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.

It's striking how much emotion Satrapi is able to convey through blocky drawings.

Best “performances,'' however, are given by the movie's almost agonizingly beautiful historical settings -- luxurious households, rich architecture, furnishings, ornaments, draperies, fineries and such are often more captivating than the hushed tones of the lovers. [17 Sept 1993, Daily Notebook, p.C1]

The thinking is shallow. The emotions are tepid. But the creativity is dazzling. If that sounds like a slam, consider that most Hollywood screenplays are predictable, rote and functional -- and those are the good ones, folks.

So in-depth, so appealing, so easy to sit through and so anomalously grand scale that few who see it will ever forget it.

Director Jesse Moss was basically a one-man production crew, which explains how he was able to film such intimate, painful conversations. His work is haunting — one of the best documentaries of the year.

The soundtrack, full of jazz standards, is an enjoyable feature, though in the context of the movie, audiences will mostly feel anxiety hearing them. The amount of work required to sound breezy and effortless is daunting.

A great film, the best I've seen since Terrence Malick's "The New World," and far and away the richest and most brilliantly acted picture to be released this Oscar season.

Beautiful but hollow.

Child actors usually seem either vacuous or snotty, but 8-year-old Max Pomeranc qualifies as a find. As Josh he comes across as a genuinely nice kid, and his intelligent, watchful eyes make him a believable chess talent. In fact, Pomer anc is a highly-ranked chess player who has competed in the national finals. [11 Aug 1993, p.E1]

It’s sincere and intelligent — but it’s weak as a social statement and even weaker as drama.

Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is a bladder-buster of a movie with no obvious bathroom break, no section where the story starts to sag. This makes it, almost by definition, a good and admirable piece of work. But Killers of the Flower Moon is also a lumbering mess, an ungainly and tonally odd film that, for all the strength of its parts, has little cumulative impact.

For art lovers, though, there is plenty to savor.

Delightful.

Frank, funny and true as "Ghost World."

What a talent Waad is. For Sama is a film made with the instincts of a journalist, the passion of a revolutionary and the beating heart of a mother.

Force of Evil is a more thoughtful kind of film noir than we are used to but still employs the traditional black-and-white contrasts and shadows.

Verhoeven creates an elegant frame for his lead actress and lets her fill it, and what we end up with is Huppert’s best collaboration with a director since the death of Claude Chabrol.

The director has said that, though the story was inspired by the deaths of his parents, he hoped to make a film "brimming with life." He's succeeded.

As a film, "Levees" is a significant and exhaustive achievement. Although it can be argued that it might have been even more effective if it had been edited down a bit, the power of its human stories compensates for whatever minor flaws it has.

It's screamingly, hysterically, laugh-through-the-next-joke, laugh-for-the-next-week funny. It's so inventive…This is a film by an original and significant comic intelligence.

It is not just about the American dream; it is a search for America’s soul.

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.

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.

Marty Supreme is so fast-moving that its 2½-hour running time passes quickly. Even with a uniformly excellent and eclectic cast and some over-the-top situations, it’s hard to take your eyes off Chalamet.

The most coolheaded of the Iraq war documentaries, the most methodical and the least polemical. Yet it's the one that will leave audiences the most shattered, angry and astounded.

Not a stirring piece of drama, and it does not altogether work in the ways it was intended to. But in its own shambling, elliptical way it's an entertaining, memorable movie whose 2 1/2 hours go by without strain.

It’s a delicious, yet far-fetched setup that pushes the limits of believability, even when we consider how powerful denial can be. But director Christian Petzold never loses control of his taut film.

Almost frighteningly alive.

Farmers may wonder what the big deal is, but Gunda is quite a cinematic achievement whether you’re familiar with the livestock or not. Plus, the piglets, whom we see grow from birth to adolescence, alone are worth the price of admission.

The Power of the Dog is a beautifully composed work by a filmmaker at the height of her powers. It deserves our attention.

Feels like a streamlined improvement on the original.

The quietly stirring, exquisitely photographed Columbus is an art-house gem that beautifully illuminates not only the architecture of a small Indiana town, but also the characters that inhabit it.

In many ways - in all ways - The Artist is a profound achievement.

In many ways, the film is typical Hitchcock, with his camerawork check out the scenes with the umbrellas, the windmill, Big Ben, an airplane crash and others, thrilling plot lines, casting against type and employing attractive lead actors and actresses. But it's also very unusual because of the director's use of propaganda, unusual for him. [06 Apr 2014, p.R19]

All this makes Zama interesting and unique and something to be respected. But none of this translates into anything resembling a satisfying narrative or even entertainment as we know it. Still, as bleak experiments go, Zama is the real thing.

Magical and haunting, The Piano has the power and delicate mystery of a gothic fairy tale. [19 Nov 1993]

This screen version, directed by Lewis Milestone, is the one to see. Burgess Meredith is George and Lon Chaney Jr. is Lenny. Chaney never got to do much in movies, except rapidly grow hair as the Wolfman, but this movie proves that the younger Chaney inherited some of his father's genius. [24 Feb 2002]

What results isn’t a straight autobiography, obviously, but rather the autobiography of a career and, most importantly, the autobiography of a spirit.

The movie is long, and here and there it seems to meander. But when it arrives at its anguished last scene, there's no doubt that Eustache knew where he was heading all along.

Ultimately is less a horror film than a valentine, from a daughter to a father, and a sweet portrait of a man going gently into that good night.

An excellent film noir.

The crack in the pretty picture of America goes a lot deeper than we thought, thanks to Ray's brooding vision.

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

Far superior to its companion piece, "Flags of Our Fathers," released earlier this year, "Letters" is a grim and humane film that has to be counted among the director's better efforts.

Anomalisa may simply be a brilliant one-off, but it’s pointing a new direction for animation, if anyone cares to follow it.

The 1931 version, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, is the standout, featuring two great performances, one by Fredric March (who won the Academy Award for the title role) and the other by Miriam Hopkins, as Ivy, the lovable trollop. [28 Dec 2003]

A famous French actor using his art to work through the loss of his wife and daughter in a car accident. The strategy works, at least for a while.

Twenty-five years after its release, "Diva" is still an excellent model on how a crime thriller should be done.

Visually, Bi is already a master. There are amazing shots that recall Tarkovsky (especially “Stalker,” an acknowledged influence), or early Wong Kar-Wai.

If it all sounds rather heady for a Disney movie, well, it is. And it is one of the curious delights of The Lion King that a moralistic patriarchal drama can be played out in a Darwinian setting and still emerge shining in a dream coat of Hollywood entertainment values. [24 June 1994, p.C1]

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

Hawkins, Bonneville and voice actor Ben Whishaw — who makes Paddington sound like the Geico gecko minus the attitude — give the film a strong base of kindness.

The movie is funny, definitely funny. But underlying the humor is a vision so bleak, so despairing and so utterly hopeless as to make "No Country for Old Men" almost look cheerful.

A triumph that goes well beyond Hoffman's tour de force performance.

A unique and hilarious British comedy.

A tender, unforgettable comedy about a vanishing way of life.

Hard Truths lacks subplots, or, come to think of it, a plot. Good thing, then, that it features one of the best lead performances of the movie awards season. Pansy might remain a bit of a mystery, but Jean-Baptiste is clearly a revelation.

The movie represents a leap forward for writer-director Martin McDonagh. Three Billboards is as clever and imaginative as McDonagh’s “In Bruges,” in terms of how it makes characters collide in delightful and unexpected ways.

A moving, quite amazing documentary.

Overlord is an ambitious, important experiment that has come to light after three decades of neglect.

A history lesson about the Holocaust well worth teaching.

Hardly a riveting experience. It has slow patches, but it has a cumulative effect, thanks equally to Hansen-Love and Huppert. We come away feeling enriched and expanded, without exactly knowing how or why.

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.

Macy is the MVP here, delivering a detailed and very moving portrayal of Granier’s cohort on the job, an explosives specialist and natural-born environmentalist.

There is plenty that’s wrong with it, and there’s plenty that’s right with it. But the truth is, in the moment, no one is balancing pros and cons. I just loved it. It’s a film that combines an overall feeling of modernity and relevance with the glow of old-time glamour.

And there lies the greatest flaw with Citzenfour and Snowden himself. Despite the film’s virtues, we’re no closer to understanding Snowden than we were a year ago when this saga began.

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

To say it is about a debilitating disease is as reductive as saying "Little Miss Sunshine" is about a beauty pageant. Both are intimate stories of family ties that bind but sometimes also choke.

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.

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.

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.

Foxtrot troubles and fascinates as it shifts from a portrait of grief to one of pathology, and captivates after it shifts again, into a visually driven, borderline absurd look at military life.

There's such a thing as smart angry, and such a thing as stupid angry, and after seeing Inside Job, audiences will be smart angry.

Unlike the sometimes cornpone depictions of backwoods life in “Winter’s Bone,” the folksier moments here seem organic.

It will be the most talked-about comedy of summer.

To members of the Darko cult, this may not be an improvement, but it could help this compelling and extremely moving film find the audience it deserves.

The King's Speech is a warm, wise film - the best period movie of the year and one of the year's best movies.

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

What keeps us glued to our seats are a series of unexpected plot turns, little and surprising story moments that create curiosity and sometimes anxiety. Just as one of these elements resolve, Almodóvar presents another, so that there is no point in Parallel Mothers at which the audience can become bored or complacent.

What Mackenzie has crafted here is a crowd-pleaser with undeniable art-house elements.

Has some great movie moments but also boring stretches.

The old “Shirkers” is gone, but long live Tan’s new version.

The verdict is sad but unavoidable. Poor Things is a 141-minute mistake.

Ghobadi infuses his movie with a humor that can almost be called Seinfeldian, and it's this mix of laughter with tears that gives Marooned in Iraq its big impact.

Mr. Soul! is like a wrinkle in time, a time capsule that needed to be opened. In uncovering rare gold, it’s a film that reminds us just how much we don’t know.

Aquarius has a lot of things on its mind, and sometimes the plot machinations in the last third seem a tad heavy-handed, almost as if they’re being piled upon a delicate character sketch.

I just don't know how all this sweetness and light will go down with a teenaged movie audience presumably gung-ho with Rambo - especially now that he's got the presidential seal of approval. And that's no joke, son! [3 July 1985, p.58]

Jacob Bernstein’s documentary about his mother, Nora Ephron, is unbearably funny for much of the way, and then it is sad, but bearably so because Everything Is Copy is about one woman’s realization that some things in life are more than material for her writing.

The most entertaining movie of the year. Funny and action-packed, it's also got that rare thing, heart.

Chadwick Boseman commands every moment of this film, radiating probity and purpose, and it’s only later on that you realize that, with another actor, this wouldn’t have been a sure thing. The Black Panther is a superhero with lots of uncertainty.

If you haven’t seen a Weerasethakul film yet, here’s a good opportunity, but leave your expectations at the door. There’s no one like him.

The magic of Brooklyn can’t be analyzed, but something in the richness of its relationships puts an essential truth before us — the brevity and immensity of life. We know all about that, of course, but that’s the beauty of great art: It takes what you already know and makes you feel it.

The film, winsome and tragic at once and finely attuned to the rhythms of childhood, always seems quite close to real life.

Life Is Sweet, a comedy with wonderfully touching moments by off-beat British director Mike Leigh, is an absolute gem of eccentric humor about family life. Fresh and quirky, the film dishes up astonishing vitality in its look at what is ostensibly a plain, lower middle-class family in Middlesex. [22 Nov. 1991, p.C5]