The anger, the mischief, the humor and the intelligence that flash in Day-Lewis' eyes make Christy Brown the most memorable film figure of the year. The Oscar does not necessarily reflect the pinnacle of success for an actor, but Day-Lewis certainly deserves that honor. [20 Dec 1989, p.E1]

The bold, masterful Beach Rats, one of the most exquisitely haunting LGBT coming-of-age stories ever told, takes place in the unhip fringes of Brooklyn, a land that time has forgotten. But nothing about this film is forgettable.

It’s just fantastic. Sorry, fantastique.

This thriller is so expertly -- and perversely -- poised that audience members may find themselves secretly rooting for the duplicitous Ripley.

If you thought you didn’t like William Shatner, see this movie to have your mind changed. And if you already like him, get ready to love the guy.

Sing Sing is also a celebration of the creative expressiveness of live theater and its possibilities.

The result is something rare, especially considering how fine the novel is, a film that's fuller and deeper than the book.

All That Breathes is the kind of immersive documentary experience other filmmakers, and film lovers, would do well to study. It never feels the need to explain what it’s doing. It’s as calm and patient as the Samaritans at its core.

That perception of Fiennes and Gustave is central to the whole enterprise. Without it, the movie just breaks off and flies away. But with it, The Grand Budapest Hotel becomes something wonderful.

Welles goes for broke in his performance and direction, and the only trick he misses is a tracking shot around his own bulging waistline. [Director's Cut]

After watching her belt, blast and harmonize with power and precision through wildly diverse styles of music like an Amazon heroine, to see her struggle her way through this short piece is the kind of heart-string moment documentary filmmakers can only hope to catch.

Anybody with a soft spot for fakers, who either identifies with them or just admires their chutzpah, is going to get a kick out of Happy, Texas.

A delightful French comedy.

A brilliant and irresistible counterfactual overview of American history.

Riveting.

It is filled with lavish battle scenes and sharply scripted intrigue, and is among Kurosawa's greatest triumphs. [17 Apr 2005]

A confluence of perfection in every aspect of the film.

The fight climax and very interesting resolution cap off an exhilarating two hours of entertainment — and suggest a sequel to come. Hope there is one.

One Day is a beautiful movie, but beautiful in a way that life often is, not movies. Nothing is sudden or easy, either for the characters or for the audience, and there are no thunderbolts from the blue.

Benediction is an awesome combination of wildness and control. Davies is out there all by himself, speaking a cinematic language that is his own and that has little to do with plays or literature.

As touching and original a movie as you're likely to see this year.

The Farewell has a special feeling about it. It’s full of truth and emotion, and lacking in sentimentality. It has an eye for absurdity and for the telling detail, and it marks Lulu Wang as a director with the rare but essential ability to make you care about what she cares about. It will go down as one of the standout movies of 2019.

A genuine winner in the old-fashioned family entertainment genre.

For those who just come for the music, “Hit Me Hard and Soft” hits the spot, covering most of her best songs, from “Chihiro” to “Everything I Wanted” and “Bad Guy,” while providing a limited yet fascinating window into Eilish’s workaday world.

The film is so pitch perfect and realistic, it seems you are there with these people, watching their lives unfold before you as it happens.

4 Little Girls brilliantly captures a moment in American history and tells an achingly painful story of injustice and family loss.

Vincente Minnelli's lavish and hugely entertaining adaptation of the Gustave Flaubert classic leaves little doubt that Emma (Jennifer Jones in an over-the-top performance that works surprisingly well) has found satisfaction for the first time in the arms of wealthy rogue Rodolphe (a perfectly cast Louis Jourdan). [26 Aug 2007, p.N44]

At times trying and perplexing, but it also contains some of the most psychologically insightful and ecstatic filmmaking imaginable.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that conveyed with such vividness and precision the helplessness of childhood.

Goal! hits the back of the net and is an early candidate for the funnest movie of the summer.

A remarkable documentary about an almost unfathomable ordeal.

Sounds like silly fun -- and Linda Linda Linda is -- but it is also an extremely well-written, emotionally complex coming-of-age tale that has a John Hughesian respect for teenage angst.

A serious movie that slowly earns its emotion and enlists our involvement. Even before the finish, it’s goosebumps all around.

Like her (Cholodenko) other movies, this one has vivid characters and strong performances and flows like a slice of life set in an appealing, interesting world. But this one also has a good story and, if you're paying attention, a distinct point of view.

The best American movie about women so far this year, and probably the best that will be made this year.

Audiences will come away feeling like they’ve really been somewhere, that they were moved by the people they met and expanded by the experience. You can’t ask more from a movie.

Klapisch's masterstroke was to place at the center of a movie a man, forced by circumstances, to stop and simply observe.

This is one of Kubrick's best, not gimmicky or arch, not somnambulant or mannered, just finely detailed, measured, richly photographed and, at every step of the way, entertaining and interesting.

It's one of the best documentaries ever made about show business, about what it really consists of and what it demands.

The short, sad life of Amy Winehouse is compellingly told in a new documentary that sidesteps sensationalism and dime-store psychologizing and lets archival footage do much of the work.

The unnerving brilliance of the film owes to the director's skill at assembling information and allowing it to speak for itself.

It's an exuberant, well- crafted film that gets the audience involved on a gut level even before the opening credits are over.

A brutal movie, brutal in all the right ways -- brutally stark, brutally funny, brutally brutal. [30 Oct 1992]

Has more originality, nitty-gritty humor, spirit and spunk than all the summer blockbuster retreads combined. Underneath the jousting and jiving, there's a sharp, uncompromising look at the anatomy of a race riot in the movie. [30 June 1989, Daily Notebook, p.E3]

The film's freedom and control, its inspiration and focus, announce it as the work of a confident and mature artist.

Haunting music, the seriousness of the allegations and riveting interviews with Alexander Haig, Christopher Hitchens (whose book inspired the film) and others give "Kissinger" extra drama and urgency.

If there is any suspicion that PBS is trying to butch it up for the Bush administration, this film's thoughtful and heartbreaking depiction of the hell and loss of war is an eloquent counterbalance.

Adapted from Justin Torres’ debut novel from 2011, Zagar’s bravura direction, with a visual style by cinematographer Zak Mulligan, is lyrical and poetic in an approach that would suggest Terence Malick, complete with wistful narration by the film’s young protagonist.

It's shockingly funny - you don't sit there deciding to laugh. Your own laughter catches you by surprise. [14 Apr 1989]

First Reformed has a confidence about it, the presence of filmmaking consciousness that can’t do wrong, because this time he knows exactly what he wants to say, not only in a general sense, but second by second and shot by shot.

A movie unlike any other.

A poetry of love, longing and affirmation bleeds through the music of Cuba, and some of the best sounds the island ever created are captured with embracing humanity.

An exquisite achievement.

Weeping Camel essentially lets native people tell their own unforgettable story.

Bright Leaves' takes on a sizable foe -- in this case, big tobacco -- but with such grace and wit that his message never seems medicinal.

A wonderful movie, sincere and inspired, with four terrific performances and a story that doesn't let up. The picture has the gentle, nourishing quality of a fairy tale that you want to believe, and the unsoftened impact of gut-level entertainment. [13 July 1990, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

The film's tone is extraordinarily flexible, holding within the same reality elements of the absurd, the ridiculous and the comic while sustaining a sense of tension and dread throughout. This is, of course, one of the classic Pacino roles - he's so appealing - but don't overlook the late John Cazale as his accomplice, who gives us a character who's stupid and scared, troubled and dangerous, and disturbingly inscrutable.

It’s hard to know what to make of this, but it’s quite enough that it happens at all. The film has some longueurs — it isn’t scintillating for every second of screen time. But Marques-Mercet and his actors establish an intimacy with the audience that’s practically unique. Even if you love it only a little, not completely, you will probably remember 10,000 Km for the rest of your life.

Waitress deserves an essay, not just a review. There are perfect moments that stand out, and the reasons for their perfection are interesting.

With Henry & June, [Kaufman] has had the courage to look at the many unconventional faces of love with grace and sympathy. It is a daring and major accomplishment by one of our foremost film artists. [05 Oct 1990, p.E1]

We can only describe the result, which is that this director — in her first feature film — has the ability to synthesize emotions and ideas through pictures. She shows you something; it means something, and you know what it means. She has an emotion, so she shows you something else, and you feel it, too.

As in a good European film, shots are allowed to breathe. The focus is on character and human emotion. At the same time, the movie shows an American concern for pace and story development. The result is the best of both worlds.

Sigourney Weaver is so daring and amazing, her veracity is at times painful to behold.

Beautifully acted and suffused with warmth and humor, Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret is a film worthy of the long wait in bringing Judy Blume’s classic 1970 children’s book to the screen.

The films never lose sight of Mesrine the man, a fascinating character in that he's brutal yet extremely intelligent, has a skewed but discernible conscience, and, under the right circumstances, can be warm and generous.

To see Come From Away onscreen now — directed by Christopher Ashley, who won a Tony Award for his Broadway direction of the show — is to see a path to mercy and compassion off in the distance and wonder if we can still get there — or if it’s too late for us.

Leigh is perfectly cast as the game-pod goddess.

It’s not easy to make an amusing, accessible diversion that mixes LGBTQ positivity and national politics, but “Red, White & Blue” passes the test with flying colors.

Those willing to meet (Untitled) even part way will discover a comedy of intelligence and wit, with some strong performances.

A haunting, beautiful labyrinth that gets inside your bones and stays there.

Third Person is Paul Haggis' best movie, and the one he has been building toward for years.

It’s a potent and timely slice of Americana.

Thanks to Radner’s letters, diaries and autobiography, director Lisa D’Apolito is able to tell us, with great immediacy, what Radner’s thoughts were at the time. We come away with the portrait of someone who was never just going along for the ride, but who was always questioning and challenging herself, working toward professional excellence and hoping for an ideal romance.

A crime gem that is darkly funny even when it's chilling -- and certain to become a classic.

Each shot is its own little miracle.

Star Wars, set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” is the most exciting picture to be released this year — exciting as theater and exciting as cinema. It is the most visually awesome such work to appear since “2001: A Space Odyssey,” yet is intriguingly human in its scope and boundaries.

This is the world through the idiosyncratic eye of Cassavetes, which is both all-forgiving and inexhaustibly, passionately nosy. [28 Jun 1991, p.F8]

In watching Ava, a visually inviting and sharp portrait of teenage life in Iran, one must admire how writer-director Sadaf Foroughi was able to play her own tune in life.

Extraordinary.

Red is the best of the lot: warmer, more accessible, unusually generous toward its characters. A mystical tale of chance encounters and unexpected connections, Red uses a traffic accident as a springboard to discovery.

Visually stunning, it meshes haunting images with a complex multilevel story about the enchantment of youth.

The funniest film to come along since "South Park," and one that succeeds in a more difficult and satisfying way.

The true soul of the New York mob is portrayed in Donnie Brasco, a first-class Mafia thriller that is also in its way a love story -- perhaps director Mike Newell's best.

Like all his films of the last dozen years, “No Bears” brims with paranoia and metaphors for the trouble Panahi’s pictures have gotten him into. This time, though, he implicates himself in a complex exploration of how his work can exploit and even exacerbate the real-life tragedies it’s always so powerfully depicted.

Like the best wines and the best films, there’s a complexity to the finish, so that it reverberates with meanings beyond the obvious. Indignation has the disconcerting quality of truth and is an altogether adult piece of work.

One of the best American films of the year so far.

Logan takes its indestructible metal claws to comic book movie norms and destroys them, and it’s a wonderful thing.

Hilarious.

The linchpin is Johnson, who turns in a vulnerable yet confident performance as an always chill woman who might be too willing to make a relationship work, a role she’s mastered since starring in the “Fifty Shades” trilogy.

Has genuine life in it. It's an energetic comedy that consistently looks for and finds unexpected ways to be funny. [31 Mar 1995, p.C8]

The most consistently entertaining movie of 2012. It's 165 minutes long and shouldn't be a minute shorter, a film of surprises, both in story and in casting, and of moments of agonizing, teased-out tension. The dialogue is dazzling.

As an antidote to the frenetic nature of a lot of children’s TV of the day, Rogers preferred a measured pace on his show, and even made judicious use of silence. These are just two of the numerous gifts given by this extraordinary man to the children lucky enough to have watched “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

Disney's 33rd animated feature, and its first with characters based on real people, is a stunning movie with clever twists, vivid characterizations, insightful songs and a surprising harvest of revisionist history that manages to ring smartly as pure entertainment.

Superb documentary.

The film captures the harshness and the sweetness of our time.

This is a perpetrator’s perspective on the business of violence, carried out with notions of professionalism while slowly shaking the sociopath’s sense of self. Michael Fassbender’s unnamed contract killer is as delusional as he is dead-aimed focused; it’s both chilling and humanizing.

The plot is an obvious parable for modern dilemmas, yet in the hands of the film's creators, and with their graceful use of 3-D, viewers feel as if they're watching how the future might actually unfold, glimpsing a conflict that's destined to take place 300 years from now.

The most passionate love affair in The Souvenir is with film. Hogg utilizes an almost cinema verite style, with a visual look of the grainy kind of 16mm film an ’80s film school student would work with. Her style is reminiscent of early Olivier Assayas or Éric Rohmer’s “The Green Ray” (1986), an acknowledged influence.