This is a movie for all cultures and all people, for families and especially for those who have lost them.

Unnervingly good, Little Children is one of the rare American films about adultery that feels right--dangerous, hushed, immediate.

If you haven't gotten hooked already on Michael Apted's series--collectively, one of the great documentaries in the history of the cinema--you should prepare yourself for the latest installment, 49 Up.

Borat is a rarity: a comedy whose middle name is danger, or as the Kazakhs say, kauwip-kater.

The beauty of the Turkish film Climates, a small but indelible masterpiece, is more than skin-deep. No 2006 film meant more to me. It's as sharp and lovely as the best Chekhov short stories.

The word masterpiece costs nothing to write and means less than nothing in an age when every third picture and each new Clint Eastwood project is proclaimed as such. After two viewings, however, Letters From Iwo Jima strikes me as the peak achievement in Eastwood's hallowed career.

It's a work by cinematic geniuses that reveals beauty and terror in a long-ago time with a virtuoso intensity. You won't soon forget its mad, lovely sights and sounds.

A brilliant work of the imagination capable of truly seizing and igniting our fantasies.

Brims with intelligence, compassion and sensuous delight in the textures, sights and sounds of life--all the way from the Taj Mahal to Pearl Jam.

A beautiful film, harrowing, tough and rife with grief.

Jafar Panahi of Iran is one of his country's great filmmakers, and Offside is his best movie to date.

This is a picture that may sound sappy but probably will enrapture audiences lucky enough to catch it. [19 May 1995, p.L]

The style is brash, and it works. Tucker and Epperlein illustrate Yunis' account of his eight-month imprisonment, much of that time spent at the notorious Abu Ghraib compound, with literal illustrations--pages seemingly torn out of a Frank Miller graphic novel.

Burnett's documentarian empathy, coupled with his easygoing skill as a dramatic essayist, result in a film that doesn't look, feel or breathe like any American work of its generation.

Arnold reminds us that the best thrillers don't settle for taking the audience away from their everyday experience; rather, they burrow inward and, by sheer power of cinematic observation, make it hard for us to look away lest we miss something--on a screen or off.

It has wit, originality, color, warmth and formal intelligence. It tempers its escapist dash with a touch of darkness, and for all of its playfulness, never departs from a fundamental seriousness.... Something Wild is superbly unpredictable. [7 Nov 1986]

The cast is tremendous; these actors work with Resnais like a well-oiled stock company that knows every trick and can communicate almost telepathically.

Though much of Naked Lunch is flip, hip and hilariously funny, it never wanders far from a profoundly melancholic undertone - Cronenberg's unshakable sense of loneliness, isolation and anxiety. [10 Jan 1992]

David Cronenberg's The Fly is that absolute rarity of the '80s: a film that is at once a pure, personal expression and a superbly successful commercial enterprise. [15 Aug 1986]

One of the most remarkable and moving love stories the movies have recently given us.

It's a movie that's so personal, naked and vulnerable that you can understand why some of its humor seems rough, some of its visuals excessive. But Crooklyn has a quality not as obvious in any Lee film since "Do the Right Thing": the sense of a whole world opening, rich and real, before your eyes. [13 May 1994, p.A]

This remarkable movie is really one-of-a-kind. [15 Dec 1995]

Georgia, written with rare honesty and economy by Leigh's mother, Barbara Turner, and very sensitively directed by Ulu Grosbard, is a tough-minded look at show business and families. [10 Jan 1996]

What emerges is a far more accurate, complete and endearingly human portrait of Mozart than any documentary has ever painted.

It's a very small piece, working in a deceptively casual storytelling style. But it's my favorite music film since "Stop Making Sense," and it's more emotionally satisfying than any of the Broadway-to-Hollywood adaptations made in the last 20 years.

It's a superb, thoughtful drama that doesn't claim to be a documentary and shouldn't be judged as such. [22 Dec 1995, p.B]

Armstrong and screenwriter Robin Swicord have pared the work's sentimentality and bolstered its intellectual content, [21 Dec 1994]

A cornball adventure film about a dashing young explorer mixing with New York cafe society types. What a delightfully complicated fantasy film this is. What Woody Allen has done with The Purple Rose of Cairo is create a classic film about our love affair with fantasy. [28 Jun 1985, p.1]

Its sense of humor is more sly, more sophisticated and more interesting than most PG-13 or R-rated comedies at the moment. The film may be animated, and largely taken up with rats, but its pulse is gratifyingly human.

May be the best and saddest film of the year so far.

Gordon's documentary proves better than 90 percent of the manufactured stories out this summer. One can breathe a sigh of relief that it was done right and not cobbled into another bad fictional comedy.

It is a wonder, marked by a sense of wondrous skepticism that has nothing to do with cynicism.

This is the kind of film that doesn’t end after the credits roll, and it’s a gold-star example for what a documentary should do: inspire.

It is wonderful: a rhapsodic adaptation of a memoir, a visual marvel that wraps its subject in screen romanticism without romanticizing his affliction. It left me feeling euphoric.

Baumbach’s achievement stings. It also has the sureness of tone and direction of a Chekhov story.

Day-Lewis... the role of a lifetime.

The first great film of the year. It’s beautiful but so much more—full of subtle feeling, framed by a monstrous, eroding landscape.

The result is a mixture of unified atmosphere and lived-in character study, and while Vasiliu’s role is not as indelible as that of her co-stars, Marinca’s Otilia and Ivanov’s steely abortionist are just about perfect.

Green is a rare bird in American filmmaking: a humanist who knows how to tell a story.

It's unlike any other war film, in any language.

A gem made by a filmmaker who loves life, and knows how to capture its ebb and flow and sweet complication.

A kinetic delight, Reprise comes from director Joachim Trier, born in Denmark but raised in Oslo, Norway, and it’s a highlight of the filmgoing year so far.

While I may argue with the little guy's taste in musicals, it's remarkable to see any film, in any genre, blend honest sentiment with genuine wit and a visual landscape unlike any other.

Sensational, grandly sinister and not for the kids, The Dark Knight elevates pulp to a very high level.

This is a superb picture, sharp, open-minded, wised-up and cinematically accomplished.

The film itself is perfectly poised between artistry and audacity. It's beautiful.

Trouble the Water is so much better and truer and deeper and more illuminating than either of them ("Bowling for Columbine"/"Fahrenheit 9/11").

It works from a specific place and lets audiences relate to that place, and the people in it, like trusted intimates.

In its 98 minutes, film critic Godfrey Cheshire’s documentary Moving Midway records an amazing architectural feat, and that’s the least of its virtues.

Ballast strikes me as one of the few American pictures of 2008 to say what it wants to say, visually and narratively, about a specific situation and part of the country, in a way that transcends regional specifics.

This is one of the real finds of 2008.

Desplechin's films are great, chaotic, unsettling fun. This one's scored, elegantly, to a mixture of standards and classics and original music by Gregoire Hetzel.

This is one of the screen's most rewarding explorations of the teacher/student relationship in any language.

It is personal filmmaking of the highest order, recognized with an Academy Award nomination for best foreign film.

Even with its limitations, I find Silent Light spellbinding.

Some of the comic inventions are inspired: Muntz has a pack of dogs equipped with electronic voice boxes, which means they're talking dogs, only they speak as if they've learned English from a poorly translated Berlitz guide.

The characters in Gomorrah may lack an extra dramatic dimension: Garrone errs, if anything, on the side of detachment. Yet that detachment is also the key to the film's success. There's so little hooey and melodramatic head-banging here.

A sweet, sharp coming-of-age romance, Adventureland is a little warmer, a little funnier and a lot more truthful than the last 20 or 30 of its ilk. Especially its Hollywood ilk.

This one slice of the American experience amounts to one of the best films of the year.

It all comes together as formidably detailed and easy-breathing craftsmanship.

Not since Robert Altman took on “Popeye” a generation ago, and lost, has a major director addressed such a well-loved, all-ages title. This time everything works, from tip to tail.

The stories we hear in 24 City belong to its specific place, but they are universal.

A tart, brilliantly acted fable of life’s little cosmic difficulties, a Coen brothers comedy with a darker philosophical outlook than “No Country for Old Men” but with a script rich in verbal wit.

The Sun sheds only so much literal light on its chosen subject; it's a film of shadows and silence, the calm before and after the storm. But everything you see and hear carries weight and an eerie poetic undercurrent.

Some films aren't revelations, exactly, but they burrow so deeply into old truths about love and loss and the mess and thrill of life, they seem new anyway. A Single Man is one such film, one of the best of 2009

It's not for all tastes; it requires some patience. The more your own job involves absurd, time-consuming bits of minutiae, the more familiar (and amusing) it'll seem.

Extraordinary.

What are the odds that the year's most compelling mystery would end up hanging its hat on the year's richest love story

One of the most searing, heartbreaking and ultimately triumphant mother/daughter stories ever put on film.

Exceptionally clever, hilariously gloomy and bitingly subversive.

Chow's savagely funny cinematic love letter places Hong Kong legends Yuen Wah, Leung Siu Lung and former Bond girl Yuen Qiu in well-cast pivotal parts, establishing Kung Fu Hustle not only as an endearing homage to a genre's history, but an astonishing piece of cinema in its own right.

A sweaty, vital masterpiece that's always one step ahead of its audience.

"All right" doesn't begin to describe it. The Kids Are All Right is wonderful. Here is a film that respects and enjoys all of its characters, the give-and-take and recklessness and wisdom of any functioning family unit, conventional or un-.

It's an uncompromising drama, not easy to watch. And it is one of the year's highlights.

It takes something like a miracle to unlock the magic in his exquisite aggravations, the essence of the human comedy. This film is indeed something like a miracle.

It is enraging yet nuanced, an elusive combination for any documentary.

Extremely moving, exceedingly droll, flawlessly voice-acted.

Incendies is no mere riff on a Greek mainstay. It is its own entity, delicate and fierce. Already I've risked making it sound like homework. It's not; it's an enthralling drama of survival.

The cave exists to provoke awe in mere mortals. The camera pauses at one point to take in a stalagmite reaching up to touch, nearly, a stalactite and the inevitable association is with Michelangelo's Adam and the hand of God.

Whether Kundun is a perfect movie or not, it's an important and beautiful one. Scorsese's movie takes us into a world we've rarely seen with this kind of sympathy or detail: a magical-looking society built on Buddhism and centuries of art and tradition.

Moneyball is the perfect sports movie for these cash-strapped times of efficiency maximization.

It's one of the year's most pleasurable American movies.

This is one of the finest achievements of the year, and while it's easy to lose your way in the labyrinth, I don't think Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is most interesting for its narrative pretzels. Rather, it's about what this sort of life does to the average human soul.

In both theatrical environments and open-air ones, with Wenders paying close attention to the geometrics as well as the psychology of the movement, Pina is the best possible tribute to Bausch, and to adventurous image-making.

The film is a singular achievement, a piece of realist cinema with the pull of a suspense thriller.

The wondrous cinematography is by Gokhan Tiryaki. It is not an easy picture. Not many masterpieces are.

An indelible portrait of an American family at its most blithely macabre.

The Master is brilliantly, wholly itself for a little more than half of its 137 minutes. Then it chases its own tail a bit and settles for being merely a fascinating metaphoric father-son relationship reaching endgame. It may not all "work," but most of it's remarkable.

Flight is exciting - terrific, really - because in addition to the sophisticated storytelling techniques by which it keeps us hooked, it doesn't drag audience sympathies around by the nose, telling us what to think or how to judge the reckless, charismatic protagonist played by Denzel Washington.

See it, and I dare you not to care about what happens to these kids, these Yankees of chess.

It blends cinematic Americana with something grubbier and more interesting than Americana, and it does not look, act or behave like the usual perception of a Spielberg epic. It is smaller and quieter than that.

The key American film of 2012 ... Its stance is extremely tricky. It's not a documentary. It's not a load of revenge nonsense. It's not '24.' I'm still arguing with myself over parts of it. And that's a sign that a movie will endure.

Small, sure and stunningly acted, this is a picture of exacting control.

Dense like a detailed graphic novel in the Chris Ware or R. Crumb vein, but a real movie in every way, Consuming Spirits is a strange and wormy accomplishment, the sort of personal epic only the most obsessive of cinematic madmen undertake, let alone complete.

So what we have in the middle of Back to the Future, this seeming kids' movie full of screeching cars, special effects and lightning storms, is nothing less than an adult reverie. And if families could be persuaded to see this film together, it might touch off a long night of sharing between parents and children. [03 July 1985]

This is a great and necessary document in support of a two-state solution. Even those who don't believe in such a solution may find their minds changed by The Gatekeepers.

Badlands is about a landscape as much as the couple fleeing across it. Watching it, you sense that Malick finds his outlaw lovers beautiful and terrible, pathetic and monstrous, funny and overwhelmingly sad. [27 March 1998]

No succeeds, wonderfully, because it knows how to sell itself. It is cool, witty, technically dazzling in a low-key and convincing way.

Your kids may will fall in love with it, if you help them find it.

Complex, knotty and at times even uncomfortable; its world has a weight and heft that makes its ultimate romanticism seem genuinely transcendant, genuinely magical. [14 April 1989]

Lovely, heart-stirring film.

And yet there is enough of a core of sincerity to turn even the most preposterous moments-such as the film's dream-sequence finale-into something moving and true: You buy the feelings, even as the situations degenerate into the ludicrous and absurd. [17 Aug 1990, Friday, p.C]

A beautiful, almost defiant film on an unusual subject: love among the elderly.

The movie has an avalanche of eye-popping visual effects, including a bustling Santa's village, nifty "Jimmy Neutron"-type gadgets and "Stars Wars"-like igloo walking robots - and, of course, the requisite heartwarming happy ending.

A modern digitized lollapalooza concocted out of old-fashioned slam-bang space opera elements.

This century's Planet of the Apes is a rouser, a screaming-banshee fun house.

Delivers that rare combination of winning traits. It's a low-key comedy with a risque hook -- a seemingly straight woman dabbles in lesbianism -- yet it maintains an old-fashioned faith in literate dialogue, believable behavior and themes that reach beyond the plot points.

Visually, even compared to Sayles' own best work, it's somewhat prosaic - and dramatically, it suffers from the fact that its two main characters are kept so far apart. But the screenwriting and the cast redeem this film.

It's funny, sympathetic, mostly smart, and it boasts a likable cast of characters led by two performers who have star power and know how to use it.

The kind of movie some audiences are starved for, a comedy with a human face, warmth and spirit.

A picture about America with the blinders off, a film about heroism that makes you chuckle and feel sad - and a film about childhood that lets us reenter that lost world and see the grass, sky and sunlight the way they once looked, in the golden hours.

There's scarcely a scene in which the actors, action and sound track aren't cranked up to maximum intensity.

The Zellweger-Firth-Grant triangle works as irresistibly as Hepburn-Grant-Stewart in "The Philadelphia Story."

This is not an inspirational drama about finding yourself; it's a Hitchcockian comedy about adultery, murder and losing a corpse.

More intent on engaging the heart as it explores the mysteries contained within - mysteries that, as Lawrence and his spot-on cast demonstrate, are far more compelling than simple murder.

These are real characters, fully observed, gutsily written, beautifully acted by the two leads.

A film that celebrates simple human kindness. If the ending feels somewhat unsatisfying, it is perhaps because one hates to see this too-brief film end at all.

Griffith gives the fullest performance of her career; Weaver, the most likable, even though she's the villain of the piece. Michael Nichols directs his best film in years. [23 Dec 1988, Friday, p.A]

It's a summit meeting between three brilliant leading men from three generations with three striking on-screen personas.

Graced by bleak, stylized direction and an insightful ending that suggests that nothing ever really ends, this first feature film by "Northern Exposure" and "Homicide" writer and producer Bromell is a promising debut.

One of those rare movies that manages to maintain the hushed intensity and claustrophobic anxiety that is normally associated with theater or prose.

A real gem: a deadpan fantasy that turns into one of the best pictures ever about the post-"Star Wars" studio moviemaking era.

A deliberately old-fashioned picture that succeeds in nearly everything it tries to do.

A triumph that deserves a broad audience.

A story of faith and redemption, as viewed through the blurry and bloodshot eyes of a young man.

It has a jokey irreverence that keeps it from teetering over the edge to absurdity.

The actors and writing lend unexpected dimension to all of the characters, and Lopez's Harry is an indelible antagonist, one who manages to be genuinely big-hearted and evil.

Scene after scene in Calle 54 just knocks you out.

An extraordinary movie on many levels.

The simplicity and idealism of The Color of Paradise are part of what makes it so attractive to near-jaded palates here. There are no evil characters in the film.

A fine French comedy-drama.

An incredibly ambitious film and one of the most highly accomplished of the year.

Combining the immediacy of the Internet and the wise perspective of history, Startup.com proves that investing in real-life drama can reap rich dividends.

Manages to find the magic through its documentary style, and manages to find the erotic in the commonplace. Not since the glory days of Italian neo-realism has lust among the peasants looked so good.

This is an art film in the true sense of the term, engaging the mind, senses and emotions in a way that only movies at their best can do.

Showing us a world through a child's eyes, A Time for Drunken Horses speaks so truthfully and well that it breaks the heart and scars the conscience.

One of the best realistic dramas of the year.

(The film is) one of the most anguished, intense and weirdly brilliant of the year.

Wonderful spirit, humanity and humor.

Tells an inspiring story, unknown or forgotten by many, while bringing the past to life and illuminating issues that persist today.

A film that uses beautiful tableaux and convincingly raw actors to build to a climax of shatteringly understated poignancy and power.

It's sensuality with a stinger, and Fat Girl is an adolescent sex drama that takes no prisoners.

Another of those excellent foreign films that sometimes slip though cracks, considered too strange or eccentric for domestic tastes. Strange it is, but delightfully so

The beauty of The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack lies in its ability to transform itself into a sad tale of loss, regret and missed opportunities while it also remains a solid documentary about a once-influential artist seeking his place in the sun.

Like a Bach toccata or a frosty drink on a sunlit veranda, a first-class movie spy thriller can offer one of life's cooler, more elegant treats. The Tailor of Panama fits that category.

Announces the arrival of an undeniable talent (Meshkini) that has come of age.

The concerts are hypnotic, the music is swell, and the entire package moves along at just the right pace.

A mad, resplendent peacock of a film, a cinematographic riot of color and sensuality that evokes its era -- the swinging mid-'60s -- as much as any movie made during those giddy years.

A noir with a smile, and after all these years, its deft mixture of darkness and light still makes us smile.

Intoxicatingly well-crafted entertainment about hunting down your enemy.

Argentinean filmmaker Lucrecia Martel takes fundamental risks with form and style, and it pays off brilliantly.

The beauties of Shower lie in its human observation, in its funny interplay, candor, lusty acting and hearty simplicity - and also in its warm imagery and the fascinating symbolic use it makes of water.

A wonderful, heart-breaking movie.

Shares the characters' off-kilter yet human qualities.

A harsh, spellbinding tale.

His movie isn't a surgical attack at this problem and that; it's a cluster bomb intended to reap destruction, make a mess and jolt all who see it to react.

Generates genuine tension because it's propelled by actual human feeling, which, these days, turns out to be a surprisingly thrilling prospect. [11 Dec 1998]

An often-wondrous comedy, just as rich and surprising as "L.A. Confidential" but considerably less dark.

What really makes Alias Betty stand out, even from good recent French ensemble films like "Eight Women" and "Venus Beauty Institute," is that ingenious, Rendell-derived story. To kidnap an old phrase, it's a corker.

May be a bit sentimental for some, but I found its patient examination of how the forces of optimism can be overwhelmed by a wave of cruelty to be both moving and wise.

An adventure movie of extraordinary simplicity and power.

With his usual consummate visual skills and his flair for the nauseatingly audacious, David Cronenberg’s written (spottily) and directed (stunningly) a movie that often makes you feel as if you'd lost contact with reality: a twisted, nightmarish tale of futuristic reality games and a couple on the run. [23 April 1999, Friday, p.D]

One of those welcome visitors, a movie that turns out to be much more than we expected.

A sign of O's effectiveness is that it works regardless of whether you know Shakespeare's play.

Panahi's simplicity accentuates the movie's power: its sense of life caught unobserved.

Ends up working like a charm.

Violence may provide entertainment value in more crass or commercially minded projects, but in the unflinching world of Affliction, it leads only to the ruination of your soul. [5 February 1999, Friday, p.D]

While Last Kiss may strike some as a calculated crowd-pleaser, it's cleverly calculated, perceptive and often quite funny -- and a bit darker than it may first appear.

It's a lovely, terrifying sight.

Takes a premise that seems ripe for broad, vulgar joking and turns it into a sly, even subtle, comedy.

Most of the performers have limited acting experience, but they are perfect for their parts, exhibiting the courage, stamina and wariness essential to live in such a harsh environment.

A seductive revisiting of an old classic - one that helps us see these lovers and their world with renewed passion.

Graciously filmed by Martin Brest and imaginatively performed by Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin, the tired concept yields a steady stream of little discoveries and surprising insights that add up to some uncommonly rich comedy. [20 July 1988]

A work about memory and loss, His Secret Life becomes a forum of Antonia's liberation of consciousness and feeling, but there are too many contradictory moods sharing the same space, resulting in a tentativeness and uncertainty.

This is an old-fashioned movie done with wit, grace, smarts and style. [19 March 1999, Friday, p.A]

One minute into Saturday Night Fever you know this picture is onto something, that it knows what it's talking about. [15 Oct 1999, Siskel Years, p.6]

Grosse Pointe Blank is covering the same kind of territory as that elephantine, if exciting, 1994 family man-killer thriller, "True Lies." But this time, the joke stings. [11 April 1997, Friday, p.A]

This small-scale, low-budget movie is defined by an honest searching quality.

For any of you who've ever daydreamed of playing hoops with Jordan, Michael Jordan to the Max is almost certainly the closest you'll ever get.

Irons' Von Bulow is easily the most attractive and entertaining movie heavy since James Mason's villain in ''North by Northwest,'' a figure with whom he shares a taste for elegant homes and wry understatement. [17 Oct 1990]

Thornton and his excellent company summon up for us the long rides, dangerous companions, rites of passage, the mad love and, most of all, the special relationship between the man/boys that rode over the border and the horses that carried them there.

It's the best new battle film since "Black Hawk Down," a movie it surpasses in sheer feeling and bravura style, if not in nightmarish panic and suspense.

May not have the size and grandeur of some of the biographical and political epics being released this fall, but I defy you to find a better written, more honest -- or yes, more satisfying and delicious -- movie this year. [27 September 1996, Friday, p.C]

William L. Petersen (''To Live and Die in L.A.”) gives another mesmerizing, seeming nonperformance as the brilliant agent on the trail of a serial killer who has murdered families in the South. [29 Aug 1986]

Honest, poignant and very funny, full of memorable, moving moments.

Be forewarned: The movie lasts three hours and 16 minutes, and nearly all of it deals with subjects that polite society (and even rude society) tends to ignore or evade.

Revives the art of smart, scathing movie conversation as it skewers Manhattan's singles scene while providing a goodly number of laughs. Like its subject, the movie may have its prickly moments, but it's awfully fun to watch.

Not too many actors last year bettered or equaled Beatty and Schreiber here, separately or (better yet) together. It's a pleasure and a privilege to watch them work.

When a culture offers little more than death upon death, appreciating life's everyday beauty is as good an answer as these characters -- and this filmmaker -- can provide.

Harris and Harden have real on-screen sympatico, in their nasty battles and good times alike.

It's an exciting but brainy, cross-cultural thriller about modern London and life in a contemporary urban pressure cooker, and it depends more on plot, character and atmosphere than it does on chases and gunfire.

It's an unabashed pacifist movie that really works, emotionally and dramatically.

Such a stylistic inconsistency might be bothersome in another film, but here it's just part of the texture.

The climax, featuring what's essentially a suspended roller coaster of closet doors, is as thrilling as it is imaginative.

It's one of the most ferociously convincing physical re-creations of warfare ever put on screen.

It's a simple story with complex reverberations and undercurrents, as secrets keep being revealed.

It's a genteel film with a gun in its pocket, but it's also a film with a universal chord of feeling that keeps welling up from the dark surfaces and violent byways of the plot-and a final confession that both warms the heart and chills the blood.

More flat-out funny than "Rushmore," but in neither film is the humor joke-based. What you're laughing at is the behavior of characters who are so fixed in their idiosyncratic worldviews that they can't help but careen into each other like out-of-control bumper cars.

There's a zest and brilliance in Neil Jordan's racy heist thriller The Good Thief that makes it almost intoxicating to watch.

So troubling and unflinchingly honest that watching it becomes a test of empathy and compassion.

An excellent, unforgettable film.

A rarity -- an intelligent and moving drama of ideas that becomes increasingly thrilling as the ideas unfold.

The day after seeing it, you're less likely to fixate on the flaws than to find yourself experiencing chuckle aftershocks as you recall the most outrageous gags. In these days of mostly forgettable comedies, that sensation has become all too rare. [15 July 1998]

You will not forget The Piano Teacher. Nor will you forget Isabelle Huppert, a brave, brilliant actress who here plays her masterpiece.

Casual moviegoers may enjoy it, too, if they follow a simple rule: Stop looking for the way out and let yourself get lost.

Has the resonance, eloquence and formal rigor of a piece of great literature.

As much fun as anything director/co-writer Jane Campion has ever filmed. Holy Smoke lets it all hang out.

There's a gentleness and open-mindedness in that touch and throughout the film that's a little at odds with the shallower script. But, in the end, that humanity pays. [27 Dec 1996]