He's (Hanson) never before generated the kind of heat inside a picture--and out of it--that he has with L.A. Confidential.

It's best appraised as a strong ensemble piece, a darkly dreamy slab of social commentary and definitely one of the year's best films.

The singing and dancing in this Chicago are uniformly splendid, right down to Gere's tap dancing. The high wit and dark eroticism Marshall brings to the famous "Cell Block Tango" number are matchless.

Turns out to be more than simply a near-miracle of filmmaking, however; it is also an astonishing work of art, a historical epic that drifts through one's consciousness like a reverie.

Fargo is a concert performance--an illuminating amalgam of emotion and thought. It glimpses into the heart of man and unearths a blackly comic nature, hellishly mercurial and selfish, yet strangely innocent. If it weren't so funny, it would be unbearably disturbing.

What makes About Schmidt so extraordinary is how ordinary its tale is; it's a gray picture about gray people looking for some kind of meaning in their gray lives.

It's painful, it's real, and it's probably the funniest thing you'll see this year...a teen sexploitation classic.

It is a remarkable achievement in filmmaking, a beautiful and brutal work.

No one can blend melodrama and heightened emotion with laugh-out-loud wackiness the way Almodóvar does.

It gracefully defies the usual categories, gets under your skin in ways you cannot anticipate, then works its way straight toward the heart. It's far and away the bravest and best movie of the year.

He (Spielberg) commemorates the soldiers in that vast Normandy cemetery in the most absolute and honorable way possible.

Smart people will relish its temerariousness, average people will smile awkwardly and comment that it's "kinda different," and dimly lit people may mistake it for the Elmo movie and drool quietly in the back rows. It's a movie for everyone.

Kubrick's comic gem sparkles with enduring relevance.

It would be a masterpiece in any language.

The performances are uniformly remarkable.

This is the breakout role for Sigourney (née Susan) Weaver, whose iconic presence still propels this ride beyond the scores of substandard imitations that followed. Why see it on the big screen? Because it's bloody brilliant.

One of this year's best films--a classic, even, like a C.S. Forester "Hornblower" story on steroids.

This film is a miracle, an extravaganza equal to its predecessors and in some ways more stunning. It is a profound testament to the extraordinary power of moving images and sound.

Brilliant.

Lasseter and Stanton and the rest of the animators and gagsmiths use the computer with staggering imaginative freedom.

Spielberg can never top this. Period.

The movie's scares are intense, but the notion that the Terminator would move on to politics is even more frightening.

Feels like something entirely brand-new; such are the gifts of Kaufman and Gondry, inventors and magicians.

A gorgeous, emotionally rewarding masterpiece that invites compassion, reflection and, at least from this reviewer, a great deal of admiration. It's no wonder that it won 12 Japanese Academy Awards.

The first exceptional drama of 2004, The Mother feels like life itself, sharpened to its finest points.

The result is a vivid anthropological document suffused with plenty of emotion and a touch of ancient magic.

Where Peter was yee-ha giddy with the discovery of his newfound powers in the first film, he's crushed by the weight of responsibility that comes with them in its far superior successor.

In this bolder, longer new cut, characters are allowed to finish scenes previously left as DVD extras, effects are creepier, and the theories of "the Tangent Universe" are explored in greater depth. Friends and neighbors, this is a Great American Movie.