In scene after scene -- the long wedding sequence, John Marley's bloody discovery in his bed, Pacino nervously smoothing down his hair before a restaurant massacre, the godfather's collapse in a garden -- Coppola crafted an enduring, undisputed masterpiece. [21 Mar 1997, Daily Datebook, p.C3]

One of the greatest of all epics.

A masterpiece.

Part fairy tale and part bogeyman thriller -- a juicy allegory of evil, greed and innocence, told with an eerie visual poetry.

Everything Melville shows us, he shows us for a reason, and these reasons are never obscure but are rather pertinent to the action and to the moral movement of the world and the characters.

It turns out that Pepe Le Moko is even better than "Algiers."

Visually stunning, it meshes haunting images with a complex multilevel story about the enchantment of youth.

Seeing it is a time-bending experience, a way of visiting the past and glimpsing the past's idea of the future. A masterpiece of art direction, the movie has influenced our vision of the future ever since, with its imposing white monoliths and starched facades.

First, this movie should be enjoyed. Later, marveled at. And then, once the excitement has faded, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days really should be studied, because director Cristian Mungiu creates scenes unlike any ever filmed.

Superb.

Ratatouille is a classic.

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

But make no mistake, whether the movie is fair or horribly unfair - I know nothing of the actual facts and can't make that determination - its portrait of Zuckerberg is a hatchet job of epic and perhaps lasting proportions.

One of the most innovative and best made films of the past year. Every now and then, even Dick Cheney gets to like a great movie.

Moaadi is the standout here, subtly evoking filial worry and fatherly pride in one scene, popping off with rage in another: He's believably decent, believably flawed. A Separation touches on religious strictures and the role of women in Iran, but it does so with a light hand and not a twitch of condemnation.

A lovely, evocative tour de force. So why does it seem we should be enjoying it more?

A fine picture because it can still, without fail, make an entire audience of children shut up and fall in love with a little green alien with big eyes and a turtlelike body.

It is an exhilaration from beginning to end. It's the movie equivalent of that rare sort of novel where you find yourself checking to see how many pages are left and hoping there are more, not fewer.

A worthy, fascinating film..

This one enters the pantheon of great American war films.

In the moment, it's intermittently transcendent, heartrending and beautiful ... and busy, repetitious and boring.

It's back in a handsome new black-and-white print, and it's still powerful stuff -- you can see why Pauline Kael wrote that it was "probably the only film that has ever made middle-class audiences believe in the necessity of bombing innocent people."

Payne's little marvel.

There is no turning away from the screen.

Though an estimable success overall, The Return of the King has several scenes too many and too great a concentration on battles.

Amour is also unforgettable and one of a kind, two hours of torment that, in the end, you will probably not regret.

The comic contrast between the genteel snobbery of von Bulow, a Danish aristocrat, and Dershowitz's dry contempt for his well-tailored client is treated with understated but stinging wit in Nicholas Kazan's brilliant script. [9 Nov 1990]

The class act of action movies.

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]

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.

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

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

Perfect pitch.

Days of Heaven is a visual poem. Slow and elegant, reverential in the way it celebrates the earth's contours and the play of light. [27 Oct. 1999, p.B3]

Wise, delicate and impeccably performed, Yi Yi is a three- hour drama that looks at one middle-class family in transition -- and does so with such a kind and probing eye that we all see our lives reflected through Yang's lens.

By the end, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly achieves a victory over difficult material, but celebrating that fact doesn't preclude recognizing the story is not a natural for movies and remains an uneasy match.

This is the most realistic film about teaching that you're ever likely to see.

Hushed minimalism is a rare and appealing quality in the cinema these days, but so little happens in 35 Shots of Rum that I'm hard-pressed to describe the plot. It doesn't exactly have one.

The film has aged gracefully.

Anderson almost brings off a picture worthy of his grandiose ambition.

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

Gets it right. It's a wonderful movie. Watching it, one can't help but get the impression that everyone involved was steeped in Tolkien's work, loved the book, treasured it and took care not to break a cherished thing in it.

An indelible statement on loneliness and spiritual thirst.

Toy Story 3 is a better film than "Wall-E" and "Up" in that it succeeds completely in conventional terms. For 103 minutes, it never takes audience interest for granted. It has action, horror and vivid characters, and it always keeps moving forward.

Not always pleasant to watch.

It's an endurance test. Though never boring, the movie is a fairly long slog through the snow.

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]

Clearly a minor classic, mainly for reasons besides its crime story plot -- namely, the urbane fatalism of its cast and the overall mood of inevitability that hangs over every scene.

Impossible to describe, impossible to forget, The Triplets of Belleville sends audiences tottering out of the theater, dazed and delighted, and wondering what it is they have just experienced.

An absolute delight, combining the cheap thrills of a biopic with the gentler, but more lasting, pleasures of a brilliant character study.

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)

Has more originality, nitty-gritty humor, spirit and spunk than all the summer blockbuster retreads combined. Underneath the jousting and jiving, there's a sharp, uncompromising look at the anatomy of a race riot in the movie. [30 June 1989, Daily Notebook, p.E3]

Riveting.

The best movie of 2008? The most revealing war film ever made? The greatest animated feature to come out of Israel? All these descriptions could apply to Waltz With Bashir.

Leigh goes right to the core of his character's lives and mines the place where we're weakest, most alone and sometimes the cruelest.

Feels positively Greek in its magnitude, a lament about fate, age, time and life.

Until this film, these Shin Bet directors had never consented to an interview. Now that they've spoken - and have said the unexpected - we can only wonder if their words will have an influence.

It's a movie filled with surprises, including one outright kick in the head that qualifies as one of the biggest movie moments of 1992. [18 Dec 1992]

As close to perfect as filmmaking gets.

An overwhelming experience.

If his two previous films suggested a director dipping a few toes in dark waters, Un Prophete marks the moment when Audiard took the plunge.

This is one helluva drama, with one helluva star turn by Jennifer Lawrence as Ree.

One of the best crime dramas to come along in years.

The new material makes the film seem lumpy and overstuffed.

A great achievement: tense and passionate, a film that one feels not just emotionally but also physically.

A great experience, precisely because it's so intimate and unguarded.

Among the great American crime movies, 1973's Badlands stands alone. [13 Feb. 1998]

Egoyan's voice is so clear and loving, his vision so forgiving and his film so intelligent that you come away refreshed.

It not only evocatively captures the Russian spirit and the yearnings of a generation, but it also masterfully chronicles the historic collapse of the Soviet Union and its complex aftermath.

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.

This Is Not a Film isn't just a film, it's a strong one. It's also an act of political defiance, a moving personal document and a meditation on what film is and can be.

Part of the appeal of Topsy-Turvy is its generosity about human folly and shortcomings. Its wistfulness is very touching.

It's tremendously entertaining, and probably worthy of repeat viewings.

Magnificent but somewhat frustrating movie.

The visual and emotional hues are darker [than previous Pixar films], and the focus rests more on middle age than coming of age. The adventures of a family of superheroes are likely to thrill and amuse children, but the film's more grown-up themes might go over their heads.

A sweet but curiously unfulfilling story.

It's a humane and witty treatment of an average life that, incidentally, speaks to the worth and inherent drama of average lives.

Sad funny and richly romantic, everything that makes Allen’s movies so beloved. [7 February 1986, Daily Notebook p.76]

A British costume film that's funny but not at all fusty.

There's just nothing artful about it, and it's Greengrass who deserves the credit. These nonactors don't act the way most people do when playing themselves. They act the way people do when they're being themselves.

An original, inspired piece of work.

A superb documentary.

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

It's striking how much emotion Satrapi is able to convey through blocky drawings.

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

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

A great film, the best I've seen since Terrence Malick's "The New World," and far and away the richest and most brilliantly acted picture to be released this Oscar season.

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

Beautiful but hollow.

Delightful.

The director has said that, though the story was inspired by the deaths of his parents, he hoped to make a film "brimming with life." He's succeeded.

It's screamingly, hysterically, laugh-through-the-next-joke, laugh-for-the-next-week funny. It's so inventive…This is a film by an original and significant comic intelligence.

The most coolheaded of the Iraq war documentaries, the most methodical and the least polemical. Yet it's the one that will leave audiences the most shattered, angry and astounded.

Almost frighteningly alive.

Has there ever been a live concert film as vibrant or as brilliantly realized? I don't think so. [Review of re-release]

A heartrending film, Lee's Poetry is indeed a work of art.

In many ways - in all ways - The Artist is a profound achievement.

Magical and haunting, The Piano has the power and delicate mystery of a gothic fairy tale. [19 Nov 1993]