Infinitely charming new romantic comedy.

Bergman blends a theatrical subjectivity—scenes of the inner life that defy physical reality and depend on special effects, whether in the film lab or on set—with a tactile visual intimacy, with his characters, the objects close at hand, and the superb coastal landscape.

It's extremely uneven--there are slick and sentimental passages and some are impenetrable. But there are also emotional revelations and there's a superb sequence--almost an epiphany--when the dying man, who has accomplished what he hoped to, sits in a swing in the snow and hums a little song.

Dumont films Joan’s spiritual conflicts and confrontations with playful exuberance but avoids frivolity; the ardent actors infuse Joan’s spirit of revolt with the eternal passions of youth.

Every step depends on stifled emotions and closely guarded secrets, resulting in a buildup of operatic passion that endows everyday gestures and inflections with grandeur and nobility.

The movie is constructed entirely of a remarkable array of archival footage, including Beckermann’s recordings, that spotlights unresolved national traumas and unabated anti-Semitism.

Zodiac is superbly made, but it's also a strange piece of work.

Mazursky applies a light and graceful touch to matters of intimate agony.

Bunuel's daring is fully apparent.

Despite its heroic energy and impulsive youth, it’s a bleak philosophical work of its time, a bitterly terrifying vision of no exit.

The part of Lydia is scored for hero, villain, mother, dictator, and f*ckup, and Blanchett responds with perfect pitch.

It was a Broadway musical comedy, slightly adapted, and filmed in Astoria--and it looks stagey. But the film is too joyous for cavilling.

With its tangled shadows, fun-house mirrors, wrenching angles, and glaring lights, the wide-screen black-and-white photography evokes the psychological distortions of reckless and rootless outsiders, the disproportion of their seedy circumstances to their doomed heroism.

This uninhibited and uproarious monster bash, directed by Joe Dante, is more quick-witted and ironic than the original; it sets forth a savvy, slaphappy agenda before the opening credits and follows it straight through to the end, and even beyond.

Cronenberg’s movie was an early showcase for his tense formal style and intellectual Grand Guignol. He displays a true shock-meister’s instinct by saving the worst for last. The result is a cinematic bad dream that generates recurring nightmares.

1900 is a romantic moviegoer's vision of the class struggle -- a love poem for the movies as well as for the life of those who live communally on the land.

Linklater barely puts a foot wrong, and he shows that a movie about happiness can be cogent and robust, rather than sappy or wispy; and yet, for all its gambolling mischief, Everybody Wants Some!! leaves us with plenty to rue.

In DaCosta’s hands, Ibsen’s emotionally extreme but tonally restrained play becomes a spectacular, flamboyant melodrama, with physical action as intense as the characters’ inner worlds.

Siegel’s terse, seething, and stylish direction glows with the blank radiance of sheet metal in sunlight; the movie’s bright primary colors and glossy luxuries are imbued with menace, and its luminous delights convey a terrifyingly cold world view.

The secrets unveiled in the movie’s second half are mostly wretched, and Kore-eda, in his steady and unhectoring way, is levelling grave accusations at Japanese social norms, yet what stays with you, unforgettably, is that bundle of mixed souls at the start.

Gerima films Jay’s intimate confrontations with an impressionistic flair that focusses attention on characters’ listening, thinking, and remembering; flashbacks and dream sequences infuse Jay’s tightening conflicts with the pressure of history—both social and intimate.

The faults of the movie, semi-excusable as self-vindicating ploys, are nothing compared with its strengths.

Williams doesn't seem sure how to resolve the movie, but it's wonderfully entertaining.

What is most winning about Distant is that it can peer past the grief and find a scrap of comedy. [15 March 2004, p. 154]

Powerful, concise, fully sustained.

Central Park is at first discomforting, then enraging, then illuminating.

Ozu’s despairing view of postwar Japan looks as harshly at blind modernization as it does at decadent tradition.

Lighthearted and charming story of a black and white team of con artists in the Old South. Very enjoyable.