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.

Anthony Hopkins is a great actor and he gives a resourceful, inventive, compelling performance that holds our attention over three hours. It never convinces us that he is Nixon: he doesn't look much like him, and he misses entirely that incredible shiftiness in his public manner. But it somehow works. [20 Dec 1995, p.C1]

A lesson in listening.

The movie is entertaining, reasonably true to the facts of its subject's life and full of music.

A movie that plays better if you know nothing about it going in.

The best of several films about the Roosevelts, this adaptation of Dore Schary's Tony-winning Broadway play - which deals mostly with FDR's battle with polio and the difficult years that formed his presidential character - earned Greer Garson a best-actress nomination as Eleanor. [16 Nov 1995]

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

Marks a surprising maturity, restraint and confidence to Carrey's acting. Even more than "The Truman Show," he plays it perfectly straight here, and his natural charisma carries the movie with just the right dose of Jimmy Stewart charm.

In the end, we feel just what Branagh wants us to feel - a sense that, behind all its frustrations, there is a joy in this unavoidable battle-between-the-sexes that makes life worth living. So his film has it both ways: It is true to Shakespeare and his poetry, and it makes an almost perfect '90s date comedy. [21 May 1993]

Meirelles adds another perspective, that the epidemic might be a good thing if, by being thrown into the darkness together, we may once again recognize the human family to which we all belong.

Covers this exact same territory, but does it with such refreshing, clearheaded honesty and skill it seems like a revelation.