The disparity between Cindy and Jerry is itself obscene, but less so than that illuminated by the customers of Farewell Cruises, whom Yung shows to be almost parasitic in the way they feed off the misery (albeit without knowing it) of those who serve them.

Like Cheung's ethereally plaintive voice, the movie is a siren song that's appealing at first, but held too long. It becomes an increasing whine.

Sinners gives sensuous, supernatural, often electrifying expression to the belief that we’re all simultaneously captive to our histories and capable of so much more.

Leigh has fashioned a limber style of political commentary that is part documentary, part cartoon and wholly novel in the movies.

McQueen makes the case that its subject was an artist whose clay was clothing. It also, despite giving short shrift to psychoanalysis, reminds us that everything you might want to know about the artist can be found in the art.

The Black Stallion is one of the few movies that justifies the word "sublime." It casts an immediate pictorial spell of wonder and discovery and sustains it until a fadeout that leaves you in a euphoric mood, lingering over images whose beauty and emotional intensity you want to prolong and savor. [9 Dec 1979, p.G1]

Earth Mama says a lot with very few words.

As Booksmart takes its shape, albeit haphazardly, Wilde’s filmmaking skills become more and more evident, bursting forth in a third act that builds into something beautiful and even transcendent.

Huston's straightforward, sardonic direction reinforces a compact, unusually literate screenplay. [07 May 1980, p.C1]

There is no narration. There are no interviews. Just rote, monotonous activity — a recipe for repetitive stress injury — and the occasional fly-on-the -wall conversation on which we are allowed to briefly eavesdrop between several representatives of what Ascension suggests is as a nation of strivers, with hearts set on achieving what might be called the new Chinese Dream: wealth and success, in the world’s second largest economy.

Perceptive, powerfully acted psychodrama.

Reality isn’t just stranger than fiction: It’s subtler, sadder and exponentially more haunting.

The line between madness and genius is thin. Not to mention more than amply explored in any number of films about tortured artists. But to look at the almost religious ecstasy on Moreau's face is to feel the artist's passion and be inspired by it.

The more you watch, the more you are committing yourself to watching "56 Up" and beyond.

Candid, pitiless and deeply humanistic, Fleifel’s portrait feels simultaneously timeless and urgently new.

Campillo’s style is usually naturalistic, and the superb ensemble cast’s performances are entirely unaffected.

Gives refreshing -- and bittersweet -- dimension to the age-old clash between generations.

At times heavy-handed in its symbolism, “Seed” is still a gripping, provocative knockout — a domestic political thriller — that hints at the limits of oppression and the long, long bending of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “moral arc.”

Hilarious, painful and brutally frank.

Grand enough in scale to carry its many Biblical and mythological references, Blade Runner never feels heavy or pretentious -- only more and more engrossing with each viewing. It helps, too, that it works as pure entertainment.

If Kagemusha falls short dramatically, and many admirers may not share that impression, the sag occurs at an awesome level of filmmaking prowess. Ironically, this tale of a shadow warrior is diminished only by the length and intensity of the artistic shadow thrown by Kurosawa in his prime. [21 Nov 1980, p.F1]

The movie has the sense of being embalmed, or pickled. With its stilted dialogue not quite kitschy enough to be funny and not quite authentic enough to be realistic, the whole movie feels as if it's taking place in formaldehyde.

A well-mounted, macabre seriocomedy with passing punchlines. And for about half the movie, it's compelling stuff.

Weaving together stories of death with observations on the post-9/11 culture of surveillance, Heart of a Dog hints that the very language on which Anderson has built her career as a performance artist is finally inadequate in the face of mortality.

Mournful, enigmatic and compulsively engrossing, Fireworks Wednesday gives viewers a chance to watch a master at work — before he was acknowledged as a master.

Within the stylistic limits and shortened time span the filmmakers have decided to use, All the President's Men is an exceptionally well-made film. It's simply impossible to suppress the feeling that a more involving and satisfying movie would have emerged from a less restrictive framework.

It's a showcase for Nicholson in an astounding performance as the dim but lovable hit man, Charley Partanna. [14 June 1985, p.27]

Much of the humor derives from how despicable these characters can be, and Jude doesn’t so much push the envelope as turn it into a paper airplane and let it fly.