he wasn't willing to go out on a limb. [18 Feb 1994, p.04]

The producers of the TV series have managed the near-miraculous feat of putting out a well-written and decently animated episode every day that draws you in without insulting your intelligence. So it shouldn't surprise many people that this may be the best Batman story brought to the big screen so far. [28 Apr 1994, p.D07]

It's a grand and glorious mishmash of the Bible and the Beats, of German expressionism and Hollywood B- movies, at once pretentious and naive, jokey and deadly serious. You'll love it or you'll hate it, and you know who you are. [04 Feb 1994, p.03]

Like Johnny's rants, Naked is a revelation, a parable of spiritual homelessness and the terror it engenders.

The worst of times has brought out the best in Spielberg, and it is the delicate narrative balance that makes Schindler's List such a special and profoundly moving experience. [15 Dec 1993, p.E2]

Tedious sports inspirational that genuflects before the mythology of Notre Dame football with the story of a walk-on who fulfilled a lifelong dream of suiting up for the Irish. [26 May 1994, p.E05]

Silly, but irresistible.

Scenery rushes by, noise blares, characters pop up wearing new costumes that they couldn't possibly have had time to change into as they eluded their adversaries.

A solid double rather than a grand slam, The Sandlot remains a refreshing antidote to the daily round of contract squabbles on the sports page.

As Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands reminded us, Burton always has been more absorbed by what his audience sees than by what his movies say. It's part of his unique talent as a filmmaker, but it leads him to ignore the flaws in the structure of what is, after all, supposed to be an exciting adventure film.

The dialogue and action in One False Move seems instinctive and unforced. There isn't an iota of caricature, there isn't an affectation of "style," there isn't a false note sounded.

Basic Instinct's characters lack psychology and therefore motive. Admittedly they possess pathology, but that's not enough to maintain suspense in a movie with plot holes big enough to drive a tank through.

An exotic and erotic love story about an interracial couple whose cultures have more in common than they ever imagined. [12 Feb 1992, p.D]

Unusually gripping.

The muddled huddle that is Necessary Roughness is one long fumble strewn with offensive lines.

It's a joyride until you think about the film's biggest contradiction. How come this movie celebrating the superiority of human feelings over machine precision is most alive when thrilling in the mechanical perfection of the Terminator and T-1000? Inside Terminator 2 beats a human heart. But its soul is that of a killer machine.

Every time Problem Child gets an interesting edge, it loses it.

Full of macho swagger and unabashed hero-worship.

Zemeckis and Gale obviously paid attention to quality control in finishing the trilogy. They could not, however, hope to reach the quality of their first effort. [25 May 1990, p.5]

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer contrasts the mundane and the domestic with the appalling. The tone doesn't vary at all, and it's not a pretty picture, but movies that burn their images into your consciousness like this one are very, very rare. It is admittedly hard to look, but this is a portrait that demands to be seen.

Basic as a home movie -- and twice as touching -- Charles Lane's Sidewalk Stories is a black-and-white silent comedy that pays tribute both to Charles Chaplin's The Kid (1921) and to the urban homeless. [06 Apr 1990, p.4]

Fans of the original should relish going back to Back to the Future, as long as they keep in mind that in movies - as in life - you can't go home again. And if you do, things aren't likely to be the same. [22 Nov 1989, p.E1]

Licence to Kill continues the salvage operation begun in The Living Daylights and rescues a series that was in danger of shooting itself in the foot.

If Batman did nothing else but restore pulp-art shadow to the icon sanitized in his pop-art TV reincarnation, it would be an achievement. Tim Burton's Batman, starring a subdued Michael Keaton as you-know-who and a supercharged Jack Nicholson as the Joker, handily accomplishes that mission.

Baker's life, like his music, was as sad as it was beautiful. And Weber's movie - obsessed with Baker's image as much as with his songs - hits all the right notes.

Somebody should tell Ward that winning isn't everything. Character is. And this is what his movie lacks.

Penny Marshall brings a logic to the premise that is sustained through most of the movie. And where the other movies snickered at the sexual possibilities in the idea, she faces up to them with both candor and taste.

The Big Easy is an extremely enjoyable (and well-lubricated) vehicle for two actors who aren't quite yet stars, but should be.

Apart from Connery, the star of the film is Mamet's deadpan script, which obviously inspired one of the movie's baldest old-movie tributes.

A small, quiet film that walks tall and resonates long after.

A comedy that belongs back on the drawing board.

The triumphant masterpiece of Akira Kurosawa's fertile twilight.

It is an exploitation picture disguised as a hipster comedy.

Too bad it's hog-tied by a ridiculously familiar plot, uneven direction and characters of such dizzying simplicity that you wish the demons would get to them just to smack some sense into their heads. [26 Sept 1983, p.D3]

The frenzy and off-the-cuff spontaneity of live '50s TV comedy is lovingly captured, and O'Toole won a best-actor Oscar nomination. [25 Dec 1998, p.22]

If we approach the unfamiliar with fear and apprehension, we will be met with fear and apprehension. But if we approach with sympathy and curiosity, we will be rewarded with same. And our souls, not to mention our bicycles, will soar to the heavens. [2002 re-release]

Blessed are the Pythons for making holy wit of the Holy Writ.

One of the rare rock films that produces the effect of a live concert: After each number, the audience erupts into applause.

House is one of the most exciting genre discoveries in years. [17 Jun 2010, p.14]

Attenborough's underrated 1977 epic A Bridge Too Far fashioned an antiwar statement from the foolhardiness that stranded 35,000 paratroopers behind German lines in an attempt to take key bridges. [02 Feb 2002, p.C01]

Robert Altman's droll 1976 deconstruction of a western icon with Paul Newman in peak form. [12 May 2001, p.E01]

It's not just the grainy stock and bad sound - technically, we've come a long way. It's the cheesy sex, the awkward edits, the hammy symbolism, the mix of art-house aesthetics and exploitation cliché. Strange creature, this is.

The way that power and wealth corrupt the spirit is a recurring theme in Huston's work, and it is served up here in a hugely entertaining fashion. [17 Mar 1995, p.11]

Classic.

Still stands as a gloriously silly and twisted send-up.

Hill, Redford and Goldman reteamed for 1975's The Great Waldo Pepper, which is set in the barnstorming days of aviation, but never really takes off. [04 Jan 2003, p.C01]

A frequently amusing exercise in camp horror that misses being wholly satisfying because it has too many people to kill. [21 Apr 1973, p.8]

A classic of subversive surrealism.

As a director, Poitier hasn't come up with any startingly new twists on the old Western cliches. [11 May 1972, p.14]

The chase influenced a generation of filmmakers, and Hackman's Popeye Doyle put an indelible stamp on the archetypal burned-out cop who was to become such a ubiquitous presence in movies. [12 March 1999, p.16]

The Conformist has a decadent visual beauty about it that's breathtaking. But as striking as Bertolucci's classic looks, there's even more powerful stuff in the storytelling.

Shot in simple, elegant black and white, unfolding at a measured pace, The Wild Child is fascinating not only for its Tarzan-like true-life story, but also for what it says about the process of nurturing and educating children, and the tools we use - language, discipline, affection - to do so. [20 Feb 2009, p.W05]

A sad and funny examination of issues of racial subjugation, cultural stereotypes and sexual mores. Although some of its filmmaking techniques seem naive and anachronistic now, there is much that is bold, inventive and poignant about Van Peebles' feature debut. [09 Nov 1994, p.E01]

Shy sheriff Stewart comes up against mobster Fonda and his gang of outlaws; not as good as this pairing should have been. [02 Jun 1994, p.E04]

Paul Scofield contributes a telling performance as an art-obsessed German officer who cares more about Monet than the lives of his men. [20 Jul 2002, p.E01]

It's inspired fun.

The definitive movie of the genre - a scathing satire of the warped logic of atomic confrontation with a brilliant cast led by Peter Sellers, George C. Scott and Sterling Hayden. [14 July 2001, p.E01]

The film...has an amazing quality of life, animation and hope. [07 Dec 1962, p. 27]

The Magnificent Seven has a secure niche among the great westerns. Its action is brilliantly staged. [12 May 2001, p.E01]

Robert Burks' cinematography is outstanding, and composer Bernard Herrmann supplies one of his strongest, spookiest scores... A major influence on the movies and movie-making style of Brian De Palma (among many, many others), Vertigo has a dreamlike eeriness and a climax that is, well, downright dizzying. [29 Nov 1996, p.04]

What Touch of Evil is really about, though, is filmmaking: evoking a mood of sweaty despair, of sour, sinister doom, using the vocabulary of a crime picture and a group of remarkable talents, in front of and behind the camera. [Director's Cut; 25 Sept 1998, p.04]

Directed by Fred Zinnemann with a feel for heartland values and belief in the need for community that Rodgers and Hammerstein urged so strongly, Oklahoma! is a hugely enjoyable film. [14 Sep 2002, p.D01]

A first-rate horror film, of which there aren't many. [17 Jun 1954, p.19]

Mr. Hulot's Holiday is concerned not with character, but with how the unreliability of nature, human nature, and mechanical objects makes human actions and interactions awkwardly funny. [05 Mar 2010, p.W12]

Among lovers of the genre, Shane is surely among the top five westerns ever made. [14 Jun 2003, p.D01]

The marvel of Brando's and Leigh's performances is that he is steely solidity and she airy evanescence, something frequently misinterpreted as his modern, realistic acting style and her quaint kind of theatrics. [Director's Cut; 18 March 1994, p.10]

There are humor, pathos, tragedy and a good slice of real life in this picture. [25 Aug 1950, p.12]

It is as breathtaking a moral thriller today as it was in 1949. [16 July 1999, p.10]

Less famous perhaps than some of Alfred Hitchcock's other wartime thrillers, this 1940 spy yarn is possibly one of his best. [07 Mar 2014, p.W15]

The Lady Vanishes brings out Hitchcock's macabre wit and sardonic view of mankind in a light mystery starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave.[10 May 2003, p.E01]

The most amazing thing about 1936's After the Thin Man is not that it remains a sparkling, engaging entertainment almost 70 years after its release, but that it is nearly as good as 1934's The Thin Man, the first movie based on Dashiell Hammett's husband-and-wife detective team of Nick and Nora Charles. [06 Aug 2005, p.D07]

One of the better Ginger Rogers-Fred Astaire outings. [14 Jun 2004, p.D01]

Grand, glorious, gigantic and gorgeous. [13 Apr 1936, p.6]

However moved or indifferent one may be to the joys and heartaches of the very British Marryots, Bridges, their butler, and Ellen, his wife: Cavalcade is a necessary addition to one's cinematic education as an example of screen technique at its best. [15 Apr 1933, p.22]