F. X. Feeney

One of the best films of the year thus far.

No parent who's been roped into leading the troops to a matinee need fear being bored: gags are, Simpsons-like, conceived to tickle several generations at once.

The Godfather traces the arc of this doomed idealism with a beauty that is still fresh.

Part poem, part jungle blossom, all brilliance.

Not only one of the best films of the year, it's one of the best films of the decade.

It is one of the most beautifully staged American movies in a very long time.

The Japanese title means chaos, and that is what is let loose when a powerful king foolishly tries to release the reins of power, in the hopes of enjoying a peaceful old age.

It's an exhilarating display of filmic artistry.

I've not stopped thinking about it -- weighing might-have-beens and alternative courses of action, as though remembering an actual event rather than a nimble, superbly-realized fantasy. That's a first-rate achievement.

We never seem to be looking at actors, but at people; never at scenes, but at life unrehearsed.

A superb film by any measure, as deep and harsh as the sin Dillon committed to become great.

Leonard Schrader adapted the screenplay from the novel by Manuel Puig, and his fearless willingness to explore every corner of human nature serves what is greatest and sweetest in the performances of William Hurt and Raul Julia.

This is the deepest of Jewison's three racially themed films, the other two being "In the Heat of the Night" and "A Soldier's Story."

Here is a ghost story so dynamic you could call it a ghost poem.

Writer-director Gianni Amelio masterfully chronicles the ways two people can betray each other, and especially themselves, in the name of love.

The alchemy of good acting under the pressure of sublime film sense makes for a miracle in the hearts of the audience.

eXistenZ gives us Cronenberg at his wittiest, and Leigh at her most vulnerable and fascinating.

Above all, Oshima has fashioned a tale of men among men that feels familiar at first, then moves boldly into more enigmatic terrain.

Of the many excellent animated features Disney has produced over the past decade, this is the one that feels the freest, and sweetest.

What Harris extracts from himself is nothing less than a psychological nude scene, sustained across two hours.

Yet Waiting for Guffman is never mean-spirited. Its weird warmth is perfectly embodied by Guest himself, whose flamboyant, stagestruck choreographer, Corky St. Clair, could have (in less ingenious hands) been a cruel, gay-bashing caricature, but instead becomes a hallucinatory Everyman.

A delirious fable about every creature's need for espace.

It works its magic with such exuberance and passion that the film's length becomes a part of its fun.

Has power not only as film scholarship, but as an inquiry into cinema's interplay with our collective memories and the nature of history itself.

We're afforded the illusion of an omniscience so complete as to mark a pioneering breakthrough in movie storytelling, one not to be missed.

It's a cheerfully deranged stunt, executed in a spirit of infectious lunacy that powers the resulting film to its strongest laughs, and weirdest depths.

Everyone plays their role (and the roles within their roles) to perfection, and writer-director Mamet keeps us guessing what's what and who's who right up until the final minute.

The deeper strength of Smoke Signals rests on the sensitivity and truthfulness of Farmer’s performance as the ebullient, self-hating alcoholic father, and that of Irene Bedard as the young woman he knew in later life.

LaGravenese (writer of "The Fisher King," adapter of "The Bridges of Madison County," making his directorial debut) eschews distractions of style and molds our attention to the performances.

It is worthy of comparison to the lifelike, character-rich films we cherish from that era (1970s), and is certainly one of the finest films to come out this year.

Breakdown recalls so many good movies, in such unpredictable order, that by the end it simply stands on its own, a solid, logical, edge-of-the-seat sluiceway of escape and pursuit.

Astonishingly deep and moving.

It's a film which aims to persuade us of its truth without props or signposts--and it does so with unforgettable beauty.

It's a disturbing film in the best sense.

Byrne is a stand-up poet the way some actors are stand-up comics. His innate depth prompts The Usual Suspects to transcend its own cleverness--and this is the movie's smartest, least predictable surprise.

Has such perfect pitch in small matters that, as it builds, it proves no less capable in tackling bigger issues--and what begin as chuckles become deep belly laughs.

Penn's own gifts as an actor seem, in turn, to bring out the best in Nicholson, as well as the rest of the cast.

It's a sweet chamber piece, beautifully played.

Cox's own directorial style is innocent, in the sense of being original without ever straining for effect.

The fun is in getting there, and in the mechanics, charted by writer-director Francis Veber.

Khouri manages, with terrific flair, to keep the extremes of screwball farce and blood-curdling family intensity on one continuum -- not only through the strength of the performances (including one from James Garner, who, as Sida's dad, gets the best one-liners) but in the ways they match across time.

Dizdar maintains a knife-edged balance in tone throughout the film

It's a fresh installment in what appears to be a self-perpetuating sitcom of British life.

A sharp, upbeat, well-wrought meditation on love and race that kicks the new year in movies off to a terrific start.

Enigmas make Panic involving, and suspenseful.

Moll ratchets his suspense with impressive mastery, wringing a maximum of excruciating terror out of the humblest everyday materials.

A labor of love -- a swan song repaying a lifetime of happy debts to the theater, by grace of two terrific performances.

Nearly three and a half hours in length, but owing to its freedom of movement, the film feels weightless.

What makes Sunshine unique, what rewards a first viewing and lives in the mind long thereafter, is that Szabo has attempted to place Judaism and Christianity on a continuum that is both historically truthful and highly personal.

Bergman's collaboration with Ullmann began when he directed her in "Persona" (1966). Here, with the roles nearly reversed, she shows herself as great an interpreter behind the camera.

The Messenger may be a caricature of theology, but then Besson is a cartoonist of genius.

A smart, romantic, heartbreaking pleasure.

Zhang's work is always worth watching, but this is the first of his films in which the sorrows are so heart-rending, its many comic moments so laugh-out-loud human.

A superb, instructive portrait of an artist at work.

Director John Dahl ("Red Rock West," "The Last Seduction") has a pronounced knack for snap reversals and out-of-the-blue shocks.

Their discretion makes From Hell less a horror movie than a classical film noir.

Demonstrating yet again that he knows few limits as an actor, Duvall not only nails the accent, he inhabits the man's flinty, grudge-bearing contrariness with such a furious commitment that it brings out the best in the actors around him.

Pellington's sharp, fastball compositions and nerve-splintering cutting style are of a piece with such intelligence, devilishly mixing shock with optimism.

A witty, well-crafted comedy that combines primal slapstick with sharp satiric banter to keep children and parents laughing together.

What transpires is so rich that I've seen this movie three times. The joy of being involved with two wholly truthful (if colorfully fucked up) characters is that exhilarating.

Writer-director Hans Petter Moland (The Last Lieutenant, Zero Kelvin) has a fine eye for landscapes, but an even surer touch with actors.

First-time director Baltasar Kormakur -- balances tones with a smooth, mature confidence.

(Herzog's) tribute to Kinski doubles as a life-affirming monument to creation in all its variety.

This is such a dazzlingly self-assured directorial debut that it's hard to know what to praise first.

One's laughter builds on such a rising curve that memories of its flaws burn away.

Above all, you've got Jennifer Grey, as a rich girl summering in the Catskills and falling for her working-class dance instructor, played by Patrick Swayze. The chemistry between them is red-hot, and they're wonderful dancers.

The Wayanses can be crude beyond crude, but they're so clever that their inventiveness takes the place of taste.

Celebrity is one of Woody Allen’s finest. This is a minority opinion….But I prefer Allen when he works in a minor key – “Broadway Danny Rose,” “Radio Days” --precisely because he’s not trying to be profound, only true to firsthand observation.

This gets my vote as director Franco Zeffirelli’s finest film. Certainly, it’s his most personal.

Cleverly structured, fast-paced, funny, even moving.

Funny and light, all the more potent for seeming so effortless.

It's fitting, then, that Dinner Rush boasts Hawks-ian virtues: fiery energy, swift, character-driven chitchat and a tough, upbeat sense of how the world works.

Writer-director Sebastian Cordero wrings nerve-racking suspense, and complex performances, from these dynamics.

It's a first-rate chamber piece for actors, but Julie Christie brings a particularly layered depth to what could have been a very flat role; a combination of bereaved mother and castaway wife. Her torment and her intermittent joys are so fully communicated that they anchor the film.

Writer-director Kasi Lemmons works fast, and the world she conjures is powerfully realized.

The film's discretion short-circuits any impulse we might have to regard Glennie as a handicapped person who has “overcome.” Instead, we're led to experience her life as she does - as an adventure in which setbacks are not challenges, but illuminations of untracked paths.

Chilean-born actress Leonor Varela (TV's Cleopatra, a few seasons back) plays Chavo's mother, who, in her rage to see her children survive, powerfully embodies the film's moral center.

Overall, Whitely's debut film may just fill you with an unexpectedly deep elation.

The Proposition is a very hard and harsh movie, but it also has a hypnotic, lyrical velocity. As Arthur, Huston exudes dead charisma.

Writer-director Carl Colpaert never loses his balance, despite the David Lynchian leap of faith he asks us to make midway, in a twist so bold as to be a backflip. If anything, this extra layer in the story effectively illuminates the moral choices Jesus must navigate.

Impeccably produced.

First-time writer-director Mark Hanlon creates a solidly trippy atmosphere.

Mamet's fixation on language is, nonetheless, more effective onstage than onscreen, where the technical and visual requirements distract from the sounds of the words -- the heart of Mamet's work.

The sense of loss aroused by the film is oceanic.

Surprisingly moving -- prompting lumps in the throat over what was, after all, a historic moment of the most luminous hope.

A film whose story movingly outfoxes any number of shopworn expectations on its way to a singular, heart-rending outcome.

The picture's deepest strength, however, is the fire Fernán-Gómez conjures from deep within himself, as if "honor" were an extinct volcano he could will into exploding, given enough anger and time.

Excellent performances.

Catches the volatile beauty of what it was to be alive and politically aware in the early '70s with a rare accuracy and depth.

Thrillingly unpredictable.

May lack any transcendent point that would make it exceptional, but it is certainly a worthy start, and worth catching.

Mystery Men gives proof that satire isn't dead.

Seen in the bowl's metaphoric reflection, Nolte's Adam, with his patronizing wish to build a great art museum to "give something back" to the poor laborers who built his fortune, is a complex American monster.

Whaley successfully balances his scenes on a knife-edge of tenderness and anger that was Truffaut's trademark.

A refreshing breakaway from both idolatry and cynicism.

The love that grows between Fish and Poinsettia could have turned treacly in the wrong hands, but director Charles Burnett -- has the direct observational style of the silent masters.

Lurie manages, despite these obstacles, to inspire Redford to give one of the most layered and interesting performances of his career.

It's great unruly fun.