The subtle colors and textures of the food alone make Ratatouille a three-star Michelin evening.

The rewards for paying attention are mammoth and exhilarating. This is a high-IQ movie that gives viewers an IQ high.

The word docudrama doesn't hint at Boal's achievement. This is movie journalism that snaps and stings, that purifies a decade's clamor and clutter into narrative clarity, with a salutary kick.

However ripe A Separation might seem for being adapted into a smart American film, Hollywood shouldn't bother. Farhadi's movie is just about perfect as it is.

The performances are daring and assured, especially Lansbury's holy terror of Momism and Harvey's snide, pathetic pawn, brainwashed by both KGB AND CIA. [21 March 1988, p.84]

Artful but not arty, Spirited Away is a handcrafted cartoon, as personal as an Utamaro painting, yet its breadth and heart give it an appeal that should touch American viewers of all ages.

It towers over the year's other movies as majestically and menacingly as a gang lord at a preschool. [10 Oct 1994]

A near-perfect movie about men in war, men at work. Through sturdy imagery and violent action, it says that even Hell needs heroes.

It works; this is Pixar's most enthralling entertainment since "Nemo."

Sideways is by far the year's best American movie.

The second half of the film elevates all the story elements to Beethovenian crescendo. Here is an epic with literature's depth and opera's splendor -- and one that could be achieved only in movies. What could be more terrific?

A marvelously sad and funny docucomedy. [22 Oct 1990]

Crouching Tiger is contemplative, and it kicks ass. Or put it this way: it's a powerful film and a terrific movie.

Though faithful in every detail to Tolkien, it has a vigorous life of its own -- grandeur, moral heft and emotional depth.

An instant classic.

It is a ripping yarn and a spectacularly new and odd vision.

Triplettes is terrific…there's no competition for the fall's most imaginative delight. In that race, Triplettes can already take its victory lap.

Rich in humor, pained or frolicking.

In a style of agitated naturalism, Jordan examines poignant matters of life and death, sex and friendship, duty and loyalty, freedom and bondage, manhood and womanhood and all the ambiguous areas in between. [30 Nov 1992]

Redux is both a reminder of American cinema's last glory days and a rebuke to the timid present. Maybe Apocalypse Now wasn't the best movie of 1979, but Redux is surely the film to beat for 2001.

Nemo, with its ravishing underwater fantasia, manages to trump the design glamour of earlier Pixar films.

Weird, beguiling premise.

The Incredibles has those characters, that heart.

So Almost Famous is almost fabulous. Oh, all right. The movie's so clever and endearing, you can forget the almost.

Hannah and Her Sisters is old-fashioned in another sense: its plot has the elegant geometry of a Philip Barry play. [Feb 3, 1986]

The controversial film that is unbearable--and unmissable.

Hollywood's smartest media satire in years--and a breakthrough for Jim Carrey.

Watch Murray's eyes in the climactic scene in the hotel lobby: while hardly moving, they express the collapsing of all hopes, the return to a sleepwalking status quo. You won't find a subtler, funnier or more poignant performance this year than this quietly astonishing turn.