This clearly qualifies as a heist film, and a hugely entertaining one, notwithstanding a few plot perforations and a running time of two hours plus that might have been trimmed a bit.

One word for Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms, a movie with a hero obsessed with words, is astonishing. Other words apply to this Israeli feature, in subtitled French and Hebrew, that’s set in Paris. They include, in no particular order, fascinating, infuriating, frightening, lyrical and befuddling. Plus deadpan funny and frequently stunning as a bittersweet ode to contemporary France, one that’s suffused with New Wave verve.

A hugely entertaining and scarily edifying documentary.

Rarely has a contemporary movie taken in so much life and revealed it with such depth of feeling.

However inward the hero may be, the movie around him is thrillingly outward, not to mention poundingly onward and relentlessly upward.

I thought "Topsy-Turvy" was perfection, a spirited evocation of the partnership of Gilbert and Sullivan, plus a blithely definitive depiction of the artistic process. Happy-Go-Lucky is perfection too, assuming you go along with its leisurely pace, which I did quite happily.

Mason and Odgers are charming young performers with cheeks that shade of pink generally found only in picture books or among English school children. That color goes perfectly here. There is an unabashed old-fashioned quality to the story-telling, not quaint, not fusty, but very much of another era -- and what a relief that is.

This beguiling fable, with its darkly distinctive look, does DreamWorks proud.

The comedian has had his ups and downs recently, but the film is pure up, a wonderfully genial and inclusive record -- not that the music is devoid of anger or social protest -- of a day-long, freestyle show.

Ever since the movie made a brief appearance late last year to qualify for Oscar consideration, Mr. Caine's performance has been hailed as the best of his career, and surely that's true.

Mr. Davenport, who makes films “about disability” according to his website, also makes them from the perspective of the disabled—he has cerebral palsy and often uses a wheelchair. Like many people who find themselves on the anti- side of the assisted-suicide issue, he takes the concept to what seem very logical conclusions—with an assist from Canada.

Weiner, an extraordinary documentary feature about the disgraced New York politician Anthony Weiner, has it all — the surreal spectacle of contemporary retail politics, the sizzle of media madness and the mysteries of psychodrama.

A documentary of stunning immediacy and marvelous images.

If this death-obsessed drama is a classic, then give me potboiling life.

A narrative that mixes, not always successfully, stirring moments and sensational action with angst and grim conflictedness on a galactic scale.

The film makes its case graphically, to say the least, yet muddies its bloody waters with an excess of artifice and a dearth of facts.

The stuff of heroism is always mysterious. In this case it’s also marvelously strange.

The oblique nature of the final act might perhaps be justified if the rest of the movie were better. As it is, I kept thinking, “I guess that’s funny, in a way” rather than actually laughing at any of Mr. Rankin’s aggressively whimsical notions.

Terrifically funny and remarkably wise, a comedy that speaks volumes, without a polemical word, about the tension between rigid politics of any stripe and the imperatives of life and love.

Right makes might in Takashi Miike's excellent-and exceedingly violent-remake of a 1966 Japanese classic by Eiichi Kudo.

This one is both demanding and extremely rewarding, because it's really a meditation on violence.

Crazy Heart is blessed with so many marvelous moments, lovely lines and vivid characters.

Suffice it to say that the film is a must-see for fans of the man (who, like many of his gifted colleagues, has given up on what’s left of the Hollywood studio system) and a should-see for anyone who cares about how movies are made, as well as how, in certain near-miraculous cases, really good movies get made.

For all its rich trappings, A Little Princess is impoverished at the core. [18 May 1995, p.A14]

No doubt this would flounder spectacularly without gifted actors, but Mr. Jacobs is lucky enough to have three.

Adaptation, like "Being John Malkovich" before it, is far from a well-made film, even on its own flaky terms. But it's a brave, sometimes brilliant one, with a phantasmagoric ending, full of love and hope, that defeats prose description. Never was an adaptation more original.

What's on screen is a gorgeous grab bag of notions: ardent love, a salute to Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain," a bit of "Camille" and a lot — I mean a lot — of nuts-and-bolts stuff about nuts and bolts.

A captivating entertainment for the holiday season and well beyond.