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

This is a movie that mines deep beneath the surface of human feeling. It will make you think - about love, about life, about two people who aren't real, except that they've become so for so many of us in this improbably successful indie franchise.

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

It may be the first meditative action movie.

Mr. Turner is no barrel of laughs. It's a barrel of life - an extraordinary one.

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.

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]

Inside Out is the first psychological thriller that's fun for the whole family. Really psychological. And really fun.

Exhilarating, edgy and wryly comic.

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

The Return of the King is too long...The various story lines...come together in stilted, episodic ways. The narrative is less-than-seamless.

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]

Some of it is wistful, some of it whimsical, but it's all wonderful, impossibly so.

An immensely rich, deeply felt exploration of human relationships that draws you in and holds you fast for nearly three hours.

A classic of subversive surrealism.

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

Just a few barrels short of being a masterpiece.

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.

The film is more than laborious eye-blinking - it's also dazzling visually, its potent imagery conjured by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski. But finally, Diving Bell is about something imperceptible: consciousness.

French movies are not so neatly resolved. In fact, the point of many French movies, such as this provocative one from director Laurent Cantet, is that some problems don't have satisfying solutions - or resolutions.

An eerily quiet, bracingly bloody, and expertly laid-out adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel.

35 Shots of Rum is visual poetry, but poetry that examines the human condition with insight and illumination.

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

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]

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]

But moving across this tableau is Frodo and his gang, and here the trouble lies...Not a one seems believable as conveyed by Wood, who forever looks to be on the brink of a good sob. Likewise, his hobbit sidekick Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin) is a real wuss.

Because the filmmakers have framed this fame game so much like a conventional love story, the audience, like Goodwin, is seduced by Van Doren's pretty face. This is precisely what the film warns us to guard against, so the experience of watching Quiz Show is supercharged. As the wedge is driven in between what we think (lying is bad) and what we feel (that nice Van Doren boy can't have lied) - Redford and Attanasio make us aware of how readily we accept style divorced from substance. [16 Sept 1994, p.03]

The haunting mastery of Leviathan comes not from these broad indictments of a social order, but from the specifics of the performances, the actors wearing their hurt and rage, their defiance and dread, like well-worn clothing.