The effect is Chaplinesque if Chaplin had the latest in gadgetry, because the entire picture is also shot in 3-D that, for once, puts all 3 of the Ds to imaginative use.

This superb remake has the inevitable look of a period piece, a smoke-filled rendering of things past. However, thanks to Tomas Alfredson's direction, a taut screenplay, and a uniformly brilliant cast, the film also retains its contemporary relevance.

Every once in a long while, the right director comes across the right project at just the right moment, and things so often discordant fall into perfect harmony.

More arduously, Riva is obliged to act out the physical decline while still registering a full spectrum of emotions. Remarkably, she does it all, even when reduced to communicating with her eyes alone. Hers is, in every sense of the phrase, a nakedly honest performance.

With the help of an impeccable cast and with a style steeped in the past, Soderbergh has placed the persona of Kafka under a lens, and the soul he discovers is his own. [31 Jan. 1992]

The score (a nifty collection of vintage but never clichéd period tunes) complements the mood perfectly, and the ensemble cast members hit their own notes to perfection.

Always perceptive and curiously light in tone if not in content -- such a remarkably delicate look at an absolutely devastating subject.

Sophisticated and unsentimental political film.

Lee has forged a work of art in the classic sense -- art that delights and instructs.

It's intriguing, appalling, savvy, nasty, grossly unsettling -- you may not like what you see, but you'll definitely be affected by the sight.

The verdict? Green passes with flying colours -- his is a huge and hugely impressive talent.

One of those rare films that manages to be both terrifically entertaining and consistently thoughtful, it turns an apparently tame deception into a very rich metaphor.

This film and Salinger's novel differ greatly in the details of narrative and character. Yet, there's no mistaking the similarity in tone and sensibility and, particularly, in the capacity to split an audience into warring camps fighting on shared ground.

The whole ensemble has a hoot with this material, and their joy is contagious.

In the end, like any satire worth the name, In the Company of Men spins around to fire its biggest salvo at its ultimate target -- the audience.

Indeed, as the film unreels to its extraordinary climax - a scene that will make your skin crawl - Frears has the larger target right in his sights and, bang, pulls the thematic trigger, taking no prisoners.

The result is a rarity on any screen: intelligent fun.

The surprise lies in Linklater's ability to breathe so much fresh life into a tired formula...This is a picture that recollects not merely a period in time but a state of mind.

Some movies, a very few, possess the purity of myth, and they don't have to be great to be greatly important. "The Wild One" is an example; "Saturday Night Fever" is another. Now add 8 Mile to that short list.

No, the film may not be quite as luminous as the cast, but it's good - very good, in fact.

From the first stylized shot to the final comic resolution, Moonstruck is completely sui generis - hard to describe but easy to love.

Kaurismaki is a master at infusing his movies with apparently contradictory qualities. The best of them -- and The Man Without a Past is surely that -- are hard to describe precisely because they seem to exist, to balance precariously, in the tension between opposites.

A powerful and affecting piece of work.

The Usual Suspects filled me with a highly unusual urge - to be a true "reviewer," to rewind the projector and figure out this humdinger once and for all.

What an impeccably crafted film this is -- slightly impoverished in theme, perhaps, but so rich everywhere else that it seems rude to notice.

The result is a rare treat, a revival of a period piece that doesn't descend into mere quaintness or prettiness, and that manages to capture the spirit of an earlier time without sacrificing the perspective of our own.

Duelling roles are an actor's dream, and Cage takes full advantage. He and that face of his -- hang-dog homely one minute, vibrantly macho the next -- are perfectly cast. So is Streep as the sophisticated Manhattanite drawn into a steamy realm of Southern discomfort.

This is a rare adaptation where the script (by McGrath himself) heads straight for the novel's horrible essence, reproducing it non-verbally and in an even more concentrated form.