The film is seductive, disturbing, enthralling -- a trip to hell that gives the passengers a great ride.

The funniest, cleverest, most exhaustingly exhilarating animated feature in ages.

It's a Wonderful Life is a pretty wonderful movie. It has only one formidable rival (Goldwyn's The Best Years of Our Lives) as Hollywood's best picture of the year.

The controversial film that is unbearable--and unmissable.

This is a movie as big as the open sky, but one where human emotions are still distinctly visible, as fine and sharp as a blade of grass.

Saraband makes for a powerful and poignant final roar from the grand old man of cinema--the movies' lion king.

The best Hollywood movies always knew how to sneak a beguiling subtext into a crowd-pleasing story. Superman Returns is in that grand tradition. That's why it's beyond Super. It's superb.

This is a complex and sophisticated picture, the kind of grown-up love story we see all too rarely these days, especially when it comes to starry, big-ticket moviemaking. It’s entertaining and robust and forthright; it’s also tremendously sad, not necessarily in a bring-your-hanky way, but in a deeper, more truthful way.

Mitchell — who was so marvelous as Eazy-E in the 2015 "Straight Outta Compton" — is superb here, as a young man struggling with what it means to be at home within his own heart, and within his country. Mudbound — tough and bittersweet and, in places, painfully brutal — is all about what it really means to be an American.

For three hours, Kechiche puts the audience on a ride nearly as exhilarating and exhausting as that endured by Adèle and Emma, Adèle and Léa. The film is like a tough exam that everybody aced. The director, the actresses, the moviegoer — we all deserve a très bien.

No film since Preston Sturges was a pup has so shrewdly appreciated the way the eccentric plays hide-and-seek with the respectable in the ordinary American landscape; no comedy since Annie Hall or Manhattan has so intelligently observed not just the way people live now but what's going on in the back of their minds; and finally, and in full knowledge that one may be doing the marketing department's job for them, it is the best movie of the year.

In a style of agitated naturalism, Jordan examines poignant matters of life and death, sex and friendship, duty and loyalty, freedom and bondage, manhood and womanhood and all the ambiguous areas in between. [30 Nov 1992]

Triplettes is terrific…there's no competition for the fall's most imaginative delight. In that race, Triplettes can already take its victory lap.

The second half of the film elevates all the story elements to Beethovenian crescendo. Here is an epic with literature's depth and opera's splendor -- and one that could be achieved only in movies. What could be more terrific?

For this movie stands to be something its predecessor was not, a megahit. And it deserves to be, for it is a remarkable accomplishment: a sequel that exceeds its predecessor in the reach of its appeal while giving Weaver new emotional dimensions to explore.

The filmmaking is marvelously austere, yet in its sudden bursts of action electrifying, in its stern morality sobering, in the blackness of its comedy often quite delicious.

It's an exhilarating trip of movie madness and sadness.

Reitman's blend of comedy and drama, romance and social observation make Up in the Air the ideal movie --- and maybe even a cure -- for the Great Recession blues.

As you watch this enchanting fantasy, feel free to be thrilled or to giggle, as you wish. This time, Happily Ever After lasts 98 minutes. [21 Sept 1987]

But it is the style with which this wild farce is developed that sustains our horrified interest and keeps us laughing as the darkness gathers around Barbara and Oliver. [11 Dec 1989]

So it is Scorsese's triumph that GoodFellas offers the fastest, sharpest 2 1/2-hr. ride in recent film history. [Sept 24, 1990]

A war film that, entirely aware of its genre's conventions, transcends them as it transcends the simplistic moralities that inform its predecessors, to take the high, morally haunting ground.

This is a movie in which expertise and good sense win the day; no one is rewarded for stupidity or cruelty. And in that sense, Knives Out isn’t just a beautifully made diversion. It’s also a utopian vision.

Silence is something to see whether you’re certain there’s a God or whether you just believe in sunlight, which covers just about everybody.

This is a chase movie (Simon Legree after three Little Evas) across parched outback terrain, captured with rapturous authenticity by cinematographer Christopher Doyle.

Hannah and Her Sisters is old-fashioned in another sense: its plot has the elegant geometry of a Philip Barry play. [Feb 3, 1986]

If Shakespeare's poetry enters the mind through the ear, Kurosawa's enters it through the eye. But the imagery is of comparable quality, at once awesome in its power, delicate in its irony and, finally, for all the violence of the events it recounts, eerily serene in the sureness with which it achieves its effects.

Remain open to fantasies but not be consumed by them. These are good lessons for a would-be director. They are good lessons for everybody. And no recent movie has taught them with more patient sweetness. [Feb. 5, 1990]