Because she also has a classical heroine's sense of quest, the picture's Pocahontas rises above stodgy old legend into the sky of myth... That's apt for a role model for any child, red or white. And it's perfect for a film romance that earns a place of honor among Disney's latter-day animated film stunners.

But this Evita is not just a long, complex music video; it works and breathes like a real movie, with characters worthy of our affection and deepest suspicions.

But the writer-director is canny enough to salt the stew with poignance, so that by the end these attitude machines have become human beings -- more than the sum of their chiseled jokes.

The movie hits every emotional button with a firm fist. It makes the phrase feel-good sound like a command from the industry's P.C. Patrol.

It's a terrific movie. I love the look and the verve of the thing, the confidence of its epic design, its smart use of half a dozen noted British thesps, lending weight and wit to the supporting roles.

Both horrifying and hopeful.

Fincher, whose work on "Fight Club" and "Panic Room" displayed his expertise in melding the suspenseful and the lurid, plays it cool here. He lets his stars do their thing.

If this madly entertaining movie has a fault, it's that it's too ingenious for the genre it ostensibly inhabits.

A careful, finally powerful film.

It could as well be called Best Thing of Undetermined Species.

A gross-your-eyes-out horror movie that is also the year's most poignant romance.

The film is wonderfully cast and played, right down to the bit player (Ralph Tabakin) who shops suspiciously for a TV set: "I saw Bananzo and it was not for me."

Director Barry Levinson and screenwriter Paul Attanasio are great guys to waste time with. The latter has a real flair for writing strong, confrontational scenes -- brisk, needling, well shaped -- and the former stages them with coolly concentrated intensity. And the cast is terrific. [19 Dec 1994, p.75]

Through his art and passion, Stone makes JFK plausible, and turns his thesis of a coup d'etat into fodder for renewed debate.

The movie, which drops the postcards but keeps the edge, is a show-biz mother-daughter film par excellence -- Terms of Endearment out of Gypsy. [17 Sept 1990, p.70]

Big and pretty, vigorous, thoughtful, this Hamlet expands the story with helpful flashbacks.

Director Gillian Armstrong and writer Robin Swicord have fashioned an entrancing film from this distinctly unfashionable classic.

In this judicious, irresistible romantic comedy, all the performers are tops. [14 Dec 1987, p.82]

Wu is a fine, supple tabula rasa; McGregor (Trainspotting) shows again that he is one of the boldest, most charming young actors.

Not just a ripping yarn but a powerful, poignant coming-of-age story.

So, for those of you who were wondering if a great TV show could top itself at feature-film length, the good news is that The Simpsons did it! But "South Park" did it first.

Sexy, funny, sad and defiantly romantic, Feast of Love is the rare movie to cuddle up to.

A picture about war and politics that has manages to be both rational and inspirational. It is also the year's funniest smart movie.

Some of us knows that there's an American style -- best displayed in the big, smart, kid-friendly epic -- that few other cinemas even aspire to, and none can touch. When it works, as it does here, it rekindles even a cynic's movie love. So cheers to Downey, Favreau and the Iron Man production company. They don't call it Marvel for nothing.

The new picture provides a master coursed in cunning visual art and ultra-satisfying entertainment.

If the film is just as strange and endearing as its glowing protagonist -- and it is -- that's because the director and co-writer (with Mignola) is Guillermo del Toro, 43, who has the wildest imagination and grandest ambitions of anybody in modern movies.

No film with an ambition this large, and achievement this impressive, can be anything but exhilarating, a vital affirmation of the creative process.

Embrace the movie -- surely the most vivid and persuasive creation of a fantasy world ever seen in the history of moving pictures -- as a total sensory, sensuous, sensual experience.