Funny, heartbreaking and, yes, uplifting, The Long Walk Home takes the audience into a past that is always threatening to become the present; that it was made makes the future seem a little less threatening. [09 Feb 1991]

This is a formula film with panache.

A sprawling personal journey, filled with an array of fascinating characters, through the world of wine.

A sweet if predictable tale about teaching and learning and parents and kids, it's all made easier on the eyes by Grant, whose trademark suaveness never allows him to quite slip into the role of bedraggled father of five. [19 Nov 2005, p.9]

Is there an admired British thespian who hasn't toiled in Potter's field?

The story in Japanese Story grabs you precisely because it's so wonderfully hard to define.

As a political testament, the result is revealing and important. Yet as a documentary, it wanders here, there and everywhere – long on intensity but short on focus.

Are the creators and lead actors of the quirky indie comedy Before You Know It all women? Three words: lighthearted menstruation humour.

Like circus acrobats who bounce up smiling, the characters end up on their feet, and you realize in retrospect that they survived because somebody, finally, stopped to think. A final thought on Go: Go.

Wahlberg, whose dim-bulb act was over-exposed in Pain and Gain, fares better here in a more heroic role. Stig is a hothead and a narcissist, but he’s also just a little bit smarter than he looks. The same goes for 2 Guns as a whole.

The margins of the movie are so curious: there is an entire graduate thesis to be written about how a film starring a one-time Miss Israel features a subplot about Egypt magically erecting a giant wall within its borders, or how its 1980s aesthetics are inexplicably paired with modern moviemaking bloat. But the overriding keyword of Wonder Woman 1984 is “conventional.”...Which is fine, for now. Let’s watch these superpowered gods rumble amongst themselves. We can worry about our mortal world tomorrow.

Parents might get more of a kick out of the voice-casting and darker corners of the story than school-aged children. But Vancouver’s BRON Animation studio provides a strong, often beguiling sense of tyke-hypnotizing flair to the visuals, and the zippy, synthy score by Wes Anderson favourite Mark Mothersbaugh should keep kids bouncing up and down, in a good way.

What's before our eyes suggests we share the planet with some amazingly strange beings.

Is it much of a movie? Not really. It’s more of an experience – a passive sort of virtual reality – that uses a bare-bones narrative as a vehicle for a big-time body count.

The stars are of the first magnitude, the direction is sharp as a scalpel, the premise (vampirism sans fangs, garlic and other Transylvanian paraphernalia) is only semi-silly, and the visuals are suitable for exhibition in a gallery specializing in high gloss S & M. [29 Apr 1983]

What a graceful movie this is.

Lumet uses every claustrophobic camera angle in the book to make the viewer feel as trapped as the characters. [04 Nov 2000, p.12]

The action is grim and not without gore. Heebies, jeebies and even willies will be left on theatre floors like so much stray popcorn and spilled soda. That being said, the victory of What Keeps You Alive is not its heart-thumping (and a little too long) second act, but the question of survival versus vengeance the film raises.

The strengths of Fugitive Pieces are its fluidity and subtlety. Emotional repression may be one of the most difficult conditions to portray honestly, and Dillane's performance of Jakob is a study in the art of creating sympathy by not asking for it.

But while first-timer mistakes abound – everyone except the three leads deliver performances so stiff I wondered if they were deliberate – Selah and the Spades is more than just a slick calling card. It’s impassioned, informed and sometimes furious work that could find Poe being name-checked herself not too long from now.

“Who would we be without museums?” Aleksandr Sokurov wonders as he narrates this challenging philosophical essay, and sifts materials back, forth and around in the Louvre’s history.

The portrait of the ailing artist is bittersweet, but when Helms sings or plays, the look on his face is pure joy.

This is a fine, funny, humane film.

Eraser may lack the chameleon wizardry of the the "Terminator" duo, or the imperious mechanics of "True Lies", but the bang-for-the-buck ratio is high enough to appease even the thinnest wallet.

Woody Allen’s first Stateside production in nearly a decade is a sharply observed, post-economic crash comedy-drama that boasts a formidable performance by Cate Blanchett and addresses such pertinent real-world concerns as class, gender and corporate criminality in urban America.

In recounting this conflicted tale, director Rachid Bouchareb displays some valour of his own, resisting what must have been a strong temptation to deal in aggrieved agitprop, and instead, quietly but powerfully, confining his attentions to a small group of indigenous soldiers.

White Hunter, Black Heart is a beautifully made elaboration of a thesis that has thankfully lost its antithesis to time. [15 Sep 1990]

Bausch's work, as performed by her dance company Tanztheater Wuppertal, is shot exactingly by Wenders, who captures everything from the largest gestures to the subtlest facial nuances in ways impossible in 2-D – and of course in far closer detail than seeing the dances performed live.