Some things really are as good as the hype makes them out to be, and The Endless Summer is one of them. [28 Jun 2020, p.K14]

It's a film of tension and spectacle, with a singular point of view behind it. It grabs the viewer thoroughly, even as it invites audiences to watch it with a cold, careful eye.

This is a solid, three-star movie, but its premise is brilliant and unforgettable. [21 May 2017, p.Q45]

The essential mistake that's made about Lewis is assuming his movies were intended mainly to be funny. I suspect they were intended mainly to be really, really weird.

By far Elvis' best post-Army flick, and you can thank Ann-Margret for that distinction. [03 Aug 1997, p.34]

This is one of the wisest, slickest and most unorthodox feminist films one could ever hope to see.

Cool, chiseled and savagely funny, Kubrick's cautionary doomsday farce never ages but gets more relevant with time. [12 March 1999, p.D15]

Maybe the film works best as nostalgia for Baby Boomers who recall the picture from their childhood.

Few thrillers create as much sheer joy and happiness as Charade, in which Cary Grant spoofs his Alfred Hitchcock persona, Audrey Hepburn exudes her usual magnetic charm, and Paris is as scenic as ever. [18 Jan 2018, p.E4]

It is possibly Kurosawa's most underrated masterpiece, rich in characterization and structure, yet lost in the shuffle among such classics as "Rashomon" and "Seven Samurai." [14 Sep 2008, p.N31]

It's over pretty fast, just 75 minutes, but it has its grisly moments and a few underwater sequences that are pretty creepy.

The Great Escape is great entertainment. [06 Jun 2004]

Lust on the Grand Prix circuit. [30 Sep 2007, p.N34]

Blake Edwards' moody suspense thriller captures San Francisco from unexpected perspectives, starting with a dark drive with a perfect noirish Henry Mancini score across the Bay Bridge, and ending with then-new Candlestick Park. [08 Feb 2015, p.D6]

You can take it straight as an example of a bygone day of outsize filmmaking or enjoy it as kitsch, but it's exhilarating either way.

Each player in this love rhombus keeps the Martin Ritt-directed affair from scatting off into period nonsense. [01 Jul 2001]

As French crime thrillers go, this is about as good as it gets.

In this one masterpiece, Federico Fellini achieved the ideal balance -- between social observation and unconscious imagery, between artistic discipline and freedom, and between the neo-realism of 1950s Italian cinema and the orgiastic flights of his later work.

Bleak, dark and strangely arresting throughout, Blast of Silence is not quite a can't-miss proposition, but one comes away from it feeling as if one has seen a minor classic of some kind. Yes, minor - but still a classic. [04 May 2008, p.N36]

Stanley Donen's spouse-swapping comedy is not as naughty as it might have been, but it showcases Mitchum in a good comic role. [11 Jul 1997, p.D1]

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]

He has very shrewdly interwoven crime, sex and suspense, blended the real and the unreal in fascinating proportions and punctuated his film with several quick, grisly and unnerving surprises.

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.

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]

The greatest sexual suspense drama ever made has come to be regarded by many Hitchcock admirers as his most accomplished film. It is certainly his most forlorn, and easily his most mesmerizing. [Restored]

Touch of Evil is a savvy starter because Welles' astonishing cinematic invention and his persuasive presence as star are prime noir at tractions. The look, a deftly arranged climate of odd shadows and angles, neon lighting and flawlessly choreographed action scenes, keeps interest piqued through a contrived plot and mannered acting.

The level of sexual tension and general creepiness as Chahine's character becomes unhinged is more intense than one would expect from a movie made in the 1950s under a totalitarian regime. [04 May 2017, p.E7]

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.