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]