It's huge and bewildering and it hurts to watch, but it hurts so good it's gorgeous.

In this magnificent, profoundly tragic film, Nolte and Coburn each turn in career-best performances as a father and son who embody the ancient, seemingly ineradicable male pathology of violence, retribution, and the slow death of the soul.

I can think of no other movie that has dared to analyze grief and its aftermath with such naked honesty and precision.

This is a movie to love, that touches you in places you never suspected, that shows you that the road less traveled is the road to your dreams.

It’s a movie made of moments, the antithesis of "plot-driven," but the sum of these moments is magnificent, the culmination of so many elements: acting, scripting, score (by locals Michael Linnen and David Wingo), and cinematography.

But in the genre, as both a movie and a conscious addition to the ongoing celluloid Western mythology, the film is a masterpiece, a stunning and awe-inspiring statement.

One of the 10 best films ever made, period.

Such gorgeous explosions, such a terrible vision, such an amazing work of art. Go. Now.

An amazing work, a film that seems to gurgle up from the American heartland, resonant and fully formed, ripe with possibilities.

Amy Heckerling’s portrait of high school/shopping mall life in Southern California is still just about as good as it gets...The panoply of teen types and turmoils is dead-on accurate.

Everything about its scale is epic.

Its simplicity belies an emotional complexity that will linger in your mind like a gentle dream.

As sad and poignant and potentially hopeful as it is amusing. The movie is our story as much as it is Schmidt's, no matter if it's viewed as a self-reflection or cautionary tale

It's paved with delightfully irregular and unanticipated bits of business that stimulate the viewer to stay fully alert, while renewing our faith in the sheer joy of watching movies.

As disturbing as it is well-made, this low-budget indie is a thoroughly original piece of work.

A movie that amply delivers on the epic promise of its title, entertaining, enlightening, and emboldening viewers with its deceptively simple premise and execution.

Ingenious in its simplicity.

One of the most exciting movies of this, or any other, year. It's smart, funny, and wonderfully crafted and performed.

Just about as great as a movie's ever gonna be... As for the storytellng, The Godfather is an intricately constructed gem that simultaneously kicks ass.

One of the most intelligent crime-thrillers to come along in years.

By the end of the movie, it’s no longer possible to know anything with certainty -– so convoluted, contradictory, pathological, and long ago have the events become. It’s a movie that will have you talking and thinking for hours.

Very satisfying. Classic storytelling, modern techniques. And the images: This movie has embedded so many strange and new mental pictures in my head that I'm not able to shake free. Yet, neither would I want to be free.

A marvelous achievement that refuses to avert its gaze from the poetry and the insane savagery of the hopeless.

A chilling classic, the movie is a scabrous satire about human deviance, brutality, and social conditioning that has remained a visible part of the ongoing public debate about violence and the movies.

A wildly inventive, unrelenting thrill that amazes us with its visual and intellectual treats and dazzles us with its ongoing ingenuity.

More lethal than a nuclear waste dump, Kubrick's komedy at least kills us with laughter... It's one of the greatest - and undoubtably the most hilarious - antiwar statements ever put to film.

Ghost World resists convenient closures and summaries and some may take issue with its open-endedness. But anything else would have been phony, and Enid would never have stood for it.

Near-perfect in every way, The Hours is a compelling meditation on making the most of what we're given in life. For some, it may be too cerebral a film experience, but for those who blissfully fall into its finely tuned modulations, The Hours is timeless.

This modern cult classic is a triumphantly dark comedy directed by one of the film world's truly original visionaries, Terry Gilliam. "Imagination" is this futuristic film’s middle name.

In the end, The Fog of War offers a couple of hours of brilliant clarity amid the noise and chaos.

The performances are riveting and the visuals are stunning. The boxing sequences are brutally realistic - there are no crappy Rocky theatrics here - and the humanity oozes out of every scene.

Gilliam keeps the audience guessing, and in doing so creates a startlingly effective rumination on the nature of sanity and madness cloaked in the shroud of a sci-fi thriller.

Harrison Ford gave one of his most memorable performances as Indiana Jones, a dashing Saturday matinee idol for the modern age.

Director James Cameron and producer Gale Anne Hurd (both of whom co-wrote the script) demonstrate their storytelling virtuosity.

A delightful little wormhole that takes us on a journey to another dimension of consciousness.

Angela Lansbury's frighteningly in-check performance is alone worth the trip.

With Bad Education, the great Almodóvar delivers the finest movie of his career.

Unlike other filmmakers in the autumn or winter of their careers, Eastwood doesn't seem content to rest on his laurels and give his audiences the tried and the true. For that reason, among many others, he and Million Dollar Baby are true champions.

This is the way this ground-breaking monument was meant to be seen: in mind-boggling 70mm.

A concept executed with bravura style, intelligent curiosity, and playful wit.

Kidman inhabits the lead character of Suzanne Stone (yes, Suzanne Stone) with such sly and delicious zest that we can only wonder why this aspect of her acting has been buried under blonde dramatic ambitions.

So definitive in so many ways, Bonnie and Clyde has become a 20th-century touchstone.

Boasts a smart screenplay by Robert Benton and David and Leslie Newman, striking cinematography by Geoffrey Unsworth (especially in the Smallville sequence), bright comic turns by Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman, and of course, that winning performance by Christopher Reeve in the title role. Believe a man can fly? You bet!

It's a short, sharp, shock to the cinematic system that's virtually impossible to dislike, and if you don't leave the theatre grinning your face off, then buddy, movies just aren't for you.

A riot of sight and sound that, however baffling, has an irresistible, elemental pull.

An additional treat is seeing Hollywood good guy Henry Fonda playing one of the nastiest curs in the West. Once Upon a Time in the West is one of the great films in cinema history. (8/30/2000 Review)

For in relating the true story of Conlon's wrongful conviction and 15-year imprisonment, Sheridan has used the tools of the filmmaker to evoke a visceral echo of Conlon's waking nightmare.

Some movies are like Dorothy's twister; they just pick you up and whisk you away from the commonplace world you know to a world wondrous and astonishing. Days of Heaven is such a movie. [27 July 1998]

Repulsion's depiction of a young woman's dissolution into madness is one of the most harrowing mental descents ever depicted onscreen. (Reviewed 11/24/97)

Although made in 1969, this French masterpiece is receiving its first stateside release with a new print struck for the occasion.

Raimunda believes that dirty linen should be washed at home: Thank goodness Almodóvar hangs some of it up on the screen to dry.

These creatures of the underworld are the fervid fabrications of del Toro's imagination: More than once they will catch you by surprise and make you gasp.

Fonda and Hopper’s now-classic film hit the old guard with the force of a rifle shot to the head. [Review of re-release]

Minnelli and Grey sparkle, and the Fosse flash is everywhere in evidence.

Even though we're aware of the tragic trajectory of the singer's life, for a while it almost seems as if reality got it wrong and Curtis might just squeak past the reaper's scythe with no more than a shave and a haircut.

There Will Be Blood is not a movie that disappears quietly.

Synecdoche is the kind of movie that rewards repeated viewings. But sometimes, as Van Morrison sings, it's just best to "sail into the mystic."

A Prophet is the kind of film that makes you remember why going to the movies can be a thrilling experience.

Winter's Bone never hits a false note.

Virtually flawless performances and directorial execution render The Fighter one of the most thrilling movies of 2010.

It's the most compelling American movie to come around in a long, long time.

The story winds its way over the material, forcing the characters and the viewers to constantly reassess everything they have seen and heard.

Loud, hilarious, and enormously entertaining, 24 Hour Party People makes you want to toss current FM radio out on its pre-fab, corporate-sponsored backside. And not a moment too soon.

It's an audacious, affecting, and unexpectedly hilarious debut, and most definitely the most original film I've seen all year.

The dialogue is scattered with so many beautiful gems that conversations glitter.

Wildly entertaining, "Shakespeare in Love" minus the Bard and the babe, but with substantive style to burn.

The characters in The Claim suffer under the weight of very big things -- betrayal, abandonment, disease, death -- but they do so quietly, stoically, until, by God, they just can't take it anymore.

The images this war photographer shoots are beyond awful, but there's just no looking away.

Director David Gordon Green has made a work of uncommon beauty and intelligence, one that is smart enough to trust its characters and the technical contributions of its crew.

So upbeat it might as well arrive on a sunbeam.

As good as it ever was, and improved slightly by hindsight, experience, and extra cash.

Unruly girls around the world are liable to find these Bandits stealing their hearts.

It's all about the little things, and the way in which the little things can steal into your heart in big ways.

Sellbinding, distressing, and possessed of a dark and terrible beauty.

The result is total immersion in the moment of the music, sure to send jazz fans over the moon.

The documentary has no narration, and uses excellent expository camerawork to say things that no narrator could equal.

The film probably won't draw in audiences who aren't already fans of the quirky, subtitled pastoral, but it's more than worth a look.

New and amazing -- it takes you back to the days when French filmmaking and French filmmakers were the darlings and saviors of the cinematic cutting edge. It's a great film, simply told, and a pleasure to watch.

Kempner's documentary is a streamlined, gorgeous piece of work, full of revelations of time, place, and person.

Nearly a perfect film, from its bold and epic man-vs.-nature conflict to the breathless scripting, editing, acting, and direction.

The film is dignified rather than dour, full of rich imagery.

Anyone who can watch this film and deny that the Sex Pistols were one of the four or five most exciting and indelibly brilliant rock groups ever is pumping formaldehyde, not blood, through his veins.

Only a quite over-the-top character played by Raquel Welch strikes any false note. Otherwise, Tortilla Soup is a real chef's special.

The work of a fine craftsman and artist.

Seems more like a subtle, elegiac tone poem than an indictment of human banality and the evil that men do.

This political satire that's as fresh and exhilarating as anything we've seen come out of Hollywood in quite some time.

Fonda brings all of his childhood frustration and angst to the screen in one of the year's most unexpectedly brilliant acting performances.

A handsomely constructed and executed movie, the kind of effort that deserves appreciation, on its own terms, for what it both dares and accomplishes.

Cue the footage of Cockettes in spangles and glitter, high-kicking and belting out show tunes at the top of their lungs. Damn, it looks grand.

Close is a true joy. Without question, she's the heart and soul of Cookie's Fortune.

The overall execution add up to a film of beautiful, ultimately heartbreaking honesty.

It is a rare treat of a film.

More emotionally complex than even I had thought possible, Chasing Amy is the sound of burgeoning genius on the fast track to maturity.

With this artlessly profound and affecting story of love, von Trier emerges as one of those blessed filmmakers who've managed to blend their early stylistic flamboyance with enough human empathy to make their work both visually and emotionally compelling.

Director Michael Lehmann made a stunning debut with this sharp satire of teen cliques.

It's the kind of movie you wish you had more time to absorb and could see more than once before reviewing.

The perfect antidote to the summer heat in Austin, more refreshing even than a dip in our chilly holy waters of Barton Springs.

Big Night is, in a word, delicious.