Weird, beguiling premise.

The Incredibles has those characters, that heart.

It’s a work that blends compassion with artistry so purely that there’s no way to separate them. This is bold filmmaking that makes us feel more courageous too.

So Almost Famous is almost fabulous. Oh, all right. The movie's so clever and endearing, you can forget the almost.

Nolan shapes Oppenheimer’s story into something like an epic poem, focusing not just on his most famous achievement, but on everything that happened to him afterward; Nolan is maybe even more interested in Oppenheimer as a complicated, questioning patriot.

It deftly walks the line between appropriately somber and great, sophisticated fun.

Hollywood's smartest media satire in years--and a breakthrough for Jim Carrey.

This is a sort-of comedy about personal trauma, a delicate line to walk—and Victor mostly pulls it off.

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

Dern’s mastery is so complete that it makes conversation about the actor’s skill or the awards she’ll likely win seem unworthy; her performance ignites the screen with increasing tension, stuffing a lifetime’s worth of repressed trauma into a moment.

It’s about love and poetry and dreams, and about the chance encounter that can close a wound with the magic efficiency of a tiny butterfly bandage. How you pour all of that into one movie is something of a mystery. But then, a good poem is always something of a mystery too.

The first hour of the film sets up the situation with a naturalistic vigor and cinematic resourcefulness unique to Scorsese. He knows precisely how to move the camera, dress a set, direct his splendid actors, underlay the music, edit to keep the viewer off guard and consistently impressed. But Raging Bull has nowhere to go but down and out. As Jake follows the trajectory of his predictable degradation, the film threatens to become as bloated and repetitious as the fat ex-champ in his cups.

The controversial film that is unbearable--and unmissable.

Reveling in its ’70s milieu and in the eternal abrasion of sexy women and covetous men, American Hustle is an urban eruption of flat-out fun — the sharpest, most exhilarating comedy in years. Anyone who says otherwise must be conning you.

A grand and glorious film that may well be the smash hit of 1977, and certainly is the best movie of the year so far.

A gravely beautiful fairy tale of longing and loss. [20 Sept 1993, p.82]

This excruciatingly violent, three-hour Viet Nam saga demolishes the moral and ideological cliches of an era: it shoves the audience into hell and leaves it stranded without a map.

Kaufman may be counting on the audience's will, insistence and yearning to create a coherent love story from the shards and shrapnel he provides us.

Directing with a cool, steady hand that renounces shaky-cam the way Fletcher would denounce rock ‘n roll, and getting strong performances from his two leads, Chazelle provides a potent metaphor for artistic ambition as both a religion and an addiction.

Smartly crafted, impeccably acted, The Lives of Others packs a subtle punch, from its creepy first images to its poignant finale.

The cast list is like a convocation of the Three Chinas: Taiwan's Kaneshiro, Hong Kong's Lau and the mainland's Zhang Ziyi. All are terrific, but the lady shines brightest.

It also offers the fun of watching an eye-rolling, lip-twitching Robert Newton as he wallows outrageously through the role of Long John Silver, one of fiction's most ingratiating scoundrels. Disney apparently liked him well enough to let him steal the whole treasure (as well as the picture), instead of the single sack of coins that Stevenson let him get away with.

If this sounds like an old-fashioned sex comedy, it is -- sexy, for sure, and funny, in wild spurts.

Even by the out-there standards of "Basic Instinct" and "Showgirls," Paul Verhoeven’s latest, Elle, is a thing to behold. Part thriller, part obsidian-black comedy, part cerebral firebomb, it’s confrontational, terrible and glorious. You almost can’t believe such a picture exists.

Minari is a gentle, lovely picture, one that acknowledges there really is no “immigrant experience,” beyond the pure human experience of finding yourself adjusting to a new environment.

Through it all, we’re supposed to relish the emotional complexity of the story, or maybe even just its dark humor. Amorality can be fun, but Marty Supreme has no emotional core—though it does try to grab us in its final minutes, when Marty is unrealistically redeemed in a moment of mawkish sentimentality.

Prepare to be riveted: No End in Sight, Charles Ferguson's first film, is without question the most important movie you are likely to see this year.

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.