Mr. Crichton's previous films as a director — "Westworld" and "Coma" — are skillful and, each in its own way, entertaining, but they give no hint of the amplitude he displays in this visually dazzling period piece. With Sean Connery as the gang's elegant leader, the sort of mastermind who denies his body nothing, Lesley-Anne Down as his magnificent moll, and Donald Sutherland as his locksmith —"the best screwsman in England" — The Great Train Robbery is classy entertainment of the sort I associate exclusively with movies.

Arthur is a terrifically engaging, high-spirited screwball comedy about Arthur's more or less accidental salvation, largely through the love of a good, very poor but equally daffy young woman named Linda Marolla (Liza Minnelli).

The Last Detail is one superbly funny, uproariously intelligent performance, plus two others that are very, very good, which are so effectively surrounded by profound bleakness that it seems to be a new kind of anti-comedy. You'll laugh at it, not through your tears but with a sense of creeping misery.

All the Money in the World revs up beautifully, first as a thriller. But while the kidnapping is the movie’s main event, it is only part of a story that is, by turns, a sordid, desperate and anguished tragedy about money.

A sly and thoroughly charming Trojan horse of a movie.

Besides being one of Woody's most consistently witty films, Love and Death marks a couple of other advances for Mr. Allen as a film maker and for Miss Keaton as a wickedly funny comedienne.

The Sure Thing is glowing proof of two things: Traditional romantic comedy can be adapted to suit the teen-age trade, and Mr. Reiner's contribution to ''This Is Spinal Tap'' was more than a matter of humor.

A witty, romantic, psychological horror film and it's almost as rewarding as a successful analysis...The fun is not in logic but watching how Mr. De Palma successfully tops himself as he goes along, and the fun lasts from the sexy, comic opening sequence right through to the film's several endings.

Like the teenage girls who monopolize its attention, Kill Me Please is moody, lovely, preening and libidinous.

Urban Cowboy is the most entertaining, most perceptive commercial American movie of the year to date. Here is a tough-talking, softhearted romantic melodrama that sees a world that is far more bleak than the movie, or the characters in it, ever have time to acknowledge.

Allen has made a movie that is, in effect, a feature-length, two-reel comedy—something very special and eccentric and funny.

In appreciating that world, its pathos, its narcissism, its tensions, and its sufficient moments of glory, Downhill Racer succeeds with sometimes chilling efficiency. Within the limits imposed by the tangential nature of its insights, it is a very good movie.

A terrific movie, just right for Steve McQueen—fast, well acted, written the way people talk.

For one thing, the buildup is so grippingly patient that we’re more than halfway through before the titular battleground is reached. And for another, this painstakingly paced thriller displays an intensity of purpose that makes it impossible to dismiss as well-executed trash.

On any level, earthly or otherwise, the ingenious new animated Hercules is pretty divine. With inspired intuition, Hercules brings together ancient lore, gospel singing, girl-group choreography and lots of free-floating mischief into a jubilant pastiche of classical references.

The performances of the young actors who play them (actual twins, though not conjoined) are the real miracles here, each one creating a distinct personality.

Bathed in a shadowy beauty and slippery psychological atmosphere, “Beast” soars on Ms. Buckley’s increasingly animalistic performance.

With visuals as kinetic as its language, Joseph Kahn’s Bodied is an outrageously smart, shockingly funny satire of P.C. culture whose words gush so quickly you’ll want to see it twice.

Mr. Legrand is skilled in the techniques of dread and suspense, and without sensationalizing or cheapening the story, he gives this closely observed drama the tension and urgency of a thriller.

The writer and director Samuel Maoz (“Lebanon”) has an exacting eye. The framing is meticulous; soon it’s also very purposefully working your nerves.

There’s almost a cosmic dimension to some of the most beautiful passages, as if the world (call it nature or God or sensitive direction) were holding Charley in its embrace.

The director Warwick Thornton constructs a searing indictment of frontier racism as remarkable for its sonic restraint as its visual expansiveness.

There is gentle comedy here, and a real rooting interest deriving from Ms. Zhang’s committed, never-a-false-note performance. The film’s unusual perspective makes it a distinctive and potentially enriching experience.

Western is as precise as a dropped pin on a GPS map, which makes its sense of mystery all the more powerful.

At first, Rosie’s simplicity is jarring. But as the character learns more about her personal and poetic origins, her minimalist frame absorbs the weight of a rich, complex history. That transformation is the great pleasure of watching this small film.

In this time of mass displacement across the globe, it is a stark reminder of how traumatic the refugee experience often is.

The Icelandic director Oskar Thor Axelsson is clearly fluent in horror conventions. But he has commendable restraint, and his latest film, I Remember You, transcends genre pyrotechnics even as it incorporates elements of Nordic noir.

In spite of its limited perspective on Vietnam, its churning, term-paperish exploration of Conrad and the near incoherence of its ending, (it) is a great movie. It grows richer and stranger with each viewing, and the restoration of scenes left in the cutting room two decades ago has only added to its sublimity.