Gunnarsson masterfully weaves these strands into a bold, multilayered tapestry surrounding a powerful story.

Philip Messina's claustrophobic sets and Cliff Martinez's elegantly creepy score add to the film's distinction and work off Clooney's performance and Soderbergh's staging to create an hypnotic spell and suggest a cosmos full of spiritual possibility.

A gracefully subtle, sweet-spirited French parable of the brotherhood of man that was nominated for a Golden Globe, won Omar Sharif a César Award for best actor and has been a surprise hit in Europe.

It could be more involving, but it's funny enough that you won't care.

A powerful experience, filled with dazzlingly executed action sequences that generally avoid the rock music and drugged-out conventions of "Apocalypse Now," and even exude a certain core of humanity.

It's funny, touching and crammed to the rafters with clever dialogue, splashy production numbers and stiff-upper-lip charm.

Mühe's performance is brilliant, communicating more turmoil and pain with the droop of a lip and a flicker of the eye across an otherwise intently passive face than all the emotional storms of the cast.

An unusually engrossing World War II epic.

The script, written 20 years ago by the late, great director John Cassavetes, still packs an emotional wallop. [21 Mar 1998]

Captures the overwhelming and uncontrollable emotional assault of loving and living through captured moments and sensuous images.

It's the warmest, most generous portrait of American hospitality you've seen from a European movie in some time.

Despite the cat-and-mouse games between cop and criminal, this is less a battle of wills than one man's battle for his own soul. Nolan bravely treads where few American films dare to delve -- into the world of ambivalence and ambiguity -- and emerges with a compelling portrait.

It's more strangely and elementally touching than its predecessors.

The film is an across-the-board charmer that should appeal to children as well as their parents, aficionados of animation and old-movie buffs who will be challenged to sort out the blur of seemingly hundreds of classic film references.

One of the most hilarious and engaging films from producer Judd Apatow's often inconsistent comedy factory, thanks to inspired dialogue, dynamite chemistry between Rogen and Franco and perfectly pitched stoner gags (undoubtedly the result of copious research).

An honorable and often enticing piece of personal filmmaking.

While it lacks the original's streamlined core, the father-son relationship, the sequel gets by on assembled moments of sentiment

With so much going for it, it's sad that Red Eye goes into such a third-act tailspin and cliched slasher-flick finale.

But it also works as a compelling thriller and whodunit; as a powerful political metaphor (the reservation is a kind of microcosm of the Third World and America's relationship to it); and as a piece of environmental mysticism, celebrating - like so many recent films - the psychic purity and spiritual superiority of its aboriginal characters. [3 Apr 1992]

Dillane gives such a layered, detailed, utterly convincing performance as a man struggling with an inescapable and suffocating burden of guilt that he quickly makes us forget that he's too old for the part.

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

Hayek throws herself into this dream Hispanic role with a teeth-clenching gusto. She strikes a potent chemistry with Molina and she gradually makes us believe she is Kahlo.

While Margot's casual cruelty and the scenes of squirmy discomfort are sometimes painful to watch, the rendering of this disastrous family reunion is seriously, savagely droll.

A suspenseful, fascinating movie that milks the premise for all it's worth.

It's an ingratiating star vehicle and elegant entertainment.

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."

An absorbing, exciting costume drama that works as a historical romance, a family tragedy and a showcase for its young stars.

An inspirational documentary that treats thinkers (so often the villains of our entertainments) as heroes.

Despite a few weak points, the most heavily dramatic Sandler vehicle to date is a striking, genuinely touching, meticulously well-acted friendship parable, and a big audience pleaser.

Moves like a bullet and, even if they're overblown, the action sequences are still mostly exhilarating and hypnotic. Moreover, the film's human dimension and character development is richer and more rewarding than the genre requires, and its philosophical underpinning more intellectually audacious and seductive: The film is more of a mind-trip than I expected.

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.

Culturally, the film is a fascinating document because it's so obviously a conscious amalgam of Hollywood gangster movie conventions, reflecting the retro sensibility of writer-director Melville, an incorrigible fan of American culture. [25 Apr 1997]

Captures both the spirituality and humanity of monastic life.

First-time director Ali Selim does an exceptional job throughout, his movie has the balance, uncluttered leanness and emotional impact of a Willa Cather short story, and it's no surprise that it has been nominated for Best First Feature in the 2007 Independent Spirit Awards.

The casting also works. As the Khan, Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano ("Zatoichi") is all effortless charisma, and Chinese actor Honglei Sun (as his best friend-turned-enemy) and Mongolian actress Khulan Chuluun (as his faithful wife, Borte) are just as effective.

It's not really scary, but it reaches a level of insanity so unhinged and dispassionately wretched that it defies description. Inspired, but not for all tastes.

The social commentary isn't subtle, but Romero delivers the goods so effectively that many won't even notice.

Deliciously dark tale of insidious seduction.

Fumbling characters find that survival is not a matter of economics alone, it's also a matter of hope.

The restrained drama both punctures the mythic ideal of the samurai culture (trained as fighters, they mostly serve as clan bureaucrats) and spins a romantic portrait of one man who values principle over protocol despite the cost to his reputation.

The filmmakers piece it together with almost clockwork perfection and deliver it with masterful misdirection, creating the most ingenious, eccentric and brazenly jaundiced psycho-thriller to come along in years.

Uses sports as metaphor for life with rare twist.

It's a tough, tight, no-nonsense action melodrama filled with irresistibly hard-boiled dialogue and a large cast of engagingly hard-boiled characters. All and all, it's one of the better of the many recent Hollywood remakes of classic film noir. [21 Apr 1995]

Movie is so hip-swingingly infectious and leaves us with such a high that it's hard not to suspect that -- handled right -- it could well become the fall version of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."

While careful not to denounce the religion, the film fires a powerful broadside at fundamentalist Islam in general and revolutionary Iran in particular. [11 Jan 1991]

Too bad they didn't skip the gags and one-liners, along with the songs, and go the distance in making this an authentic dinosaur world.

Underworld opera of the bravura kind, this is driven, like most Hong Kong action, more by emotion than logic.

In its final scenes, when truth and superstition collide, the film becomes more preposterous than anything Penn may have contrived earlier.

Another harrowingly cynical dirty-cop movie in the recent tradition of "Training Day" and "Narc." Yet it's so much more complex, engrossing and satisfying than those films that the comparison is not entirely fair.

A gripping, terrifying, profoundly touching human drama that's definitely worth seeing.

It has a terrific retro style, it's well-directed and it makes an engrossing showcase for its trio of stars.

Mesmerizing and curiously satisfying idyll that gradually, slyly maneuvers us into a whole new way of looking at the delicate relationship between man, art and Mother Nature.

Jewison handles this rich tapestry of non-linear scenes with the skill of the old pro he is, and carefully modulates the drama to create the maximum emotional impact.

The first half of the movie is repetitive, and threatens to become more about Steidle than the conflict. The second half picks up considerably as we see him actively trying to alert the U.S. government to the atrocities.

This one transcends the subgenre to be a respectful and very funny horror spoof. [11 Feb 1999]

Both intellectually absorbing and emotionally gripping.

This free-flowing film certainly hits the high points as it flips around its talking-head celebrity sound bites at warp speed.

The lack of stellar performances gradually becomes a virtue of the movie as we forget we're watching actors in roles, and Stone builds a documentarylike veracity that gives the saga of the trapped cops and their loved ones a riveting immediacy.

It lets down in the last act and is probably too mired in serial-murderer-movie formulaics to garner Oscar attention. But it's his tightest, best film since "Unforgiven."

The song may be somewhat familiar, but Sach gets understated performances from his entire cast and finds interesting harmonies as they play out their clashing duets.

The movie is an extraordinary personal adventure that views everything through the eyes of its hero as it carries him from one apocalyptic situation to another.

At its core, it's an exploration of the demands and obligations of brotherly love, staged with honesty, originality and a surprising spark of intelligence.

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

Not only feels real, but it avoids preciousness and cute eccentricity and, in its lean, almost grave, cut-and-dried delivery makes more of an emotional impact because we're able to imprint our own memories of adolescence upon it.

Noyce's movie is a testament to endurance -- the camera caresses the landscape -- instilling us with a respect and reverence for it, its harsh ways and the attachment to it that Australia's indigenous people hold.

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

All told, this first Bond of the new millennium may be far from the best of the series, but it's assured, wonderfully respectful of its past and thrilling enough to make it abundantly clear that this movie phenomenon has once again reinvented itself for a new generation, and is very likely to outlive us all.

A terrific movie about middle-age malaise and a comedy of unusual wit and drollness.

As dark as a Greek tragedy yet it has a vibrance and joie de vivre that can't be contained by grief.

The film tells the story of Jimmy Hoffa in a refreshingly honest way. [25 Dec 1992]

Like all of Hallstrom's American films, "Something to Talk About" has a distinct European "feel," and is less interested in being a star vehicle for Roberts than a freewheeling ensemble piece that balances her in every scene with strong supporting work from Quaid, Duvall, Rowlands and especially Sedgwick.

A moody adventure story set in Alaska that resonates with envrionmental overtones and is filled with delicate character studies, but ends up being a terrific little genre thriller. [04 Jun 1999]

Fresh, vibrant and vital, this interpretation reminds us why Shakespeare is timeless.

It packs surprising punch as a biopic.

As entertaining as it is a viable, political message destined to make viewers rethink their stance on war.

Set in a precinct house, the film shows its theatrical origins. [25 Oct 2005]

A witty, literate, wryly sophisticated parable of American politics: just the kind of movie that Hollywood, in its search for the global audience, supposedly doesn't make anymore.

It's a film that, by its complexity of character and mastery of tone, surpasses the original it was intended to honor.

In remarkably compact and quietly concise vignettes, we're introduced to each member, and immediately understand what they're all about.

The film is thriller, comedy and rite-of-passage story, but Boyle never loses sight of what's at its core.

Speaks in the raw mumble of the dirty South. A regional film in the truest sense, it does for Memphis what its producer, John Singleton, once did for South Central Los Angeles.

Assuming the bulk of what we see is factual, it comes off as a gripping docudrama.

Sweet, sexy, and unexpectedly enchanting, Yana's Friends is the little feel-good comedy that could.

The ironies and contradictions that give the first half a dark humor give way to gravity and respect as soldiers are killed (off camera).

It's a funny, insightful film whose feminist undertones don't overwhelm the story and characters.

Anderson is a hopeless romantic in a cynical world, and for a brief moment he makes the case that true love is the only power that can crack time and space.

The funniest thing I've seen this summer.

A top-flight example of cinematic storytelling, thanks in large part to the unusual narration, spoken in English by David Gulpilil.

It's a fantasy of a crime epic, to be sure, but it's a glorious fantasy in which the unspoken bonds of brotherhood bathe every shootout and sacrifice in the light of myth.

Ceylan has an unerring gift for camera placement, and his slow, measured scenes can be as hypnotic as they are lovely -- at times, too much so, with the characters constrained by his poetic perfection.

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.

Occasionally falters in its symbolism and storytelling, but still unnerves because we're never quite sure of our bearings, or whose "reality" we're watching.

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

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.

Positioned to be the environmental documentary of the year.

Most of the magic of this unusual movie comes from the freshness, imagination and sweet spirit of its animation, which is blissfully its own thing and does not show the influence of any of the reigning forces in the art form.

An unapologetic B-movie.

A thoroughly enjoyably and wistfully charming ensemble drama carried off with an irresistible Gallic flair.