Traveling from the tragic to the comic, this multifaceted film is richly acted and imaginatively directed.

Expressively filmed story of rivalry, romance, and cultural conflict.

What makes this small-scale drama so compelling is Pontecorvo's treatment of the main character.

Charged with humanity and compassion.

A pungent pleasure from start to finish.

This great masterpiece of German film is evocative and inventive from its first shot to its last.

Masina gives one of her most expressive performances.

Its dark-toned cinematography by Henri Decaë still packs a wallop, and the screenplay has a refreshing sense of humor.

The performances of this quiet Iranian drama are utterly genuine, and the story is a delicate blend of slice-of-life realism and soft-spoken social commentary.

Cinema's greatest surrealist is at the peak of his powers in the last movie of his unparalleled career.

A full-fledged masterpiece.

Superbly acted, cleverly written, sensitively directed.

Made near the end of Buñuel's career, it's not his greatest movie, but it contains some of his most memorable moments.

Morris's unique blend of realism and surrealism gives the film great resonance as a portrait of one eccentric individual and, more important, a study of the morbid proclivities that run beneath the surface of our supposedly civilized society.

Dumont's cinematic style is aggressively physical and philosophical at the same time. It irritates as many viewers as it inspires, but it prompts more thought than ordinary movies ever do.

Stands with the greatest science-fiction movies ever made.

Makhmalbaf continues her rise as Iran's most promising young female filmmaker, and Iranian cinema extends its reign as one of the world's most exciting cultural phenomena.

Sensitive, imaginative.

In short, they don't make 'em like this one anymore. Viewing it is like taking a time machine to a movie age that was more naive than our own in some ways, more sophisticated and ambitious in others.

The acting is superb, the filmmaking is imaginative, and the story never goes quite where you expect.

Suspenseful and ingeniously directed.

This masterpiece of poetic realism features one of Gabin's most renowned performances, a smart subtext about French colonialism, and enough exotic atmosphere to keep your head in the clouds long after the final scene.

A fact-filled study that's also a full-fledged work of cinema art. [2 Sept 1988]

Barbet Schroeder directed the ingeniously made film, which weaves fact, hypothesis, and conjecture into a harrowing yet continually gripping and often highly amusing narrative. [12 Oct 1990]

The latest installment is packed with surprises and emotion for people who've seen earlier stages of the project, but even newcomers will be fascinated by the vivid glimpses it provides of everything from love and family to political action and the pervasiveness of class distinctions in British life.

Results are illuminating, harrowing, and riveting.

Funny, sad, and skeptical in about equal measures, it announces writer-director Dylan Kidd as a filmmaker with a bright future.

Less a biography than an essay on theatrical illusion and the changing nature of comedy. Love it or hate it, you've never seen anything quite like it.