Suffused with a painterly tenderness and cruelty, the French film Gilles' Wife - based on a 1937 Belgian novel by Madeleine Bourdouxhe - stars the extraordinary actress Emmanuelle Devos.

The Maid has that particular gift of leaving you off balance in the best possible way, and whenever something like that comes around you owe it to yourself to check it out.

A film as arresting and at times as frustrating as the Pistols themselves.

The role of Jacob is greatly expanded from the book, and the unsatisfying way that Smith and Raimi resolve the brothers' relationship in the movie is the only major change--major compromise--made in transporting the novel to the screen.

Once again Chabrol's son Mathieu has composed a crucially evocative score, and Renato Berta's cinematography is gleaming. Merci Pour le Chocolat crackles with wit and elegance, humor and pathos.

Expertly realized and gunmetal slick, Eastern Promises whirs along with perfect efficiency, but doesn't stir much in the way of visceral horror despite its penchant for treating the human body like a chicken carcass on a block. (Squeamishness, yes.)

An exceptional film, at once disturbing and elevating, deliberate yet powerful.

Their (Kim Bartley and Donnacha Ó Briain ) remarkable true-life footage makes this 74-minute film as potent as behemoths twice its size.

A ticking time bomb of a movie, a gripping, incendiary, casually subversive piece of work that marries pulp watchability with larger concerns without skipping a beat.

Likely as not, these things mean nothing in a conventional plot sense, but as powerful images, as pictures from a dreamlike world, they are unforgettable. And that, David Lynch would probably say, is exactly the point.

The jokes would be funny even if they weren't perfectly timed, but what makes them come across as so poignant is the seriousness with which the director and his co-conspirators deliver their jabs and japes.

There's barely any on-field footage in The Damned United. What we get instead is fine acting and directing, splendid dialogue and a story too outrageous to be made up.

Georgia is not an easy film, but in the American independent arena, it outperforms everything in sight.

Deceptively superficial at the outset, the movie deepens into something poignant and unexpected.

A beautifully calibrated movie in the most traditional sense of the word -- the ideal marriage of topic, talent and tone.

That meandering dialogue can be difficult to control, and at times the film feels as if the director has stepped away from the vehicle, leaving it to veer off the path. Still, it's an experiment that works more than it fails by giving Gosling and Williams both the motive and the means to create something extraordinary, a valentine that actually says something true about being in love.

Not only do Grant, Scott Thomas, Callow and company handle the sprightly dialogue with aplomb, they are also adept at the doubletakes and befuddled looks that make Four Weddings both amusing and irresistible all the way through the not-to-be-missed final credits. [9 March 1994, Calendar, p.F-1]

Few actors can be as convincing as leaders of men, and to see Crowe as Capt. Jack Aubrey in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is to see a consummate performer doing what he does best.

Teaches important lessons in the most casual, joyful way. How it manages to do that is probably the biggest secret of all.

Thanks to the residual love and attraction between the pair, this cocktail-fueled reunion never descends into a "Virginia Woolf"-like grudge match but, rather, remains an equitable, tender, sometimes surprising game of hard truth-telling.

Simultaneously poetic, dramatic and realistic, White Material is an altogether stunning work.

Its charming story of the delicate intersection of three highly individual lives is the kind of completely personal yet universal film that the festival and the entire independent movement came into being to celebrate. And it does it all in 88 deft and funny minutes.

Droll and delicious.

Bamako is an attack on globalization that is endlessly cogent, confrontational -- and, best of all, as captivating as it is illuminating.

A buoyant and disarming drama about sons and fathers, death and dying, living and loving and all the ways we find ourselves starting over, hoping to finally get it right.

Masterfully put-together, made with confidence, intelligence and command.

Not the supernatural horror picture its title suggests, but this subtle, elliptical film evokes its own kind of nightmarish situation.

Remains a timeless, major work of a master.

Simultaneously exhilarating and confounding, dazzling and confusing, this is filmmaking of such verve and style that you likely won't care that you can't follow it completely.

The 17-year-old so completely captures the innocence, cynicism and rage of a child of poverty and divorce on the edge of adulthood that it feels as if you are spying on Mia, so achingly real, so tangible does her world seem here.

A lot of this horrific Little Shop is not only sweet, melodic, funny and oddly idealistic, it's even, well, tasty. [19 Dec 1986, p.1]

Even if No is not the whole truth — and no film is — its pungent dialogue and involving characters tell a delicious and very pertinent tale. And the messages it delivers, its thoughts on the workings of democracy and the intricacies of personality, are just as valuable and entertaining — maybe even more so.

In an attempt to be both modern and traditional, this gorgeously made film ends up betwixt and between.

Nathaniel Kahn is very much a presence in this film, at times too much so. The title is properly read with the emphasis on the "my," and the work itself is a plea, understandable but disconcerting at times in its nakedness, to be linked irrevocably to his father.

Wright and Pegg are storytellers who weave their naughty bits into genuine characters and a plot. It's a ridiculous plot, but one that's absolutely in the spirit of the films they're satirizing.

Police, Adjective may not be the film you're expecting, but it's one that will stay on your mind.

Meier and cinematographer Agnès Godard make potent use of the setting's alternating highs and lows, delivering a jolt of heartbreaking hope in the film's final image.

In "Django," Tarantino is a man unchained, creating his most articulate, intriguing, provoking, appalling, hilarious, exhilarating, scathing and downright entertaining film yet.

In Skyfall, Mendes has given us a thrilling new chapter in a franchise that by all rights should have been gasping for air - which really makes him the hero of this saga.

Solondz's filmmaking style tries to make a virtue out of flatness and distance, and is always more comfortable indicating where feelings would go than actually providing them.

A splendid film. It uses all the resources of cinema -- masterful writing, superb acting, directorial intelligence, an enveloping score, top-of-the-line production design, costumes, cinematography and editing -- to make a film whose cumulative emotional power takes viewers by surprise, capturing us unawares in its ability to move us as deeply as it does.

15 minutes into it, you are spellbound, heartbroken and unaccountably cheered -- your faith and admiration in humanity restored.

Though drawn together by the thrill of infatuation, fostered by Isherwood's penchant for emergent male youth and Bachardy's awe of fame and glitz, the pair developed a durable love strengthened by nurturing and patience. In recounting this journey, directors Guido Santi and Tina Mascara make rich use of the couple's glamorous home movies.

The Wrestler doesn't add up. It's constructed with great care around a lead performance that is everything it could possibly be, but the picture itself is off-putting and disappointing.

Tchoupitoulas is a jewel-bright whoosh of a ride through nighttime New Orleans.

Though it sometimes overplays the sentimentality, Thunder Soul gets not just the music but also the sense of possibility for this post-civil-rights generation.

A one-trick pony, a movie that has a gift only for making audiences squirm.

Most of all, Davies proves himself to be a poet of the commonplace whose art is the exalting of the everyday. He may rail against "the British genius for creating the dismal," but his own work is anything but.

With its startling mix of 16-millimeter-shot, handmade animation styles using stop-motion, sketches, collages and models, along with uncensored characters often resembling cadaverous marionettes, this twisted look at life in a faded Appalachian town is one decidedly idiosyncratic ride.

When something heartfelt occurs in this movie, you accept it without too much squirming. The disciplined yet intuitive way in which these actors connect is a model of ensemble performance.

A captivating film that truly elevates the spirit, Ballets Russes is the most emotionally satisfying documentary since "Mad Hot Ballroom."

It's not until Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that a film has successfully re-created the sense of stirring magical adventure and engaged, edge-of-your-seat excitement that has made the books such an international phenomenon.

What it offers isn't really a nostalgic look at a "more innocent time" so much as a saucy wink at a casually vicious time that is constantly being sold to us as innocent.

Don't miss this opportunity to see a film that many believe started the renaissance of indie films as it was intended to be shown.

Identifying herself with other minorities (whose members she mimics outrageously), Cho shatters racial and sexual stereotypes with merciless wit.

Made under unique and wrenching circumstances, it gained poignancy and a kind of purity from its troubles, and an already affecting film ended up suffused with emotion.

A clever, entertaining stunt, no more, no less.

King Kong is an homage not just to the original but to the history of movies themselves.

Though overlong, Hui's valentine never milks the drama for tears, maintaining an unsentimental focus on the central duo's playful chemistry and the loving way Ah Tao's attention to detail is repaid.

Though the film's final break-the-bank action sequence in Venice is worth waiting for, Casino Royale's 2-hour, 24-minute running time is long enough to exhaust all but the series' biggest fans.

With Midnight in Paris, Allen has lightened up, allowed himself a treat and in the process created a gift for us and him.

Mixes satire and suspense in unexpected ways in a film that is as darkly amusing as it is bitterly critical of bourgeois society's indifference to suffering.

Through everyday actions and gestures -- in Hussein's awkward exchanges with other people, in his tender fumbling of his fiancée's purse -- Panahi shows a man for whom life has become increasingly arduous, alien. The filmmaker captures, in other words, what Bresson called "the force in the air before the storm."

"Weeping" is a simple tale of animal estrangement and reconciliation that in its own quiet way manages to be soothing, hypnotic, even magical.

District 9 is very smart sci-fi, but that's just the beginning; it's also a scathing social satire hidden inside a terrific action thriller teeming with gross aliens and regrettable inter-species conflict. And it's a blast. . . .

A remarkable film.

Kon's best work yet.

Watching Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is like experiencing a thrilling unfinished symphony: The story is enthralling, but it's not over, and there's no telling where it's going. Which makes what we see on screen all the more involving.

Assayas has such a steady hand as a director, he knows precisely how to let all of Gilles' inner angst play out. His nostalgia for those past days can be felt in the affection and forgiving way the indiscretions of youth are portrayed.

With Bad Education, Almodóvar is at his most breathtakingly complex and mature, and at his most pessimistic.

Silver Linings Playbook is rich in life's complications. It will make you laugh, but don't expect it to fit in any snug genre pigeonhole. Dramatic, emotional, even heartbreaking, as well as wickedly funny, it has the gift of going its own way, a complete success from a singular talent.

Being able to hear this kind of playing is a special moment in time, one we don't want to end and one that we're privileged to experience.

Much of the film is told compellingly and heartbreakingly through the wide-eyed innocence of five children.

The images captured by Herzog and cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger are dazzling all on their own, finding the disorienting psychedelia that is nature at its weirdest.

Part science fiction scare movie, part offbeat romance, part completely unclassifiable, "Color" is also one-man filmmaking of a remarkable sort.

Dallaire is not only the protagonist of Shake Hands, he is a compelling reason to see it.

It would seem impossible that anyone looking into the heart and the clear intent of the film would fail to see Scorsese's passion for his subject. And if our world is becoming so dangerously constricted that we're forbidden even to look, that is something we should all worry about. [12 Aug 1988, p.1]

In recording life as it unfolds in the course of a year, On the Ropes not only defies prediction as to its outcome but is in some ways downright confounding...as involving and suspenseful as the best fictional films.

If there is one moment in The Language of Music that will thrill old rock fans, it's watching Dowd, his fluid hands moving with a surgeon's grace, remix for the film's benefit the 24-track sub-master of "Layla."

Williams' performance is remarkable not only for its depth but for its stillness.

Set in an enchanting locale where the potential for magic is everywhere, this impeccable animated film puts its complete trust in the spirit of make-believe.

Effortless and effervescent, Frances Ha is a small miracle of a movie, honest and funny with an aim that's true.

A deceptively simple, deeply resonant story about the inherent loneliness of family, the odds against assimilation and the enormous distances that can divide two people.

Unusual in both its subject matter and its approach, this film guides us on a pair of intertwined paths American movies rarely venture down.

Promises takes a simple idea and just about breaks your heart with it.

Love and Death on Long Island is sharp, sophisticated and completely delicious, a purposeful comedy that focuses on the power of screen images to uproot lives and the poignancy of amour fou, totally mad love.

Filmmaker Leon has deftly structured Gimme the Loot as a picaresque tale, an anecdotal, observational film that introduces us to all manner of eccentric and original characters. Will Malcolm and Sophia get what they want, what they need, or something in between? The only sure thing is that being along for the ride is pleasure of the most unexpected sort.

Essential viewing.

Finds Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien at his most intimate and romantic. The deceptive simplicity of these vignettes, written by Chu Tien-wen, throws into relief Hou's formidable storytelling strengths and visual acuity - his way with actors, his subtlety and expressiveness.

An exquisite film, as elegant and precise as an impeccably cut diamond. It's small in scale but wholly mesmerizing, holding us captive as it demonstrates how much enveloping richness can be conveyed with a minimalist style.

Firmly rooted in the filmmaker's esoteric, frustrating, provoking, demanding narrative style, the movie is also amazingly romantic - lush, ripe, rich, delicious.

In Greenfield's canny and compassionate view, their post-collapse reality check is an emblem of consumerism as affliction, and surprisingly relatable.

The mellow, serendipitous The Parrots of Telegraph Hill is here to show you just how magical happenstance can be.

As worthy and moving as The Color of Paradise is, it is not entirely free of the manipulative, the arbitrary and the downright punitive.

A convulsively funny affair.[15 July 1988, Calendar, p. 6-1]

Paradoxically, it is Shawshank's zealousness in trying to cast a rosy glow over the prison experience that makes us feel we're doing harder time than the folks inside. [23 Sept 1994]

Deliciously funny and fiendishly clever con-man comedy that begins on a note of ingenuity that it then sustains with the tension of a high-wire act.

Starkly beautiful and exceedingly demanding, The Turin Horse, which Hungarian master Béla Tarr has said will be his last film, is both easy and impossible to define.

Bergman has never been an ordinary filmmaker, and what he's given us is no genial last hurrah but rather an intensely dramatic, at times lacerating examination of life's conundrums that is exhilarating in its fearlessness and its command.

That rare episode film that actually accrues a cumulative power and doesn't merely proceed from one segment to the next.

When Iris DeMent's impeccable version of the hymn is heard on the soundtrack as the final credits roll, it's the perfect touch to end a film whose aim is always true.

Raucously funny and surprisingly insightful.

There is a lot of hope in the air in I Wish, but the film never feels sappy. The very appealing score by the Japanese indie-rock group Quruli brings a kind of upbeat energy that matches the clean, open style of director of photography Yutaka Yamazaki, a frequent Kore-eda collaborator.

As delicately and deliciously prepared as the dishes it features, Big Night is a lyric to the love of food, family and persuasive acting.

At a time when so many in this country are at odds about what represents America at its best, it's refreshing and then some to see a film that everyone can agree is an example of exactly that.

An old-fashioned weepie tucked inside a fiercely indicting political thriller.

My Dog Tulip is as disconcerting and unusual a piece of animation as the 1956 memoir that inspired it, and that is saying a lot.

For Fernanda Montenegro, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Italy's late Giulietta Masina (Federico Fellini's wife and frequent star) in appearance and talent, "Central Station" is a personal triumph and a rich cinematic experience.

The result is a wonderfully humorous take on a seldom-broached subject.

What the film captures so effectively is the cultural reality of Mexico's ubiquitous underclass.

Parse it any way you like, Miyazaki's gifts as an animator place him in a category of his own. To see his latest film is to be somehow reminded of Italians who could hear Verdi's operas as soon as they were sung or English readers who could experience the novels of Dickens episode by episode.

In some ways, it reminded me of the final "Seinfeld" episode. As much as I laughed throughout, I kept wondering what was with all the emotional lessons.

For those who do enjoy being smacked around by the ocean, for those who thrill to the romance and hype of extreme surfing and dig the outsider aspect of this rarefied culture or at least its marketed cool, this film will likely be their ticket to ride a board by proxy.

Room 237 becomes not a film about "The Shining" or even a film about film. Rather, it is an examination of the nature of obsession, about how we are capable of convincing ourselves — and possibly others — that just about anything might be true.

The most frankly sensual movie in memory. Winner of five Cesars, the French Oscar, including best picture and best actress for its luminous star, Marina Hands, it has found the soul of the celebrated D.H. Lawrence novel.

Both sweet-natured and sharply pointed, a film whose poignant, emotional effects and subtle acting sneak up on you.

A remarkable feat of imagination, a magical tale with a genuinely sinister edge.

Bold, acutely observant and universal in its wide-ranging concerns and implications.

The trouble with describing a story this complex and digressive is that it's hard to keep it from sounding complicated and hard-to-follow. But for a movie about movies, it's surprisingly humanistic, cheerful and true to life.

Couldn't be more unlikely, more unfashionable -- or more compelling.

Disturbing, unnerving and wire-to-wire involving, Deep Water is the story of a dream that got so wildly out of hand that it ensnared the dreamer in an intricate trap of his own devising.

A gritty, deceptively low-key, no-fuss, no-frills movie of consistent originality and surprise in which suspense arises straight up from the heroine's evolving character.

A provocatively structured and thrillingly executed film noir, an intricate, inventive use of cinema's possibilities that pushes what can be done on screen in an unusual direction.

Nothing is rushed, everything is given its appropriate time and place. When we watch Hansen-Løve's films, we're not only experiencing a life unfolding before us, we're also realizing what a great privilege it is to be able to do that.

As ambitious, honest and subversive as any American movie since "Election."

It may sound commonplace, but in the hands of master filmmaker Mike Leigh, the everyday becomes extraordinary.

In only his second feature, Frammartino has found a fresh and ravishingly poetic and beautiful way to explore the relationship between the spirit, man and nature.

This is the best class of poetic realism, the kind you can believe in without a trace of hesitation.

Instead of a genre movie-industry calling card, Roy has made a venturesome and effective film.

It's not the kind of work that wins awards, but without Cruise's intensity almost willing our interest in Spielberg's unrelentingly dark world, Minority Report wouldn't have nearly as much life as it does.

Chillingly, Portillo reveals that 50 women were killed in the 18 months it took her to make her film.

The result is involving, engrossing cinema -- more thrilling, in fact, than Howard's "The Da Vinci Code" -- filmmaking of a type rarely seen anymore and sorely missed.

What you see is pretty much what you get. Fortunately, what we see is often vivid and lovely.

A documentary with the pace of a thriller, a story of motors and machines that is beyond compelling because of the intensely human story it tells.

With its long takes and deliberate pacing, Beyond the Hills is demanding but always engrossing, even during its repetitive middle section.

In a country that embraces cinematic violence with such ease but blushingly prefers to keep sex in the shadows or under the sheets, the grown-up approach of The Sessions is rare.

As uplifting as anything you will find in theaters.

This calm and thorough film has just the right attitude and tone to deal with a most incendiary story.

A film of rare, delicate sensibility.

Spring Forward is so fully realized and so moving that you wish you could get away with merely saying: "Go see it for yourself."

A potent and unexpected mixture of authenticity and flash -- even if this is what happened on the ground, making it worth our time on screen is just beyond the contortionist abilities of even this most acrobatic of films.

A substantial film of unexpected emotional force. And when at a certain point it seems to slip the bonds of this world and take a leap of faith into an almost mythological dimension, it breathlessly takes us along for that memorable ride.

An unforgettable experience from yet another filmmaker who is making South Korean cinema one of the most vibrant of any emerging on the international scene.

Effortlessly graceful and burnished to a glow, Dinner Rush is surely as satisfying as any of the delicious-looking food served at Louis' restaurant -- and is as full of surprises as any dish Udo ever concocted.

At its soulful heart, Pariah is a stinging street-smart story of an African American teen's struggle to come of age and come out - to the father who still calls her "daddy's little girl" and the mother who quotes the Bible and buys her pink frills.

Nothing quite prepares you for the rough-cut diamond that is Precious. A rare blend of pure entertainment and dark social commentary, this shockingly raw, surprisingly irreverent and absolutely unforgettable story.

The story it tells is such a wrenching one it cannot help but move us, especially when the performance of a lifetime by Don Cheadle is added to the mix.

She is by turns blue, bitter, hilarious, unbroken; a Hollywood-style portrait in infinite ambition. In that role, Rivers is unforgettable.

Im Kwon Taek's exquisite Chunhyang brings to the screen one of Korea's most cherished folk tales, a timeless romance in which the lovers are challenged by differences in class.

A superlative work, offering a rich emotional experience that at the same time calls attention to the seemingly endless suffering of the Afghan people.

A rich, unnerving film, as comic as it is astringent, that in its own quiet way works up a considerable emotional charge. [8 Oct 1993]

A sharp and satisfying romantic comedy.

What makes The Fly such a stunning piece of obsessive film making is the way Cronenberg deftly allows us to identify with his monstrous creation. [14 Aug 1986]

If you give yourself over to that clash of style and sensibility, something magical happens as the power, the prescience and the precision of Shakespeare's words take hold of modern problems.

It projects equal parts fury and despair as it reveals how a particular group of individuals was caught in the unforgiving gears of the criminal justice system.

You don't need to be a fan of Wagner, or even opera, to find this a fascinating glimpse of a dauntingly complex human endeavor.

Intelligently written and directed with a pleasing frankness by Bill Condon and well played by Liam Neeson, Laura Linney and a strong supporting cast, the film skillfully uses the forms of old Hollywood to tell a story that would have given heart failure to Harry Cohn and his fellow tycoons.

A period chamber drama drawn from a Joseph Conrad short story and of such intensity and passion that it transcends a specificity of time and place to achieve timelessness and universality.

Lives up to its ambitiousness in all its aspects.

Biting and vicious, a styptic pencil on the battered face of "civilized divorce." It's also thoughtful, laceratingly funny, and bravely true to its own black-and-blue comic vision. [8 Dec 1989]

Though it can overreach for emotional effect and overplay its hand at times -- Sexy Beast brings considerable virtues to telling this tale, including a great eye for faces and director Glazer's palpable excitement at working in the feature medium.

A complete original. This ingenious, almost indescribable film won't remind you of anything else because there's nothing else like it.

Both an irresistible human story and as fine a documentary on football as "Hoop Dreams" was on basketball.

It's hard to fully empathize with Don's season of remorse. It's the big problem with Broken Flowers, and one I don't think the movie -- for all of its funny and occasionally poignant touches -- ever really transcends.

Performances this strong and direction this sensitive make us simply grateful to have an emotional story we can sink our teeth into and enjoy.

An invaluable portrait of us-and-them America, a smart, generous, poignant, quietly disturbing movie about secrecy and hospitality, and how easy it is for a tradition of separateness to flourish when the stakes are as deceptively frivolous as an eye-popping yearly party.

His engaging chronicle of the physical, historical and psychological effect of the undertaking, is also an invitation for a film buff to meditate on the antebellum South's mythic power in stories and film.

As he did in "Unforgiven," "Mystic River" and "Million Dollar Baby," Eastwood handles this nuanced material with aplomb, giving every element of this complex story just the weight it deserves. The director's lean dispassion, his increased willingness to be strongly emotional while retaining an instinctive restraint, continues to astonish.

Inevitably poignant but also often amusing and always deeply touching.

Norwegian director Joachim Trier's inspiring first feature Reprise joyfully tackles the process of self-creation, as well as the friendships that feed and sustain it. He captures, in a way that's cool and romantic and heady, the moment in life when nothing matters more than ideas, influences and the possibility of shaping one's life into a work of art.

Morris pulls off a genuine shocker to cap his film, but his method exacts its price. It takes fully a third of the film's 109 minutes to become involved in it, thanks to Morris' deadpan tone and the initially jarring effect of his intercutting between straightforward talking heads and his B-movie reenactment of the crime. [2 Sept 1988]

Provocative and engrossing.

Writer-directors Joel and Ethan have seized the opportunity afforded by the Oscar-winning success of "No Country for Old Men," to make their most personal, most intensely Jewish film, a pitch-perfect comedy of despair that, against some odds, turns out to be one of their most universal as well.

What makes Look at Me such a deeply satisfying experience is its ability to combine insightful character portraits like this with wickedly funny situations that slyly skewer all-too-human weaknesses.

For director Lou Ye, who also co-wrote the script and was a student in Beijing during that crucial year, Summer Palace is the story of his particular lost generation, a story he felt so deeply about he risked his career to tell it. Search out this vivid film in a theater. Don't let the sacrifices he made be in vain.

The rousing The Fighter tries a number of risky maneuvers and manages to make them pay off in the end. The movie initially feels like more of a near thing than the filmmakers anticipated, but as in boxing it's only the final decision that counts.

If Asian martial arts movies interest you even a little bit, you're going to want to see Iron Monkey. Not only that, you're going to want to see it more than once.

An unassuming but quietly heartbreaking drama.

Mother is a thriller as well as . . . something else.

Though Iron Man is diverting enough in the comic-book-movie mode, there is one thing it doesn't have, and that is dramatic unity. Unlike the irreducible element that is its namesake, Iron Man the movie is an alloy, a combination of several different and disconnected components that don't manage to unite to make a coherent whole.

It's a shining valentine to the movies--full of homages, collages and swooningly romantic Ennio Morricone music--and it gets right at the messy, impure, wondrous way they capture and enrapture us. [16 February 1990, Calendar, p.F-1]

We may have seen it all before, but when it's done up like this, experiencing it all over again is a pleasure. [16 June 1999, Calendar, p.F-1]

Genteel moviemaking with modern overtones, The Winslow Boy is especially good at the visual re-creation of its time.

Think of Control Room as a through-the-looking-glass movie. Like Lewis Carroll's Alice, viewers of this remarkable documentary will be disconcerted by a glimpse of a world where everything is reversed.

This documentary provides an elegant, enthralling peek behind the curtain and into the you-won't-trust-your-eyes world of this celebrated contemporary conjurer.

It's a movie that not only puts you in space but lets you travel through it with a speed and wonder that would make James T. Kirk go a little weak in the knees.

Drive is a Los Angeles neo-noir, a neon-lit crime story made with lots of visual style. It's a film in love with both traditional noir mythology and ultra-modern violence, a combination that is not ideal.

Complex, challenging and richly rewarding, it glows with the kind of wrenchingly selfless portrayals that are the hallmark of the Bergman classics.

Because Into the Arms of Strangers is as much a story about childhood as it is about the Holocaust, it's an especially moving and effective piece of work.

A lovely piece of movie making: precisely controlled but with a lived-in scruffiness.

Rarely have a novelist and filmmaker been better matched.

The Piano Teacher will surely be too strong for some audiences and is best left to those who like films that take big risks and get away with them.

A riveting encounter with the woman who was Hitler's secretary...In a daring and successful stylistic choice, directors Heller and Schmiderer include almost nothing in the film but Junge.

Commands respect and affection. [2 June 1989, Calendar, p.6-1]

There are always moral crosscurrents in Lee's most provocative work, but so magical and mystical is this parable, it's as if the filmmaker has found the philosopher's stone.

I found myself repeatedly on the edge of tears over its course. It is a relatively short but luxurious film.

There's a muscular sincerity to this movie, a power and spread to its imagery that triumphs over the occasional candied purple patches or strained plot twists. [16 Jul 1993 Pg. F1]

A haunting, immersive portrait of a romance between two men, one that's marked - and marred - by both drug dependency and emotional codependency. Not unlike last year's gay-themed drama, "Weekend," it proves an important and mature piece of business.

The film is a rigorously thorough biography and an impassioned accolade. Temple spends as much time on Strummer's life before and after the Clash as he does charting the band's powerful musical and political influence.

Swinton is one of the finest actresses working in contemporary cinema, but Guadagnino, who developed the project with her in mind, has created a film that literally luxuriates in her talents.

The truth-is-stranger-than-fiction saga has been a hit on the festival circuit, winning top documentary prizes at Sundance for Sweden's Bendjelloul. What sets Searching for Sugar Man apart, though, is the way in which the filmmaker preserves a sense of mystery in the telling.

A wholly unexpected and ultimately gratifying experience.

This masterful celebration starts off slowly, even uncertainly, giving no hint of the rich and elegant exploration of love, jealousy and animal attraction it will in all good time become.

Directed by Ra'anan Alexandrowicz and winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, this is the second superb Israeli documentary (after "The Gatekeepers") to come to town in less than a month and deal fearlessly with an aspect of that country's legal and political system.

Not just any kind of trash, it's high-art trash, a kind of "When Tutu Goes Psycho" that so prizes hysteria over sanity that it's worth your life to tell when its characters are hallucinating and when they're not.

Though it has its charms, Monsters, Inc. does not measure up. As a childhood entertainment it is certainly fine, but Pixar's celebrated lure for adults is largely absent.

It takes two to be sisters, two to have a rivalry, and two exceptional actresses to turn Hilary and Jackie into a compelling look at the most intimate and troubling of family dynamics.

The film is as faithful to its subject as perhaps any film biography has been. As Eastwood said, Parker was a paradoxical character, both self-destructive and full of life, and the movie, simultaneously dark and exhilarating, takes that as its theme. [22 Sep 1988, p. 1]