Lady Bird is a joy, from its start...to its finish, when that ever-so-slightly older young woman takes a breath and looks out — hopefully, nervously, excitedly — into a limitless future.

Hawks drew from his entire career to enliven this amalgam of genre traditions, once favored by Quentin Tarantino as a litmus test for potential girlfriends. [26 Oct 2003]

Just as it lulls you, it also devastates.

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]

While it may have seemed revolutionary in its time, it now suffers from the disadvantage of looking like one more Asian movie about alienated youth. [18 Feb 2005, p.I20]

This tale of ambition and its cost — and its collateral damage — is Blanchett’s movie, and she delivers a tour de force in every scene.

On par with the most compelling courtroom dramas, Brother's Keeper is all the more fascinating because it presents a reality as complex as any fictional plot could ever be. [20 Nov 1992, p.20]

Twenty-five years in the making, this warmhearted, generous film is a quiet masterpiece — the very specific story of one family, but one in which many of us can find our own.

"There's nothing about this place worth filming," insists one character, but Kiarostami always comes up with something: a Tati-like scene in which a canister rolls down a street, all but waiting to be kicked, and several exotic glimpses of urban life, including a turkey salesman who carries a couple of unplucked birds through the Tehran streets. [26 Feb 1999]

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.

This George Cukor adaptation is nevertheless regarded as the definitive Hollywood treatment. Katharine Hepburn and Spring Byington are particularly well-cast. [15 Dec 1994, p.E3]

Yes, the film does strum the heartstrings a bit too emphatically toward the end, by cranking up Williams' music and giving us perhaps one tear too many, but that's a minor quibble. When Elliott and his friends soar on their bicycles, like flying Peter Pans who must soon grow up, it's as touching and note-perfect a moment as any in the movies. [2002 re-release]

Whether the new scenes make "Apocalypse" a better movie is debatable; for me, they were fascinating but not essential.

As charted by a brilliantly incisive script by former lawyer and Washington Post film critic Paul Attanasio, the ethical crises of "Quiz Show" radiate from that anguished moment when Van Doren takes the bait. [16 Sept 1994, p.C3]

The Souvenir reveals itself slowly, calmly, with great deliberation.

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.

Röhrig’s performance is an extraordinary feat of minimalism. His expressions convey a deadened spirit. Yet behind his eyes and at the corners of his mouth are signs of a spirit that won’t be crushed.

The first and best version of Leo McCarey's tale of a shipboard romance that turns serious. [20 Oct 1994, p.E3]

This Little Women purist was moved to tears by this movie, and didn’t want it to end. Beautifully intimate, gentle and wise, it made me — and all of us — part of the March family. And what better Christmas gift could we wish for than that?

Sergei Urusevsky's amazingly mobile cinematography is so expressive, and Kalatozov's heightened sense of drama so contagious, that this becomes one of those rare movies that makes you look at the world differently. [23 Jun 1995, p.H26]

The occasional creakiness of Milestone's passionate pacifist war film adds to the sense of authenticity. It's a lot closer to World War I than we are to it. [05 Dec 1997, p.G1]

It’s a lovely, inspiring picture of a crucial institution; one which, as an employee describes, serves as “a warm, welcoming place that’s committed to education and committed to nurturing everyone’s passions and curiosities.”

Nickel Boys is a life, made up of pieces; some of them lovely, some devastating. It’s a mesmerizing, uniquely told story — of memory, of injustice, of friendship, of survival.

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 real fun here is in the three central performances, each of which threatens to steal the film (giving “The Favourite,” appropriately, its own balance-of-power issues).

Steven Spielberg's magnificent new film, Saving Private Ryan, redefines the World War II movie.

It is another sumptuous visual feast from the studio, full of endless images finely detailed and often lavish.

“Fury’s” pace is delirious, the stunts are incredible — such crashes, such explosions, such a lot of flying bodies — Hardy’s performance is a marvel of subdued conviction and Theron brings an impressive gravity to her work as Furiosa. Put it all together, and you’ve got a rousing crowd-pleaser that hits on all fast-revving cylinders.