I love this movie like a person. It pierced my heart the way certain paintings or pieces of music do. The way standing at the foot of a mountain does. The first time I saw it, I had to stay in my cinema seat for five minutes after it ended, to finish crying. The second time, I vowed to watch it more analytically, but ended up crying all over again.

Eyes Wide Shut still towers above most of the movies out there, immersing the viewer in a web of emotional complexity, at once raw and personal and, at times, theatrically overcooked.

As much about deception as it is the fear of being forsaken, White Lie unfurls to become an unexpected empathy inquest.

This outing not only doesn't disappoint; it surpasses high expectations. This is a terrific, smartly designed adolescent adventure, visually rich, narratively satisfying, and bound to resonate for years to come.

The doc, similar to the Oscar-winning The White Helmets but a subtler portrait of heroism, reveals accurate information as the first weapon of resistance.

Consequently, Ephron is forced to shape and integrate the twin halves of the picture, and she does a splendid job - the intercutting is always fluid and never mechanical. Better yet, the script keeps surprising us, setting up stock situations and then pulling away from a stock treatment.

Set against the high-tension strings and jarringly funky synthesizers of Greenwood’s score, the film is transformative and transfixing.

Akilla’s Escape recasts the monolithic narrative of gang involvement as one that rejects a trope of Black peril in order to tell a multi-dimensional story of resilience – one where keen strategists are developed through unsolvable situations, where the enduring love of Black mothers demonstrates what it means to walk into the line of fire and where, amidst abject tumult, moments of tenderness and triumph persist against all odds.

What advance publicity has been powerless to suggest is that Personal Best is an exceptionally well-crafted, thoroughly accurate, emotionally galvanizing piece of filmmaking, easily one of the most intelligent explorations of competition on cinematic record. What's best about Personal Best is a lot more than just personal .[5 Feb 1982]

Raw and electrically presented, Civil War is an ugly odyssey and an audacious premonition.

The ensuing story about life and love is made visually compelling by exquisitely crafted animation, much of it drawn in the bold and refreshing ligne claire style pioneered by the Belgian cartoonist (and Tintin creator) Hergé. That counterintuitive contrast with the mysterious, unspoken tale only makes this unusual film all the more intriguing.

There is no rookie-film handicap required in grading the excellence on display. There are no fireworks or twists or unnecessary frills here, nor should there be – this is simply perfect filmmaking from a voice that demands to be heard. The fall movie season is saved. Thank you, Greta Gerwig.

Utterly magnificent and intoxicating.

Star Wars is the most entertaining sci-fi movie of the decade.

Kurt Russell has never seemed more clever, Mel Gibson more vulnerable nor Michelle Pfeiffer more goddess-like. Once upon a time, before the pictures got small and the hills were obscured by smog, the Hollywood sign read: "Hollywoodland." That was back when Tequila Sunrise, an intelligent, escapist epic for adults, wouldn't have seemed the anomaly it seems today. [2 Dec 1988, p.C1]

A film where the cast neatly dovetails with the script which perfectly meshes with the direction. In short, a film that works. [5 Aug 1987]

The Long Day Closes is a twice-remarkable film. Once, because director Terence Davies opens his personal bottle of memories and makes them interesting to us. Twice, because, in doing so, he triggers our own memories. [11 June 1993]

An uncommonly tender and observant documentary on the phenomenon that is "A Chorus Line."

Film, not film, whatever it is, Cameraperson plays like a study not only of cinema itself, but a warm, welcome reminder that there is (ideally) an intelligence, and maybe even a bit of grace, behind the moving images that wedge themselves in our memory; that they are the handiwork of a living, thinking, feeling, sneezing human being, someone who is both camera and person.

In short, Batman is terrific - funny, smart and sensitive too, the perfect cinematic date.

From the very first scenes of the Canadian documentary Eternal Spring, you’re thrust into a thrilling, all-consuming film that challenges traditional documentary tropes and finds a way to tell a winding, difficult story with brilliant ease.

Unlike many of his action-cinema contemporaries, McQuarrie excels at creating clear lines of sight for his set pieces, and cutting them together to ensure maximum tension.

The Witches of Eastwick is an uproarious and entirely successful attempt to examine the differences between the sexes by couching the examination in mythological terms. [12 June 1987]

Safdie and Bronstein know they’re playing with fire in every frame, and it’s a miracle of Maccabean proportions they’re able to keep the entire thing from self-combusting.

Bronstein infuses every moment of If I Had Legs... with a jagged kind of intensity, stringing together scenes with an adrenalized propulsion that makes a story of a mother struggling against a world pitted against her feel both singular and universal.

BlackBerry is funny, fast and nerve-rattling. And it is always – always – intensely entertaining.

With The Shrouds, the filmmaker – not only one of Canada’s greatest creations, but cinema’s, too – has delivered what might be his career-defining masterpiece.

The film is simply operating at a speed constantly one click ahead of expectations, never satisfied that any one viewer could know where it might all be heading.