Above all, everyone in a Meyer film looks like they're having an absolutely great time.

A masterpiece in minimalist horror.

Very convincing, deeply disturbing tale. [31 Dec 2005, p.49]

This Superman alludes explicitly to its origins in the Depression-era comics, and Clark has a quaint 30s habit of using the phrase “Swell!” from his boyhood. Maybe now this movie looks quaint in the same way. But there’s still a surge of adventure and fun.

The idea of sacrifice permeates everything, along with the cruelty and horror. This is Cimino's masterpiece.

The unmasking "reveal" at the beginning of the movie is a great coup, and the film continues to be very scary, helped by Carpenter's own theme: a trebly plinking of piano notes and that buzzy synth in low register.

The silence of Jeanne Dielman is the film’s weather and its atmosphere. It is a silence of terrible loneliness, and a silence in which a storm is gathering.

The film, with its transcendentally beautiful visuals...is a rich and rewarding experience. [1 Sept. 2011]

A period piece, still reasonably funny.

Maybe in the end it's just an exuberant collection of great scenes – but what Big Wednesday has is heart.

Like The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Fury yokes together a spy thriller and a domestic drama while also incorporating elements of SF and horror.

It's beautiful and strange, with its profoundly disturbing ambient sound design of industrial groaning, as if filmed inside some collapsing factory or gigantic dying organism.

A splendid recreation of Napoleonic France and a compelling movie to boot.

Woody Allen said that he could watch a Bergman movie and feel himself gripped as if by a thriller; that's how I felt watching this restored version of John Cassavetes's 1977 picture Opening Night.

Devane gives a performance of anguished depth, the final carnage is spectacular and it's a time capsule of a movie.

Silly but fun adventure starring b-movie specialist Doug McClure as an adventurer trapped on a mysterious island where badly animated dinosaurs roam. [26 Apr 2000, p.24]

A Bridge Too Far is a fantastic historical and cinematic achievement but, if you're not a die-hard war obsessive, prepare to snooze.

It is, on the other hand, enormous and exhilarating fun for those who are prepared to settle down in their seats and let it all wash over them. Which I firmly believe, with the extra benefit of hindsight, is more or less exactly what the vast majority of the cinema-going public want just now.

Cross of Iron is an atmospheric, unflinching tale of the German retreat, though its sedate pace holds it back from greatness.

A demonic limo, driverless behind its tinted windows, vrooms around killing people in this squashy horror that fails to match other vehicular creepies like Christine and Duel. [24 Sep 1999, p.20]

In Annie Hall, Allen again writes, directs and stars with Diane Keaton in a remarkable recreation of a spent love affair, which is both sad and hysterically funny. A film which sticks close to the cutting edge of love, and darts about daringly trying to make philosophical sense of it, is bound to be flawed. This one is, because Allen tried to do in 93 minutes what Proust needed 11 volumes for: to resolve life, love and the passing of both.

Script and acting are equally shaky. [27 Sep 2008, p.55]

The problem is that Rosenberg's drama all but sinks under the weight of its serious subject matter and ponderous script; and there are too many iffy performances from the big-star cast (Faye Dunaway, James Mason, Orson Welles and all). [04 Feb 2006, p.53]

A neglected 1976 gem from a neglected Hollywood genius. May was known for her comedy but here proves absolutely fluent in the language of mobster lowlife, with an edge of caustic, disillusioned humour, and strange yet shockingly real outbursts of violence in which cafe owners and bus drivers are suddenly roughed up.

The film is immaculately cast...The principal figures in its ideological debate – the chilly, number-crunching executive Robert Duvall, godlike network supremo Ned Beatty and the ambitious, exploitative programmer Faye Dunaway – are vivid caricatures. But the movie runs out of steam as satiric invention turns into fervent, deeply sincere statement, and solid William Holden’s middle-aged producer becomes the representative of old-fashioned integrity.

The film is a deliberate parody of mass communication so it parodies the techniques.

The story unfolds in a daring sequence of narrative leaps.

On first release, Arthur Penn's 1976 western found itself derided as an addled, self-indulgent folly. Today, its quieter passages resonate more satisfyingly, while its lunatic take on a decadent, dying frontier seems oddly appropriate.