It's a celebration of American female screen acting, it's a study of early feminism that feels relevant today, it's a carefully mounted exercise in period filmmaking and it's a beloved novel come to life for the fourth time. [23 Dec 1994]

A near-perfect movie.

Thrilling. [22 Jan 1993, p.AE15]

The timing and cutting of the film are terrific, the build-up to an absurdly hilarious climax is just right, and the performances are near perfect.

It is affecting, accomplished, witty, poignant and memorable.... Unstrung Heroes is one of the year's best films. [22 Sep 1995]

The experience of watching Carol is like being pulled into a different place, real and not real, like the best movies, like being in love.

In the year's least surprising news, Toy Story 3 continues Pixar's near-perfect streak.

Godard's 1964 dreamy yet cynical masterwork holds up as a both remarkably sad and thrilling comment on living life as if in a movie. [07 Dec 2001]

The term “iconic” is often overused, but in the case of Brian De Palma’s 1976 horror film “Carrie,” it’s justified. The image of Sissy Spacek doused in blood at the prom is unmistakable and regularly referenced in other scary movies and parodies. [28 Feb 2014, p.R06]

A stunning film.

With a level-gazed approach to its milieu, empathetic but clear-eyed, Winter's Bone practically makes up for 40 years of "Deliverance"-style hillbilly cartoons.

The best-looking, best-scripted and funniest of Smith's pictures, it's also Smith's sharpest.

Almost more valuable as a piece of foreign policy than as the highly accomplished work of cinema it is.

The acting is flawless, the world feels utterly real, and the finale accomplishes the miracle of finding in the everyday world something profound.

Eastwood has crafted one of the most powerful American dramas in years.

Simultaneously modern and yet gorgeously primitive with its budget sets and simple but influential score, this is not just a film re-release but a film event.

It's an ambitious, passionate, grief-stricken work of film art.

Utterly thrilling and enthralling, a commercial film that paces itself wonderfully, never allowing the action or romance to outweigh its story and characters. For mainstream adventure fare, that's quite an accomplishment.

For fans of Monk's music, the film is a must-see. [20 Jan 1990, p.C09]

A spell-binding, engaging and often breathtaking work in which exquisite sets, costumes, photography and music combine with top-notch acting and out-of-this-world fighting scenes.

Can a film so expertly capture the odious and bitter that it becomes deliciously, disgustingly beautiful? Yes, if that film is 1957's Sweet Smell of Success.

The movie was solidly directed by Hollywood vet Lewis Milestone [All Quiet on the Western Front], but it's the performances by the two leads that takes it to another level. [23 Mar 2001]

After Life is a thoroughly original, wholly realized work that leaves a profound and nagging bug in your brain for days after you've seen it: What in your life is worth holding on to? What one thing would you wish never to forget? It's a question as relevant to the lives we live each day as it is to our final moments. [24 Sept 1999, p.26]

Gravity isn’t as ambitious as “2001,” but then, what is? It is, however, absolutely a worthy successor, a masterpiece of hard science fiction, and the movie to beat at this point for next year’s cinematography and visual effects Oscars.

This edition -- clean and tight as Scott would have it -- presents a strong case for Alien as both the greatest horror film and the greatest science-fiction film ever made.

This deadpan ode to living life to its fullest could be the ultimate crowd-pleaser at this year's PIFF.

Innocence revisits imagery from the first film. But this time computer animation pumps everything up to epic proportions. The results are overwhelming.

The miracle of Some Kind of Monster is Berlinger and Sinofsky's ability to make us root for these self-absorbed man-children.