Brando's performance is so idiosyncratic -- the nasal delivery, the muffled diction and, of course, the screaming, ''Stel- lahh!'' -- that it's easy to forget its technical brilliance. But from Brando's first scene he exudes menace, even while talking calmly. His eyes always on the lookout for some slight, Stanley is ready to lash out every second he is on screen. He's impossible not to watch -- he's too odd, too dangerous. [Director's Cut; 11 Feb 1994, p.C3]

Quite simply, one of the best movies of the year so far.

It shouldn't be missed. This is a fact-based story of the French resistance who had to fight not only the Germans but their own people. The title comes from the term in a propaganda poster that the Germans and occupied French government used to label the fighters as terrorists.

Remarkable rockumentary.

Directed with a touch both delicate and muscular by the great Delmer Daves, it's truly a Western for those who don't like Westerns, and will be treasured by those that do. [02 Jun 2013, p.Q21]

Durham’s direction is sensitive and assured, and he does a great job mixing his location work with archival footage to create an authentic sense of what San Francisco was like during those times. This is not one of those movies that shoots in the city for two days then absconds to Vancouver for the rest of the shoot. This is a Bay Area movie through and through.

It’s right up there with the best rock documentaries. That is, if you can call it a documentary.

This one's so much fun, it's worth taking the whole family.

So much for caveats. What's more important is that "The Cook" is a bracingly intelligent and often beautiful work -- a chilling black comedy that tells its heartless story in a virtuoso style marked by visual elegance and dark, ironic wit. Anyone able to stomach its graphic imagery will find it an unsettling but unforgettable movie. [6 Apr 1990, p.E3]

The visuals pop, the fish emote and the ocean comes alive. That's in the first two minutes. After that, they do some really cool stuff.

Neville’s portrayal is gripping, emotional and therapeutic, but fans looking for clear-cut answers won’t find them.

The best scenes are filmed inside the cruiser, dashboard shots that face inward instead of out, catching Gyllenhaal and Peña in moments so playful and true they make all other buddy cops look bogus by comparison.

It would have been enough for The Other Dream Team to simply pay tribute to the tie-dyed underdogs, but the filmmakers strived for more. Adding detailed historical context, the quirky feel-good story becomes a tragedy and a lesson. And that makes the victories resonate even more.

There's nothing like a good story, and The Galapagos Affair: Satan Comes to Eden has a great one that grabs viewers from the first minute and holds on for two solid hours.

An entirely unconventional, hypnotic, meandering film.

It’s smart and funny and makes great effort to capture not just a time and place, but the specific feelings of being on the verge of adulthood and thinking the world is against you.

A quite interesting and irresistible movie, a sort of cross between Paul Schrader’s recent film of spiritual crisis, “First Reformed,” and Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can.” An impostor as anguished priest.

Mischievous, singular and profound.

If there were any justice in the world — there often isn’t — Alice Guy-Blaché would be remembered alongside D.W. Griffith as one of the great pioneers of the early screen. The good news is that she is becoming better known, but as the new documentary, Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché makes clear, not nearly as much as she deserves, nor for the right reasons.

Won the Golden Spire Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival a few years back, and now, finally, the documentary is being released into theaters. It's a film with distinct virtues: It tells a fascinating story.

It's a very funny movie, perfectly paced. [15 Apr 1994, p.C1]

Technically rough and ragged, Paris nonetheless does an excellent job of digesting a rich, multilayered subculture, and breaking it down for a general audience without oversimplification. [09 Aug 1991, p.F1]

As Marguerite, Frot is a completely open vessel, ready to receive the muse that cannot come. She has a childlike quality here, but she also seems (and this is both funny and sad) very much the mature artist.

One of the most hauntingly beautiful mysteries ever created on film.

Woody Allen's strongest and most mordantly funny movie in years, even if it is also his bleakest.

Stagecoach both revived and elevated the Western.

Let It Rain touches on class issues, feminism, immigration and the particular challenges facing a single, driven career woman in her 40s. But it's graceful in presenting its ideas, and what emerges is not a polemic but a kind of snapshot of modern-day concerns.

An extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at the comedy game.

It grabs you from a symbolic opening scene of gang members rolling the dice -- the odds, it soon becomes clear, are stacked against them getting lucky -- and never lets go.

A film that must be seen to understand the sad truths of our times. It's been made with a sensitivity and creativity that's come to exemplify Winterbottom's work.

Although it's told in the light, piquant style of his best comedies, there's a sadness at the root of Federico Fellini's Intervista. [31 Mar 1993, p.D3]

Ultimately, it’s not so much about nature but our own existence. The knowledge that our lives are finite but valuable — and what our responsibilities are for generations to come.

A thrilling, audacious work.

It is not merely a thriller but a shocker. It will separate hard-core Jet Li followers from the fair-weather fans.

Little Shop of Horrors is consistently amusing and churns with non-stop musical momentum, plus a few old-time Disney touches. This time, it's easy being green. [19 Dec 1986, p.79]

This film, directed by William Friedkin and based on Mart Crowley's breakthrough play, is often dismissed (sometimes by people who haven't seen it) as sappy and dated. But on second look, it's one of the important films of the 1970s.

Blanchett is so convincing, and Field’s approach is so authentic, that it feels like an event, not just a movie.

Director Nancy Buirski not only is able to give rare insights into the dance world but a compelling tale of love, friendship and perseverance.

A brilliantly realized, Hollywood-sleek documentary produced by Cameron Crowe, A-list director and onetime boy wonder Rolling Stone reporter who not only conducts the film’s current interviews, but is also shown at age 16 in 1974 doing his first interview with Crosby.

It's a good movie not because it says the right things but because it says those things well. [18 Sept 1992, p.C3]

One of the year's most important documentaries, a real must-see.

Arrival works as mainstream entertainment, but includes hallmarks of the “2001: A Space Odyssey”/“Silent Running” era of artist-driven science fiction. It has Hollywood stars, but makes great effort to strip them of any false glamour. The film is tightly calibrated, but leaves things open to interpretation, for discussion on the ride home and beyond.

This film is the sharpest since "The Prisoner of Azkaban." It is the most emotionally satisfying, blending spot-on comedy and adenoidal sexual tension, with scenes of gutsy vulnerability.

A riveting works of humanism.

This is one of the greatest films of the 1950s, a prophetic film about the dangerous power of modern media.

May be the most magnetic, most beautiful and bravest Carmen ever to grace a stage or film set.

The main source of astonishment is the precision exhibited everywhere, from the slyly vintage look of Rodrigo Prieto's cinematography to the gradual, cinching tension in Chris Terrio's careful screenplay.

Aided by the luscious cinematography of Giuseppe Rotunno (one of Fellini's favorites) and the illustrious production design of Dante Ferretti, Gilliam has clearly won this round to preserve magic and wonder on the screen. [8 Mar 1989, p.E1]

Respect has everything you could hope for in a musical biopic. It has a good story and great songs and, best of all, it has someone in the lead role who can put those songs over.

Beatty has fashioned a hilarious morality tale that delivers a surprisingly potent, angry message beneath the laughs.

One need not be a jazz aficionado to enjoy this film. All that’s required is a smile.

A fine-boned, luminous tribute to Keats and the sufferings of love.

In 1925, Charlie Chaplin released "The Gold Rush," his best film to date and one of the best he would ever make - or anyone would ever make.

Thoroughly entertaining.

The Last Duel, directed by Ridley Scott, gives us the texture of life in 14th century France, so much so that we feel that we are there, in this place that’s desperate and foreign and yet human and familiar.

Naked Gun 33 1/3 is a feast of pointless, shamelessly silly, almost consistently funny gags. Another comic gem. [18 Mar 1994, p.C1]

It’s a beautiful and hopeful film, coming at a time when there isn’t much beauty or hope in our movies, and it’s the type of picture — a sprawling, exuberant musical drama — that hasn’t been seen in decades.

Feels positively Greek in its magnitude, a lament about fate, age, time and life.

An exhilarating documentary.

An invigorating and inspiring viewing experience. The mission was indeed a giant leap for mankind, and now we have a documentary worthy of its subject.

There's no pretending this is a perfect movie. Yet I doubt I could have enjoyed it more if it were. [25 Nov 1992, p.E1]

One of the best films of the year.

A Haunting in Venice is no downer. The script by Michael Green (“Logan,” “Blade Runner 2049”), who also wrote the first two Branagh Poirots, is at times ingenious, and he wrote a great part for Fey. As the mystery novelist Ariadne, a stand-in for Christie, she brings nice comic touches to a performance that threatens to steal the movie.

Rachel Weisz - in what has to be the performance of her career, and there have been lots of good ones - plays an intelligent woman in the grip of a lust that's too big to handle or suppress. She can either ride the tiger or be devoured.

So wonderfully odd, even spiritual, that audiences won't be able to do anything but smile.

A couple of other odd moments to savor: Lucky, seeking a crossword answer, reads a dictionary definition of “realism” that’s perfectly to the point. And listen as he plays “Red River Valley” on the harmonica. Either one is a great way to remember Harry Dean Stanton.

In some ways, this is "The Graduate" gone to "Lord of the Flies."

Writing With Fire, directed by Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas, tags along with these remarkable women as they go about their work. Viewers sit in on editorial meetings and training sessions, and go out in the field...It’s well worth seeking out.

The film's final words are simple and to the point, and come from the retired cop, Seymour Pine: "You knew they broke the law, but what kind of law was that?"

It doesn’t make cows into human beings. If anything, for some 90 minutes, it turns us into a cow. In doing so, it shows us — in a way that we actually feel it — how amazing it is to exist.

That’s a strength in this documentary. It becomes clear that it’ll take a strongman to bring down a strongman, at least in this case.

Visually mesmerizing, lyrical and with a unique cadence, “Is God Is” is a one-of-a-kind experience. It’s angry and yet imbued with wry, fatalistic humor.

Art is either alive or dead, and this movie is emphatically and exuberantly living, energized by what can only truly be described as love. The movie’s love is for the place, for the characters and for all their dreams. In movies, as in life, love is rare. It makes everything better, and it must be respected.

Morgan finds the right elements of action and character through which to make history leap off the page.

None of these issues are fully resolved, but just enough ... and that’s what makes On Golden Pond cinema gold.

Everyone has a story from childhood that remains vivid in memory, and that feels important enough to immortalize in art. But few people have the ability to get their story out from their minds and onto the page, the stage or the screen. Yet when that does happen, and when it’s done right, you can get something original and heartfelt, such as Kenneth Branagh’s autobiographical Belfast, one of the glories of this year’s cinema.

One of the smartest and most impassioned films about Christianity in recent memory, though to say that might give the wrong impression. In tone and strategy, the film is low-key and subtle; and the story can be appreciated both for its surface qualities and its deeper intentions.

Green Card demonstrates that explicit nudity is not necessarily an essential ingredient in creating an erotic atmosphere, but that it does take a director's sensitive understanding of the various ways in which emotion creates desire. When that understanding is combined with a sense of the human comedy, it's cause for celebration. [11 Jan 1991, p.E1]

Spotlight one of the best movies about journalism ever made, at once gripping and accurate. It doesn’t just get the big things right, such as how news stories evolve, but the small things, such as what offices look like and how staff tends to react to a new boss.

Such are the timeless joys of the books (and now the movie), this sparkling absurdity and knack for buckling swash under the worst of circumstances.

A unique and hilarious British comedy.

Riveting.

Descendant isn’t just necessary. It’s urgent.

A larger-than-life resonance.

Addams Family Values is so much better than the first film -- partly because Sonnenfeld, who made his directing debut with the first film, has refined his directing chops, but mostly because Rudnick has contributed a delightful, mock- macabre script. [19 Nov 1993, p.C1]

All told, the best ensemble cast I've seen this year.

A dark comedy that confirms Diablo Cody as a screenwriter of importance, eliminates the last shred of doubt that Jason Reitman is a major director and gives Charlize Theron her best showcase since "Monster."

A viewer may even blink his eyes to be sure the turn of events is actually happening.

An innovative and intriguing plot, credible characters with edgy relationships navigating increasingly insane situations, plus jokes and scares built up with care or blasted out of disruptive nowhere with equal effectiveness — it’s all here, and even better.

One of 2005's must-see documentaries.

Richly satisfying entertainment the way movies are at their best, when they prod you to think.

Invoking the seven deadly sins and the Ten Commandments, nearly everyone has something to confess. In that sense, this new “Knives Out” isn’t just a whodunit, but a who-didn’t-do-it — spiritually speaking.

Maestro exposes a truth about marriage that I always knew but could never quite articulate: To be truly known and understood can actually be scary.

The goal of this review - why not just say it? - is to disclose as little about the story as possible while instilling a ravenous and even rabid desire to see Love Crime immediately.

Alan Rudolph's direction is active but unintrusive, highlighting some of the more chilling moments with slow-motion sequences and odd cross-cutting. [19 Apr 1991, p.E1]

The Coens' plotting, with its suspense and reversals, is a source of amazement and delight.

This movie is seriously funny, surprisingly funny, not funny in a way that you ever decide to laugh, but funny like you couldn’t keep quiet even if you wanted to. The laughs, as they say, keep coming.

Gripping and compelling.