This sleeper never caught on with the masses but became a cult movie after making a lot of the year's 10-best lists. [19 Sept 1997, p.13D]

Director Taylor Hackford is so enthusiastic reminiscing on an alternate soundtrack that he almost convinces you that this diminutive cult movie is better than it is. [27 Dec 1996]

Director Richard Rush's unique moviemaking saga is one of the consummate screen treats of its day, though its offbeat subject matter and tone caused it some problems. [23 Nov 2001, p.8E]

Oft-touted as director Walter Hill's best film, this is probably tops of umpteen Westerns about the James-Younger-Miller outlaw clans. [24 Feb 1995, p.14D]

A strong first half has Jill Clayburgh oozing bile when weasel husband Michael Murphy dumps her. Writer/director Paul Mazursky's sexual-political screen landmark wobbles some when she takes up with artist Alan Bates. [13 Jan 2006, p.14D]

Haphazard in its narrative but consistently mesmerizing until an overdose of communist rah-rah in the late going. [08 Dec 2005, p.4E]

Another of director David Cronenberg's queasy early horror films that, like The Brood and Videodrome, gets under your skin. [04 Jun 2004]

Sissy Spacek goes vengefully telekinetic in one of director Brian De Palma's best movies, and her scenes with mom Piper Laurie (both actresses were Oscar-nominated) release a lot of energy themselves. [29 Jun 2004]

The 1975 film not only succeeds as a rollicking cinematic costume drama, but lends insights into the mindset of countries of the region such as Afghanistan and how their culture clashes with that of the West. [01 Mar 2003]

A masterpiece. (9 Jan 1998, p.3D)

You still get Tim Curry in drag, young Susan Sarandon in her skimpies and an enthusiastic score. [16 Nov 1990, p.3D]

Now that we no longer expect the world from any of them, the movie is an amusing 88-minute trifle with Beatty in a gigolo mustache and Nicholson with Art Garfunkel curls. [05 Jun 1998]

Teamed again after Midnight Cowboy, writer Waldo Salt and director John Schlesinger make a costly flop of Nathanael West's great novella about underbelly '30s Hollywood. Karen Black is just OK as craven screen wannabe Fay Greener, but, along with M*A*S*H, this is Donald Sutherland's greatest lead (as a dweeb named Homer Simpson). [08 Jun 2004]

Screenwriter Alan Sharp's dialogue, as edgy as his name, combines with Penn's incisive direction to create memorable characters played by Hackman, Ward, Jennifer Warren and a young James Woods as an auto mechanic you don't want messing with your points and plugs. [22 July 2005, p.6E]

The movies are so much fun that even detractors of Charlton Heston (Cardinal Richelieu) and Raquel Welch (taking pratfalls as "Constance") readily admit that both carry more than their load here. [01 May 1998]

Cassavetes wrote and directed on his standard improvisational shoestring. The oft-shattering result, which runs 2 1/2 hours, is so uneasily lifelike that the academy temporarily ignored its prejudice against independent productions by rewarding Rowlands and Cassavetes with Oscar nominations. [18 Sep 1992, p.3D]

This is still a great Carney performance and inspired casting by writer/director Paul Mazursky. [16 Sep 2005]

A lot of cinematic ineptitude and moral turpitude can be forgiven in the final 40 minutes, when Halicki redeems his movie by staging one of the greatest car chase scenes in history -- one without much, if any, fakery. [01 Dec 2000, p.8E]

These swashbuckling romps are packed with the kind of slapstick and throwaway asides you may not expect before noting both were directed by Richard Lester, the man who molded the Beatles on screen. [01 May 1998]

As the suddenly somber Hickey, the traveling salesman who rudely stops regaling assorted skid-row barflies with flip patter in 1912 New York, Lee Marvin is very good in a role that Jason Robards always owned. Otherwise, the actors are all on a "wow" level. [04 Apr 2003]

Cult director Don Siegel bookended Dirty Harry with this esteemed toughie. [08 Mar 1996]

Forget Lassie and Flicka. Two years before Richard Zanuck and David Brown gave us a new kind of animal picture with Jaws, they produced a ssssssickie that gave character actor Strother Martin a rare lead. [22 Aug 2006, p.4D]

Robert Altman's oddball send up of the late Raymond Chandler got a rigidly polarized response, but I love it. [21 Jun 1991, p.3D]

Eddie Albert's Oscar-nominated slow burn as the loathing father in The Heartbreak Kid is the funniest portrayal of Midwestern WASP-ism in movie history. [08 Feb 2002]

Drivers congest highways, while many of their cars inevitably end up as twisted scrap. The final Monsieur Hulot comedy from France's Jacques Tati couldn't possibly be more topical. [18 Jul 2008, p.13D]

This is impressive on costuming and hunk fronts (with Billy Dee Williams the key factor in both), while Diana Ross is better than OK in a performance whose Oscar nomination was probably a fait accompli. Otherwise, this lumpy 2 1/2-hour biopic of Billie Holiday hasn't improved since it was critically drubbed -- four other nominations or not -- as one of the most ponderous of all showbiz chronicles. [11 Nov 2005]

This critical smash was graphic, yet laced with macabre humor. [30 Oct 2007, p.2D]

Despite Paul Newman and Lee Marvin, a deserving flop about modern-day cattle hucksters; at times here (call the rest home), I think Newman sounds like Wally Cox. [01 Mar 1991, p.3D]