Woo's hand is sure and his eye, as ever, finds beauty in everything, even death.

A near-perfect movie.

American teens will respond to the directness of the issues here, as well as the film's brisk and risky tone.

Audiard's craft is still arresting, and the film hums with beauty, vigor and blood.

David Lynch's Inland Empire left me grasping for the merest crumbs of comprehension.

In breezy fashion, it introduces us to a handful of crossword savants, the history of crossword puzzles, a number of celebrity crossword addicts...

If Like Father, Like Son had set up a genuine conflict here, this could have been a fascinating, even gut-wrenching, melodrama. Instead, writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda stacks the deck by making Ryota such a highfalutin jerk and Yudai such an exemplar of cozy, loving family life.

It's to the director's credit that despite its characters going off the deep end toward the end of the film, Time maintains its focus, setting up a mind-bending finale.

This film insists on being taken on its own terms -- the sort of demand, in other words, that defines the best art.

A charming but only partly satisfying portrait of its subject.

It's an entirely conceived work of art, dark and hopeless and maybe even callous, but glittering and wonderful in its determination and in its craft.

Solid summer entertainment set in a recognizably real world.

There is life to The Proposition, though, and brutal, pitiless life it is. If it breathed more (and if Huston had spoken less), it might have been remarkable. As it is, it's monotonous, grim and uneven.

The film is whimsical and satirical but not totally a comedy. Despite the occasional Monty Python-esque jab at romantic history, the story of the central lovers is also poignant, a chronicle of bad choices and missed opportunities. [25 Jun 1999]

It's a remarkably mature achievement

Rich in detail, gorgeously shot and beautifully acted, Les Destinees is, in its quiet, epic way, daring, inventive and refreshingly unusual.

As usual in Le Carre's world (and the real one), a measured, rational approach faces an uphill battle against the philistines who really run the show. That predictably weary attitude is both the best — as embodied in Hoffman's performance — and worst — in its weary predictability — things about A Most Wanted Man.

More seriously, Jarecki never quite pierces the skin of this world, capturing its shiny and grimy surfaces but failing to immerse us in its flaws; too often it's like flipping through a magazine story on the lives of the rich and corrupt.

It's no "Fantasia" or "Sleeping Beauty," but it's no "The Rescuers Down Under," either.

A film in which barbs of wit, anger and grief continually prick at you.

It romps along with infectious good humor but continually imparts a sense that underneath all the surreal frivolity lurks a scathing allegory of modern-day Balkan troubles.

Marnie is merely a marginal work by director Alfred Hitchcock, meaning, naturally, that it's superior to all but the best works of almost every other director ever. [02 Jun 2000]

It's hard to recall the last time a big-ticket summer movie delivered so fully on its promise.

This is the sort of film for which the phrase 'movie-movie' was coined -- and coined as a term of highest praise.

With solid performances, competent direction and artfully drab cinematography, the film would be indistinguishable from a Hollywood thriller if not for the Flemish dialogue. It's no surprise to learn that an American remake is in the works.

A funny and sometimes substantial movie that in real life would never have a happy ending.

The people are pretty, the music scenes are well-staged (they're supposed to be crude and corny, right?) and we've needed a silly romance for a while now. But for all its hugs and kisses, the film refuses to embrace itself.

The Matrix slams you back in your chair, pops open your eyes and leaves your jaw hanging slack in amazement.

An extraordinarily gut-wrenching, intense story of survival against all odds.

If the slightly hurried third act and unlikely conclusion don't quite deliver on the brilliance of the first 75 minutes, it's a forgivable offense. This is a different sort of horror film, where the known is infinitely more frightening than the unknown.

The film has accomplished something few documentaries manage: It's created a stir. It's got people thinking and talking. And avoiding the fries.

Heading South is strong in bursts, but the bursts are too diffuse for its best moments to last.

Funny and weird and surprising and action-packed and genuinely beautiful.

A handsome work of impressive sweep dotted with fine performances. It offers a few fine moments of wit, fear and emotional intimacy. But it rarely pulses with vital life.

A thoroughly credible and deeply entertaining biopic about a titanically famous film personality.

In this involving if slightly unfocused documentary, director Daniel Karslake takes a two-pronged approach in examining how religion has been interpreted -- some would say twisted -- into, at its worst, monomaniacal homophobia.

A dry, vicious and deeply moving little comedy that sort of takes the structure of a teen sports movie, then undermines that structure at every turn.

If the star does his utmost to make a one-dimensional character interesting, his director, Clint Eastwood, adapts Kyle's memoir — a life story rife with moral complexity — by hammering it flat.

It's better at being droll than laugh-out-loud funny.

It never exactly lights you on fire, but you always believe it.

You can sense the deep investment Donzelli and Elkaïm have in what they're doing, which isn't something you get at the movies every day.

All Things Must Pass is a labor of love by actor Colin Hanks, a Sacramento native who grew up on the store.

Frighteningly, grippingly real.

If it touches up against the syrupy at a very few moments, it's nevertheless consistently clear-eyed and convincing.

An affable, entertaining and poignant experience of the sort not normally afforded by space movies.

An achievement of accomplished filmmaking and superb acting, L.I.E. puts you in the tough spot of unraveling how you feel about what you've viewed.

Dani's feelings are complex, as she reacts to life's new everyday bewilderments, and much of her reaction is wordless. Witherspoon and Mulligan make Dani's feelings eloquent. [16 Nov 1991, p.C10]

Gran Torino amounts to one more elegiac movement in Eastwood's astonishing late-career symphony.

Everyone is in top form. Pearce, the Australian who's elevated everything from "L.A. Confidential" to "Mildred Pierce," sinks his gleaming teeth into the comic aspects of Trevor and doesn't let up. Smulders, now part of the Marvel universe, is edgy and fun. Corrigan is best of all.

There's so much to impress and delight you that the time flies by.

All the up-from-under satisfaction of an underdog getting over, with the added oomph of the truth.

The movie's a ride, basically. It's a slick, funny buddy-flick confection about a dork (Jesse Eisenberg), a Twinkie-loving hick (Harrelson), a hottie (Emma Stone) and a sassy kid (Abigail Breslin) who bicker and bond as they drive cross-country after a zombie plague.

If you enjoyed any of Frank's previous work, or thought "Brick" was the bomb, you'll love this.

A lot of what happens is gross, puerile and gratuitous, granted, but Helms and Galifianakis are truly funny in offbeat fashion, and the script allows Phillips room for some brilliant slapstick. You will not be ennobled. But you will be entertained.

The symbolic ending may strike some as a letdown but it's well-played by Sagnier, capping another in a string of memorable performances.

While Shepard just does his grim, weathered, Sam Shepard shtick, and Hall seems oddly miscast as the tense, prickly Dale, Johnson's easy, gritty charm is a much-needed buffer between their colliding obsessions.

Leconte's signature on the film alone makes it worth seeing.

A frequently transporting depiction of the early and middle life of Ray Charles, the film soars on remarkable performances, a convincing sense of time and place, and, of course, the glorious music for which Charles was rightly billed as The Genius.

Lively, cheeky, dense and, ultimately, too flip, clever and torturously twisted to be fully engrossing.

A campy premise taken to unthinkable heights. There are the requisite battles with spiders and housecats, but mostly the increasingly diminutive hero is introspective, turning his predicament into a treatise on the human condition. [07 Nov 2003]

Because there was anarchy and randomness in Thompson's life and work, you find it in Gonzo.

This is one of Downey's most enjoyable performances, and one of Kilmer's funniest. It's a relationship comedy wrapped in sharp talk and gunplay, a triumphant comeback for Black, and one of the year's best movies.

Crossing Delancey is the most delightful falling-in-love story since ``Moonstruck,'' which it faintly resembles. [30 Sep 1988, p.F13]

Offers a lot of laughs, a heartwarming core.

Malick is a unique director of extraordinary gifts, of that there can be no doubt. If he ever chooses to shoot a script as fine as his technique, he will surely produce a masterpiece of the medium.

It's not great moviemaking -- it isn't as accomplished or funny as the best of the Farrelly brothers' films, say -- but it's got real appeal.

If there is a drive-in classic, this is it. [04 Jun 1999]

In a film culture in which contrived tomfoolery and overinflated emotions stifle in their effort to provide comedy and romance, something as light and precise as The Puffy Chair feels like more than an exception; it feels like fresh air.

Racy, obscene, spirited and infectious.

The issues the film raises are truly profound and discomfiting whether you work in the media or just consume it.

It's a film that can leave you on the fence. There's great facility with non-pro actors, with unusual locations, with both intimate and epic-scale scenes. Yet at the same time, Takata's reserve overwhelms the picture and makes its efforts to elicit emotions seem clumsy.

Alas, Robbins is far more interesting than Cruise, and you wonder what the film would have been like if their roles were reversed -- if Robbins were the loser in search of redemption and Cruise the agitated freak in the basement.

The film's best sequences -- the troubles of the young woman -- are gems adrift in a sea of Jell-O.

Oacks more heat, acid, danger and drama into its brief running time than most films of nearly double the length.

As a fable, The City of Lost Children may not have a resonantly significant moral, but as a film, it is without a doubt the most incredible thing that the cinema has brought us this year. [22 Dec 1995]

It may not add up to a narrative, but it's a fascinating compilation -- a mixtape you may want to hear more than once.

Amalric plays up the ambiguity and brings it all home in a tight 75 minutes, a time that would have impressed Simenon, who wrote and revised novels in less than two weeks.

It's a dark, brooding, moody film that follows a grim narrative to a logical inevitability and is nonetheless fully infused with a spirit of humanity.

It's the sort of history you could nibble on for hours.

There's much to admire here, but less to like.

It's a fine debut, far more grounded, plausible and engrossing than most Hollywood thrillers.

Magic Mike doesn't sizzle often enough as either cinema or beefcake, though. It's medium-strength Soderbergh, which is better than the full-strength stuff most filmmakers can manage but not exactly the brand that keeps you coming back for more.

It's overlong and sanitized but succeeds in presenting an important part of contemporary American culture to a mainstream audience.

So rich, moving and surprising that a familiar story starts to feel new again. The details, the personalities and the final twist grab you until you're left truly shaken and inspired.

It's a film full of clever moments that may at first seem cheeky but come to feel inspired, with a third act (which only a churl would describe) that rises to a dizzyingly heightened level of metaphysics and mayhem.

It's not orthodox Dahl but it's pure Burton, and, as it's been such a very long time since moviegoers have been afforded that particular treat, it's entirely welcome.

A sweet and wise little film.

Once you lose yourself in Ruiz's stunning achievement -- a wonderfully acted, beautifully realized vision of Proust -- you'll be enchanted.

Impressively reframes the gun-control debate in terms that advocates of both sides might find fruitful, but Moore doesn't do anything to shed his reputation as a snot.

There's a lot of fascinating talk here and a genuine passion for ideas and words. But it's also a case where the messenger is so grating that we feel the perverse urge to kill the message that he carries just to spite him.

Johansson, fittingly, is the focus. In her face, as in the faces of Vermeer's handful of captivating subjects, the viewer intuits whole stories and worlds.

JFK drags but is undeniably fascinating. [20 Dec 1991]

Ignorance is bliss, maybe. If you don't know (and the film doesn't tell you, though the press notes do) that Diplomacy plays fast and loose with the known facts, it's a thrilling, even moving drama. But learning the truth gives an unpleasant aftertaste to a movie that's otherwise a solid piece of work.

While In Bloom offers an authentic slice of life from a particular time and place, it never gets close enough to its characters, physically or emotionally, to really hit home.

Fortunately, their story is just as compelling here, and the film's subjects display impressive adaptability, as well as a desire not to forget those they've left behind.

Westfeldt becomes irritating. That's one of the film's points, but it's made a little too well.

It's a first love story that goes beyond many simplistic notions as to why people fall for one another. If it weren't true, no one would believe it.

This is grand, inspiring entertainment of a sort that Hollywood aspires to and rarely achieves.