It's irreverent about cancer and that could be inspirational. And it's surely one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen all year.

A League of Their Own is a grand-slam comic drama. Superbly written, acted and directed. [1 July 1992, p.1D]

Stealth is a key element of tension and, even though DePalma tosses his share of fireballs around, Mission: Impossible gets edgier when it gets quieter. The audience's rapt, empathetic silence while Hunt hangs there in peril proves how well the director does it. [24 May 1996, p.5]

Manchester by the Sea is a gracefully coarse ode to lives knocked down and if not bouncing back at least not splatting at rock bottom. There are also glimmers of humor shining all the brighter because of the darkness they cut through.

Yes, this one is even better: funnier, brawnier and ingeniously constructed for appeal to both devoted fans and reluctant converts.

The Coens fashion an atmospheric descent for Llewyn, a meticulous re-creation of Greenwich Village's folk scene in 1961, around the time Bob Dylan hit town.

Villeneuve crafts a movie both cerebral and sensuous, as puzzling and visually striking as its predecessor. The experience should be likewise revered by next generations.

The Fabulous Baker Boys has winning performances, but the film's real success is how truthfully it portrays these people and their music. [13 Oct 1989, p.6]

So many things could go terribly wrong with Spike Jonze's Her, and it's a small cinematic miracle that nothing does.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi launches the franchise to another level of action and humor thanks to incoming writer-director Rian Johnson, whose imagination seems boundless as George Lucas’ 40 years ago.

What "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" did for zombie and cop flicks The World's End does for sci-fi fatalism, respecting its doomsday tropes while presenting them with cheeky wit and a refreshing strategy of sensory underload.

The Sessions is often brazenly funny, not from shocking dialogue but characters speaking and reacting the way real people do, especially with such a flustering subject as sex.

Young, old, black, white or whatever: This is one Bus you can't afford to miss. [16 Oct 1996, p.1D]

The Lobster remains strangely romantic throughout, an absurdist take on the notion that great love stories — Casablanca, The Way We Were, Gone With the Wind — don't always end tidily.

At this point in his celebrated career, there shouldn't be much new that Hanks can show us. But there is, as the actor reaches deep inside to express the relief of dodging death as I've never seen it played before. He's in shock; we're awed.

The End of the Tour asks viewers to lean in, listen well and be rewarded with an uncommonly intelligent and relatable movie experience.

More touching than daring, The Wedding Banquet is an exquisite comedy, brimming with simple human decency and more belly laughs than any comedy I've seen this year. [15 Oct 1993, p.4]

This movie doesn't play any of its themes cheaply.

It's a remarkable movie, the first of 2015 that I can't wait to see and hear again.

The funniest comedy of degeneracy since "Bad Santa," and a career-changer for Aniston and Farrell if they'll only keep following their perverted muses. Horrible Bosses spins hostile work environments into a movie surpassing "9 to 5" and "Office Space" as the touchstone flick for disenchanted drones.

Three Billboards lands somewhere near Coen brothers country, eloquently finding comedy in horror and vice versa. Yet it remains its own mangy animal; a study in grief that’s funny, finding justice in terror and forgiveness after the unforgivable.

The movie's assured direction by Sam Mendes can't be underestimated.

One of the all-time great sports movies — primarily because it's one of the all-time great sports stories.

Hands down and body parts floating, the most irresistibly sick movie in years is Piranha 3D, which should be retitled Piranha 3D, Double-D and C for all the topless cuties director Alexandre Aja feeds the fish and audience.

Even if their names were John and Mary, the two people soon to be a couple at the center of Southside With You could make viewers swoon. Richard Tanne's walk-and-talk slice of budding romantic life is that good at expressing those small moments when love begins taking hold.

Silver Linings Playbook is a bracing shaken cocktail of awkward failure and accidental success, with Pat and Tiffany making a refreshing and unlikely couple to root for. We just want them to be abnormal together, share their favorite antidepressants, maybe even dance to Stevie Wonder.

An absolute masterpiece in the Disney tradition. [17 Nov 1989, p.11]

Nelson's is one of the year's best performances in nothing less than one of the year's best films. [23 Sep 1994, p.2]