Brilliant. [24 December 1997, p. 24]

Based on a true story, the movie has abundant humor and uplift - but it's a heartbreaker of extraordinary dimension.

Exquisitely moving story.

You can reexperience the humor and magic -- and the essence of Streisand -- in this William Wyler classic.

This audience-pleaser is smart and acerbic. Jaoui has an uncanny ear - as director, co-writer and part of the inspired ensemble cast - for human foibles, self-deception, celebrity worship and female body issues.

Gently unfolds into an epic, heartbreaking love story that's far greater than the sum of its parts.

In the end, it's a sweeping, important film that overturns everything you learned in school about the birth of this nation.

Once in a great while there's a movie that's so funny, infectious and welcoming - a movie that makes you feel so good about America and the people in it - you just want to climb inside the screen and live there. That's the case with Dave Chappelle's Block Party - part comedy, part concert film, part avant-garde experiment, and all of it a joy.

Powerfully uplifting precisely because it's so horrifying.

It's a white-knuckler all the way, with most of that tension coming from the smallest facial expressions exchanged in uneasy silence between compatriots who knew what they were getting into, but were nevertheless unprepared for the moral and emotional fallout of their patriotic actions.

A pitch-perfect gem.

Deliriously inventive.

A delightful and endearing romantic comedy with the shape and resonance of a Jane Austen novel.

The sniper's life is a lonely one, full of shallow breathing and delayed gratification. Solitary as it is, Jude Law manages to get a little action in the bunkers of wartime Stalingrad in the ambitious but sometimes inadvertently silly Enemy at the Gates.

Each man winds up owing the other -- and the enormity of the sacrifices they make on one another's behalf are quite moving and have not been duplicated in the movies since.

Feels like an old-fashioned movie in the way it deals with bold sacrifices made in the name of love, while its setting and chary view of the era's political machinations mark it as distinctly modern.

It's not just a movie about an underdog who fights the odds, it's about following one's heart -- despite the obstacles.

Its simple, straightforward storytelling makes mincemeat of the idea that, gee, if these people just worked a little harder and got motivated, they, too, could get a piece of the American Dream.

Moll clearly has looked to Hitchcock and Clouzot for inspiration. There are sexual undercurrents between characters, psychological quirks and a murky veneer like the surface of the pool in "Diabolique."

Another perfect little gem from Iran in which the simplest story unleashes a torrent of emotion.

An immensely uplifting movie whose final, unforgettable frames come as close as anything to answering the big questions about why we bother in a dog-eat-dog world.

A pleasure, chock full of creatively choreographed fight scenes.

In Wide Blue Road, his (Montand) character and the wages of desperation are much more complex. Here is the real lost Atlantis.

This powerful, compact trilogy speaks volumes about women in Iran.

An excellent movie about a real-life nail-biter, forcefully acted, true to its period and directed with clarity.

A brilliant if slow-paced movie about one man's unwitting journey into adulthood.

It's a Master "Plan."

A fascinating whirl of politics and palace intrigue.