The plot is spare, but unsettling imagery elevates The Hunter to the level of pure cinema.

An intelligent, well-made film about a seemingly well-adjusted, likable and loquacious woman.

The movie is about a sculptor, played by Michelle Williams, in the days leading up to a gallery show. That’s all it’s about, and yet it’s enough. The pleasure of Showing Up is in being dropped into this woman’s life and, more profoundly, into her consciousness.

This movie doesn't work unless the central relationship between Atafeh and Shireen works. It does, beautifully; whether together in a nightclub or alone in a bedroom, Boosheri and Kazemy find a delicacy and sensitivity that reinforces, not diminishes, their strength.

Dangerous Liaisons isn't necessarily a work of art, but it's a guilty pleasure for sure.

Anyone with any doubt as to the importance, in a functioning democracy, of American newspapers - with working newsrooms full of professional, paid journalists - needs to see this movie.

A tennis match can be a personal battle, a clash not only of athleticism but of mind, and Guadagnino gives every game and set the gravity of gladiatorial contest.

All this is dramatized expertly and with a lightness of touch in Simon Beaufoy’s screenplay and in the direction of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the team behind “Little Miss Sunshine.”

Children of Men is Cuarón's run for freedom, with a riveting story, fantastic action scenes and acting so universally solid that even the dogs perform masterfully under his direction.

A movie to savor.

In Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan takes an eggheady topic and, without insulting anyone’s intelligence, turns it into a gut-level experience. He shows that the kind of hyper, jacked-up, ultra-modern filmmaking associated with the action and superhero genres can be harnessed in the service of a smart, serious movie.

The payoff is a consistently rich piece with impressive visual vitality.

Utilizing plentiful archival footage, contemporary commentary, recent interview observations from people who were there and some dramatized recreation, director Cristina Costantini gets some sly laughs, edged with appropriate anger, out of the sexist mindsets Ride deftly steered her career through in the 1970s and ’80s.

Funny, riveting look at the music scene that ruled Manchester, England, from 1976 to 1992.

Maybe the best shoot-'em-up ever made, the one that turned meanness into a haunting pictorial poetry and summed up the corruption of guilt, old age and death in the American fantasy of the Old West.

A gem of fast action, sophisticated wit and inspired comedy.

The result is a comedy that's low budget in all the right ways - so hilarious, testosterone-charged and yet cringe-inducing to watch that the result is almost exhausting.

It's an horrific and tragic story, but somehow made beautiful through the care and attention of Schnabel's direction and Bardem's tender, unforgettable performance.

Inhuman though it may be, this is far-and-away the most humane of “Predators,” expanding rather than skimping on the series’ blood hunt fundamentals. That kind of daring and intelligence makes “Badlands” the coolest science fiction adventure seen in eons.

A work of art such as A Good Person cannot be the product of some casual connection. It’s the product of a soul connection, and I hope Braff and Pugh get another chance to work together.

[Scorsese's] latest, “Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger,” is a personal guide to the work of a one-of-a-kind directing duo who continues to influence filmmakers today.

Almodóvar presents this material in a way that never splits our attention, even as he’s giving us a deluge of sensory and emotional detail. It’s as if he’s internalized the story so completely that he can’t make a gesture — can’t move the camera, can’t shape a moment — without saying something true.

Delightful.

It's a hilarious comedy made even more successful because so much of the satire seems fresh.

This doesn’t have the budget or the marketing push of “Pet Sematary,” the other horror film out this week, but The Wind has a boldness and imagination that transcends such limitations. This is indie horror at its best.

This is what Hopkins has been showing us for decade after decade: the deepest, rawest and most tortured feelings of private, dignified men. His is nothing less than a glorious cinematic legacy, and the miracle is that he keeps building on it.

Structured like a 17th century comedy of manners, the picture is a social critique of the idle rich that's part comic and part tragic, that's light and airy and yet haunted with meaning. [08 Feb 2004]

It's the kind of small but amazing character study (think ``Marty'') that film lovers yearn for while griping that this type of picture no longer gets made. Turns out it does.

Deliriously charming.

Jarmusch has created a small miracle of a film, one that is both intellectually dazzling and emotionally provocative.

Herzog, as ever, is obsessed most of all with human nature: Into the Abyss explores our deepest urges to love, and live, and kill.

Lindon is a strong, sensitive actor, heir to the stoic French working-class tradition of Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura. And not enough can be said for Kiberlain, an actress willing to be seen in all her ranges.

All Black, all the time, and could easily have been an exhausting mess. But the movie is coherent, hilarious and surprisingly sweet.

This is a science fiction film, but like all excellent movies in the genre, the focus never strays from the human heart.

Using long takes, tracking shots, segments where the screen goes pitch-black, and rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue, Patterson has created a film that forces an audience to pay attention for fear of missing something.

Patrick Stewart needs to work on his interpretation of Darth Vader in “Hamlet: Return of the Siths,” but it’s those little comic diversions interspersed throughout Hunting Elephants that make this Israeli movie a little gem.

Director Bernard Rose has created a committed, intelligent and fascinating piece of work with no irony about it.

Late in the extraordinary new Netflix documentary American Factory, Cao DeWang, the Chinese CEO of the Fuyao Group, wonders aloud, “I don’t know if I’m a contributor or a sinner.”

In the face of this relentless nihilism, it’s quite an achievement that the new documentary Wasted! The Story of Food Waste is so darned entertaining and hopeful, as well as informative.

When it's over, this documentary lingers as a testament to extraordinary human bravery. It stands as one of the most heartbreaking and suspenseful sagas of the year.

No, you don’t have to be a fan of fake wrestling to appreciate “Iron Claw.” A love for classic Greek tragedy wouldn’t be misplaced, though.

Christian McKay who, as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles"gives what I believe is the most exact and uncanny screen portrayal of an historical figure, ever.

Spartacus isn't the greatest epic ever made, but it's head and shoulders above most of the sword-and-sandal wheezers that came out in the '50s and '60s. And, given the prohibitive costs of shooting an epic today, it's the kind of movie we're not likely to see anymore -- except in well-deserved revivals like this one. [13 May 1991, p.E1]

A triumph for all involved.

A tense, nail-biting thriller featuring powerhouse performances.

A life-affirming rebuttal to apathy, despair and surrender. It’s also one of the year’s most important films.

This may be Favreau’s best achievement — taking a beloved film guided by Walt Disney himself and crafting something distinct and memorable.

The movie is a stunner, so hypnotic that the length hardly matters.

It is an exceptional accomplishment.

This is the legal movie that lawyers most often praise for its realism, in terms of not only story but also tone and atmosphere. It's full of great scenes. [08 Apr 2012, p.P19]

Full of drama, poignancy and some heartbreaking moments.

A film of audacity and total gut-level appeal.

In this small and very smart film, Cronenberg does several things at once and makes them all look effortless, capturing various shadings of consciousness and versions of reality.

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]

The story is minimal, just a series of events in the life of a young man and his circle, but every scene is rendered with such authenticity that it’s riveting, almost like it’s a privilege to be stepping back in time.

This wonderful romp of a movie looks magical on the big screen: colors are a picnic for the eyes, details loom so clearly you can practically touch them and there's a sense of the larger-than-life with a film that's already larger than 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]

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is a perfect thriller. It may not be as good a movie as ''Cape Fear,'' which is a sort of cinematic extravaganza, but in many ways I liked it more. It's stripped- down and lean, without a moment wasted, and the plot works like a delicate machine. [10 Jan 1992, p.C1]

Leaves its audience with many troubling questions. Among them: Should a film console us with its own brilliance when it aims to discomfit us with its content?

Out of the Past is cinematic perfection, a Hollywood classic that's as great and as enjoyable as its reputation has promised.

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.

It's a special movie that can make you laugh out loud numerous times at gross comedy and then make you think and feel something, too. There’s also something to be said for a movie that seems like the most fun these actors ever had.

One of the best Hong Kong films of 2002.

It touches, in a way movies rarely do, on some essential current of life.

One of the best films to open in the Bay Area in 2007.

Loose, buoyant and bracingly original.

Cassandro takes place in an inherently goofy arena — this is over-the-top, stagey fighting, after all — but the filmmakers avoided the temptations of cheap laughs and produced a satisfying dramatic story that will appeal to both fans and non-fans of this outlandish wrestling genre. That’s a rope move worth cheering for.

The movie's satisfactions are subtle, but they run deep, and there are many.

None of the advance hype on Kids can prepare you for the raw, stripped-down reality that Larry Clark captures in his astonishing first film. Nothing can prepare you, because no other film has ever caught the recklessness, sweat and tingly heat of teenage sexuality so effectively.

A funny movie, but also a serious movie, and — who knows? — maybe an important one.

It is pure, retro-cinematic joy.

What's much more fascinating and enriching is Eastwood's Olympian vision, the sympathetic and all-encompassing understanding of the pain and grandeur of life on earth.

More than a high concept stretched to feature length. This is a funny and extremely satisfying comedy, the best in a while.

Virtually everyone who sees this movie will be galvanized to do something about global warming -- and everyone should see this movie.

Intimate, heartfelt and wickedly funny, it's a movie whose impact lingers.

Here's another thought: This old man who can't leave the house has just made the first important film of 2010.

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

It's a bleak, fatalistic tale about rootlessness and the changing moral order in the machine age, but the wondrous details of the film trump any grand thematic concerns.

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.

This is an acerbic examination of erotic obsession, told from different perspectives, with wit, suspense and cold-blooded detachment.

A richly textured and compelling film.

The balance between action and mysticism in The Empire Strikes Back provides fascinating energy. It's as if the kids are given one set of delights, the bravado of battles and elaborate warships zooming through exotic space, and adults are given another, a layered explanation of what it all means in the grand scheme of things. [Special Edition]

Lemmon and MacLaine are magical together, and MacMurray more than holds his own as the third part of the triangle. He commands the office - and, not incidentally, the big screen - with a sexual energy he would scarcely have a chance to show again.

Unlike the previous two installments, Lady Vengeance generates on odd feeling: hope.

The most heartbreaking, moving film in theaters right now.

The Corruptor' quickly turns into a good bad-cop drama of fascinating moral complexity.

Set amid a group of freshly arrived white army conscripts who will be sent to fight communist guerrillas along the Angolan border in apartheid-era South Africa, it’s a riveting portrait of a particular time and place while also being a broader assault on the type of pressure-cooker masculinity where torture, cruelty, humiliation and racism are the coins of the realm.

It's a lovely and wistful celebration of youth, time and moments of connection -- and about the experience of living in the midst of a simple, perfect day that you know you'll remember for the rest of your life.

This is one of the funniest movies of the year.

What makes it brilliant is that it demonstrates how universal this distinctly Jewish musical has become, how it has been embraced by many cultures and how it is still influential today.

A rare chance to see a major cinematic work on the big screen.

Frank, funny and true as "Ghost World."

With its dry, throwaway humor and constant stream of chuckles, it creates its own category of stealth comedy.

A vital, sexy and touching movie that goes to the heart of what human caring is all about.

It's a wise, sweet-natured film, and one that manages to have fun with its charac ters without judgment or condescension. [04 Aug 1993, p.E1]

A delicate, beautifully observed study of impossible romance, Lost in Translation is one of the best films this year.

This is a rare film and a rare use of cinema. Other documentaries are like filmed news stories. This one is like a poem. If you see this, you will never again think of hearing in quite the same way, and you will hear sounds that are so haunting that they will be with you for the rest of your life.

The women are remarkable, unforgettable. But don’t overlook Nivola, an enigmatic figure as the rabbi and husband.