Awesome! Bravura! Captivating! Dazzling!

Infectious, intoxicating joy is the emotion conveyed in every frame of this ravishing, exuberant documentary.

It's the most uplifting movie of a numbing year -- a feel-good film full of songs about feeling god-awful.

Maniacally funny. It remains neck and neck with "Young Frankenstein" as Brooks' best film.

A small-scale, slight undertaking, but its pleasures are unexpectedly rich. It has become a habit in our movies to portray the exploits of high school characters as shocking and depraved. Ten Things allows its teenagers their innocence and a quality that is even rarer these days, something like nobility.

Released in 1962, it was pretty clearly the most intelligent spectacular within living memory. On its 40th anniversary, it's even better.

Not to be missed. And pay close attention to the finale. It's a genuine surprise.

As giddy and antic as any great Warner Bros. cartoon of the 1930s and '40s -- it bears seeing more than once, if only to allow for the sight gags that play second fiddle to the plot, a rarity in animation -- but also resonant and real. In other words, it's the perfect movie.

Doesn't just kick your ass. It pummels your entire body; it leaves you trembling.

One of the finest qualities of Amadeus is that it reminds us of those rare occasions when an Oscar sweep is actually merited.

This movie would be worth feting in any season. It's wrenching but never manipulative, stoic but never dull, exhausting but never wearying.

Tanovic describes it as "a very serious film with a sense of humor." It is an apt description for a very remarkable film, one of the best of the year.

Coppola and Murch have balanced their new edit with grace notes of sweetness, elegance and eroticism, and the payoff is grand, providing both a reprieve from the multiple blitzkriegs and a break in the monotony of the cruise up the Nung.

Perfectly capturing the zeitgeist of American high school life in the '80s, complete with a Rubik's cube reference, the funny and occasionally harsh Fast Times, with all due apologies to John Hughes and Mickey Rooney, may be the greatest teen movie ever made (even though Cates was the only real teen).

For all its long shadows and ominous atmosphere, this is a very funny movie -- as funny as the Coens' masterful "Fargo."

Weaving many interconnected plot lines and more than a dozen lives together, this gifted writer-director has fashioned a bleak, brilliant comedy about loneliness, lovelessness, and alienation--a film that constantly upends our assumptions about what is heartbreaking, what is hilarious, and what is both.

What we have here is an historical document of inestimable value, describing in no uncertain terms the terrible and beautiful times before AIDS.

Probably like nothing you've ever seen before. In a cool world, it would be guaranteed not only the Best Animated Feature Oscar, but Best Picture as well.

The audience responds to Out of Sight the way Jack and Karen do to each other. Instantly we like the way it looks, moves, and sounds. Ultimately we like how it makes us feel.

Like gathering storm clouds, Donnie Darko creates an atmosphere of eerie calm and mounting menace -- stands as one of the most exceptional movies of 2001.

That's all Full Frontal is: a brilliant gag at the expense of those who paid for it and those who pay to see it.

It's moving; but it's also endlessly engaging, uproariously funny at moments, informative, and eventually touching in ways one might not have expected.

The film is a whirlwind blur, a kinetic thrill ride through the industrial backwater that was one of punk and post-punk's most fertile Promised Lands: Manchester.

A beautiful and timeless achievement, Conrad Rooks' 1972 adaptation of Herman Hesse's appropriation of East Indian mythology still entrances.

The miracle here is not so much that Pray captures the DJs in peak form, but that he comprehensively captures SO MANY of them.

Lawrence constructs a vivid pastiche of human foibles, nicely flavored with a touch of suspense and some well-timed jolts of humor. In the end it's a terrifically entertaining film, if not quite so profound as the makers might wish.

An exciting, sharply realized melodramatic film noir, based on Elizabeth Sanxay Holding's novel "The Blank Wall."

Beautifully observed, miraculously unsentimental comedy-drama.