As a first-time director, Pearce manages something difficult. He creates a tone that acknowledges absurdity, but also consequences. He finds an edge that’s extreme, that’s weird, that’s satirical and that goes right to the edge of farce, and yet the movie is at all points as involving as an intense drama.

The absorbing rags-to-riches-to-rags story — a must for any classic film fan — is told in The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, directed by Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri.

City Slickers is a funny and affecting comedy, with wonderful jokes and a script flashing intelligence in every direction. [7 June 1991, p.E1]

They talk and talk, and somehow it's delightful.

One of his better efforts, not up there in the Vertigo-North by Northwest-Psycho stratosphere, but a cut above his competent thrillers such as Foreign Correspondent, Saboteur and Lifeboat. [19 Dec 2004]

The film deserves some kind of honor for its campy originality, smart and funny dialogue, and provocative yet sensitive look at the making of a film circa 1969.

An inspired mix of spirited family entertainment and harrowing drama.

Lattuada has adapted a gritty neorealist style to suit his dark comedy and is in full command in the final half hour, when he ups the ante in surprising ways.

To think of how people thought and acted just 45 years ago is to realize that the women in this film were the advance guard of the modern era. That makes them important, and they make this documentary important.

The film is as much about the creation of the original show back in 1975 and the genius of the late Michael Bennett, who masterminded it, as it is about the newer version.

Carries a lot of emotional power.

When explored by writer-director Mike White’s expert, soulful script, Brad, against all odds, becomes a sympathetic figure, and the film itself achieves a sort of poetry.

Director Gabe Polsky masterfully documents Fetisov’s triumphs — and sorrows.

The Boy and the Heron is unquestionably a personal vision, with its own internal logic. It has a direct conduit with the mind of its creator, who happens to be a genius and one of the best to ever do it. If this is it for Miyazaki, well, what a finish.

The greatest sexual suspense drama ever made has come to be regarded by many Hitchcock admirers as his most accomplished film. It is certainly his most forlorn, and easily his most mesmerizing. [Restored]

Aided by sumptuous cinematography (Eduard Grau), a haunting score (Alberto Iglesias) and eye-popping production design (Inbal Weinberg) – there’s always a font of interior decorating ideas in an Almodóvar film – Martha’s journey toward the great unknown has everything but a light at the end of the tunnel.

Contains an incest story line that's disturbing but shouldn't scare people away. Nair handles the subject with such grace and sensitivity that it becomes just another element in this complex celebration of family.

Neither a "gay" movie nor a straight one; it is simply a funny one.

Freeway is rude in the way the truth is rude -- only funnier. The movie seduces with its humor, all the while presenting a realized vision of a harsh, absurd world.

Backed by a feral, driving score from Ukrainian folkloric quartet DakhaBrakha, “Porcelain War” makes the case for art as another protective weapon against imperialism. Like Ukraine, the film concludes, the delicate but resilient sculptures may break easily — but are very hard to destroy.

The great thing about Reality Bites is that each of the characters comes across as real, and not some glib concoction by a screenwriter who's watched them from a cloistered distance. Childress obviously knows their world inside out, and shares it with insight and a prickly, original wit. [18 Feb 1994, p.C1]

A strikingly immersive movie, a slow burn filled with subtleties and nuance, with its message nestled in the details as much as the greater story. While other filmmakers have effectively captured San Francisco’s landmarks and topography, story co-writers Fails and Talbot seem to be filming San Francisco’s streets with a microscope.

Anybody who talks about True Romance has to start with the writing. It's dazzling. In scene after scene, Tarantino surprises the audience even while coming up with dialogue that rings much more true than anything you could have anticipated. [10 Sept 1993]

In the person of Cameron Diaz, Mary is an island of sanity, good-natured humanity and genuine sweetness in an ocean of anarchy. Without her presence, There's Something About Mary would be merely sophomoric and tasteless.

One of the consistent pleasures of Knives Out is that, while its style evokes an earlier era, the script is very much a witty response to today’s world.

As the corpses pile up and the cocoons hatch, the spiders become more brazen and finally start invading houses. The last 45 minutes of Arachnophobia is a blast, with attack-of-the-killer-spider scenes coming nonstop. This is not great art, but it's a good time, and the climax is terrific. [18 July 1990, p.E1]

A superb film.

This is one of the wisest, slickest and most unorthodox feminist films one could ever hope to see.

Though One Fine Morning is low-key and flows easily from one scene to the next, it’s truly innovative and original. Writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve has cracked a code. She figured out how to make a kind of movie that other filmmakers would love to make but don’t know how.

One of the best films of the year.

Hopkins makes himself transparent. He lets us see both who this man was and what he is now. There’s dignity in the crumbling facade and child-like terror in the eyes — and a warning to those who’ll be lucky enough to live so long.

Fan has visual panache - Last Train Home has some gorgeously composed shots - but he also has something that can't be taught: The patience and understanding to allow a family to tell their heartbreaking story in their own way.

It’s a crime movie, but as the title suggests, it’s a personality study, a detailed one that grows in dimension. It’s fascinating to watch Plaza fill in those details. Her face is almost blank, but only almost. We always know what she’s thinking.

The Idol, a feel-good film about a Palestinian boy’s improbable ascent to pop stardom, takes place mostly in Gaza, a place not associated with feeling good. But out of the war rubble emerges one of the most irresistible movies of the year.

In its sober, nonassertive way, Bopha! takes on the tone and weight of a Greek tragedy. [24 Sept 1993, p.C1]

Serbis has the feel of a documentary, but a documentary can't accomplish what Serbis does: Take us to a corner of the world where sex and regret are so intimately entwined.

One of the year’s most significant films.

Smart, fun entertainment.

To see performers of color so joyously at home in their roles as founding fathers and mothers, as leaders, as American myths was always one of the show’s chief gifts. In reenvisioning our past, it gave a salutary jolt to our present and helped remap our future.

In the riveting, masterfully executed Harmonium, bad karma pays a visit to a family — and overstays its welcome. It’s a bleak film, no doubt, yet it remains engrossing throughout with its genuinely surprising twists and outstanding acting.

Maybe it's no mystery how they did it, considering the aggregate comic talent, but this bunch achieves peaks of sublime nuttiness.

It's a rare, beautifully made movie that offers you another world. [23 June 1989, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

Ratatouille is a classic.

Red Sparrow is a thoroughly entertaining movie that stays fresh and interesting for all of its two-hours-plus running time. But what kicks it into a higher level is that it’s a terrific vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence, one of the few movie stars who deserves one, who is a film star in the classic sense.

In the end, the power of Final Account resides in the way it shows how human nature reacts to lies, propaganda and state-sanctioned atrocity. Some people, looking for an excuse to do evil, will jump right in. A very tiny faction will risk all to fight against them.

What a shrewd achievement for writer-director Henry Selick ("The Nightmare Before Christmas"), to have made a movie that everyone will acclaim as beautiful, when perhaps the most beautiful thing about it is the sheer ugliness of it all.

The concept is high, the humor lowbrow and the joy of experimentation evident in every frame of this wonderful picture.

Leigh goes right to the core of his character's lives and mines the place where we're weakest, most alone and sometimes the cruelest.

Has there ever been a live concert film as vibrant or as brilliantly realized? I don't think so. [Review of re-release]

Downbeat, ultimately tragic, but there's a wondrous, sad beauty here.

For the most part it is an effective, disturbing and - a rarity for Haggis - subtle exploration of the stateside war story.

Splendid.

Director Oliver Stone has fashioned in JFK a riveting, dramatic and disturbing look at one of the great whodunits of history. [20 Dec 1991]

Whatever you may feel about each side, it's hard to watch as city officials order explosives to be dropped on the MOVE house (which has a bunker on top) - and then sit idly by as the resulting fire burns the entire neighborhood. You'll keep asking yourself: How did it come to this? And hauntingly, no one has any answers.

It’s extraordinary how Luhrmann is able to tell this story honestly, while still making it palatable. It’s equally extraordinary that he can take this short and tragically misdirected life and make it feel like a triumph.

The moments between the characters are absolutely full. It's a pleasure to watch such consummate professionals.

Home for the Holidays strikes such a perfect note that it's hard at first to realize what an impressive balancing act it is.

Homicide is a haunting picture that nags at you, days later. It provides no neat answers to the questions it raises about the merits of assimilation vs. maintaining one's ethnic, racial or religious identity, but rather captures something of the times. It might not be the most satisfying movie out there, yet there's a sense about it that, years from now, Homicide will seem even better than it does today.[18 Oct 1991, p.D1]

A delightful, witty picture that's short and sweet and presents one of the most accurate depictions of the behavior of teenage boys you're ever going to see on screen. [22 Mar 1991, p.E1]

Living in Oblivion is a rarity, a dark comedy that takes place almost entirely on a film set. Written and directed by Tom DiCillo, this is a very funny picture that presents the world of independent film making as a nightmare of conflicting egos, budgetary squalor and incompetence.

Awakenings is a troubling film, but it's also a courageous one that dares to tackle a difficult subject with sensitivity and honesty. [20 Dec 1990, p.E1]

Delivers plenty of laughs and succeeds on a level that recent ``SNL'' movies (``It's Pat!'' and ``A Night at the Roxbury'') didn't.

A gorgeously rendered and gritty film version of the classic adventure story by Jack London. It is a must-see for anyone with an interest in outdoor adventures, particularly as invented by Jack London. [18 Jan 1991, p.E3]

With Woo, violence is not just a means to an end. It's something pretty; it's fascinating. His talent is an original and peculiar one. Woo brings an esthetic sensibility to bear on the phenomenon of a good guy beating people up -- and to the spectacle of a violent shoot-out. Explosions aren't just impressive but beautiful. [20 Aug 1993, p.C1]

All the women are good company, but in some ways Dench is the star of the show. She laughs often as she kibitzes with the others and seems not at all in awe of herself.

The audience, too, will be sorry to see this fleeting, beautifully made French film end.

"Human Resources" was a good, straightforward tale, but Time Out is better. It's haunting. It's like a poem.

There are lapses in character motivation, and at times the film takes on a cartoony feeling. But if you worry about those things, you shouldn't be watching action movies. For its genre, Broken Arrow is a class act.

I didn't think there was a drop left in this formula, but Sylvester Stallone has reached down, gone into the well, pulled himself up from the mat and found the strength within to come back with one last Rocky movie that's better than all the other sequels and almost as good as the original. [16 Nov 1990, p.E1]

Plummer gives her strangest, most uninhibited screen performance to date. Playing Eunice, a wildly psychotic killer with a working-class British accent and a mysterious past, Plummer draws a streak of white-hot rage across the screen.

Love has become a tired movie theme, but rarely is it relegated to a subplot as it is in Broadcast News. That's just one of the reasons that makes James Brooks' ingenious film a different sort of movie. Another is how it subtly reveals the complex mingling of work lives and love lives, showing how they feed each other and, indeed, feed off each other, careers devouring entire relationships in hungry 30-second sound bites. [10 Jan 1988, p.17]

It’s a wild ride from beginning to end, thanks to a fearless performance from Finnish actor Elmer Back, who is a perfect match for Greenaway’s mischief.

Mr. Holland's Opus is a glowing tribute to the unsung heroics of those rare, gifted teachers who make a difference in life. Richard Dreyfuss, in a performance that both touches and inspires, plays music teacher Glenn Holland.

The director is barely a kid, yet this is such a ferociously accomplished, beautifully nuanced and endlessly surprising film, you'd think the guy had been directing for decades. [13 June 2010, p.Q25]

If there is no other reason to see An American in Paris than its fabled 18-minute ballet scene -- well then, that, during the last reel, is worth the price of admission. Choreographed by Kelly -- no doubt with a smile -- it is a stunning series of homages to French painters Toulouse-Lautrec, Dufy, Utrillo, Renoir and the like. It is a masterpiece of filmic creations -- nothing quite like it before or since. [11 Dec 1992, p.C11]

Has a saccharine quality but also offers a memorable performance by famed Spanish actor Fernando Fernan Gomez.

Manhattan Murder Mystery is splendid good fun, and especially gratifying for those of us who've missed the harmonious Allen-Keaton combo. [20 Aug 1993, p.C1]

First Man is one small step for Chazelle that shows he is much more than a music man.

Terrific.

An entertaining but exhausting satire on tabloid media and the way they feed our thirst for violence, Natural Born Killers stars Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, in banshee-out-of-hell performances, as serial killers Mickey and Mallory Knox -- a trashy, gonzo/weirdo version of Bonnie & Clyde. [26 Aug 1994, p.C1]

The movie is so cleverly entrenched in its sardonic style that Russell's toughest act must have been keeping a straight face. Escape From L.A. is surprisingly effective in picturing a former nirvana clenched in the twisted rubble of its own excess.

It's tremendously entertaining, and probably worthy of repeat viewings.

Disclosure is a frankly adult picture. The seduction scene is protracted and genuinely sexy -- though what this woman sees in Douglas is a mystery. The talk in Disclosure is also frank -- and unusually explicit. People talk about sex in this picture as they would in life.

Denzel Washington is riveting.

This is an intimate, lyrical yet incendiary film, and it will please fans of both Young and Jarmusch, a filmmaker drawn to the intersection of American popular culture and a profound sense of loneliness.

Ixcanul provides a window into a culture that we rarely see. But it’s not just an anthropological study — it has a powerful story to tell, too.

One of the most visually sumptuous movies you will see this year.

Obviously, Barrymore is not ideally cast outside modern times, but her presence is so good-natured that she makes an audience want to work with her.

The title is all that's boring about director Michel Gondry's latest mind bender, as trippy as LSD.

Sean Mullin’s documentary It Ain’t Over is literally inside baseball. The film is essentially a Berra family project, an attempt to rehabilitate the professional reputation of someone who often doesn’t get his due as a player.

The suspenseful love story Out in the Dark isn't a political film by any stretch, but the intrigue and prejudices of the Arab-Israeli conflict certainly fuel the romance and thrills of this entertaining, taut movie.

As impressive as it is geeky. Most of the principal characters look like they haven't seen daylight since "Pac-Man Fever" was on the charts.

Big as it is, Blade' is meticulous and subtle, not just in its camera technique but in the way it works its themes and creates a mood.

For those of us too young, this will give you an idea of what it meant to watch those baby steps that led to one giant leap.

Worth seeing, both for the ways it's timeless and for the ways it encapsulates an era.

The new movie shrieks of motherhood - raising hot-button issues like biological clocks running down, the rights of birth mothers and whether to adopt or give artificial insemination a shot.

Has a jangly, improvisational tone, with nuanced moments of humor and pathos.

It's no great shakes as a film, but its combination of mild comedy, slapstick, pathos, many photogenic canines and a positive message will make it irresistible to families.