While occasionally the film wanders a bit too far into sentimentality (a scene involving a baby feels like it crosses a plausibility line), watching 1917 is an emotional and moving experience. You think of these two young men as one minuscule piece of an enormous tragedy, filled with individual stories.

“Salvatore” is a pleasure for anyone who loves shoes and/or good movies.

Moka is a lean, taut dramatic thriller that continually offers delicate surprises as it shifts and evolves, building toward an unexpected yet wholly satisfying conclusion.

Miike misses an opportunity to add even more resonance by telling us a little extra about each of the samurai fighting the good fight. But he's also busy shooting nearly an hour's worth of complicated fight choreography. Enthralling as that is, Miike's greatest achievement here is in giving us reason to deeply care.

The most entertaining portrait of a wildly talented, socially untamed filmmaker since The Bad and the Beautiful. [21 Sep 1990, p.28]

It’s a film full of creative swirls.

There’s more going on here than pretty pictures: This fascinating portrait of a lady has ice and steel at its core.

Winner of the best film award at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival, Greg Kwedar’s “Sing Sing” is a gentle reminder of the power of art to transform lives.

You leave The Assistant thinking about why some of us are invisible and some of us don’t notice — and about how evil lives in the places from which we look away.

Wonderfully confident and strange, Take Me to the River marks an auspicious directing debut for Matt Sobel. There’s not a stale moment in it.

See the movie. It’s a treat. And educational, too.

A haunting and lovely documentary.

It’s a sweet-natured, gentle film that might remind more than a few watchers of a special date in their own life, long ago.

So much of Sicario, Denis Villeneuve’s disturbing drama set in the world of law enforcement and Mexican drug cartels (the title is the Mexican term for a hit man), takes place on Emily Blunt’s face.

Thank You for Your Service is a harrowing, honest and beautifully acted film about lives blown to bits and then put back together; not entirely, not immediately, but piece by tiny piece.

Andrew Bergman's The Freshman is a charmed comedy, the kind of seemingly effortless movie in which everything falls neatly into place, as if ordained by nature.

Talk To Me isn’t just a splashy debut for the Philippou brothers, who prove their filmmaking chops in making the leap from the small screen to the big. It’s also an incredible introduction to a remarkable actress in a role that will undoubtedly prove to be an instant classic horror movie heroine.

Eat Drink Man Woman is so cleverly plotted, edited, scored, performed and photographed that the audience is frequently just as surprised as the characters, yet Lee and his co-writers plant just enough clues to keep you from feeling tricked. [05 Aug 1994, p.E22]

Egerton is commanding throughout. His performance is truly a marvel. Rocketman as well.

Prisoners is a dark, deeply serious examination of how loss can unhinge us; it grabs onto you, and you may have trouble shaking it away.

This film is both a loving homage to Austen and a celebration of fashion and decorative arts.

There’s magic amid the chaos of Oasis: Supersonic, the exceptional new documentary that charts the rapid ascent of British band Oasis.

There is a touching universality to these life stories, which at this point have a lulling near-sameness: grown children, long careers, lasting passions and friendships (Paul’s and Symon’s is particularly touching), a looming shadow of illness, the nearness of twilight.

The effects work rivals the likes of “Saving Private Ryan” and, well, “Independence Day.” It’s spectacular and realistic-looking. That’s to be expected. What’s not expected is how serious-minded and well-acted the picture is.

Strong performances by Samson Coulter, Ben Spence and Elizabeth Debicki anchor a delicate coming-of-age story that explores masculinity and fear, and, like surfing, is equally about what’s beneath as on the surface

Elegantly photographed by the legendary Henri Decae, who emphasizes smoky blue and darkest blacks, "Le Samourai" has film-noir style to burn. [25 Apr 1997]

Ira Sachs’ lovely, heartfelt drama "Love Is Strange" had at its center a New York City real-estate problem — as does his new film, the equally splendid Little Men.

One scene cuts right to the next, eschewing a typical progression of shots or exposition to instead just let us observe the little details. It creates an arresting experience that feels as if we are merely witnessing memories fading into each other as Sandra tries to find solace amid her growing sadness.

So much of the pleasure of Denis Villeneuve’s poignant science-fiction drama Arrival lies in watching Amy Adams figure things out.

BlacKkKlansman manages that tricky balance of being both entertaining (some of the performances are quite comedic, particularly Paul Walker Hauser as a mouth-breathing Klansman) and devastating.

Condon doesn’t shy away from the violence and tragedy at the heart of this story, but he lets us see the tender, hard-forged connection between Molina and Valentín, and also lets us disappear into a world of tinselly Hollywood beauty, just as they do.

The movie is a model of clear, precise storytelling, of state-of-the-art technique used to advance a story rather than show off.

In the film, we’re able to see Ailey during the Kennedy Center honors, watching intently as “Revelations” is performed; he looks like he’s carefully checking it, making sure it’s perfect, wondering if it could be better — the artist watching the art. You leave Ailey hoping that, somewhere, he’s watching still.

This is the swiftest, funniest, most lunatic comedy to date from the team that created "Top Secret," "The Naked Gun," "Ruthless People" and "Airplane!" [28 June 1991, p.23]

Schultz has a lovely way of telling a just-on-the-verge-of-melodramatic story on a very human level.

These characters don’t seem like types chosen from a screenwriting manual but like people we might know, with quirks and feelings and flaws and hearts.

It’s a movie that, by its serene final scene, changes its viewer. You leave happier, honored to have been, for two hours, part of this family.

Archangel, defying every contemporary cinema convention as it does, won't be to everyone's taste. But for those interested in the wilder possibilities of what film can do, it's an absolute must

Godard's technical innovations have become so commonplace that they no longer jolt. But the aura of urban fatalism remains compelling, and so does the acting by Jean-Paul Belmondo as a Bogart-worshipping fugitive and especially Jean Seberg as his amoral girlfriend. [02 Aug 1991, p.24]

It’s a performance that deserves a bigger playground — but this “Mulan” is still a treat, at any size.

DaCosta takes some big stylistic swings — particularly with the soundtrack — that sometimes makes you feel as if you’re watching a comedy rather than a horror film. It’s a welcome, offbeat balm to the more intense moments sprinkled throughout and reflects the movie’s more pondering approach to a story that questions who the real monsters are.

Aside from the Brechtian ending, Taste of Cherry is not a difficult film, although the implications of the characters' references to "true" Moslems, "brave" Kurds and multiplying Afghans may be entirely clear only to an Iranian audience. [3 July 1998]

You have, I promise, never seen a movie quite like Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden. It’s a period drama gone mad; a lavishly colorful, beautifully-filmed-erotic-revenge-crime thriller set in 1930s Korea.

By the film’s poignant final scenes, you feel like you’ve really been somewhere, with a new appreciation of what it means to be home.

The Marx Brothers at their purest and funniest - no romantic subplot, no musical interludes with Harpo, no distractions from the fun of watching Groucho deflate Margaret Dumont as he becomes dictator of Fredonia and frivolously declares war. Cleverly directed by Leo McCarey, it was the team's least popular 1930s film, perhaps because the tone of non-stop anarchy proved too unsettling to Depression audiences. [10 May 1991, p.65]

Eastwood and screenwriter Todd Komarnicki deftly create tension by twisting time around.

You can't help getting into the spirit of it.

Much of the film’s pleasure is in hearing Morrison speak.

It’s a simple, moving story about love, loss and storytelling itself.

This film celebrates Halston’s work but shows more interest in the man — and the unexpected corporate drama — behind it.

Bigelow has a way of making scripted drama feel like an utterly gripping newsreel. That’s not necessarily all to the good — I found myself wishing for more character development — but you can’t deny the power of the filmmaking.

Simultaneously smart and myopic, sneaky and forgetful, the mother Debbie Reynolds plays in Albert Brooks' Mother always keeps you guessing. [10 Jan 1997, p.F1]

Filmed in black-and-white shadow, Coen’s version of Shakespeare’s taut tale of murder and consequences in murky Scotland here seems so creepily ethereal it practically floats in the air, with gorgeous language gliding by on the cold wind.

Bugsy is really pretty wonderful. It's the kind of old-fashioned yet multi-layered movie that Hollywood filmmakers seemed to have forgotten how to make in 1991, when well-written, carefully structured screenplays often appeared to have gone the way of manageable budgets. It couldn't have arrived at a more welcome moment.

Martial-arts action, excitingly mounted, is all part of the package as Po battles a glowering, green-eyed bull (J.K. Simmons) and tries to whip peaceable pandakind into a fighting force to defeat the villain. One-liners fly as fast as kung-fu fisticuffs in this sweet and satisfying picture.

The interweaving of animation and nonanimated footage gives the picture a kind of surreal quality that befits the sense of the survivors of how unreal the event seemed to them.

In a digital fantasy world where culture has been abandoned in favor of commerce, talent is the cheapest commodity.

A soothing 76-minute respite from the noisy clutter of Hollywood's holiday-oriented movies, Microcosmos invites us to "fall silent" while it shows us the spectacularly exotic sights of a world almost beneath our notice, where "time passes differently." [22 Nov 1996]

Both inviting and confrontational, Blindspotting shakes viewers in their seats and announces Diggs as a star-in-the-making leading man.

Farrow is hilarious when she's aggressively pursuing Mantegna; amusingly dumbstruck when she's fighting off a group of male partygoers (one of the secret potions makes them fall in love with her); and touching when she's trying to reconcile with her sister (Blythe Danner) or sell her lame script ideas to an old friend who works for the networks (Cybill Shepherd). The performance is a triumph of sensitivity to rapid mood swings that stops just short of turning the movie into The Three Faces of Alice. [25 Jan 1991, p.22]

Darkly comic and submerged in irony, events unfold with the inevitability of a slow-motion car wreck. When the emotional and physical carnage finally recedes, Sigurðsson leaves us with one haunting image that proves the universe has a sick sense of humor indeed.

Its honesty and power makes it feel large; you live among these characters in their weary trailer park, aching for them.

By the time the film turns into this unusual buddy adventure, it is an absolute joy, the pair putting their big brains to the task at hand and playfully ribbing each other as they go.

The movie’s a playful commentary on overdependence on technology — Wallace has machines that bathe him, dress him and make his tea — but it’s also just fast-paced fun, and you look forward to watching it a second time to catch the sight gags you missed.

A magnificent work of minimalism, the film is about these minute moments just as it’s about the most existential parts of life.

Coppola tells the story through lush mood, meticulous art direction, swimmy music (not Presley’s) and her two actors’ gloriously big-screen faces.

Oh yes indeed. Avengers: Endgame brought it...This film had an insanely difficult job to do — to gracefully and tidily wrap up a 22-movie Marvel Comics cycle with a cast list bigger than the Hulk, and to do so with both poignancy and hold-your-breath action — and it delivers.

In the midst of that hostile physical and psychic landscape, de Clermont-Tonnerre has made a stringent tale of a struggle for redemption.

Moving 1965 love story with the late Elizabeth Hartman giving an excellent performance as a tormented blind girl who falls in love with the only person who treats her kindly (Sidney Poiter). It was Hartman's debut, and she and director Guy Green succeed in keeping it from becoming overly sentimental. [23 Aug 1990, p.F5]

It’s a detective story. It’s a spy thriller. It’s a cautionary tale. And it’s true.

Director Gerard Johnstone demonstrates a visual awareness of genre convention that he then uses to both sendup and skewer common tropes just as M3gan gets to hacking herself. When paired with Cooper’s unparalleled command of the comedic beats, it becomes one of those films that deserves the hype and then some.

It's far-fetched yet (for entertainment's sake) entirely credible, and the abundant comedy is intelligent enough to advance a serious and surprisingly sophisticated plot. [09 Sep 1992, p.F3]

Burnham, in his debut film, makes some funny observations about growing up in the tech era.... But mostly, with glorious support from Fisher’s symphony of awkward poignancy, he makes all of us remember what it’s like to be 13.

Adapting a prizewinning novel by Canadian writer Patrick deWitt, Audiard has made an atmospheric Western in which the four lead actors portray their characters with remarkable subtlety.

You can imagine how other filmmakers might approach this — it’s a beautifully cinematic story — but no one else would film it quite as Malick has. This quiet, meditative and very deliberate film (nearly three hours long, though not a great deal happens) is at once historical drama, love story and ode to nature.

Fascinating.

Incisive, insightful and very funny.

The silence in Silence is deep and profound.

Into the Spider-Verse is pure fun, nonstop from start to finish.

A thoroughly satisfying musical-comedy romp.

Today it has a classical feeling to it, with rich, on-target performances by Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons and Michael J. Pollard. [10 May 1991, p.65]

The most operatic of Hollywood epics, Anthony Mann's El Cid is dominated by a go-for-broke Miklos Rozsa score and Robert Krasker's gorgeous wide-screen photography, which takes full advantage of the movie's Spanish locations and its eye-filling sets and costumes. [27 Aug 1993, p.D13]

Directors Laura Collado and Jim Loomis’ cleverly edited and deliciously photographed food porn is a tasty peek at the cutthroat culinary world and one of its most mysterious figures.

The spell Miss Hokusai casts is a powerful one that lingers long after the lights go up in the theater.

Mamaengaroa Kerr-Bell, who plays Grace, had never acted before, and neither have a couple of the other key players. But under the careful direction of television veteran Lee Tamahori, they all do credible and forceful work.

The beauty of The Florida Project is how Baker uses a cast of mostly inexperienced actors to tell a story that feels completely, utterly real: You feel as if you’ve slipped inside of Moonee’s enchanted world, while at the same time seeing the harsh reality of Halley’s.

Thewlis voices Michael with weariness and despair until the character encounters Lisa. Leigh mixes eagerness...and an abashed vocal quality that emphasizes her character’s vulnerability.

Cooke presents a case that the war on drugs in America is not only a no-win scenario, it is no longer (if it ever was) designed to be won as much as fulfill disturbing, narrow agendas in the public and private sectors.

While the limitations of the budget occasionally show, the elegantly appropriate photography, quirky performances and Haynes' unique vision carry the day. He is clearly a director to watch. [14 June 1991, p.25]

The characters in Clint Eastwood's dark, rugged, perversely funny new Western are so seriously compromised that their flaws almost add up to a running gag.

Gyllenhaal here shows herself as a natural storyteller; The Lost Daughter flows like water as its characters navigate territory not often explored in film.

As Kubo warns, early on, don’t blink — you might miss something. Something that — and what a treat this is — you’ve never seen before.

Complex and lively, The Wild Robot is thoroughly delightful on every level. It’s a rare treat, not just for kids but for adults as well.

An outstanding noir with young Burt Lancaster as an inmate plotting escape, and Hume Cronyn as the cruel, scheming bastard of a head guard. [15 Apr 2007, p.K4]

It’s a scalpel of a film that cuts into how stacked the deck is and how solidarity — or the lack of it — can determine whether you survive unscathed.

The seminal police thriller is a prime example of McQueen's rising above his material. [12 Jun 2005, p.K1]

“Killers” is a master class in filmmaking, taught by that one professor we all had in college whose every word we hung on, and whose classes always felt too short. It’s that thing we always look for but so rarely find: a great story, beautifully told.