With a zippy soundtrack and breezy editing style, Every Body comes off as an up-to-date declaration that being intersex is something to be celebrated. In the end, we can’t help but share in the enthusiasm.

Payback has a completely different spirit from "L.A. Confidential'' -- more wild, more silly -- but it has the same attention to the fine points of plot and character.

Sly, near-perfect comedy.

Sad funny and richly romantic, everything that makes Allen’s movies so beloved. [7 February 1986, Daily Notebook p.76]

Athlete A gives us the story behind the story. It’s a terrific journalism movie, but it’s also a story of young women who persevered and found justice against the odds.

A good rule of thumb for Richard III is that if it's not fun, somebody's doing something wrong. Nothing's wrong here. Some of the unexpected visual touches are brilliant, others simply entertaining. But the picture never stops coming at you.

But perhaps the most affectingly weird and most unforgettable performance comes from Penn. There is nothing redeemable about his character, and the actor plays him like Javier Bardem’s unstoppable assassin in the Coen brothers’ “No Country for Old Men”.

This film has a voice of its own. And at a time when the romantic comedy seems to be a lost art form, that's saying something.

Takashi's film is sumptuous, with rich cinematography, costumes and set design. Half the time it is a game of chess - the battle of wits between Motome and the lord. Half of the time it is a moving melodrama.

Stone's feisty, intensely personal style of film making is well-known. With Born on the Fourth of July we are treated to a poignant, spirited and captivating - for the broken heartedness of it all - performance by Tom Cruise. [25 Dec 1989, p.E1]

Just in physical terms, Eddie Redmayne transformation’s into Stephen Hawking is something remarkable.

Brother's Keeper is a thoroughly engaging examination of the whole curious affair by two New York City-based film makers, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, who document with a distinctive underlying humor and a feeling for contrasts between urban and rural America. Sometimes that contrast is touching, sometimes painfully hilarious, and often a little gloomy as the film delves into the lives of the surviving brothers to reveal a community with genuinely humane values, but one ripe for exploitation by the big city media. [16 Oct 1992, p.C4]

The story itself is arresting, and if that’s all “Bang” offered, that would be enough. But “Bang” does more.

A film of great hilarity, humanity, idiosyncrasy and grade-A, eyebrow-singeing raunch.

The film is its own beast, and it's a rare one.

Bridge of Spies tells us that the Constitution is not some quaint national luxury but the road map out of the darkness.

Acting rarely gets better than this.

Watching Licorice Pizza is simultaneously like watching life with all the boring parts cut out and like watching movies with all the phony parts cut out.

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.

Dan in Real Life fires on so many circuits that at times it's actually shocking how good it is.

Amid scattershot pop culture references, flying cars and squads of armored knights with laser-guided crossbows, Nimona makes a cry for acceptance that has mythic resonance.

Talented director Eran Riklis is interested in the coexistence of cultures, not violence, but that doesn’t mean his ending fails to carry an emotional wallop. It’s a doozy, and shows us that life can be a complex whirl of dueling identities.

I'd be shocked if we see a better horror film in 2013.

Ultimately, Black Bear is about the price of art — not only the price the artist pays, but that the people around the artist end up paying, unwittingly. Yet in the actual experience of it, the movie doesn’t feel so lofty. It just feels tense and disquieting, like a thriller. In that sense, it is a thriller, but one of the emotions, and it’s riveting every step of the way.

A great piece of filmmaking and a legitimate science-fiction/horror classic.

Walt Disney Pictures' Beauty and the Beast is an enchanting feast of extraordinary animated film making that magically revives the classic Disney style with genial humor, memorable music, fluid grace in its drawings, and compelling romance. [15 Nov 1991, p.C1]

A very smart, very shrewd movie, and the smartest, shrewdest thing about it is the way it masquerades as just a fluffy comedy, a diversion, a trifle.

The suffering artist story is as old as time. Yet “The Brutalist” tells it with such specificity and visceral conviction, it feels entirely fresh. Modern, even.