One of the most pleasurable movies of the year.

[The children's] remarkable lack of self-consciousness ... and Kore-eda's quasi-documentary style give this movie a stunning credibility.

To watch "Lives" is not just to enjoy a fabulously constructed timepiece; it's to appreciate a deft cautionary tale.

It's one of the most powerful films of the year.

This movie is not only a thrilling experience, it closes the book on a truly satisfying trilogy.

Chinese director Zhang Yimou understands perfectly that the small can be epic and awe-inspiring. And, by the way, he knows how to get big, too.

As viscerally compelling as smash-mouth filmmaking gets.

It hasn't aged so much as triumphantly metastasized. (Review twenty years after release).

It's a guaranteed must-see for its generation. Sin City has a long, long shelf life ahead.

A movie with the visual expanse of a John Ford western and the ensemble grandeur and long takes of a Robert Altman picture. The movie is definitely Chinese in content, but it exudes American style and spirit.

A small masterpiece of a documentary that takes us into the heart of a complex darkness.

Masterfully arranged for color, texture, decor and camera fluidity, The Conformist is more like a symphonic poem than a movie. (Review of 1994 Release)

Its mixture of wisdom and whimsy -- exemplified by the movie's unnamed and occasionally cheeky narrator -- makes this Australian movie feel as timeless as it is timely. And instead of feeling dutifully cultural as we immerse ourselves in this story, we're genuinely intrigued, touched and even amused.

It's a great pleasure that -- we get to ponder one of the most involving psychological mysteries in recent memory.

Has to be one of the must-see films for any student of Hollywood fame and infamy.

The list of great moments is virtually endless.

Wickedly funny. In fact, Heathers may be the nastiest, cruelest fun you can have without actually having to study law or gird leather products. If movies were food, Heathers would be a cynic's chocolate binge.

For those who enjoy cinematic visits to other, darker worlds, this blood's for you. Watching Ringers is not unlike watching a critical operation -- unnerving but also enthralling. [23 Sept 1988]

An extraordinarily riveting drama.

A rare commodity. It's brilliant and a guilty pleasure. A subtle damning of things Hollywood, Robert Altman's seriocomedy slices its target with a thousand, imperceptible razor cuts.

If you want to sample the sheer bouquet of great acting, you could get drunk on this movie.

Doesn't need the passage of time to become a classic. It's one already.

It doesn't matter how many times you see these images. They're always exciting.

Hilarious…The joy of Beetlejuice is its completely bizarre -- but perfectly realized -- view of the world, a la Gary Larson's "The Far Side," or "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." [1 Apr 1988]

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

More like a waking nightmare than a docudrama. A true story of murder and justice evidently miscarried, wrapped in the fictional haze of a surrealistic whodunit, it will leave you in a trance for days. [2 Sept 1988]

A sophisticatedly sappy masterpiece that bucked the prevailing Hollywood vision of aliens as nasty invaders and recast them as friendly collectibles for children.

A classically polished drama about repressed emotions, self delusion and protracted heartbreak, this Merchant/Ivory movie is one of the most affecting experiences of the year.

Kidman grabs center stage and never relinquishes the position. Playing mercilessly against her pinup girl image, she's an unforgettable, comic archetype—a more slapsticky corollary to William Hurt's bumbling, handsome newscaster in "Broadcast News."

It is sheer brilliance and testament to the vitality of an old master.

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

Through this miasma of pain and suffering, love may not flicker more strongly than a dim lamp. But it's the only beacon to consider. Can Barry find his? Thanks to Anderson's assured picture, a symphony of cinematic textures, that disarmingly simple question becomes incredibly compelling.

The visual comedy is brilliant.

The best heist flick since "The Usual Suspects," a perfect 10 of a movie.

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

By the end, you realize you've seen an extraordinary movie, easily one of the best of the year.

There are so many good things to say about this film it's hard to find a statement that really nails it. Perhaps we can leave at this: Y Tu Mama Tambien is originality writ large.

Superbly conceived anti-biopic.

Fabulously kinetic.

Awash in heart-rending emotions and gorgeous images, this is a movie to lose yourself in.

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

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

Dramatically, this is something of a waking dream.

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

Exquisitely textured film.

Reveals itself detail by searing detail.

You emerge from this experience rather like a returning U-boat crewman -- drained, blinking in the light, but oddly triumphant. [Director's cut]

The satire of the season, a hilarious, razor-sharp indictment of the American Dream.

What gives About Schmidt its ultimate boost, what pushes it into the stirring heavens is Nicholson, who produces the most understated -– and one of the most powerful –- performances of his career.

With its deft intercutting of place and time, the film creates a powerful sense of mysticism and fate.

Maintains its artistic magnificence after more than 30 years.

This movie is great in any version...I don't miss what has been cut from the new version. The overall effect is so beautifully wrought, a few details aren't going to bring things crashing down.

It gets you below the emotional belt in a searing, delicate way. No movie this year approaches such magnificent imagery, such delectable poetry.

If you don’t like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, have your pulse checked... You'll forget yourself right through to the end when Porky Pig, dressed as a cop, says "M-move along, there's n-nothing more to s-see folks." [24 June 1988]

A sequel that eclipses the original. The toys are back with even more hilarious vengeance. The story's twice as inventive as its predecessor.

A guaranteed pleasure for anyone who ever loved pop music, owned a record collection or suffered in love

Moolaade, in short, is a movie to rock the soul.

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

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.

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

A movie for aesthetically hungry moviegoers: wildly amusing, sometimes sardonic and always touching. There's so much here, and all of it delightful.

With the exception of the opening scene -- whose purpose is chiefly comic -- the movie is one, extended climax. Even with flashbacks and other time jumps, it never lets up. You have to go back to Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1952 "The Wages of Fear" to recall suspense this relentless.

A jarring, mesmerizing documentary.

Brilliant and brutal, funny and exhilarating, jaw-droppingly cruel and disarmingly sweet...To watch this movie (whose 2 1/2 hours speed by unnoticed) is to experience a near-assault of creativity.

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

Polanski, himself a survivor of Nazi-occupied Poland, has created a near-masterpiece.

There's no doubt about the film's sheer power and taut originality.

Simple, yet quietly astonishing 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.

Instead of "Masterpiece Theatre"-style fawning, [Scorsese] fills this movie with visual flow, masterful cinematography and assured direction. There's an alert, thinking presence behind the camera.

An extraordinary and brilliant (and almost wordless) film that takes us above ground and below it, up in the air and deep below water, to follow its conundrum of a story.

The film's not only funny and weird, it's oddly poignant. I miss Hedwig already.

One of the most startling, grittily brilliant films in recent years.

A great little film, dignified by a superb performance, Diamond Men is a gem.

It's easily the best and brightest family-friendly movie of the year.

A story that rips fleshy holes through your heart.

The Piano plays itself with such contrapuntal richness, it resonates in you forever.

Wickedly funny and devilishly subversive. It is satire at its most fearless.

Not since the 1972 'Cabaret' has there been a movie musical this stirring, intelligent and exciting.

The result is one of Almodovar's darkest films since the early days of "Law of Desire" and "Matador," and certainly one of his finest.

A great American picture, full of incredible images and lasting moments.

You believe in everything.

One fabulous Middle-earth show.

Few movies have evoked the happiness of a good, strong family as genuinely as this one. And this affecting atmosphere makes the eventual outcome resonate with great power.

Wings is a soaring vision that appeals to the senses and the spirit. (Review of Original Release)

Observed mostly from Remy's rat's-eye view, Gusteau's kitchen is a memorable world-in-miniature with its vivid old-fashioned stoves, bright, brassy pots and general air of frenzied industry; never did sliced red onions or simmering soup look so fresh and real.

So wonderfully antiquated, so blissfully free of postmodern cleverness.

Not only gives us a superb new cast of believable characters, it transcends its own genre. Only superficially a teen comedy, the movie redounds with postmodern -- but emotionally genuine -- gravitas.

Batman Begins emerges from the darkness and leaves a powerful, lasting impression.

For those who accept Potter's premise -- and why not embark on a challenging, enriching experience? -- this is a unique, bold adventure of the soul.

What's so powerful about the film is the rich stories it tells and how it leads them like so many human tributaries to one black, bubbling source.

Soderbergh and screenwriter Coleman Hough aren't interested in creating a coy whodunit so much as evoking the deeper, less romantic mysteries of people -- and it's riveting.

Without its animation, A Scanner Darkly would have made a fine cautionary tale about drug addiction, paranoia and institutional treachery in a police state. But with a technique that turns the existing live action into a two-dimensional cartoon, the movie goes one -- maybe even 10 -- better. It becomes its own living, breathing metaphor.

It's a masterful little film, and, thanks to Zhang's seasoned hands, it's subtly heartfelt but never manipulative.

A hugely absorbing social drama that is, by turns, excruciating, sad and sardonic.

This all makes for a deeply entertaining experience that engages our hearts as well as our funny bones. And it's gratifying to see Cruz finally get her due.

What's truly surprising about Happy Feet is not its giddily brilliant entertainment, its intimate knowledge of the culture or its toe-tapping music. It's how commonplace these qualities have become in computer-animated movies… Happy Feet may be just one of the crowd, but what a great crowd it is.

Lures us in with extraordinary subtlety. Keeping sound effects and incidental music to a relative minimum, it builds its suspense almost subliminally. So when something scary or shocking does occur -- deprived of those Hollywood-style cues -- we are truly startled.