What it doesn't do -- and this is what makes this "Diary" different -- is let what happens define her or ruin her.

Spielberg manages to give us a Lincoln for our times, inspiringly heroic but demonstrably human.

The pacing is perfect, and the action, mostly filmed in a studio, is never less than utterly believable. The director’s first feature, “Margin Call,” was full of rapid-fire dialogue, and he shows off considerable range by following it up with this film.

Astonishes on many levels.

Like "Amadeus," Shakespeare in Love works splendidly as an appreciation of an artist in the heat of creation, and it breathes life into "Romeo and Juliet."

It's clear that Weerasethakul knows exactly what he wants to do and that he does it in his own way. And that's why his film, even if it can't be recommended to everyone, blossoms inside you the longer you allow it to.

Beautiful, poetic, mournful, at once rich and spare, Brokeback Mountain takes a daring conceit and creates of it an overwhelming work of art that should speak to anyone capable of love.

It's a melodrama, but played with rigorous and surehanded spareness, and it never panders, even as it gets a mite hysterical near the end.

I reckon that for everyone who's enthralled by the film there will be others who wish they'd heard about it rather than seen it.

A tour de force of photography, editing, scoring and, most of all, patience; less a science documentary than a window on a breathtaking world. [22 Nov 1996, p.31]

It's as full and rich a portrait of the lives of athletes as we've seen since "Hoop Dreams."

Anyone who shares Ebert's love of movies and who followed his career will be exceptionally moved by Life Itself, but anyone who appreciates a well-lived life should be touched as well.

One of the most vital and strangely gripping films in recent years, a thriller more opaque, involving and realistic than just about anything that Hollywood is capable of.

Brimming with bittersweet wit and emotion and built with deceptively fluent craft.

It's a sports story, yes, because without baseball there's no Beane. But it's far more a tale of a man's triumph over himself and his doubters. And you don't need math to make sense of that.

Strickland has the courage of his convictions and maintains a tight focus on the proceedings while allowing the occasional feather of humor to float down on the pillow.

The historical details of costumes and settings are exemplary and the cast superb. Those best of times and worst of times must have looked much like this. [12 Jul 1996, p.39]

It's similar to 2011's "The Loneliest Planet," which examined a similar dynamic between a couple backpacking in the Caucasus Mountains. But Force Majeure (which, as a legal term, refers to unforeseeable events or "acts of God") is sharper and smarter, combining precision-strike storytelling, directorial art, and impressive, often invisible visual effects, including that avalanche scene.

Made with brisk energy, shot with Powell's limitless ingenuity, written with fairy-tale echoes and steeped in a love for northern Scottish folkways, it's apt to become a favorite film the first time you see it. [02 Mar 2001]

Baker's previous films "Take Out" and "Starlet" have focused on populations generally treated with disdain by mainstream society -- illegal immigrants and porn performers, respectively. With Tangerine he continues to prove that by depicting these characters in all their flaws and majesty, movies can inspire awareness of our shared humanity. And make us laugh.

Amir Bar-Lev shows in the absorbing, eye-opening and sometimes enraging film The Tillman Story, if there was one thing that you could count on Pat Tillman to do it was speak his mind: loudly, intelligently, and often in salty, pointed language.

Boosted by award-caliber performances and a perfectly struck tone, it becomes one of the more moving dramas of the year and an early, dark-horse award-season contender.

Even the tiny roles in this Rockwell-meets-Breughel panorama are perfectly, although almost cruelly, cast.

Rock Hudson and Lauren Bacall are the nominal stars, but the show is stolen by Robert Stack and Oscar-winning Dorothy Malone as a pair of seriously dysfunctional siblings, heirs to a Texas oil fortune. The tale of betrayal, misguided affection and sexual anxiety plays out in shiny Technicolor against an all-too-symbolic backdrop of oil derricks. [13 Jul 2001]

A gorgeously realized portrait of obsession, this based-on-truth vision of two teen-age girls driven to murder by their fantasies is one of the most audacious films of the year. [2 Dec 1994, p.18]

An empathetic portrait of humanity on a house-by-house, heart-by-heart basis.

A truly powerful, masterful work.

If film's rapturous reception is due in part to the rarity of filmmaking this skillful within the horror genre, it's hard to begrudge this near-masterpiece of unease any of the praise it's gotten.