Surprisingly, improbably, The Bad News Bears is the year's funniest movie. It is very much like the team itself: no serious threat at first, but, finally, tough to beat.

Master and Commander is to movies what Russell Crowe is to acting. With subtlety and power, it explores the complexities of men at war, even with themselves. It puts the passion into action, and the thrill into thought.

The Lady Vanishes exhibits Director Alfred Hitchcock, England's portly master of melodrama, at the top of his form.

The word docudrama doesn't hint at Boal's achievement. This is movie journalism that snaps and stings, that purifies a decade's clamor and clutter into narrative clarity, with a salutary kick.

Writer-director Greta Gerwig’s semiautobiographical Lady Bird is both generous and joyous, but when it stings, it stings deep.

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.

In this literal, beautiful, bountiful version of the most gilt-edged attraction in theater history, Jack Warner has miraculously managed to turn gold into gold.

Beyond dark. It's as black -- and teeming and toxic -- as the mind of the Joker. "Batman Begins," the 2005 film that launched Nolan's series, was a mere five-finger exercise. This is the full symphony.

The actors are supported by the best kind of writerly craft and directorial technique, the kind that refuses to call attention to itself, never gets caught straining for scares or laughs. Popular moviemaking -- elegantly economical, artlessly artful -- doesn't get much better than this.

One of the strongest movies in recent years.

A kind of mashup of "Our Town" and "Village of the Damned," the film is both draining and enthralling.

The first great movie of the summer.

Gravity shows us the glory of cinema’s future. It thrills on so many levels. And because Cuar‪ón is a movie visionary of the highest order, you truly can’t beat the view.

This film's manifold pleasures come in a series of small packages, with treats inside as tasty as they are unexpected.

This could have turned out to be an exercise in easy sentiment, easy to shrug off. But Frank Cottrell Boyce's script is carefully understated, and director Michael Winterbottom has achieved a remarkably seamless blend of fictional and factual footage.

Unforgiven questions the rules of a macho genre, summing up and maybe atoning for the flinty violence that made Eastwood famous. [10 Aug 1992]

Double Indemnity is the season's nattiest, nastiest, most satisfying melodrama.

District 9 proves that genre films, besides being a hell of a lot of fun, can say things you hadn't considered and show stuff you haven't seen.

The result is mainstream moviemaking at its highest, most satisfying level.

What explosive mischief might they create? That's the premise of Morris' brilliantly incendiary new comedy Four Lions.

More important, we should take into account the fact that this is really quite a good movie--a character-driven (as opposed to whammy-driven) suspense drama--dark, fatalistic and, within its melodramatically stretched terms, emotionally plausible.

Proof is on the side of the lost, blessed souls. Paltrow, as alluring and reassuring as ever, emphasizes the blessedness in the isolation of genius, giving a new dimension to a complex role. New, true and thrilling--she is the Catherine that Proof was waiting for.

Because she also has a classical heroine's sense of quest, the picture's Pocahontas rises above stodgy old legend into the sky of myth... That's apt for a role model for any child, red or white. And it's perfect for a film romance that earns a place of honor among Disney's latter-day animated film stunners.

Wright has orchestrated every swerve and near smashup—and one glorious foot chase—with precision, a rarity in action filmmaking these days.

All the actors in No Man's Land are wonderfully alive, fractious and unpredictable. Their performances also help break down the schematics and turn this into an emotionally potent, powerfully thoughtful and finally tragic experience.

The movie is tender like a rainstorm: only in the aftermath, after you’ve allowed time for its ideas to settle, does its full picture become clear. It’s the kind of movie that makes everything feel washed clean, a gentle nudge of encouragement suggesting that no matter how tired you feel, you can move on in the world.

Makes everything Hollywood has lately done in the action genre look clumsy, dull and stale. It is a short, nonstop stuntfest that, by going back to basics and placing them on the screen with simple, breathless stylishness, turns what is essentially a lowlife movie form into something one is not embarrassed to call "pure" cinema--all energy, movement and high kinetic wit.

The performances are daring and assured, especially Lansbury's holy terror of Momism and Harvey's snide, pathetic pawn, brainwashed by both KGB AND CIA. [21 March 1988, p.84]