It's a story of global consequences and historic proportions, and of astounding athleticism and synchronicity - and filmmaker Polsky ices it.

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]

A transcendent work from Ireland's Cartoon Saloon studio that's almost wasted on kids.

The photography is lush, the dialogue uproarious, and the crazy action sequences unforgettable.

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.

45 Years is a study in economy, in the beautiful symmetry of word and image and music.

Classic.

Whether it's simply the change of locale, or a change in Allen's psyche, something is up in Match Point. With a dark view of humankind, and of the vagaries of chance - bad luck, good luck, dumb luck - the filmmaker has crafted a wicked, winning gem.

A flat-out electrifying experience.

Cinderella Man is not a movie about boxing, but about this boxer who personified the heart and hope of 1935.

A bracing, unblinking work that serves as a painful elegy and sobering cautionary tale.

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

It speaks to the courage and resilience of one man, the savagery of many, and the potential, for both good and for ill, in us all.

Aronofsky has fashioned a chilling vision that lives up to the caustic irony of its title and gives us a nightmare that is not lightly forgotten.

It's a stunning Roman triumph.

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]

If vigilance and preemption, recompense and retaliation is not enough, the film asks, then what is?

Our Little Sister zooms in close, observing everyday rituals, the commonplace that suddenly turns significant.

Beautifully observed, and beautifully acted by the novice thespian Polanco (culled from a New York City public school), Chop Shop is at once a heartbreaker and a story of hope and the American Dream.

Pitch-perfect and profoundly moving.

It is a gorgeous triumph - one lion in which the studio can take justified pride. [24 June 1994, p.03]

Not only is it the best documentary in a vintage season for nonfiction films (see "American Splendor," "Capturing the Friedmans," and "Spellbound"), it's also one of the best films of the year. It's as lyrical about the particulars of Kahn as it is about the universals of fathers and sons.

Paterson is easily one of Jarmusch’s most accomplished films. He portrays the life of the mind and the workings of the creative soul as a kind of secret love affair, a deep, hidden well inside the most ordinary, mundane existence.

It is with gravity and levity and incomparable grace that Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon -- by light years the best movie of 2000.

Spoofy and sweet... endearingly old-fashioned.

It is, without doubt, a transcendent endeavor, from its exhilaratingly smart screenplay - director David O. Russell's adaptation of the novel by former South Jersey teacher Matthew Quick - to the unexpected and moving turns of its two leads.

Without doubt one of the scariest, creepiest, gut-churningly unsettling pictures to come along in ages.

Like its lead Royalty Hightower, whose performance is just as spectacular as her name, The Fits is impossible to look away from. It's gorgeous, poetic, and opaque, and I've never seen any other movie like it.

Structured in three beautifully paced, keenly observed acts, Living in Oblivion is that rare picture that leaves you gasping in disappointment at the end - gasping, that is, because it's over and you don't want it to be. [04 Aug 1995, p.05]

A quietly soulful study of two very different men.

A profound and deeply moving exploration of facing death with dignity.

An awesome cinema spectacle.

The real 3-D experience of the season is Pina, Wim Wenders' shockingly beautiful and moving tribute to the late German choreographer Pina Bausch.

It doesn't happen often, but when it does, look out: a movie that rocks and rolls, that transports, startles, delights, shocks, seduces. A movie that is, quite simply, great.

Explosively exciting film.

It's an observation of crushing truth.

With its improvisatory score (drummer Antonio Sanchez provides a hustling backbeat throughout), its seamless shots, its leaps into the surreal, and then back again into the excruciating, embarrassing real, Birdman ascends to the greatest of heights.

Toy Story 2, like its forebear, will stand the test of time.

A wicked deconstruction of a dysfunctional clan: brothers at each other's throats; a father whose legacy is anger and betrayal; an unfaithful wife; a history of deceit. It's a horror show of hatred and festering psychic wounds.

Exhilarating, edgy and wryly comic.

Creed is corny like the old Rocky films, but riveting like the old Rocky films, too.

Green Room is just as accomplished a film, with the writer/director doing everything right: the cast, the music, the editing, the way he leads you one way and then clobbers you (and some of his ill-fated characters) when you (and they) are least expecting it.

The triumphant masterpiece of Akira Kurosawa's fertile twilight.

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]

Simply the best adaptation of any John le Carré thriller to make it to the screen.

Inspiring stuff, the stuff of Hollywood all the way back to Frank Capra and before: a story of scrappy underdogs, determined to get to the truth, and toppling the mighty in the process.

Moreno, with her wide, watchful eyes, owns the camera - and the film. Her performance is perfectly natural and profoundly moving. Maria Full of Grace is a remarkable picture, full of suspense and discovery.

Gripping, hair-raising documentary.

When it comes to the realistic portrayal of the complex process of grief, most actresses are at a loss. Sissy Spacek is decidedly not most actresses.

The most moving aspect of this indelible documentary is that it chronicles its subjects' growth from instinctively going for the goal to deciding which goals are worth shooting for.

Still, somehow, The Tree of Life - impressionistic, revelatory, elliptical - works.

A slo-mo gem of gangster cool, of vintage Hollywood noir reimagined by a French new waver in love with American cars, American jazz, and the kind of trench-coated tough-guys embodied by Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum.

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

A transcendent political poem as intellectually rigorous as it is beautiful.

Has a slow-burning emotional power.

Lives is a best-foreign-film nominee competing in a year that at least three movies in this category are stronger than Oscar's best-picture contenders.

One of the finest pieces of screen acting in the career of Juliette Binoche -- the actress playing the actress in this extraordinary film.

Wildly sad, funny and terrific documentary.

A profoundly unnerving historical document.

The exhilarating film pays tribute to Buster Keaton's "The Balloonatic" by way of its slapstick, and to Hayao Miyazaki's "Howl's Moving Castle" by way of its watercolor palette and traveling domicile.

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]

It’s a true American masterpiece and one of the best films of the decade.

A riveting sci-fi investigation into humankind's experiments with A.I. (with pages from Spike Jonze's Her and Stanley Kubrick's 2001), Ex Machina marks the extremely able directing debut of British writer Alex Garland, of the novels "The Beach" and "The Tesseract," and of the screenplays for Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later" . . . and "Sunshine."

It's great to see an American filmmaker - and a successful one at that - willing to simply train his cameras on the actors and let them, and their characters, come to life.

A dazzling costume epic, a spectacle for the eyes and for the soul.

Most of all, it is the improbably entertaining story of how new media are altering the very nature of courtship and friendship.

Amour arrives with plaudits and praise. But this is not hype, it is all deserved. This is a masterpiece.

Werner Herzog's magnificent tragedy, Grizzly Man, a Shakespearean character study that packs the sheer terror of "The Blair Witch Project."

Smart, suspenseful, satisfyingly unpredictable.

Girl on the Bridge, with its doomed art-house romanticism and echoes of Fellini, may not be the deepest piece of filmmaking out there now, but it is easily the most intoxicating. Take the leap.

Clooney has never been better, subtler, more deeply rooted in a performance than he is in The Descendants. And he's funny, too.

The humor of the script constantly confounds expectations, and yet Shrek still manages to say all the right things to children.

Ryan may not be admirable, but Clooney makes him relatable. It's his deepest and nakedest performance.

A quiet, loopy gem, Duck Season is a goofball celebration of old friends, new beginnings, adolescent freedom, and baked goods laced with a little something extra.

It's an occasion for welcoming a restoration that transforms a flawed movie, one that was touched by greatness, into a masterpiece. [10 Aug 2001, p.W3]

Although Mistress America is very much a New York movie, full of references to couture, pop culture, boutique hotels (to Antigone and Faulkner, too), its comic centerpiece is a brazen assault on a country compound.

Taste of Cherry takes its title from an anecdote that celebrates the things in life - such as the savoring of a delectable fresh fruit - that we take for granted. Kiarostami's film won the top prize at Cannes last year, an honor that has infamously gone to some overrated movies over the years. In this case, the award was less than a superb picture deserved. [12 June 1998, p.04]

Brilliant, blistering account of the many ways fame deforms a star, his family and his fans.

A road trip at once tragic, hopeful, and unforgettable.

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]

A beautiful, appropriately loping little gem about growing older, daring to take risks and follow your heart. That probably sounds corny, and The Straight Story is.

Mara and Blanchett are each extraordinary, working in the most organic and soul-stirring ways.

It's Greengrass' way of asking a question that looms large in these post-9/11 days: Are we all praying to the same God, or is one man's God better than another, and one man's God vastly more terrifying?

This psycho-thriller, a Golden Globe winner and presumptive favorite for the foreign-film Oscar, itself is revelatory.

A movie with the sweet soul of "Toy Story" and the boisterous spirit of "Spy Kids."

At the film's intimate best, it gives a guitar's perspective of the troubadour. He plucks his instrument as he plays our heartstrings. It's movie and music bliss.

Profound, passionate and overflowing with incomparable beauty, Water, like the prior two films in director Deepa Mehta's "Elements" trilogy, celebrates the lives of women who resist marginalization by Indian society.

As lovingly written as it is beautifully rendered.

Washington blows you away. To say he gives the performance of his career is an understatement.

A quiet, heart-rending masterpiece, one with an actor's turn that people will remember, and rediscover, eons into the future.

The small victories that people win in Down in the Delta are earned, and so is the praise that has greeted Angelou's long-overdue arrival behind the camera. [25 Dec 1998, p.05]

Mud is steeped in a sense of place, and the people inhabiting it. Southern. Superstitious. Suspenseful. Sublime.

Riley's film brings the American icon's career back into sharp focus.

This taut cautionary tale explores the dark side of American politics. And leaves the viewer to wonder - if anyone's still wondering - is there a bright side?

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

Inside Llewyn Davis plays like some beautiful, foreboding, darkly funny dream.

It's not a pretty picture. But Food, Inc. is an essential one.