The film is graceful visually and beautifully harrowing; its worry for a planet and hope for humanity is reasoned and well-explained.

Engrossing and not too sugar-sweet, Meghie’s movie is slightly paranoid, surprisingly fantastical and superb at translating the overwhelming stupor of first love with big, bold shots and a banging soundtrack.

It's intriguing, appalling, savvy, nasty, grossly unsettling -- you may not like what you see, but you'll definitely be affected by the sight.

Given the affordable-housing crisis in Canadian cities such as Toronto and Vancouver, there’s a lot to relate to in Rosie. One can only hope that if caught in a similar situation, one has Rosie’s grace to keep going.

Does every generation of moviegoers get the Emma it deserves? If so, we are in a lucky moment.

All this is as fascinating as it is humbling, even when Herzog ventures a little too far down eccentricity's back alley.

Guttenberg has yet to make a comedy that isn't all the more pleasant for his presence. Sheedy, meanwhile, is wholesomeness personified - almost a new Sally Field embodying the positive aspects of American willpower, energy and openness. She has talent. She has freckles. She is a star. Even robots fall for her. Badham wired this one up pretty good. [09 May 1986, p.D1]

So energized by the subject that it overflows with inventiveness.

Apologies to Eugene Levy, but the award for best supporting actor in the role of an adorably well-meaning father goes to the superb Josh Hamilton.

It is our tour guide that makes Cave of Forgotten Dreams an often thrilling experience. His producer, Erik Nelson, has joked Herzog is the first filmmaker to use 3-D for good, instead of evil. There is no question that the technology enhances our visit, giving perspective and shape to the jagged Chauvet Cave – an open mouth the size of a football field.

Not quite a comedy, not really a drama, Mad Dog and Glory throws your equilibrium but keeps your interest high. [5 Mar 1993, p.C3]

Move over, Jim Carrey, and watch your back, Mike Myers. Your tenure as the most bankable comedians to call Canada not-quite home but still native land is about to come to an end. The new money is on one 25-year-old virgin – to top billing, that is – from Vancouver. His name is Seth Rogen and he's (literally) the poster boy for the best American comedy of the summer and, what the heck, of the decade so far.

Might be the best Spider-Man film ever made.

The treatment of the Sioux is not only sympathetic, it's ethnographically exact. Neither Noble Savages nor Red Injuns, the natives in Dances With Wolves are differentiated human beings about to undergo cultural genocide.

This is a rare adaptation where the script (by McGrath himself) heads straight for the novel's horrible essence, reproducing it non-verbally and in an even more concentrated form.

One of the most original, and certainly among the best-acted films this year, 21 Grams focuses on people on the verge of dying, having survived death or grasping at the slender threads of new lives.

The Middle Man is an understated gem.

Director Jeremy Sims probably uses a setting-sun metaphor more than necessary, but otherwise his decisions are immaculate and his film should hold audiences in thrall. On a journey of self-discovery, the metre keeps running. Might as well, Last Cab tells us, get your money’s worth.

Stand By Me is not "a masterpiece," but it is an evocative and cheerily amusing movie about growing up male in 1959, a kind of pre-pubescent American Graffiti, the locker-room rejoinder to My American Cousin. [8 Aug 1986, p.D1]

The feeling is like a warm homecoming.

Unlike "Crazy Rich Asians," which had eyes for narrative substance but shamelessly flirted with the superficial, The Farewell is a more substantive, engrossing and ultimately deeper work about the bonds that hold and strengthen us.

By the end, Sachs has raised urgent questions about immigration, classism, gentrification, loyalty, family and nascent sexuality – but he’s done so utterly organically, via 10 square feet of city. Lovely.

As it dips into murder-mystery territory, then something more quiet and philosophical, Chang-dong writes a story both expected and surprising.

As provocative as it is timely.

It is hilarious and heartbreaking all at once, especially when factoring in Dave Franco's performance, a beautiful game of shadows in which he's forced to play the more respected artist against his older, more famous brother.

The performances are pristine in their theatricality, Raul Ruiz Anchia's lighting is neo-classical in its velvety richness, and the script (by Mamet and Shel Silverstein) is unfailingly intricate and consistent, for all its flamboyant use of coincidence. But it is the art of Don Ameche's courtly, charismatic characterization that lifts Things Change above the level of a crafty, enjoyable stunt.

That it’s unsettling not just because of the contentious moral context underlines just how radical any realistic depictions of female desire and sexual experience still are.

Phoenix, for long scenes, is onscreen by himself, lost in his thoughts and those of the operating system moulded to fit his psyche. With his wounded awkwardness and boyish giggles, he seems authentically vulnerable, but the character’s emotionally arrested development also begins to weigh the film down.

Sensual and scary, the movie is so visually textured you feel as though you're brushing against the screen.

This much is inarguable: In the more than two flamboyant hours of Across the Universe, Julie Taymor doesn't cheat us for a single second.

In its cautious rhythm, its economical storytelling and its deliberately over-the-top colour scheme – each character’s “infection,” so to speak, is back-lit by deeply saturated red and blues – She Dies Tomorrow unsettles without using any of cinema’s typical tools.

Lincoln is directed by Steven Spielberg but, to his great credit, few will mistake this for a Steven Spielberg film. Rather, it's a Tony Kushner film, the playwright who conjured up the wordy but intricately layered script; and it's a Daniel Day-Lewis film, the actor who so richly embodies the iconic title role.

No filmmaker, in any cinematic culture, has a better eye or ear for the working class than director Mike Leigh.

A thrill ride that’s as terrifying as it is no-nonsense.

Here’s another word for Gone Girl: “meta.” It’s a word Flynn uses, which means it’s a thriller about thrillers, and a narrative about narratives, especially the form of domestic violence relished by current-affairs television shows.

Trapero reveals the ways in which truth can be much stranger, more tragic and confused, than fiction.

This is the perfect film for a band that was never trying to be something other than inventive.

Trier's all in a calendar-day conceit gives Oslo, August 31a clean, clear structure, and yet it doesn't hem it in.

Much like Robert Altman during his forays into the genre, writer/director Asghar Farhadi isn't really interested in the answers. Instead, he keeps expanding the questions, until that singular title comes to seem a misnomer.

Part political satire, part fantasy, part I-don’t-even-know-what, Diamantino is exactly the type of surreal concoction that begs to be discovered by unsuspecting audiences.

Sweet and relatively simple, a classic episodic melodrama of unabashed tenderness and unapologetic warmth, but it's not sentimental, and its offhanded explication of racism in rural Texas in 1935 is integrated so seamlessly with its dramatization of the widow Spalding's crusade to keep her farm, that the dark undercurrents of the film are easy to overlook.

Though Burton's version is faithful, the filter of his sensibility has turned it into another of his necrophilic creepshows.

The result is not only a dramatic improvement over what was already an unusually smart and satisfying pop-cultural parable of insurgent 99-per-cent rebellion, but a very likely candidate for the all-time-great-sequel sweepstakes.

A deceptively light and impeccably structured comedy that owes a clear cinematic debt to others -- Ernst Lubitsch, Woody Allen and Whit Stillman among them -- yet still manages to speak with a fresh and distinctive voice. [21 Aug. 1998, p.D4]

Admittedly, near the end, the picture loses some of its energy and compelling ambiguity (about a half-star's worth, I'd say). Still, by then, the big gains have been made. At its best, The Nightmare Before Christmas occupies the imaginative ground held by the likes of White and Dahl and Seuss - that lovely place where, for shining moments, parents and children can travel on the same passport and smile for the same reasons. [22 Oct 1993]

Marsh's most remarkable directorial achievement, however, is preserving the original sense of amazement and awe when watching historical footage and still photographs of Petit walking that tightrope up in the sky.

Disturbing and taut, Eggers’s direction is almost without fault. His only mistake lies in the film’s final 30 seconds, where all the implied horror of the family’s plight becomes just a shade too explicit.

There’s no doubt that the world needs more iconoclasts, whistle-blowers and anti-authoritarian rabble-rousers. But it deserves better than Julian Assange.

The most amazing thing about this amazing movie may be that in the end it communicates the large uncertainties and small hopes of a twisted, inarticulate adolescent boy perfectly, and wordlessly. [14 Oct 1983]

Good ain't the half of it in this case - it's funny, it's endearing, it's strangely touching. [19 Aug 1994]

Gould’s excellent documentary captures this elasticity, stretching the spectator to consider why bearing witness to a life collectively is so very worth the trouble.

Spotlight is not about fiery performances or thrilling set-pieces – it’s simply a tight and captivating look at professionals who excel at their jobs, and who legitimately care about making a difference. Sometimes, that’s more than enough.

It has a schlocky title and a rocky start, but then something happens - The Man Without a Face finds its rhythm and its grip, seizing the audience and propelling us straight through to the dewy climax. [25 Aug 1993, p.C2]

Mid90s doesn't feel like a recreation of an era so much as a lost artifact of the time. There's one predictable and regrettable narrative beat toward the end, but otherwise Hill has crafted a debut that will last a lifetime.

The reality measures up to the rep.

Unusual, as such movies go, in its disregard for busy theatricality.

Simultaneously a spectacular act of movie-making and a slight movie. Or is that impossible: When the means are so gloriously abundant, can the end ever be merely trivial?

“SEE THE MOVIE THAT NO AUDIENCE CAN OUTLAST!” – after actually taking in The Painted Bird, I can confirm that the horror more or less matches the headlines.

Miller’s characters are complete, singular people, and her take is thoroughly female. She subverts the genre, and wakes it up.

Ultimately, Potter's fable is about how a catastrophe forces us to ask what we believe and why.

"You're so lucky to live in Mexico," Luisa says. "Look at it -- it breathes with life." So does Y Tu Mama Tambien, both the pant of passion and shuddering sigh of regret.

Lethal Weapon sinks an unexpectedly sharp hook at a delightfully unique angle, and never once lets up. A purposefully off- kilter flick, it fakes one way and moves another, thwarting our conditioned responses and fuelling our happy surprise. [6 Mar 1987, p.D1]

You’re so tense you’re almost nauseous, but it’s fun – that’s the place this smart new thriller will put you in.

Norman is the "freak" bullied and ostracized and otherwise degraded by the alive-and-well crowd. Such is the outcast fate of most heroes in the best children's tales. And ParaNorman, a ghoulishly delightful exercise in stop-motion animation, is a very good children's tale indeed.

Life is Sweet is sweet indeed - and comic and quirky and, on those occasions when the tone deftly shifts, just a little sad... Leigh's work, and the quotidian life it depicts, is sometimes slim but never insubstantial, occasionally sweet but never a sugary confection. And always worth celebrating. [24 Jan. 1992]

Shot on a vintage Portapak video camera that actually predates the movie’s early-eighties setting and painstakingly crafted to resemble an analog artifact from a bygone era, Computer Chess is, ironically, a comedy about technological innovation.

Few swords clash until the 100-minute mark of Harakiri, making it one of the most patient action films ever, but also one of the most beautifully composed. [24 Mar 2006, p.R13]

There is real emotion and purpose pumped into the tiny picture – it has a heart as big as its title character is small.

Another angry, searching document about pedophile priests, Deliver Us from Evil makes for unexpectedly gripping drama.

TERRIFIC cast, imaginative direction - Patriot Games is such an enjoyable film that you keep hoping it will go the extra mile, that it will transcend the action-genre and progress from an intelligently made picture to an intelligently themed picture, That it doesn't - not quite, anyway - is mildly disappointing but easily forgiven; there's a lot to be grateful for here. [9 June 1992]

McQueen is a haunting biography that goes beyond even that live runway experience to conjure the visionary himself, in as much as he may ever be known – and in a way even his savagely beautiful clothes themselves cannot.

Viewers will be entranced by Louis Ashbourne Serkis, son of Andy Serkis. He’s one of the greatest child actors to grace the screen in some time, whose golden lion-hearted essence shines through even when facing indecision and doubt. If perfect casting is looking for the one actor who can pull the sword from the stone, Cornish has found the Webster’s definition of a hero.

The result is a rare treat, a revival of a period piece that doesn't descend into mere quaintness or prettiness, and that manages to capture the spirit of an earlier time without sacrificing the perspective of our own.

Waititi (who’s also responsible for the best comedy of 2015, "What We Do in the Shadows," and will next tackle the third "Thor" film) executes a series of deft narrative U-turns, twisting the tale into 101 minutes of pure comic joy.

Co-directors Antonio Santini and Dan Sickles tell the story gracefully, doling out Dina's tragic backstory in excellent increments.

Most movies have music, some movies are musicals, but very few movies combine the two with the grace and pure eloquence of Once.

Radwanski creates a visceral, impossible-to-ignore document of one man’s fraught reality. It is creative, bold and even dangerous filmmaking.

If everyone in One False Move keeps making mistakes, there are no false moves from the technicians or actors; the only flaw is the slight taint of convenience that attends the plotting of so many contemporary thrillers. But the taint is superficial - it's eventually overwhelmed by the smell of corruption, the odour of pain, and the stench of hopelessness. [4 Sept 1992]

Persona still conveys a power to lift the scalp and scramble the brain, and the fact that it's out-of-time says less about it being dated than it does about it remaining a radically visionary work.

Bros is a genuinely hilarious, wonderful movie: heartfelt, slick and crafted with such careful comedic care that a good deal of jokes will inevitably be drowned out by audiences still laughing over the punchlines that came just before.

A classic film that only low-down no-good viewers could fail to like. [18 Dec 2004, p.8]

Nothing short of mesmerizing.

Zhao’s artful look into the American West is a lightly brooding winner. Clearly this isn’t her first time at the rodeo.

A work of crazed distinction. [14 June 1985]

Any culture that can create the kind of self-criticism exemplified in work of the Pittsburgh horror master is far from a lost cause. [29 June 1979]

Ultimately, the film isn’t about a happy ending or even a real conclusion – as in real life, we’re not sure what will happen to Rose or where she will end up. But what we are left with is a true and honest account of how quickly the lives of millions change overnight.

Don’t Blink is a friendly film by a friend – honest and historically aware, but almost unfailingly affectionate and attuned to the “spontaneous intuition” that, 92 years after his birth, still seems the governing principle of Frank’s life.

There is no psychology in L'Argent, no acting to speak of; every scene is a minimal sketch which drives the didactic story forward. This use of narrative may sound ordinary, but, in Robert Bresson's pure filmmaking, it becomes extraordinarily relentless. [20 July 1984]

The major reason for Escape's success is Siegel's effortless expertise in re-creating the atmosphere of Alcatraz, an atmosphere in which, as the Warden says, good citizens were not made, but good prisoners were. As photographed by Bruce Surtees in rainy black and blue, the dogged, slow-motion swim through excelsior that constitutes prison existence is painfully and convincingly reproduced. For Eastwood, there is an extra bonus: if the milieu doesn't provide him with a reason for his stubbornly characteristic grimness, it does at least provide an excuse. [23 June 1979]

For those looking for a brash new entry in the cinematic landscape, Operation Avalanche is an almost otherworldly gift. The best part of all: No one had to die. I think.

Both the most bewildering of the three movies and also the most brutally compelling.

Persepolis is as modern as tomorrow's headlines and as classic as an ancient myth.

As audiences, we lean toward demanding a near-constant auditory assault – that if we’re not hearing something, we’re missing something. Director Kelly Reichardt has no qualms with upending this, and other pieces of conventional cinematic wisdom with First Cow, a film that takes great care to remind us of the whisper-quiet bones of America’s history – a time when there wasn’t much to hear except what nature was telling us.

While some of the more conventional genre beats could use more specificity, Klein gets such wrenching, charismatic performances that you’d forgive him of anything. This film will stay with you for a long, long time.

This is not only a dandy, playful movie about a talking bear, but one that gives pause for thought, too.

Never hints at the quiet, revolutionary nature of empathy and autonomy in empowering young women to keep themselves safe.

What’s admirable about the film is how Driver gives the cross-pollinating forces of music, media, fashion and art such concise, firsthand exploration.

Haneke is best known for "The Piano Teacher." His latest, Caché (or Hidden) is a quieter but equally provocative attack. It's less in your face, more in your head and under your skin.