The film is a hugely compelling tribute to the French Resistance movement in World War II, staged with a genuine epic flair but in the icy, downbeat, film-noir style of the director's celebrated policiers.

All told, Cars is a knockout.

Absolutely riveting.

Ripe with characters and events reflecting the psychic travails of today's young adults.

Another worthy performance comes from Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi.

The language and the landscape is French, but the sensibility and style is unmistakably Eastern European.

It's pretty weird stuff, and filmmakers Keith Fulton and Luis Pepe embrace it with a layer of cinematic gauze that builds a pounding energy to this hypnotic twisting of rock legend.

When Riyadh's family jokes about the purple stain that marks them as resistance targets after they vote, the black humor speaks volumes about them as individuals, as Sunnis and as Iraqis with a dream of a better way.

Bujalski's gift for capturing the awkwardness of social relationships and the messy, unkempt details of everyday life is revealing.

Funny, muckraking documentary.

For all the ephemeral pleasure of the company of old friends, there is a chasm between them and the dynamics shift from moment to moment. The beauty of the film is how director Kelly Reichardt brilliantly captures those moments with lucid simplicity.

So magnificent in so many ways that, for the first time, it seems to raise the docudrama to high art.

A heartbreaking look at broken trust.

51 Birch Street, like the best of the recent wave of personal documentaries, is both a compelling story and an eye-opening bit of social history.

Oregon-born and Seattle-based director James Longley profiles three lives in his impressionistic portrait of Iraq's Sunni, Shia and Kurd communities.

Yellow Dog shows Davaa's growing refinement as a filmmaker, and that the success of "Weeping Camel" -- her master's thesis for film school in Munich that became an Oscar nominee -- was fully deserved.

Like the folk tales from centuries past, Pan's Labyrinth is a dark odyssey with nightmarish visions and cruel threats, but coming through the sacrifice and suffering is the childlike belief in magic and imagination that for Del Toro represents the hope and optimism of a happily ever after in this cruel world.

Maybe because I happen to be reading "Moby Dick" and was therefore more open to the wider world of whale metaphor, I found Chernick's view of Barney and his working entourage riveting.

Like all Jackie Chan films, this one works best as a rousing action film. From beginning to end, Rumble is filled with imaginative and breathtaking stunts (all done by Chan sans stuntman) and a succession of epic fight scenes that are hypnotic, exhilarating, masterfully choreographed and great fun. [23 Feb 1996, p.3]

James Earl Jones and Richard Harris both gave heartbreaking, virtuoso performances as fathers who find a special bond in this subtle, flawlessly acted, immensely powerful new film version of Alan Paton's classic novel of South Africa. [29 Dec 1995, p. 3]

Absorbing, scary documentary.

It's unmistakably the work of aging cinema activist Loach, who wears his social-justice heart on his sleeve and pauses the story for lively debates among the characters, especially as Sinn Fein signs a treaty that many think betrays the cause.

It's an immensely successful movie - and far and away the most emotionally charged, psychologically uneasy and diabolically suspenseful thriller Polanski's made since his heyday. [27 Jan 1995, p. 26]

A highly original and unusually powerful drama that deserves comparison to the great Scandinavian films of the past.

Free of the ghetto clichés that fill the movies made by people who have never lived in one, Killer of Sheep is a strongly individual portrait of black, working-class America.

Indeed, it is a uniquely dreamlike, lushly romantic, highly erotic and prototypically Coppolaesque version of the story - a movie that does for the vampire genre what "The Godfather" did for the gangster saga, and what "Apocalypse Now" did for the war movie: raises it to the level of grand opera. [13 Nov 1992, p.5]

Ultimately, the movie is about finding contentment during tough times.

A miracle of a movie that is both fairy tale and slice of life.