Barry Jenkins’ beautiful Moonlight seems to have more in common with poetry than with a typical narrative film. It’s less a story than a collection of moments, which leaves its viewer feeling moved and changed, as if you’ve spent time in someone else’s dreams and woke up understanding who they are.

The Third Man has so many captivating elements that it's often thought of as a romantic movie. Maybe that's the result of Welles' involvement in a radio show in which his movie character, Harry Lime, became significantly more heroic, or the television series in which Michael Rennie took over the role. [30 July 1999, p.H1]

You’ll watch knowing you’re in the hands of a master filmmaker; only wondering when it’s over how certain effects were achieved.

Perhaps more than ever, Marlon Brando's brutish Stanley seems the most attractive and honest character; he's also bewitchingly funny. He cuts through Blanche's lies and illusions, he satisfies Stella's sexual urges, and the fact that he does so with deliberate cruelty seems not to register. [Director's Cut; 4 Feb 1994, p.D21]

Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma is a wondrously pure example of one of the great gifts that cinema can give us: to drop us into a time, a place and a life; immersing us in the sounds and the sights and the emotions, large and small, experienced by someone we’re not.

Miyazaki's films never stop at their brilliant surfaces. Spirited Away is a fairy tale in the classic tradition, a growing-up fantasy riding the rapids of the subconscious.

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]

12 Years a Slave isn’t easy to watch, and it shouldn’t be; it’s one man’s tragedy, but it’s also the tragedy of countless thousands of souls beaten down, literally and metaphorically.

Every Manchester scene gives you a sense of the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, where it’s bitter cold but nobody makes too much of it, where the past stays with you whether you want it to or not. This is a movie that pays careful attention to details.

As an actor showcase it's a clash between the Duke's old school and Clift's new breed a volatile mix in a timeless classic. [26 Oct 2003]

Writer-director Sturges' smoothest romantic comedy, starring Henry Fonda as a naive millionaire who gets fleeced by a pair of shipboard cardsharps. [05 Dec 1997]

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

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another — the most entertaining, exhilarating movie you’ll see all year — is an incision into a raw nerve. A thrilling, tense portrait of modern life, it’s Anderson’s most urgently relevant work yet.

“Do all lovers,” wonders Héloïse in a passionate moment, “feel as though they’re inventing something?” Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a bittersweet celebration of passion and art, feels like that; you’ve never seen another movie quite like this. In its quiet gaze, love becomes art — and vice versa.

It’s not a biopic, but I Am Not Your Negro leaves you wanting to know and read more of Baldwin, to experience the language that pours from this film like a fiery balm.

Imported from Germany to lend class to Hollywood's new Fox studio, the great expressionist filmmaker, F.W. Murnau, did exactly that with this affecting, visually intoxicating 1927 masterpiece about a troubled young country couple (George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor) whose marital bonds are renewed during a day in the city. [12 Mar 1998]

In a severe, uncompromising manner that none of his previous films has approached, Spielberg has captured the terror of the Nazi reign as well as the determination and resourcefulness of those who resisted. He has created one of the most shocking movies yet made about the Holocaust (there were several walkouts at the screening I attended) and one of the most inspiring.

You leave the film’s soft-grained world reluctantly, as if taking off a warm coat when it’s still a little chilly inside.

Painstakingly reassembled by producer Alan Elliott (Pollack, who never gave up hope on the project, died in 2008), Amazing Grace shows us an artist at the peak of her powers.

Dunkirk succeeds spectacularly both emotionally and visually.

The Irishman is long, to be sure, but it’s never less than compelling — Scorsese, De Niro, Pacino and Pesci, all in their mid-to-late-70s, are each carrying a lifetime of work, with practiced ease.

Watching it leaves you lighter, happier, younger — dancing your way out of the theater to the Heads’ irresistible beats.

Inside Out movingly but casually plays with our emotions, like a baby walking her fingers across a parent’s face; it leaves you changed, entertained, nostalgic, dazzled.

It may be overly sentimental, but in my opinion, it's a great capper to the Christmas season. [26 Nov 2013, p.B3]

It’s a film full of quiet magic; of the power of words not spoken, and the enduring strength of love.

Guadagnino has explored this territory before...and he’s a master at finding electricity in a glance, beauty in a beam of sunlight, an entire story in the whisper of one name.

Like the shadows dancing on their home, the film is overwhelmingly beautiful and agonizingly incomplete, a refraction of a refraction of a time that has now long since passed. It’s a work of rich layers that offers something new each time you watch.

Johansson and Driver are remarkably, heartbreakingly good in every scene; showing their characters’ journeys to an unflinching camera, letting the gap between them get wider yet unable, for their son’s sake, to completely walk away. It’s a drama playing out on two larger-than-life faces; a family torn apart, and yet enduring.