Breezy, good-hearted Irish comedy. [17 Dec 1993, p.H3]

A holiday gift, it’s bringing some much-needed light to these dark days.

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.

Shi and screenwriter Julia Cho present a sweet, graceful ode to growing up.

In this, his feature directorial debut, Möller makes a whole lot out of very little: a whole lot of dramatic forcefulness out of the most simple and basic of elements, a solitary man struggling to do the right thing.

The drama of Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women takes place in Annette Bening’s masterful pauses.

The year's most original and thought-provoking coming-of-age drama, with standout performances by Gael Morel as Techine's on-screen alter ego and Frederic Corny as the Algerian-born boy who challenges his adolescent assumptions. [31 Dec 1995, p.1]

Beginning with its enigmatic title and concluding with a haunting, strange ending, “Evil Does Not Exist” is filmmaking more interested in creating a mood than telling a taut story — but what a mood it is.

No. 2 in the James Bond series, and the one with the most memorable villains (Robert Shaw, Lotte Lenya), the most exciting fights and chases, and Sean Connery in his prime. At this point in the series (1963), the gadgetry hadn't taken over, the budgets were still relatively modest, and the director, Terence Young, had to rely on his actors and his own filmmaking ingenuity to create excitement.[10 May 1991, p.65]

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.

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.

The film is both a gripping and timely celebration of the free press, and, in the remarkable hands of Streep, an exploration of what it meant then (and, perhaps, now) to be a woman thrust into power in an all-male world.

In its most simple form, Fireworks can be called a police versus yakuza (gangster) film. However, the emphasis in Fireworks isn't on blood and vengeance, though it has them in spades. Rather, Kitano challenges the audience to appreciate the film's structure and his careful manipulations of sound, space and imagery. [24 Apr 1998]

Despite the gravity-defying cinematography and alpine setting, Free Solo transcends the climbing world and intimately examines something universal. How can Honnold risk pain to the people who love him in pursuit of a lofty personal goal?

Mustang could easily have been a pure heartbreaker, but it isn’t. It is surprisingly nuanced and even something of an adventure tale about a fight for freedom and identity.

There’s such a thing as something being too personal. James White is that thing.

A smart, wistful and very funny movie.

The mixture of nostalgia, surreal fantasy, self-parody and contemporary satire is seamlessly Fellini-esque. The style has become so recognizable that it's become difficult to separate Fellini from the national postwar cinema he helped create. [17 Jun 1993, p.E5]

The genre's other great star-director team James Stewart and Anthony Mann began a string of five remarkable Westerns with this engrossing, genre-reviving chronicle of a stolen rifle and its fateful role in the lives of its possessors. [26 Oct 2003]

What seems like a meandering comedy of police ineptitude eventually tightens into a gripping character study that defies genre conventions.

Weirdest. Feminist. Movie. Ever.

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

A profoundly brave film.

Richard Linklater’s Hit Man is one of those movies that just picks you up immediately and sweeps you away; it’s made with an irresistibly breezy confidence.

A taut, gripping documentary about one young woman’s dream ... Maiden is wonderfully suspenseful — especially if you, like me, have no idea how the race turned out.

Serkis again proves that in the highly specialized realm of performance-capture acting, he has no peer.

Visually a macabre knockout, this 75-minute fantasy boasts some of the wittiest, most vigorous stop-motion animation effects in the history of the process.

Livington's film provides a lively look at an exotic subculture that mimics the values of the white majority with unique wit, irony, and style. [07 May 1991, p.2]