Inspiring and largely unsentimental, this is as much a love story as a tale of courage.

Ghobadi infuses his movie with a humor that can almost be called Seinfeldian, and it's this mix of laughter with tears that gives Marooned in Iraq its big impact.

Terminator 2 imagines things you wouldn't even be likely to dream and gets these visions onto the screen with a seamlessness that's mind-boggling. [3 July 1991, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

A fable about women struggling to free themselves from that myth, and even at its most obvious, it's exhilarating.

A wonder of a film -- a luminous, beautifully executed drama that gathers the best cast of the year -- the best American film of the year.

Clearly, great fun.

A documentary with the emotional power of the very best in narrative film. It has characters impossible to forget, moments impossible to shake and an ending that leaves the audience both moved and rattled.

Contains an incest story line that's disturbing but shouldn't scare people away. Nair handles the subject with such grace and sensitivity that it becomes just another element in this complex celebration of family.

An overwhelming experience.

Resembles a Christopher Guest movie in that it follows obsessed, socially awkward folks on a seminal journey in their lives.

By any measure, the horrifying yet powerfully uplifting Schindler's List from director Steven Spielberg is a milestone in the art of filmmaking. [15 Dec 1993]

Stir of Echoes is much more down and dirty (than "The Sixth Sense"), and the thrills are more visceral.

A gem of fast action, sophisticated wit and inspired comedy.

More than one joke or one idea. It's a thoroughly satisfying comedy --and a respectable space adventure, as well.

The class act of action movies.

The result is a film of sadness and power, the first great 21st century movie about a 21st century subject.

In some ways, this is "The Graduate" gone to "Lord of the Flies."

Delivers a sucker punch to the audience and then pulls the rug out from under it. It is sensational. It is also grimly funny.

A breathtaking story of defiance and triumph that has to be considered one of the year's most sublime films.

The result is something rare, especially considering how fine the novel is, a film that's fuller and deeper than the book.

In this small and very smart film, Cronenberg does several things at once and makes them all look effortless, capturing various shadings of consciousness and versions of reality.

The visuals pop, the fish emote and the ocean comes alive. That's in the first two minutes. After that, they do some really cool stuff.

Stays in the mind, changing the way we look at the world.

The picture gently caricatures the folk music scene with dozens of delicate brush strokes, creating a picture that's increasingly, gloriously funny -- as in entire lines of dialogue are lost because the audience's laughing so hard.

Excellent.

Not a routine cut-and-paste horror but a full-fledged revenge fantasy -- and a completely satisfying one.

A delicate, beautifully observed study of impossible romance, Lost in Translation is one of the best films this year.

Documentaries can be informative, entertaining and provocative, but rare is the documentary that makes you feel so engaged (and enraged) that it prompts you to action somehow. Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion is that kind of film.

All Black, all the time, and could easily have been an exhausting mess. But the movie is coherent, hilarious and surprisingly sweet.

One of the year's sweetest surprises. It sneaks up on you, disarming you with its modesty and tenderness, its remarkable lack of self-infatuation.

As touching and original a movie as you're likely to see this year.

Chilling, superbly acted.

Soft, evanescent and bittersweet.

Both heartfelt and tough-minded.

If In the Cut falls short of the masterpiece Campion intended, it's unquestionably the most ambitious and important film to come along in months.

It is a well-researched smorgasbord of newsreel and documentary footage spliced with current interviews with those on the front lines.

Feels like a streamlined improvement on the original.

Each shot is its own little miracle.

The experiences of this family from Fairfield will resonate with moviegoers around the country.

The moments between the characters are absolutely full. It's a pleasure to watch such consummate professionals.

An unforgettable film.

Masterful documentary.

An ungainly masterpiece, but Chaplin's ungainliness is something one can grow fond of.

Cause for celebration. It's not only a cracking good film, but it is the first by Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien to gain a national (though limited) release.

An engrossing tale of class differences that reveals tiny details of one man’s descent into hell.

A heartbreaking, powerful drama.

This wise and warm man, who died in 2002, is captured in all his glory by the remarkable documentary.

To make a movie about that team and those games requires more than an ability to depict personal dramas or re-enact game highlights. It requires the re- creation of a world and a mind-set, and Miracle accomplishes both brilliantly.

An ambitious and exciting piece of work, a movie about sex and movies made by a filmmaker who understands the power of each to set off fantasy, create addiction, incite danger and transform the spirit.

Doesn't sanitize its tale of African American loss and survival -- the way Steven Spielberg's “The Color Purple'' did -- but delves deeply, heartbreakingly into an American tragedy.

All bets are off. For my money, Vincent Gallo wins the Triple Crown of indie filmmaking -- for writing, directing and starring in Buffalo '66.

One of the great movies -- a triumph of storytelling and character development, and a whole new ballgame for computer animation. Pixar Animation Studios has raised the genre to an astonishing new level.

This is a science fiction film, but like all excellent movies in the genre, the focus never strays from the human heart.

Star Wars' has three crucial elements going for it and they've traveled time like troopers -- it's a terrifically entertaining war story, it has memorable characters and it is visually compelling. What more do we want in movies, anyway? [Special Edition]

From the standpoint of humanizing Sudan's continuing refugee problem, Lost Boys is a gem. It doesn't preach. It doesn't prettify.

I don't claim to have seen every entry from around the world, but it's hard to imagine five better than this deliciously offbeat comedy, as wildly inventive as anything Billy Wilder ever conceived.

Beautiful in both its brevity and its vision of contemporary Indian culture, the film abounds in easygoing humor.

A first-rate thriller about arrogance at the top.

Evokes grand emotions -- anxiety, sadness, joy -- sometimes within moments of one another. Broken Wings has heart and a poetic soul.

Dares to present a flat-out heroic president, without the safety net of irony. It succeeds.

Much of that appeal comes from compelling performances by the two main actors.

A joyous, hilarious send-up of rock star pretensions and an enchanting celebration of "girl power" in pop culture.

A breed apart from anything coming off the Hollywood assembly line or, for that matter, from the saccharine romances Britain has lately produced.

A gorgeous piece of work. It pulls every heartstring a good romance should, yet bursts with G-rated fun, wonderfully human characters and several solid and hummable songs.

Mischievous, singular and profound.

A masterful portrait of the seasons of a life.

The payoff is a consistently rich piece with impressive visual vitality.

A small gem.

The concept is high, the humor lowbrow and the joy of experimentation evident in every frame of this wonderful picture.

In this one masterpiece, Federico Fellini achieved the ideal balance -- between social observation and unconscious imagery, between artistic discipline and freedom, and between the neo-realism of 1950s Italian cinema and the orgiastic flights of his later work.

It's a lovely and wistful celebration of youth, time and moments of connection -- and about the experience of living in the midst of a simple, perfect day that you know you'll remember for the rest of your life.

One of the year’s most significant films.

A masterpiece.

A different kind of Harry Potter movie, a better kind... It's where this fantasy series has wanted to go all along.

Daring in its affirmation that a dowdy woman in her late 60s still can let go of her inhibitions and exhibit a lascivious side.

The balance between action and mysticism in The Empire Strikes Back provides fascinating energy. It's as if the kids are given one set of delights, the bravado of battles and elaborate warships zooming through exotic space, and adults are given another, a layered explanation of what it all means in the grand scheme of things. [Special Edition]

The alien attack, taking place in several cities at once, is breathtaking...All the same, Independence Day is consistently funny.

Weeping Camel essentially lets native people tell their own unforgettable story.

It's hard to dislike a picture with flying cows and oil trucks.

It’s coolheaded and incisive, a thorough and informative study of corporations, their origins and their place in the modern world.

Coraci has given us a film that is not only amusing, but well-acted, and not only well-acted, but gorgeous. Micha Klein's animated transitions alone, which are used to signal each change in location, are wondrous and lovely to behold.

A thoroughly entertaining and hilarious look at a board game that's an occasional amusement for some -- and a serious obsession (or disturbing addiction) for others.

Assessing the merits of a political film is a tricky business. Obviously, its quality is partly a function of its power to persuade, but its persuasiveness is in the eye of the beholder.

Smart, fun entertainment.

Magnificent but somewhat frustrating movie.

The very best thrillers -- a select group to which The Clearing clearly belongs -- exploit subconscious fears that bubble up at vulnerable moments.

Though Mom is ditzy and, at times, irritating, we come to recognize her as the family's most original creative spirit.

An inspiring translation of biblical grandeur, turning the story of one of history's greatest heroes into an entertaining, visually dazzling cartoon.

A revelatory independent film whose moments of incredible sadness are offset by the same state of grace that blesses its astonishing title character.

An important new documentary that cites countless examples of self-censorship, under-reporting of serious issues, and -- worse than this -- deliberate neglect and outright conflicts of interest.

Woody Allen's strongest and most mordantly funny movie in years, even if it is also his bleakest.

Ambitious and brilliant.

Must-see cinema for any serious rock fan.

A hell of a movie.

The nagging desire to help these people underscores the involvement of the audience in this superbly told story. You can almost taste the saltwater, and the fear.

One of the greatest of all epics.

One of very few films to accurately portray the experience of growing up male.

Bright Leaves' takes on a sizable foe -- in this case, big tobacco -- but with such grace and wit that his message never seems medicinal.

The film is a damning look at a key Bush operative.

It's a tribute to Day-Lewis that he can play a character like Danny -- cautious, withdrawn, inarticulate -- and endow him an eloquence and grace that aren't dependent on language. Without him, The Boxer might still be a powerful tale of loyalty and love, with a core of moral complexity; with Day-Lewis in the lead, it approaches greatness.

An intense, powerful film.

Often is on the verge of spilling over into melodrama, but that doesn't bother me because life is the same way.

Unfolds as a masterful chess match of wit and ingenuity, a cat-and-mouse chase of the highest order.

Remarkably fresh and inventive.

A superb film.

A special film.

Remarkable rockumentary.

The Devil's Advocate is a sharp, suspenseful and completely satisfying movie.

A buoyant, picaresque farce that hums with goofy energy and mines enough ideas, jokes and setups for three movies of this description.

Payne's little marvel.

A must-see for anyone still coming to terms with the chaos in Iraq.

The unnerving brilliance of the film owes to the director's skill at assembling information and allowing it to speak for itself.

An enchanting, beautiful and brilliantly imagined film.

Hauntingly tells a story older than the Odyssey and as timely as today's body count from Iraq.

Hilarious.

Superb.

Dramatic, funny, fun, silly, musical, stylish, romantic and redemptive -- a film worth telling your friends and neighbors about.

A larger-than-life resonance.

A gorgeously shot, ambitious epic.

A wildly funny sex farce that smartly combines big-time silliness with sophisticated wit.

Ages well in memory because it gradually seems to mean more. Its meaning can't be summed up in a sentence, but it has to do with a view of life as inexpressibly sad and yet always right.

Compelling.

An extraordinary and effective film.

Absorbing and exquisite.

An exceptional example of Shakespeare on film.

A terrific documentary.

Disarms with its sincerity and frankness.

[Soderbergh] plays with time and narrative to reveal character, mood and longing in ways you just don't find in a mainstream crime picture.

It's an exuberant, well- crafted film that gets the audience involved on a gut level even before the opening credits are over.

Kim's masterly, poetic ending is the cherry on top in this anime, good for a rainy day or any day.

Its deeply anarchic sensibility has kept Taxi Driver fresh all these years. (Review twenty years after release).

A sensitively wrought work.

Thoroughly entertaining.

The film, winsome and tragic at once and finely attuned to the rhythms of childhood, always seems quite close to real life.

Typically, films about '60s subculture recycle the same set of media cliches and teach us nothing. Harron approaches the milieu with curiosity, compassion and an anthropologist's eye.

The difference is that Iain Softley, who directed Wings of the Dove, and his screenwriter Hossein Amini, who wrote the overlooked "Jude," are keen observers who bring a wealth of ambiguity and mystery to the surface -- and release their characters from the cliches that easily could have swallowed them.

On a deeper level -- and this is where When We Were Kings exceeds its expectations and becomes a great film -- Gast examines African American pride.

The first great Hitler movie.

So in-depth, so appealing, so easy to sit through and so anomalously grand scale that few who see it will ever forget it.

Wise and wondrous.

Utterly enchanting.

Nobody into lush melodramas dripping in sex should miss this pulsating Italian import.

A movie unlike any other.

An engrossing new drama from France.

Potent.

More than worthwhile.

Imaginative and immensely engrossing film.

An unflinching and historically rich rendering of an amazing story. He has made what is easily the best American film so far this year.

Totally original yet filled with familiar human frailties, "Everyone" leaps off the screen to become one of those rare movie-going experiences.

Instantly captivating.

An astonishing documentary.

It is, simply, the alienation-invasion movie to beat all alien-invasion movies: meticulously detailed and expertly paced and photographed, with sights so spectacular and terrible that viewers will have to consciously remind themselves to close their mouths when their jaws drop open.

An entirely unconventional, hypnotic, meandering film.

A heartbreaking, beautiful movie that gains strength from its deep characterizations.

As French crime thrillers go, this is about as good as it gets.

If you're the type who doesn't go to art-house films , Murderball should be your exception. It's hard to imagine anyone could walk away from this movie disappointed.

Won the Golden Spire Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival a few years back, and now, finally, the documentary is being released into theaters. It's a film with distinct virtues: It tells a fascinating story.

One of the best Hong Kong films of 2002.

A visual poem.

Sweet, funny, sad and profound -- the sort of film that becomes more remarkable when you realize it's based on someone's real life.

A rare, sumptuous movie treat.

Bucking the lava tide of computer special effects gushing out of Hollywood this season, the makers of Breakdown use old-fashioned ingenuity -- plus a compelling star, a fast- paced mystery and a deadpan villain -- to come up with a sizzler.

It's a love story only in passing. And yet the love story is what lingers in the mind and gives energy and meaning to everything that happens on-screen.

It's the picture that proves action films don't have to be silly, that a few thrill sequences don't mean every other value has to be shot to pieces.

Filmmaker Michael Almereyda gives the most persuasive possible account of the upswing in Eggleston's critical standing.

Beautiful and utterly entrancing documentary.

One of 2005's must-see documentaries.

A tense, concise and elegantly shot film.

Using documentary-style Super 16 film and staged cutaway interviews with friends and family, James and his photographer and co-producer, Peter Gilbert, fashioned a movie with an affecting, candid look.

A grounded and unusually matter-of-fact adaptation.

As challenging as it must have been to pilot Joss Whedon's space opera from the TV junk pile to the big screen, the finished product is a triumph.

A triumph that goes well beyond Hoffman's tour de force performance.

The submarine drama, which opens today, has everything you could want from an action thriller and a few other things you usually can't hope to expect: an excellent script, first-rate performances and a story that has more to do with individuals than explosions.

Disney's 33rd animated feature, and its first with characters based on real people, is a stunning movie with clever twists, vivid characterizations, insightful songs and a surprising harvest of revisionist history that manages to ring smartly as pure entertainment.

A film of wisdom, emotional subtlety and power.

It's a complex, satisfying piece of entertainment, a succession of unexpected, outrageous scenes.

It's a glamorous revenge romp, a "9 to 5" mixed with "Auntie Mame," and it gives each star the opportunity to do her best work in a long, long time.

A rare chance to see a major cinematic work on the big screen.

Home for the Holidays strikes such a perfect note that it's hard at first to realize what an impressive balancing act it is.

Deliriously charming.

The film is so pitch perfect and realistic, it seems you are there with these people, watching their lives unfold before you as it happens.

Carries a lot of emotional power.

A movie of intelligence and power, of beauty, universality and largeness of spirit.

Allen's most satisfying film since "Bullets Over Broadway" (1994) and his most compelling since "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989).

A masterpiece.

A brilliant and irresistible counterfactual overview of American history.

It grabs you from a symbolic opening scene of gang members rolling the dice -- the odds, it soon becomes clear, are stacked against them getting lucky -- and never lets go.

It's a pumped-up, intricate and fast-moving yarn that never flags and continues to play out in unexpected ways as it unravels.

4 Little Girls brilliantly captures a moment in American history and tells an achingly painful story of injustice and family loss.

Perhaps no director has so thoroughly explored the American concept of police work, prosecution and legal justice, and Find Me Guilty is a film that brings the 81-year-old filmmaker thematically full circle, back to his starting point, 1957's "12 Angry Men."

Richly satisfying entertainment the way movies are at their best, when they prod you to think.

The thrills in Spike Lee's singularly savvy thriller are in small unexpected moments.

A one-of-a-kind cinematic experience. This musician may not be a genius along the lines of Brain Wilson, as Feuerzeig claims, but Johnston has a knack for revealing innermost thoughts in an offhand way that is eerie and uncanny.

There's no other film like it. It's embarrassingly frank and self-revealing, sometimes funny, sometimes creepy, sometimes both.

This is a serious film, but it is also entertaining. Ngassa and Ntuba should be galvanizing figures for a nation stuck on "Judge Judy" and "Jerry Springer."

Sir! No Sir! is far from a dry rehashing of what may seem for some like ancient history. Driving guitar rock and lively editing add to the film's urgency. The voices of the veterans alone, however, make this an important and poignant film that can speak to any generation.

An ideal introduction to Toback's output as well as a welcome elucidation for longtime fans. Apart from those worthy functions, The Outsider is also shrewdly made, illuminating its subject in a variety of settings and, at times, subtly assuming the style of Toback's films.

The cruelty of his methods aside -- and Polanski wasn't the first director to terrorize an actor for the sake of a performance -- Repulsion is a frightening, fiercely entertaining experience that holds up to time. (Review of May 1998 revival)

The movie is a stunner, so hypnotic that the length hardly matters.

One of the best films of the year.

Unlike the previous two installments, Lady Vengeance generates on odd feeling: hope.

Goal! hits the back of the net and is an early candidate for the funnest movie of the summer.

Virtually everyone who sees this movie will be galvanized to do something about global warming -- and everyone should see this movie.

There's a lot to process when watching The War Tapes, and that's probably why the documentary gets even better a few days later.

One of the best American films of the year so far.

A film that must be seen to understand the sad truths of our times. It's been made with a sensitivity and creativity that's come to exemplify Winterbottom's work.

Sly, near-perfect comedy.

Family entertainment at its best.