The script is full of off-the-wall lines that take you by surprise but are perfect. [21 Aug 1987]

The dialogue stretches are just pauses between the action scenes, where the director gets to show her stuff. [12 July 1991, p.F1]

If you partake of the Marvel universe, this movie is for you no matter what. And if you don’t, seeing it would be like going to church if you’re an atheist — an experience of spectacle unmoored from any purpose or definition. In the case of “Endgame,” we’re talking fine spectacle, to be sure, the best that money can buy. But all the same, this one is strictly for the faithful.

This film is the closest we're going to get to anything new by Williams, and it's a respectable effort.

At times you may be moved as by no other foreign film this year - and then 10 minutes later be leaning forward in the seat just to stay awake.

This is a movie in which the audience knows half the gags in advance, but thanks to director Dennis Dugan's timing and Farley's execution, the audience doesn't just laugh anyway, but laughs harder. Knowing in advance is part of the fun.

This is a film that would never work without brilliant casting of the child actors, and it’s a marvel to watch the interplay between the young girls, who don’t deliver a false note.

What makes this whole thing work is, first of all, Wilee's ride, an elegant machine that lacks any gears or brakes.

'Night' is the kind of horror movie where a zombie puts his hand through a window, grabs the hero's face with a decayed hand and fellows in the audience laugh, knowingly. The laugh I can understand. The "knowingly" part I don't even want to think about it...As horror movies go, it's a little better than average. [22 Oct 1990, p.F1]

This is a decidedly blue-state take on a red-state phenomenon.

As a whole, Turning Red succeeds in hitting all the right emotional notes — and its real magic lies in its unabashed celebration of the joyful chaos of girlhood within a proud Asian immigrant family.

I would gladly see the movie again, if just to see Smith do her trademark grumpy English thing.

Absurdity and poignancy merge in the carefully observed Czech film Up and Down.

An elegant and rather even-tempered documentary.

Madagascar isn't deep and would have no business being deep. But that it keeps one foot in reality is enough to keep us guessing.

In essence, the film is a series of reflections, but fortunately for us, many of them are thought-provoking.

The resulting film is nobly ridiculous and ridiculously noble, doing everything in its power to subvert the dross it's fooling around with.

Fascinating and distinctly politically incorrect.

A potent social allegory told with humor and mystery.

Fortunately, Arbid didn’t want to make a movie about crazy people or about people going crazy, so she pursued a third option: She made the woman interesting. So “Simple Passion” is a movie about something that, sooner or later, happens to lots of people, but the fun of this story is that it happens to someone we want to watch.

A lively, ultimately sad portrait.

For a good, straight-ahead noirish crime thriller, you could do a lot worse than A Walk Among the Tombstones.

Like a soap opera, but most of what glitters is gold.

If the movie ends too abruptly, it still gives plenty of screen time to its nicely screwed-up central character. And it's still a solid, assured feature debut from the latest brothers to watch.

It moves, makes us care and involves us in the genuine drama of two young people trying to heal themselves. The austere beauty of the locations doesn’t hurt either.

The Anthrax Attacks conjures the terror and paranoia afresh and, with the hindsight of 21 years, asks the viewer to consider how effectively the crisis was handled.

The documentary is not always fascinating, but Tuschi's ultimate thesis - that Khodorkovsky, who started out a shady businessman, ultimately emerged as a hero, willing to go to jail for his convictions - is a persuasive one. Clearly, the man is a political prisoner.

If some of the animation overdoes it, a lot of it is downright gorgeous. Few images this year have followed me home like the Ghost of Christmas Past, here imagined as a bright-flamed candle with the face of a child. It flickers. It whispers. It flies.