Resonates like the best of Southern fiction.

This is a first-class muckraking melodrama: an admirable picture.

Creates an atmosphere of frenzy that is both powerful and unforgettable, providing neither solace nor comfort.

A bizarre, thrilling, warmly funny spoof of the WWII Steve McQueen prison camp thriller, "The Great Escape" remade for a near all-chicken cast.

A romance incandescent, a fiery pageant of l'amour fou. Whatever its historical transgressions, it opens up a vein and lets life and blood pour out.

It may be the most serene and optimistic film Rivette has made in France. Yet even the art-house audience may undervalue it, miss the beauty, style and wit.

All the accolades Lyne got for "Fatal Attraction" -- and didn't really merit -- he deserves here.

It's quite funny, though not in a predictably irreverent way, and it moves along briskly - a little too briskly toward the end.

An animated tale equipped with heart, humor, blazing action and not a sappy song in earshot.

Strange, funny and powerfully moving… Burton has found a way to move through camp to emotional authenticity, to communicate-through a concentration of style and an innocence of regard-a depth and sincerity of feeling that his deliberately (and often, comically) flat characters could not summon on their own. [14 Dec 1990, Friday, p.C]

Works better and cuts deeper than the mostly fictionalized "Hoosiers."

Once again, as love dies and illusions crumble, this natural actress (Isabelle Huppert) shines with human fire. [26 March 1999, Friday, p.B]

A film that comes close to re-creating the funny-but-serious environment of stand-up comedy.

Watching this film wakes you up; it is a window on an Iran and an Afghanistan we should have taken account of long ago -- seen though a master's eye, felt through a poet's touch.

The work of a remarkable new talent. By the movie's towering, final tracking shot, this imaginative, dazzling film achieves distinction.

This is a movie that doesn't depend for its effects on star performers or stylized wish-fulfillment sexuality but on realism, sharp observation and honest humor.

Of all the many documentaries that take you along on a movie shoot, one of my all-time favorites is this delightfully scrappy, sometimes poignant, often hilarious show.

The film seems a mad mix of staid PBS bio-drama, flamboyant musical comedy and surreal cartoon nightmare.

The result is both engrossing and moving, a poem about a love that breaks barriers and passes understanding.

The Sea isn't just brooding Scandinavian domestic tragedy, a lesser Bergman-Ibsen pastiche. It's also hilarious and rowdy, and it plays with our sympathies and expectations in such surprising ways, with such brilliant actors, it's easy to see why it won the equivalent of eight Icelandic Oscars.

Starts out hilarious and then turns very, very grim.

It's almost too rich in ideas for its own good: The sense of concentration and proportion isn't there. But it remains an astonishing, magnetic, devastating piece of work. [23 Sept 1988]

It sneaks up on you and shakes you: a tale of the cold hell surging up beneath that windy, sensuous Wyeth landscape.

Generous in spirit and always engaging as it demonstrates that no matter how difficult life may become, there's no excuse for being drab.

Washington, typically, is rock-solid in front of the camera, conveying ample warmth and sympathy. Behind the camera, he's a relatively straightforward storyteller, strategic in his use of lyrical touches.

The movie has a deliberately screw-loose feel.

Once you get used to the broad gestures, visual stylings and reach-for-the-sky emotions, you may find yourself luxuriating in this movie's undeniable grandeur.

Daring and beautifully made, Zhang Yang's Quitting plays like a Chinese "Rebel Without a Cause."

The characters may be speaking Chinese, but such rousing entertainment needs no translation.

A family tale, in the best sense. [19 February 1999, Tempo, p.4]

It's funny, moving and true, and it respects the audience's intelligence as much as the characters'. That combination, no matter the movie's label, deserves to be treasured.

Features colorful song-and-dance numbers that look and sound best in surround sound and on a huge screen.

A crackling good movie. [18 Dec 1992]

A three-hour delight… The movie generates much of its power by being so life-affirming at a time when people feel nervous about the future. [9 Nov 1990, Friday, p.C]

Sharp, funny, sad and daring as it may be, Happiness is missing something. Its points are often too obvious, its shocks too juvenile. It's impressive but not transcendent. [23 Oct 1998]

One of those small films that will, one hopes, find a larger audience through word of mouth.

Huston gives one of her very best performances as a strong lady who can con almost everyone but herself. Her manner on the screen in this picture and in Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors'' marks Huston as the one contemporary actress who comes closest to having the power of classic female dramatic stars of years past. [25 Jan 1991]

The acting -- especially by Borrows, Ian Hart and Hackett -- is strong and transparent, utterly convincing. The whole movie has a seamless flow and an utterly convincing sense of time and place.

About the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it treats war as a cosmic joke and its participants as hapless but recognizably human clowns.

A film made by a master, with a simplicity that is really revolutionary. It's a work capable of changing the ways you look at the movies - and at life.

Hugely funny, but it's also liberating-precisely because it centers its aim on that cold, closed system and blows it apart. The straight lines are shattered; the empty spaces in the images are packed full until they burst. [2 Dec 1988]

Thanks to Echer, Nettelbeck and this delicious movie, I was able to hear "Country" and the other Jarrett tunes in scene after scene - heightening moods, lyricizing action and making Hamburg seem like a wintry love song. Predictable or not, that's often as good as it gets.

A brilliant, absurd collection of vignettes that, in their own idiosyncratic way, sum up the strange horror of life in the new millennium.

One of the best of its streamlined, over-produced, double-clutch kind: a high-speed, slicker-than-slick car-chase movie with unexpected deposits of character and comedy.

One of the year's most thought-provoking, hard-hitting films, gutsily opening up a subject rarely done with this kind of all-out chutzpah.

A love-hate poem to L.A., and when Mann takes in the streets, the freeways and LAX, he doesn't give us shiny "Lethal Weapon"-style travelogues. He shows us an L.A. that's grim, bare, a bit smoggy and ruled by street smarts. [15 Dec 1995]

A highly entertaining and visually breathtaking movie, capable at times of rocking and delighting you.

The movie world could use more stunts as entertaining and innovative as this one.

I don't see how you can get away from calling Cage’s performance a great one. [10 November 1995, Friday, p.C]

This is a movie with every facet shining in place, every word charged and resonant. [23 Sept 1994]

One powerful, mesmerizing thriller, a masterful exercise in controlling an audience's attention. [19 September 1986, Friday, p.A]

Has the kind of super-cinematic qualities and bravura acting that make up for almost anything.

At its best, it's an exhilaratingly grandiose Highland fling. [24 May 1995, Tempo, p.1]

A finely written, superbly acted offbeat thriller.

A humane and fantastic work, and it touches us precisely because Konchalovsky shows the reality of both the soldiers and the madhouse inmates. His movie is just what he intended: a nightmare that speaks the truth.

This is a meaty, well-crafted thriller that absorbs and disturbs you from first frame to last.

A beautifully acted and deeply compassionate study of ordinary people coping with the vicissitudes of life.

An incredibly silly film of great humor, brilliant design and epic insanity.

It's hard to watch and listen to Together without, in some sense, having your heart lifted by its music.

A lovely film with a deeply humane perspective.

A true original: a film that stands apart from the crowd, goes its own way and all but dares you not to like it.

Though the role might seem a real stretch for an actor who just won an Oscar for his Charlton Heston turn as Maximus in "Gladiator," he and the movie ace the test.

The film has undeniable power, but it's an unusual and unsettling power, a product of a collision between red-hot material and the cool serenity with which Kubrick observes and accepts it. [26 June 1987]

It's a movie imbued with a fierce intimacy -- a tone and style similar to cinema verite documentary -- but it's not a banal realism, even if the characters and settings in contemporary working-class Liege initially seem mundane.

A better film about love delayed than "Sleepless in Seattle." It's funnier, more credible, more bittersweet and the characters are a whole lot brighter. Naturally, it won't be as big a hit. [18 March 1994, Friday, p.C]

Rarely does any film, animated or otherwise, immerse you in such a vivid landscape and engage your senses so strongly.

I've got to admit it's a stunner.

What's remarkable as we watch Lilya's plunge (and the brief, false rays of light that illuminate it) is how real Moodysson makes her plight, how intensely he makes us empathize with Lilya.

By the time the film is over, you may not feel differently about the key issues than you first did, but you will have many more facts (sound) and opinions (fury) to consider.

Delighted me like few films I've seen recently. It's a sexy, sweet, sumptuously entertaining movie about the huge and wildly eventful wedding reception.

Boasts all of the drama and suspense of any reality TV show, but it actually stars smart people. And they're kids.

Perhaps the most startling part is the realization that, in the turn-off-your-brain season of summer, you've just experienced an uncommonly serious-minded movie that's brave enough to engage our deepest emotions on issues of death, madness, illusion and forgiveness. That's the biggest thrill of them all.

An Adam Sandler movie with class, and if that sounds like an oxymoron, so be it. The movie is a happy nightmare of silly-smart movie comedy that defies category - and challenges expectations involving Sandler and his pictures.

It's a movie full of bewitching images and timeless fun and beauty.

Gordy barely is mentioned, even though he was the artistic leader who presumably profited most from the Funk Brothers' labors. Discussing Motown solely through the prism of the musicians is like assessing Picasso's works on the basis of the paint quality.

Mamet takes exactly those qualities that we most prize in genre movies -- characters, cleverness and high style -- and refines them to a high shine.

There's only one proper Hollywood ending to this story. Next year, Charlie and the surreal "Donald" Kaufman (listed as co-writers in the playful credits) should win twin Oscars for best adapted screenplay. They've earned it -- really.

It's a genuine shocker - a dazzler of a film - a hellishly funny picture.

Two suggestions as you watch it: Never take anything for granted, and keep your hand on your wallet as you leave the theater.

Beautiful little film.

A movie likely to rally huge audiences who want to take another roller coaster ride. And though it may disappoint a few of them, it's also a film that gives you something to think and feel sad about. It smashes you -- gently.

The film recalls Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets" and the minimalism of films such as Lars Von Trier's "The Idiots." Eason and cinematographer Didier Gertsch keep the cameras tight on the actors' bodies and faces, creating palpable unease.

The movie, done in a classic measured style, finally moves you almost as much as if it had stayed in Kurosawa's hands. Filled with love and melancholy, it's a fitting, fond epilogue to the "sensei" (the master).

One of the most remarkable English-language feature debuts of recent years.

An often brilliant, always revelatory, deeply interesting omnibus film.

A shocker for devotees of stylish angst and psychological torment. You'll have to watch it with patience and great attention, but it richly rewards that patience.

A puzzle movie in which the puzzle is actually worth the time and effort to solve.

One may gripe that the tale at times seems familiar, yet that familiarity is also part of the movie's power: Here's a story from halfway around the world that somehow connects with the hearts of viewers of almost any culture.

Dislocated from their native country and former lives, Bob and Charlotte come to establish a language of their own. Coppola has done the same, proving she boasts one of today's truly distinct filmmaking voices.

Has some of the wit, sass and sexual candor of an "Annie Hall." But it covers the same kind of territory with more bite and bile.

A deceptively simple French film about teaching that keeps enlarging as you watch it, becoming beautiful and inspiring in a way most films never touch.

It's a twisty, hell-for-leather crime thriller, and director Carl Franklin gives it all the slick, modern trimmings.

The movie is the cinematic equivalent of a near-perfect three-minute pop song. It makes you laugh, smile and tap your toes over a brisk 88 minutes, and when it's finished, you're ready to hit repeat.

Elegant, cheerfully cynical fun of the kind we used to get regularly from Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks and other masters of the classic Hollywood screwball comedy -- all those '30s-'40s movies about rich people sloshed, or acting crazy and running romantically amok.

An old nightmare, made shiny new.

The Human Stain has those qualities we often want but rarely see in our films: intelligence and ambition, decency and humanity, poetry and pity, fire and ice. Watch it and weep.

Don't see "Halloween" in an empty theater on a weekday afternoon. See it on a weekend night in a packed house. "Halloween" is a film to be enjoyed with a boisterous crowd; it's an "audience picture," a film designed to get specific reactions from an audience at specific moments. With "Halloween," the most often desired reaction is screaming. It's a beautifully made thriller -- more shocking than bloody -- that will have you screaming with regularity. "Halloween" was directed by John Carpenter, 30, a natural filmmaker and a name worth remembering. [22 Nov 1978]

Blessed with one of the strongest casts of any American movie this year, this bravura film, with its radical structure, is full of risk and reward.

Good movie westerns these days may be too few and far between, but Ron Howard's The Missing is almost a great one.

Family life rarely is portrayed with such warmth, clarity and vibrancy as in In America.

The foulest holiday movie I've ever seen -- and the funniest.

The movie boasts one of those rare twist endings that strikes the right emotional chords, and it deserves credit for laying its bets on a sexy, sympathetic Macy. Sometimes long shots pay off.

Most movingly, Monsieur Ibrahim takes a provocative subject -- friendship and love between a Jew and a Muslim -- and makes it seem natural and wondrous.

A word of warning. Big Fish is so strange and so literary that audiences seeking conventional fare may get impatient with it. But it always takes effort to catch the big ones. This one is worth it.

A funny valentine by an old master, woos us into the dance.

A movie with surprises, some of which you should discover for yourself. But its main surprises may be the power of Collette's performance and the beautifully controlled mood and atmosphere Brooks creates.

A stark, minimalist near-masterpiece about the creation of a murderer in modern Iran.

A spellbinding piece of Japanese anime from one of the form's new masters, director-writer Satoshi Kon.

German emigre Dupont directs all this with the style, flair and tension he brought to his 1925 Emil Jannings classic, "Variety." But it is Wong, shimmering with charisma, who gives Piccadilly its unforgettable center.

Ablaze with poetry and danger, and suffused with an odd kind of intellectual kitsch.

Star Wars is not a great movie in the sense that it describes the human condition. It simply is a fun picture that will appeal to those who enjoy Buck Rogers-style adventures. What places it a sizable cut about the routine is its spectacular visual effects, the best since Stanley Kubrick's "2001." [27 May 1977]

The message of this movie could not be any clearer: America is no heaven on earth.

This wise, clever Israeli film reintroduces the once-popular concept of film as allegory, as it follows a Christian pilgrim on his bumpy road to salvation.

Done with an enticing mixture of lacerating comedy, lush Roger Deakins cinematography, robust acting and juicy lines, the Coens' Ladykillers is often glorious fun to watch. It won't please everyone, of course.

An exquisitely realized film; a little gem, it keeps its conflicting or varying themes of tranquility and violence, sacred and profane love, recklessness and wisdom, in almost perfect balance.

It's a movie drama with a surface so bleak and an interior so hot with eroticism that it twists your guts to watch it.

Twilight is a great samurai film in the way that "Unforgiven," "The Gunfighter" or "Will Penny"--all muted, somber films about aging gunfighters--are great westerns.

Though Bertuccelli's film orbits around a lie, the story is really less about deception and suspense than it is a moving portrait of female and familial bonds.

This film--one of the best and most memorable documentaries of the year so far--brings that truth-teller to us once again.

The movie is zippy, laugh-out-loud funny, persuasive and at times horrifying, as Spurlock undergoes his unpleasant changes with good humor and bad tummy aches.

With Cuaron leading the way, Harry has burst from the printed page to soar on-screen.

Overall, Baadasssss! succeeds marvelously at evoking the passion and frantic energy behind "Sweetback" and putting it all in the context of its politically charged era.

The film is really just a documentary about nomads masquerading as a feature about camels. Which is why it's okay to be distracted by the details, and perhaps why its subtext--about the younger generation's real and inevitable loss to modernity--is more effective than the storyline about the camel.

The movie is a delight in many ways: an unabashed romantic comedy and Capraesque fable that takes Spielberg into realms he's rarely traveled before.

There's something simple yet miraculous about watching these beautiful animals interact with the wild and each other, even if their actions are being manipulated for the sake of drama. Annaud has taken his film's message to heart: He knows when to get out of nature's way.

Until it develops a bad case of verbosity toward the end, it improves upon its predecessor in almost every way, delivering flashier thrills while digging deeper into its characters and adding an overlay of wit.

Close to perfect example of an expertly designed and executed thriller.

The results are spine-tingling. There's only one thing to say about this movie and its rescuers, recovered from the dead--and the Dead: Rock on.

Such a triumph of simplicity, subtlety and tact--and of the eroticism in words, looks and glances--that the actors ravish us with sheer talent and intelligence.

A brilliant, giddy satiric romp with a discreetly moralistic viewpoint beneath its high-style wit.

Graced with Nair's loving direction, Witherspoon's radiance and that great cast, it is a treat, if somewhat less so than the novel.

As entertainment, Nicotina manages a bracing balance. It arrests with violent bursts and anxious pauses until its three plots merge in a satisfying resolution; its laughs caught in my throat like smoker's cough.

Conran has got himself a looker, with Paltrow in soft focus, the whole world larger than life and a title that, said in the proper low-pitched voice, conveys the tone of the film: exuberant, idiosyncratic and timeless.

A weird, funny, melancholy tribute to movies and movie-going, an opus for film geeks that rang my personal bell. A bizarre minimalist epic that will either transport or infuriate, it's defiantly, exquisitely eccentric.

It's hard to breathe in Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's Infernal Affairs, a relentlessly taut Hong Kong cop thriller that, unlike many of its cinematic peers, doesn't burn off tension in choreographed action sequences.

Salles' movie isn't fiery or didactic. It doesn't rage or storm. Salles romanticizes the youthful Ernesto.

These are some terrifically funny and gutsy guys who want to draw attention to what they see as the natural limit of WTO policy.

Anton, because after watching your tantrums, abuse and addiction in DIG! I went straight to the record store to buy your music. And that's something.

It's not a hasty, knocked-together promo job--though it is clearly pro-Kerry.

Watching Jonathan Caouette's amazing autobiographical documentary Tarnation is like descending into a pop-music, underground-movie hell and heaven, the shattered and shattering landscape of a living body and mind.

A rich, shining valentine to the British theater and the eternal joys of Shakespeare,

Bening shines, and the film shines too.

Ultimately, p.s. confirms Kidd's talent without expanding it or achieving the comic/dramatic heights of "Roger Dodger."

A movie which, like all the best blues, makes good times out of bad times, makes smiles out of hurt, makes tears taste like honey.

For anyone who likes classic, offbeat American moviemaking, in the rural-thriller genre from "Moonrise" to "Macon County Jail," Undertow is one to check. Seething with violence, bleeding with lyricism, it's a poem from the junk heap, a cry from the swamp.

What a bright, entertaining, cleverly updated and utterly satisfying comedy the new Alfie turns out to be.

It's an intellectual family film for literate parents and children, immensely pleasing if not perfect, perhaps a smidgen too brightly evasive and determinedly charming.

This hip, highly partisan biography of Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey is a surprisingly entertaining movie about the perils of studying sexual behavior in a sexually uptight culture--our own.

Miller's quiet artistry is at its peak, and though "Lili" is not as subtle, profound or moving a work as Chekhov's play, it's an intelligent, first-rate piece of cinema.

Vast, riveting, madly audacious movie biography.

Few directors are more adept at playing with all this anguish and exhilaration than Mike Nichols.

A compelling piece of press criticism as it probes the media as terror's conduit of choice, spreading message and validating violence in the 1970s and today.

One of the best films ever about that game, one of the most exciting, instructive and sheerly entertaining of all chess films.

It's a great film that, sadly, may be ignored by all but the most dedicated, knowledgable filmgoers.

Not a striking film visually. It's deliberately plain looking, focused on the appalling events with an almost documentary immediacy.

Though "Keys" is not Amelio's best, it has an emotional power almost equal to anything he's done.

Grace and Quaid imbue what could have been caricatures--with heart, intelligence and great comic timing.

It's an intelligent and informed look at the preposterous ways our leaders are often picked and sabotaged.

A violent, improbable movie done in tersely elegant style, and it may be the last action movie for one of the cinema's great action stars, Clint Eastwood.

The acting in All or Nothing is superb. Everyone creates a character we can immediately register and recognize as true.

He (Puri) is one of the most consistently excellent film actors that his country - or the world - has produced. And East is East, a grand cultural hybrid, is a real movie, too - raw, funny and wonderfully mixed up.

It's fresh, funny, biting, fast-paced and reasonably perceptive about people and their problems.

A vivifying film, though it's done in such a strange style that it takes a while to get used to it.

Just as Zhao uses his comic gifts to create an affecting human, so Dong's performance as Wu is a triumph of honesty and tact.

Seemingly a simple comedy, it actually -- like all Allen's "simple" comedies -- has a lot to say. Will the audience listen or just dismiss it as minor, out-of-date Woody? If they do, it's their loss.

You wouldn't think the darn thing would have such lingering power.

Bennett also co-wrote the script, based loosely on her own experiences, and is the best thing about the film. A physical cross between Holly Hunter and Christine Lahti, she's quite convincing as she tries to figure out what has gone wrong in her personal life - and how she can fix it before it is too late.

It's a movie of uncommon eloquence and elegance, acted by a truly gifted cast.

It's a nice mix, an elegantly smoky and dangerous cocktail -- just like the old noirs, but in a more modern, shinier glass. And since the basic brew is Elmore Leonard's, it tickles as it goes down. [26 June 1998]

Kidman crafts a characterization of breathtakingly controlled artifice, dead-on timing, dizzyingly precise humor. Her part is a knockout--in every sense of the word. [6 Oct 1995]

Thompson clearly loves this story, and, even though, she's playing the less spontaneous of the older Dashwood sisters, responsible Elinor, you can feel her spirit rising out to embrace the part. It makes her beautiful to watch. [13 December 1995]

A smart, funny and hip adventure film in a summer of car wrecks and explosions. [4 July 1997]

It's rare to find an American movie that works so well structurally from beginning to end, including a second act that withstands the plethora of fast-moving action, and a climax that is satisfying and well earned.

A fine, exciting film that makes a bloody historical event live all over again by showing it through the eyes of children on the edges of the conflict.

It's a brutally convincing movie about two hell-bent young Turkish-German lovers dancing on the edge of destruction in a Hamburg underworld of drugs and casual sex. Yet it's also compassionate and even tender.

You probably won't find two more fascinating camera subjects, two livelier conversationalists or two richer, more rewarding, more engaging and inspiring companions in any movie, fiction or non-fiction, this year.

A beautiful, intensely moving film.

All of these folks are damaged souls, trying their best to find purpose and forgiveness.

One of the more delightful and satisfying family movies.

A stirring, large-souled movie.

An irresistible Irish comedy, lovingly told, beautifully acted and graced with the perfect balance of chuckles and bittersweet heartache.

One of those sweet, intelligent, nicely made films.

Allen gives us at least half a classic comedy - more than we usually get at the movies these days - while having some elegant fun with an idea that has intrigued poets and smart alecks through the ages: the interchangeability of comedy and tragedy.

Watching Nina's Tragedies, an Israeli film that pocketed 11 of its country's Oscar-equivalents, is a rare but almost perverse experience.

Sin City is an evil place, full of awful people, an obsessive movie full of monomaniacal tough guys. Yet when Miller and Rodriguez move it into gear, noir lives.

A highly exciting, visually alive thriller.

A witty and psychologically perceptive look at the Parisian literary scene.

As beautifully designed, swift and sleek as a classic sports car, throbbing with emotion and intelligence, it's a neat suspense film that's also dramatically and sociologically potent, with two supremely talented stars, Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, delivering beyond the emotional call of duty.

A classy triple shot of film erotica from three brilliant writer-directors.

All three men turn in superb and understated performances.

With husband and wife starring, you can't help but wonder which details here are autobiographical. No matter: This is obviously a deeply personal work for Attal, whose comic timing and passion can only serve him well both on screen and off.

Should hold you spellbound.

Takes a potentially explosive subject and does it subtly and perceptively.

A gargantuan epic, a historical adventure-drama of overwhelming visual grandeur.

Don't let the fast-and-loose vibe fool you: Right up to its operatic finale, this is one tight one last job.

One of the year's best documentaries.

Hilarious, inspired, frenzied.

It's a film objet d'art to contemplate and treasure.

It's a familiar dance, but something only July could invent, a vignette much like her characters: beautiful, flawed, organic--fine alone but better with the others.

Rivets and amazes, even if it falls just frustratingly short of the mind-expanding grandeur it could have had.

It's a thriller that comes at you with gut-clutching ferocity, spewing blood and sex, shaking you up and scrambling your responses.

This is an all-Latino film--a rarity and a pleasure--but what's most curious and refreshing is that Cordero allows the Latinos to naturally embrace their nationalities, accents and cultural peculiarities.

Most of all, it's a film for moviegoers who love powerful stories and ravishing imagery: timeless, eternal, the kind of tales handed from one generation and culture to the next -- and alive in all of them.

For a film that points out so much wrong with German society and shows such dubious, dangerous behavior, it leaves the audience with high spirits and a sense of crazy exhilaration.

The poetry of Last Days has a stoned grandeur.

It's a film for specialized tastes, quiet, delicate. But it suits those tastes beautifully.

An oddity: an adaptation of a popular novel co-written and directed by the novelist himself. It's also a fine, gentle film love story and a cinematic tribute to the power and manifold benefits of communications between different cultures and nations.

A dark subject certainly, but in Murray's bouquet-bearing hands, it can still hand us a laugh.