A Summer's Tale is one of those movies where it looks like nothing is happening; there is a lot of walking and talking (against exquisite backdrops), dissections and discourse about the intricacies of romance, the false signals, the fickleness.

This long (nearly three hours), revelatory movie is both a thrilling adventure about endurance and survival, and an elegiac examination of centuries-old tribal culture, fast-fading in the new millennium.

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

This year's must-see film.

Hirokazu Kore-eda's After Life is a minimalist, mesmerizing allegory set in a limbo. It is not a memorial to the dead but an extraordinary consideration of what memories mean to the living. [11 June 1999, p.12]

Offers a crushing view of humanity at its most desperate, and a view of one man's fevered efforts to find grace and dignity amid the horror.

Sad, funny, and quietly alarming romance.

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

With a bit of Tintin and Tati, Charlie Chaplin and Wallace and Gromit echoing in the pacing and comic sensibility, Triplets of Belleville conjures up a world that's totally surprising and sublime.

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]

Jafar Panahi's Taxi looks onto a world where the social order and the spiritual order are at odds, in flux, where the conversations are sometimes cutting, sometimes comic, sometimes troubled, sometimes profound.

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

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

There's a loneliness at the heart of this world, and Ghost World, that's really touching -- and a bit scary, too.

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

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.

It's transformative.

George Miller's Fury Road is a hundred things at once: a biker movie, a spaghetti western, a post-apocalyptic dystopian action pic, a tale of female empowerment (The Vagina Monologues' Eve Ensler was a consultant on set), a Bosch painting made scary 3D real, a Keystone Kops screwball romp, and an auto show from hell.

It's been a long time since a film has conveyed a culture, and a sense of place, with such telling precision. At the same time, Winter's Bone thrums with suspense.

Piercingly funny and unexpectedly moving account of that odd couple, Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) and HRH Elizabeth II (majestic Helen Mirren) and their back-channels affair.

Elkabetz, alternately resigned and raging, stoic and sad, bitter humor in her eyes, is riveting. Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem takes its time to unfold, but like its star, the film presents its case in powerful, persuasive ways.

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

Blue Is the Warmest Color explores a life with a depth and force that would be scary - if it weren't so scarily good.

The film has the dog-eared look of a homemade valentine and the improvised sound of '60s jazz, courtesy of a score by Mark Suozzo and a spirited soundtrack including Marvin Gaye's "Ain't That Peculiar," which might be the film's anthem.

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]

At its best it is one of the most dynamic movies from a most dynamic filmmaker, now 76.

Though not as great as "Toy Story 2" and "Monsters, Inc.," Pixar movies that are the gold standard for family movies, Finding Nemo is visually entrancing.

A triumph.