Tequila Sunrise succeeds in both its larger strokes and its smaller ones-as both a romance and a thriller. It has a sense of comedy audacious enough to stage a bust that is delayed by a seduction and the sophistication to know that, for some people, to be called "slick" is the cruelest of insults. Tequila Sunrise has a deep-down glamor that borrows not from movies, but from life. It's knowing, but the last thing you'd call it is slick. [2 Dec 1988, p.b1]

A brilliant piece of filmic writing, one that bursts with fierce urgency, not just for the long-unresolved history it seeks to confront, but also in its attempt to understand what is happening here, right now.

The result is a film that does more than impart facts, or even tell a story: It builds a world, and once we’re in it, takes us on a potent and unforgettable emotional journey.

A beautiful story, told in measured cadences by a master of old-timey narrative compression and expression.

Isn't just a fabulous seagoing spectacle. It's one for the ages.

The film is at times deeply moving and, for a show that is virtually all song and no dialogue, extraordinarily character-rich.

As disturbing and densely beautiful as its opening image, a lofty forest that dwarfs the gangsters as they laugh over their kill.

Stanley Kubrick's wicked sendup of the then-burgeoning military-industrial complex is still lacerating today. Which is better, George C. Scott's bull-like portrayal of Gen. Buck Turgidson ("Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed") or the Peter Sellers trifecta of Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake, Dr. Strangelove and President Merkin Muffley? You'll watch it and weep -- from laughter and maybe just a hint of despair. [13 June 2004, p.N03]

A sci-fi-fueled indictment of man's inhumanity to man -- and the non-human -- District 9 is all horribly familiar, and transfixing.

Manchurian, with its fatalistic, dreamlike quality, comprises two of [Frankenheimer's] finest hours. [Re-release]

Monsieur Lazhar resembles a clear, clean glass of water: transparent, utterly devoid of gratuitous flavorings or frou-frou, and all the more bracing and essential for it.

A major technical accomplishment. But it’s also a major feat of storytelling, one that mentions no dates, place names or famous battles, yet nevertheless manages to evoke a profound sense of connection with its nameless subjects.

Oropelled by memorable performances by mostly unknown actors. The most famous of the ensemble, Hanna Schygulla, delivers a by turns serene and shattering performance as a mother struggling with loss, conscience and the first glimmers of unexpected connection. She's only one essential and unforgettable part of a flawless whole.

As a film that dares to honor small moments and the life they add up to, Boyhood isn’t just a masterpiece. It’s a miracle.

The genius is in the writing and in keeping all gambits created by the individual writers in sync, so the piece has a tonal consistency and a narrative flow. A lost art in Hollywood? It's really one of the best movies of the year.

The latest in an impressive string of first-rate movies for kids.

Rarely has love at any age been depicted so honestly on screen. For such a fully realized portrait to be created by a 28-year-old first-time director is even more remarkable.

It is a triumph for director Ron Howard, underwater photographer Jordan Klein, the writers and even the guy who made Hannah's latex tail (Robert Short). And it's surely the stairway to superstardom for costar John Candy and the lovely leading nyad. Splash, a departure for struggling Disney Studio, is as irresistible as the siren's song. [09 Mar 1984, p.23]

Fayyad — who directed a team of cinematographers remotely when he was prevented from entering Ghouta himself — films The Cave with a grace and compositional sensitivity all the more impressive for being achieved under the most difficult circumstances.

American Fiction would be an enormously entertaining and observant comedy even if it just stuck to the hilarious, if cringey, lengths to which the White establishment will go in the name of psychic safety and self-protection. But Jefferson overlays the story’s most biting wit with layers of warmth, sadness and discovery that make this movie far more than the sum of its parts.

Detroit is an audacious, nervy work of art, but it also commemorates history, memorializes the dead and invites reflection on the part of the living. In scale, scope and the space it offers for a long-awaited moral reckoning, it’s nothing less than monumental.

McQueen’s vocabulary is on particularly glorious display in this lambent gem of a film.

Eastwood's elegantly directed Mystic River, a deeply textured drama in which the sins (or perceived sins) of the past weigh heavily on the present.

Their individual voices may not be literally captured in On the Record. But in this anguishing and essential film, they are heard — and the implications of being silenced for so long come through loud and shamefully clear.

Binge-watching the first eight installments before you settle into this one isn’t strictly necessary, but I wouldn’t discourage it, either. They’re that good.

As rich and fun as it was in post-Depression 1937 -- yes, 1937. And the seven dwarfs (Doc, Happy, Sneezy, Sleepy, Bashful, Grumpy and Dopey) are every bit as charming as they "Hi-ho" to work at the diamond mine.

It's an astonishing movie, with a real-life feel.

Hoop Dreams is the most powerful movie about sports ever made.

Civics lessons rarely come this disturbing or this convincing.

It manages the trick of being both an unironic sci-fi action-adventure flick and a zippy parody of one. It’s exciting, funny, self-aware, beautiful to watch and even, for a flickering instant or two, almost touching.

The movie equivalent of a great read. It's a masterfully conducted concert of characters...already head and shoulders above most of the competition.

It may not sound like it, but calling this barely 70-minute Swiss stop-motion film “heavy” — as in substantial and almost swollen with feeling — is a true compliment.

You're exhilarated from beginning to end.

At once ruminative and shocking, godwardly inclined and repellently graphic, First Reformed is indisputably the finest film Schrader has directed since his sensitive adaptation of Russell Banks’s novel “Affliction.”

An extraordinary film ... that's impossible to dismiss or leave unmoved.

May not be "Fargo," but it nestles comfortably somewhere beneath that masterpiece and "Miller's Crossing," yet far above such forgettables as "The Ladykillers" and "Intolerable Cruelty."

Thanks to Burnham’s exuberant, alert writing and Fisher’s masterful command of vulnerability, anxiety, resilience and steadfast self-belief, Kayla emerges as an icon of her own — just by being herself.

It’s possible to watch Carol simply for its velvety beauty, but chances are that, by that stunning final moment, filmgoers will realize with a start that they care far more about the problems of these two people than they might have realized.

Goodbye Solo is visually simple and stunning, especially the haunting nightscapes of Solo's perambulations. But more important, Goodbye Solo is driven by deep feeling and sensitivity. Don't miss it.

As viscerally compelling as smash-mouth filmmaking gets.

Graced by superb performances, especially from Ashkenazi and Adler, this gentle but devastating portrait bursts with integrity and tough honesty, even in its most lighthearted moments.

Nicolas Cage delivers what may his best, most nuanced performance yet in the gritty, hypnotic and deeply moving Joe.

In spirit, and sheer joie de vivre, it's everything the movie business should aspire to. Win Win exemplifies movies the way they oughtta be.

Both grimly naturalistic and infused with classical values at their most thoughtfully composed, Land of Mine is epic but deeply intimate; elegant but tough.

Van Dormael has crafted a saga that, even at two-plus hours, is endlessly, enormously watchable.

If you don't fall in love with it, you've probably never fallen in love with a movie, and never will.

Deliberately paced, unapologetically mannered and contemplatively attuned, If Beale Street Could Talk invites audiences to venture beyond the screen in front of them to connect with the characters and their world on a deeper, more mystical plane.

A shattering vérité portrait of the disintegration of Iraqi society in the period immediately following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from that country, this urgent, of-the-moment film doesn’t explain the ensuing chaos as much as plunge viewers into it firsthand, offering a terrifying, ultimately moving portrait of the effects of war, both physical and psychic.

Propelled by an ingenious script by Aaron Sorkin, given vibrance and buoyancy by director Danny Boyle, Steve Jobs is a galvanizing viewing experience.

Seymour: An Introduction gives viewers a soaring, sublime and enduringly meaningful glimpse of a man who is undoubtedly the real thing.

If ever a match were made in cine-literary heaven it would be Charles Dickens and Armando Iannucci, each a master of probing social criticism, slashing wit and floridly besotted love of language.

A riotous, rapturous explosion of sound and color, Black Orpheus is less about Orpheus's doomed love for Eurydice than about Camus's love for cinema at its most gestural and kinetic.

A humanistic gem of a movie, with unforgettable performances from Linney and Ruffalo.

This soulful, unabashedly lyrical film is best enjoyed by sinking into it like a sweet, sad dream. When you wake up, a mythical place and time will have disappeared forever. But you’ll know that attention — briefly, beautifully — has been paid.

Sure, the animation work is great, but it's the actors and their subtle, complex vocal performances that make us care about these fairy-tale characters. Shrek 2 is all about fantasy, but its characters are rousingly, affectingly real -- not to mention real, real funny.

In addition to being a study in great acting, this is a study in great directing.

After Life is really a celebration of before-death: It's a complete rarity, for movies in general, for Washington in specific--pure sweetness of spirt. [8 Sept 1999, p.C9]

Neville has created a film that operates both as a dewy-eyed nostalgia trip and stirring appeal for civility.

May not be the first movie to examine the creative process. But it's the most playfully brilliant.

There are several reasons to see Selma — for its virtuosity and scale, scope and sheer beauty. But then there are its lessons, which have to do with history, but also today: Selma invites viewers to heed its story, meditate on its implications and allow those images once again to change our hearts and minds.

Many thematic ingredients come together in Farhadi’s rich stew of a story: jealousy, resentment, betrayal, forgiveness, healing. The filmmaker stirs them, with the touch of a master, into a dish that both stimulates and nourishes.

2012 takes the disaster movie -- once content simply to threaten the Earth with a comet, or blow up the White House -- to its natural conclusion, the literal end of the world.

The most engrossing, most revealing film about the making of a movie ever produced.

Morgen plunges viewers completely into the anarchic, exhilarating, finally ambiguous world of 1968 America; his final stroke of genius is his choice of music, which includes a breathtaking use of Eminem's "Mosh."

Through it all, Spall is equally enigmatic and transfixing: With his guttural croaks and barks, his Turner is often difficult to understand, but, thanks to Spall’s amazing physical performance and Leigh’s sensitive, information-laden direction, he’s never incomprehensible.

This taut, emotionally wrenching snapshot of both the mythologies and grim realities of war possesses useful reminders about self-deception and abuse of power, especially at a time when bellicose rhetoric and war cabinets seem to be the order of the day.

The new film is more expansive, more beautiful, funnier, nuttier and — this is the most difficult trick for any comic-book movie to pull off — more touching than the first film.

Museum Hours is every bit as masterfully conceived and executed as the art works that serve as the film’s lively cast of supporting characters.

Magnificently nonchalant about its magic.

Its themes of passion, heartbreak and the inexorable passage of time are eternal.

A terrific piece of filmmaking. It's taut, believable as it unspools. It's charismatic, with a slow buildup of tension in near-real time that finally explodes into a blast of violence.

There's not a false note here, and the entire supporting cast -- is uniformly excellent.

Superbly shot and accompanied by an alternately angular and lyrical score by Mica Levi, Jackie would have been an exceptionally smart, intriguing movie as an astutely conceived, well-crafted meditation on political mythmaking. In Larraín and Portman’s hands, it becomes something deeper and more emotionally potent.

Amour is a must-see film that not everyone must see, at least right now.

McQueen has taken the raw materials of filmmaking and committed an act of great art.

A terrific film, the triumphant culmination of many elements that have been attempted in previous ambitious films. This has a wealth of true movie ingredients: two or three meaty subjects handled with naturalistic ambiguity, suspense, a variety of interestingly developing characters finely acted, excitement and authenticity laced with restrained satire. [16 March 1979, p.19]

As enlightening as Coup 53 is as a secret history, it’s even more satisfying as an aesthetic exercise, treating viewers to one of cleverest workarounds in cinematic problem-solving in recent memory. It’s a nonfiction film that functions precisely as all documentaries should: as a piece of doggedly investigative, personally transparent reporting, and as simply great storytelling, full stop.

The bravura gestures work gorgeously in Birdman, as does the humor, which playfully balances the film’s most mystical, contemplative ideas with a steady stream of inside jokes and well-calibrated shifts in tone and dynamics.

An extraordinarily riveting drama.

Hypnotically absorbing film.

A marvelous breakthrough, a film of incantatory intensity and moment by a prodigiously gifted young filmmaker.

A movie that appeals to the eye, mind, heart and funny bone; that's a pretty good quadruple for any movie.

It's funny, it's heartbreaking, it's scary, it's exhilarating. It's got love stuff and lots of laughs and cool gunfights. It's really long and it feels like it's over in 15 minutes. It does something so few movies do these days: It satisfies.

Watching this masterwork allows you to return to the filmmaking sensibility of the 1960s, when epics looked like epics.

Paltrow and Fiennes are so good and the script, referencing not only "Romeo and Juliet" but "Twelfth Night," is so consistently intelligent that seduction is inevitable.

From its opening shakedown to its final takedown, “The Secret Agent” wanders a world consumed by corruption.

In the hands of director Julie Dash and photographer Arthur Jafa, this nonlinear film becomes visual poetry, a wedding of imagery and rhythm that connects oral tradition with the music video. It is an astonishing, vivid portrait not only of a time and place, but of an era's spirit.

If “Infinity War” was about failure, “Endgame” is, ironically, all about acceptance and moving on. After 11 long years, the Infinity Saga is finally, fulfillingly over. There is no post-credit scene. But oh, what a going-away party these old friends have thrown for themselves.

Propelled by Deadwyler’s unforgettable portrayal, Till leaves us with a sense of an indictment still unanswered in 2022.

Baker’s delicate spellbinders more often leave their themes unspoken. Her characters grapple with longings and a need to prove their worth, but they rarely share their struggles out loud.

Even at its most daft and infectiously ditzy, Mistress America is a sharp, aware and surpassingly kind portrait of the agony and ecstasy of becoming yourself.

The most eloquent and exacting vision of the war to date... Inspired with technique rather than overblown with it, Kubrick, the filmmaker's filmmaker, lays one on you.

A story that rips fleshy holes through your heart.

Tár, the film that wraps around its mesmerizing antiheroine like a fawn-colored cashmere wrap, is less a movie than a seductive deep dive into an unraveling psyche of a woman who’s simultaneously defined by and apart from the world she has so confidently by the tail.

Something to treasure: a thriller whose style, structure and rhythms are so integrated with the story, you cannot separate them.

Insanely brilliant.

As a director, Abrahamson uses that sense of the detached observer as a scalpel, whittling away at our expectations of horror films until we have no choice but to look at — and really listen to — what is happening. It’s an approach that requires patience, on his part and ours, but the rewards are worth it.

You know a filmmaker is in supreme command of her medium when what she creates feels less like a movie than a candid glimpse of ongoing lives that will continue to play out long after the lights have come on.