If 8½ seems stuck in the early 1960s, it's only superficially so. Somehow, the movie is more than the dated crisis of a naval-contemplating artist. It's about the inability in all of us to make sense of our lives, put it all together and come up with something meaningful.

A talky European Grand Prix thriller/romantic potboiler. [14 Sep 2007, p.WE38]

An exceedingly loopy satire of the entire American political circus, and could be viewed as offensive to the sensitive-souled in either camp. And time hasn't in the least softened its bite. [Re-release]

It's overly long and it's overly melodramatic, but it's also a perfect example of the kind of film they just don't make anymore, because they can't.

Not so much a film as a frolic that established the escapist Elvis formula: an exotic location, curvaceous girls, an inane script and an album's worth of songs. From here on, Elvis is basic boy scout. The music is pastiche Hawaiian, the plot is ridiculous, and the box-office grosses and record sales were incredible. [13 Aug 1987, p.B7]

Superb.

Perhaps the most satisfying and endearing aspect of The Hidden Fortress at this juncture of movie history is that it so persuasively lends meaning to a high adventure format, using the stimulation to enhance ideals of individual valor and group solidarity.

In retrospect, and viewed as either a once-topical curio or a nostalgic artifact from Hollywood's golden era, On the Beach doesn't seem lousy. It seems naively, even innocently, preachy. [28 May 2000, p.G01]

Hitch's masterpiece.

Time has been good to the brave blend of stark realism and Hollywood production values of this drama, inspired by the writings of the young girl who continued to believe in the fundamental decency of mankind even as her family hid from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic. [07 Nov 2004, p.N03]

Vertigo remains something less than a foolproof psychological spellbinder and agonizer. It's compulsively watchable and stylish, but the obsessive and delirious moods seem to exist apart from the creaky plot, which fails to convince one of the nature of the conspiracy that entraps Stewart's character in the first place or of the follow-up system of coincidence that eventually drives him up the fateful bell tower. [10 March 1984, p.G1]

The Bad Seed was a successful novel and Broadway play before it was made into a movie, and the melodramatic quality of much of the writing and acting betray these roots. But the movie's artful black-and-white cinematography still contributes much to making this a remarkably gripping chiller. [05 Apr 1987, p.Y6]

Director Walter Lang does almost nothing to cinematize the show, but that's all right; King and I works fine as an act of theatrical preservation, and at some strange level the story, even with its abrupt ending, still has power. [27 Feb 1992, p.D7]

Directed by John Ford, The Searchers is widely recognized not only as the greatest American Western but as one of the best Hollywood films of all-time.

Arguably one of the two or three best musical films ever made, and, along with Singin' in the Rain, the wittiest and most sophisticated of the '50s Technicolor musicals. [25 June 1987, p.B7]

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.

Rashomon has had such a profound cultural influence that there is even a psychosociological phenomenon named after it.

Brando's performance as Stanley is one of those rare screen legends that are all they're cracked up to be: poetic, fearsome, so deeply felt you can barely take it in. In the hands of other actors, Stanley is like some nightmare feminist critique of maleness: brutish and infantile. Brando is brutish, infantile and full of a pain he can hardly comprehend or express. The monster suffers like a man. [Restored version]

Rules would have been just another good movie if not for its masterly visual design. With it, however, the black-and-white film enters the realm of immortality.

Quintessential film noir. [20 Mar 2005, p.N03]

The Third Man is so elegant, tiny and perfect that it feels more like a watch than a movie: It should have been directed by Patek Phillipe. [9 July 1999, p.C01]

The Technicolor film, while still praised, was not received as well as Cukor’s version.

Director Howard Hawks’s movie is a film noir touchstone, and features one of Bogart’s best good-man-in-a-tough-spot performances, alongside the irresistible Lauren Bacall.

The nearest thing to pandemonium ever seen on film and every minute of it is sublime. [27 Aug 1987, p.D7]

This screwball comedy starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck isn't as well regarded as others in the genre, but even if it's not exactly top-drawer, it's still jazzy fun. [24 Dec 1987, p.D7]

Nowhere was American comedy in the '40s more frivolously sophisticated than in the movies of Preston Sturges, and The Lady Eve is his most satisfying romantic film. [05 May 1988, p.C7]

It is icon, uplift, art of the future, nostalgia, psychedelic journey, Americana, technological triumph, classic.

Although undeniably a western, Stagecoach transcends the genre, as both a character study of the relationships among a socially mismatched crew of stagecoach passengers and an action movie about their attempts to avoid the dangerous Geronimo and his Apache tribe. And that action, by the way, is impressive, even by today's standards. [28 May 2010, p.WE37]