It's an emotionally gripping, daringly genre-twisting, consummately crafted piece of filmmaking.

I loved it...Without trying very hard, Farnsworth commands a unique and immensely appealing screen presence that could be called "a compilation of all the great western heroes of the movie past."

Like Kubrick, Field doesn't make any moral judgments about his characters, and his film remains stubbornly enigmatic. It can be read as a high-class revenge thriller, an ode to the futility of vengeance or almost anything in between.

This is an adrenaline-pumping, devilishly well-made thriller set against the downfall of an American family.

A heartbreaking look at broken trust.

There's not a smarter, more demanding American film from the past year.

The movie is occasionally funny, always very colorful and enjoyably overblown in the traditional Almodóvar style; and the performances -- especially Javier Cámara as the gentle, sweet-spirited Benigno -- are exquisitely tender and moving.

It's as much conceptual art as dispassionate survey of the bloodless assembly line nature of the modern food industry, all process and work, automation and repetition.

A radically disturbing and memorable movie whose images don't easily fade or diminish in power.

The commentary alternates between witty insight and opinionated bunk, but it's always fun -- and a must-see for movie buffs.

A hard film to shake and makes us think and think again.

The Dardennes's masterful casting and austere style amplify this simple but powerful parable.

Hou's first film made outside of Asia is his most emotionally turbulent, yet he remains, like the balloon, outside looking in, a compassionate but distant observer capturing it all with a graceful restraint and floating beauty that ultimately carried me away with it.

Varda sees herself as a gleaner as she searches for the people and cultural activities missed by the rest of the media.

Under Schnabel's direction, it becomes stilted and static, if not simplistic.

I'd like to think it's all a joke, that far from a dream this is actually Linklater's idea of a nightmare.

The movie is so surreal it's just not very involving. As an action extravaganza, it's busy but dull.

A drama that embraces the ambiguities and contradictions of family ties and human nature in all its irrational glory.

Offers nothing new. It's actually one of Polanski's more conventional films and, ultimately, it's hard to recommend it with a clear conscience.

A darkly funny journey about life ticking by and the change to make wrongs right.

Even knowing the happy outcome, Butler masterfully keeps us on the edge of our seats, and communicates the full horror and seeming hopelessness of the crew's situation every step of the way.

Desplechin fearlessly dives into raw, bitter revelations and surfaces with hope as our heroes try again to get it right.

There is more comedy than outrage in this critique of sexual inequality in Iran.

All told, Knocked Up works more in spite of its low humor than because of it.

A well-made but harrowing and extremely downbeat coming-of-age drama.

Whatever it is, the film is the first major release of the fall worth talking about: a fast-paced, visually slick, psychologically fascinating Boston-set cops-and-crooks saga.

With the exception of some minor glitches in the sound synchronization and a nighttime performance of The Band's "The Weight" that is uncharacteristically grainy, the film looks and sounds great.

Just in time for back-to-school, this smart film about a troubled teacher and student upends most movie images, both romantic and negatively stereotyped, of the urban classroom.

It's a terrific movie -- intelligent, magnificently acted, highly compelling as a thriller, and downright scary in its implications for the corporate-run world of the new millennium.

There's still nothing quite as thrilling on the screen as the spectacle of an icon movie star in a perfectly tailored role.

Yimou plays his images like a visual symphony, and turns a potential costume pageant into an exhilarating national myth.

It works as a wistful coda to suggest that the song will go on long after the show is over.

John Cameron Mitchell credits Plato as the inspiration for his rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Now Mitchell has turned his play into a raucous, touching celebration of a film.

The texture and intensity of the odyssey makes it spellbinding.

With The Dark Knight, the cinematic superhero spectacle comes closest to becoming modern myth, a pulp tragedy with costumed players and elevated stakes and terrible sacrifices. It's the new gold standard for superhero noir.

At times, the self-congratulatory tone makes for smug viewing and slow going. In spots, the pace is so all-exclusive that not every viewer will be able to get up and dance to it.

The characters are not hugely compelling, the performances never completely grab us, and much of the story, while visually arresting, is dramatically tedious.

The sudden turns of temperament are a treat after the smart-ass attitude of American horror flicks, and the film is full of minor surprises, squirming in unexpected directions without leaving the conventions behind.

More intelligent and thought-provoking than the usual dumb and dull-witted fare for children.

True to the characters and their conflicts, the resolution is neither neat nor expected. True to Demme, it's honest and generous and very human.

It's a gut-wrenching emotional experience that you'll watch with tears in your eyes. [26 Mar 1999]

A mix of the poetic and the polemic, the film is oddly abstract and untethered.

Both intellectually absorbing and emotionally gripping.

This is Boyle's fullest, most satisfying work and an audience-pleaser that deserves to be a big hit.

Above all, the film is just wonderfully ... well, Fellini-esque. It looks like nothing the cinema has seen since then.

The most emotionally rich and cinematically thrilling film I've seen all year, a film that pulses with human life in all its terrible and beautiful irrationality.

Paranoid Park is a movie about its teen hero's inability to express his feelings: to himself, to his parents, to his friends and, unfortunately, to the audience.

By 2020, when NASA's Orion lunar spacecraft is scheduled to launch, it's unlikely that any Apollo veterans will still be alive. Sington has done us a service in helping preserve their memories.

Sautet lets the film wander from Ventura's desperate odyssey, but when the irresistibly charming young Jean-Paul Belmondo enters the picture as an unflaggingly loyal ally, his wandering is forgiven.

Soars on its purity of form, subdued elegance and tidy professionalism.

As exciting and disturbing as it is in many ways, Children of Men -- based on a novel by P.D. James -- doesn't add up to a credible alternate view of the near-future: Its vision hasn't been well thought out, and, again and again, it struck me as a sloppy piece of storytelling.

Simply enjoy its witty and expertly crafted scenes, its controlled performances, its eccentric but mostly admirable characters, its succession of bleak but cozily Nordic panoramas and its surprisingly optimistic view of the world.

It lacks history, background and cultural roots, but it's undeniably infectious.

You have to admire Chen's fearlessness in chasing the taboo subject matter, and in unblinkingly depicting the horrors of China's recent past. [29 Oct 1993]

It's LaPaglia's finest, deepest role and he's matched by Armstrong, who makes Sonja's undaunting optimism palpable within a trying marriage that's gulping for breath.

Because the subjects are all mellowing into grandparenthood and their abrasive, wilder days are behind them, this particular "scrapbook" isn't as heavy hitting and hard-edged as its predecessors.

The best thing about The Joy Luck Club is that it is not too cerebral, calculated or self-consciously arty. It is also an intensely emotional movie that celebrates the mystical undercurrent of life, that accepts the healing miracle of love, and - in the tradition of the great Hollywood "women's pictures" of the '30s and '40s - simply does not leave a dry eye in the house. [24 Sept 1993]

A dynamite comedy-drama that, unless it stiffs big-time at the box office, should be up for multi-Oscar nominations come February.

Undeniably riveting.

Think of this corrective to Kipling as "The Longest Yard" meets "The Seven Samurai" with cricket bats, choreographed dance numbers, romantic triangles and a rousing call to solidarity.

It's a daring failure that should delight many devotees of Classic Hollywood.

Both blunt and complex, Sauter's illustration of economic Darwinism at its most primal and unforgiving is a harrowing vision of human life as collateral damage in the modern global economy.

It's a twisted but beautiful love letter to a city, not factually correct but emotionally true.

For all the ephemeral pleasure of the company of old friends, there is a chasm between them and the dynamics shift from moment to moment. The beauty of the film is how director Kelly Reichardt brilliantly captures those moments with lucid simplicity.

Hammer filmed on location with local nonactors. Their lack of polish is evident -- Smith's inexpressiveness, though part of his character, is simply blank at times -- but their conviction can be just as powerful.

Cruz is tough and sexy as the no-nonsense Raimunda and she's being deservedly talked up for an Oscar nomination in a tight best actress year.

While it's being sold as "an effervescent comedy," Happy-Go-Lucky is nothing of the sort. It's rather grim, the laughs are few.

This latest remake goes back to the spirit and letter of Eric Knight's 1940 novel.

While Shrek may trek into that dark territory and has some questionable values simmering beneath the surface, its characters are delightful enough and the film is just sweet-natured and visually sophiscated enough to avoid sinking into the swamp.

The film doesn't shy away from the political side of hip-hop.

Achieves its social commentary through passion and poetry.

The film's real feat may be in its production design, in the sumptuousness and veracity with which it re-creates central Saigon and the Vietnamese countryside of the '50s: an exotic lost world of brothels and opium dens, trishaws and ao-dai dresses, Ming-deco interiors and water buffalos in rice paddies.

Oregon-born and Seattle-based director James Longley profiles three lives in his impressionistic portrait of Iraq's Sunni, Shia and Kurd communities.

Moves along its course and overflows at its climax with that indefinable but unmistakable assurance of a master filmmaker who knows just what he wants to say, is in total command of his medium and is in no mood to make any compromises.

Bujalski's gift for capturing the awkwardness of social relationships and the messy, unkempt details of everyday life is revealing.

It's a brilliant little microcosm of the '60s experience that, in a most gentle way, shows us how the counterculture probably was doomed from its inception.

At once an elegy for the communal experience of cinema-going and another quintessentially Tsai portrait of loneliness and isolation.

Shooting with a respectful remove that captures an intimacy by sheer doggedness, Finkiel creates a rich atmosphere by simply looking, listening and peering past the surfaces.

For three-fourths of its journey, Adaptation is, for my money, the movie of the year: an incredibly audacious and original exercise that challenges the conventions of moviemaking and stretches the boundaries of fiction -- almost, but not quite, to the breaking point.

It's a chilling tale that leaves us with the fear that Latin America's exploding social problems may well be beyond solution.

There are too few surprises and even less subtlety in the telling. We can only sit and wait for the next bomb to drop on this poor exploited girl.

It is ironic that the core audience for Chop Shop is that very crowd that has recently taken steps to redevelop the Iron Triangle into something more Manhattan-friendly.

Comes together with a wry sense of humor, a total lack of gratuitous movie nonsense and a graceful dignity that allows the humanity of his characters to shine through in a very special way.

One more good thing is that the movie doesn't overstay its welcome. At 76-minutes, it's wisely calculated to give us as much of its ghoulish whimsy as we can take in one sitting, and not a second more.

Forget "Raising Helen" and "The Notebook," this is the movie summer's most touching young romance.

The film is your basic sensitive young people coming-of-age in the '60s formula piece. [29 Apr 1995]

Ken Loach's new film, "Ladybird, Ladybird," takes us deep inside the true story of a woman who is a long-term victim of brutal men, and examines her predicament with such intimacy and ambiguity that the experience becomes the very antithesis of cliche. [27 Jan 1995]

Cronenberg's most disciplined exploration yet of that shadowy realm: the world refracted through the prism of a schizophrenic mind.

This bloodless, nuanced little thriller carries small weight save for Huppert's enigmatic, thrifty performance.

Cements director's place as mob-movie master.

Though it's unflinching in its depiction of homosexual affection, the marvel of the movie is the dexterity with which it transcends the specificity of its characters and gay theme to be a universal human statement and profound political epic.

It's almost too devastating for words, yet never less than compelling and heartbreakingly affecting.

Its dazzling blend of rock magic and 3-D technology just may be ushering in a whole new kind of musical theater.

In a Fuller film, you're never quite sure where you're going. Whether Fuller was an authentic artist may be open to debate, but it's impossible to deny he was a first-rate storyteller. [15 May 1998]

In its defense, I can only say that, technically, it's an exhilarating piece of filmmaking; it offers a commanding comeback role for Carradine, and it serves as a summation, dead end and, perhaps, epitaph, for Tarantino's unique contribution to world cinema.

There's nothing harder for an actor to play than a thoroughly good character, and Staunton does it with a dowdy, sublime originality.

It is passionate and angry and rousing where you might expect it to become numbing and depressing.

The restraint of both director and actor makes this steely gangster drama reverberate long after it ends. This kind of mystery is rare in a film culture that demands answers before the credits roll.