Part of the film's brilliance is its stunning and unforgiving transmission of the great truth that for most of us, death is not a single, flatline moment, but a gradual, insidious process of deterioration.

The cast certainly seems to be in on the whole joke, or at least must have felt all those hours in the makeup chair getting swaddled in latex was worth it in the end.

Caché is Michael Haneke's masterpiece: a compelling politico-psychological essay about the denial and guilt mixed into the foundations of Western prosperity, composed and filmed with remarkable technique. It is one of the great films of this decade.

Memories of Murder is a great satire of official laxity and arrogance, and its final scene is very chilling.

It's a movie that you feel you're not so much watching on screen as having beamed directly into your skull from some malign, alien planet of horror.

This is an entertaining venture with energy, fun and immature bad taste in abundance.

It is a beautifully acted, exquisitely considered chamber drama of subtlety and nuance: spellbindingly tender and utterly involving

This could be projected on to a wall at a club, but actually being made to sit down and watch it in a cinema is a weird experience.

The film’s old-fashioned charm and sweet-natured Yuletide spirit has held up, although it interestingly seems attractive now more for these softer-edged qualities than for the straight-ahead SNL-type Will Ferrell comedy that it seemed to promise back in 2003.

Sofia Coppola's second movie as a director is more than a breakthrough: it's an insouciant triumph. She conjures a terrifically funny, heartbreakingly sad and swooningly romantic movie from almost nowhere and just makes it look very easy - as well as very modern and very sexy. It is a funky little Brief Encounter for the new century.

What makes the film so compelling is the ferocious ingenuity with which Moodysson ratchets up the fear and astonishment that accompany Lilya's all too believable descent.

It’s a documentary that should be shown in all film schools.

Tamahori, director of Along Came a Spider, does a competent, if over-fussy job, but the pace flags in the showdown in Iceland.

Spirited Away is fast and funny; it's weird and wonderful. Mostly wonderful.

It remains among the strongest of the wave of gay-themed Chinese features from the late-20th and early-21st century (along with Fish and Elephant and East Palace, West Palace), elegantly interleaving its social and political commentary.

The political and the supernatural come together beautifully (and violently), and the unsentimental portrayal of childhood is refreshing, with terrific performances from the boy actors. It’s altogether a supremely satisfying tale.

It’s still a very entertaining and spectacular movie, with a rush of nostalgia to go alongside the exhilaration of fun.

Mulholland Drive is as brilliant and disquieting as anything Lynch has ever done. It is psychotically lucid, oppressively strange, but with a powerfully erotic and humanly intimate dimension that Lynch never quite achieved elsewhere. It is a fantasia of illusion and identity, a meditation on the mystery of casting in art as in life: the vital importance of finding the right role.

Werckmeister Harmonies may be Tarr’s masterpiece.

It’s fair to say Washington has never quite topped this performance. It’s an unparalleled treat to watch him messing with the bewildered Hoyt at their first meeting at a diner, and then to watch the two men striding out to the car, filmed from a low camera angle. It is all thrillingly ominous.

There's some great Pinteresque dialogue, and the murky gloom is illuminated with flashes of genius. [07 May 2004, p.15]

Chopper is a great film.

It is about grief and about the shock of grief and the stabbing fear which, in its terrifying way, gives you a clarified view of your own existence. A film to wonder at.

There are some good gags and routines here, but loads of them, particularly the one about what it was like being eight and getting hit by your mother, have been done with far more invention and wit by Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy.

The Idiots works as a situationist provocation about a situationist provocation, though claiming the sentimental high ground at the end. As ever, von Trier gets points for his sheer chutzpah.

Erin Brockovich is a study in Hollywood optimism, and Roberts sells it hard.

Brosnan brings an intelligence and wit, together with a lightness, to the role - his softly Celtic vowels pleasingly reminiscent of Sean - along with a plausible virility Roger Moore never quite managed. And Pierce wears some beautifully tailored suits as to the manor born.

Watched again now, I can respond more strongly to the heartfelt directness and empathy.