For 8,141 reviews, this publication has graded:
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49% higher than the average critic
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3% same as the average critic
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48% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.8 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 59
| Highest review score: |
Critic Score
100
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| Lowest review score: |
Critic Score
0
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 3,629 out of 8141
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Mixed: 3,386 out of 8141
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Negative: 1,126 out of 8141
8,141
movie reviews
- By critic score
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 100
Mr. Wright's Anna Karenina is different. It is risky and ambitious enough to count as an act of artistic hubris, and confident enough to triumph on its own slightly - wonderfully - crazy terms.- Posted Nov 15, 2012
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 100
For all its high-flying zaniness the movie has the sting of life, and its humor feels dredged up from the same dark, boggy place from which Samuel Beckett extracted his yuks.- Posted Nov 15, 2012
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 100
Bathed in the flamingo colors and Caribbean rhythms of its location, this deeply personal debut from the writer and director Mariette Monpierre develops with a lingering attention to sensation and sound.- Posted Nov 29, 2012
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 100
It is a work of obsessive artisanal discipline and unfettered artistic vision. You have never seen anything like it.- Posted Dec 12, 2012
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 100
Ms. Bigelow's direction here is unexpectedly stunning, at once bold and intimate: she has a genius for infusing even large-scale action set pieces with the human element.- Posted Dec 18, 2012
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- Posted Dec 18, 2012
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 100
Barbara is a film about the old Germany from one of the best directors working in the new: Christian Petzold. For more than a decade Mr. Petzold has been making his mark on the international cinema scene with smart, tense films that resemble psychological thrillers, but are distinguished by their strange story turns, moral thorns, visual beauty and filmmaking intelligence.- Posted Dec 20, 2012
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 100
Like "Inglourious Basterds," Django Unchained is crazily entertaining, brazenly irresponsible and also ethically serious in a way that is entirely consistent with its playfulness.- Posted Dec 26, 2012
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 100
A moving, intelligent and funny film about disasters that are commonplace to everyone except the people who experience them. Not since Robert Benton's "Kramer vs. Kramer" has there been a movie that so effectively catches the look, sound and temper of a particular kind of American existence.- Posted Feb 7, 2013
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 100
Every shot — everything you see, and everything you don’t — imparts a disturbing and thrilling sense of discovery.- Posted Feb 14, 2013
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 100
One may legitimately debate the validity of Malick's vision, but not, I think, his immense talent. Badlands is a most important and exciting film.- Posted Mar 3, 2013
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 100
Even as Mr. Mungiu maintains a detached, objective point of view, allowing the details of the story to speak for themselves, he also allows you to glimpse the complex and volatile inner lives of his characters.- Posted Mar 7, 2013
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 100
In Spring Breakers [Mr. Korine] bores into a contested, deeply American topic — the pursuit of happiness taken to nihilistic extremes — but turns his exploration into such a gonzo, outrageously funny party that it takes a while to appreciate that this is more of a horror film than a comedy.- Posted Mar 14, 2013
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 100
Like “The Shining” and its maze within a maze, Mr. Ascher’s movie is something of a labyrinth. Puzzling your way through its compilation of vaguely lucid and crackpot ideas is pleasurable though, for avid movie lovers, it may also feel like a warning.- Posted Mar 28, 2013
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Reviewed by
Nicolas Rapold 100
Mr. Nance turns his thought into a performance of vulnerability that’s all too relatable in its indulgences. It has heart without becoming cloying.- Posted Apr 25, 2013
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 100
In its time, this film represented the arrival of something new, and even now it can feel like a bulletin from the future.- Posted Apr 30, 2013
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 100
Life and death, nature and culture, sex and money, man and beast, God and the Devil — Post Tenebras Lux embraces the world even if it doesn’t open itself up to ready interpretation.- Posted Apr 30, 2013
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 100
What Maisie Knew lays waste to the comforting dogma that children are naturally resilient, and that our casual, unthinking cruelty to them can be answered by guilty and belated displays of affection. It accomplishes this not by means of melodrama, but by a mixture of understatement and thriller-worthy suspense.- Posted May 2, 2013
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 100
Stories We Tell has a number of transparent virtues, including its humor and formal design, although its most admirable quality is the deep sense of personal ethics that frames Ms. Polley’s filmmaking choices.- Posted May 9, 2013
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- Posted May 9, 2013
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 100
Everything depends on the subtlety of the direction and the charisma of the performances. Augustine is intellectually satisfying partly because it communicates its ideas at the level of feeling, through the uncanny power of Soko’s face and body.- Posted May 16, 2013
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 100
With its swift, jaunty rhythms and sharp, off-kilter jokes, Frances Ha is frequently delightful. Ms. Gerwig and Mr. Baumbach are nonetheless defiant partisans in the revolt against the tyranny of likability in popular culture.- Posted May 16, 2013
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Reviewed by
Andy Webster 100
You may not agree with every observation in Michael Singh’s documentary Valentino’s Ghost. But this engrossing examination of American perceptions of Arabs and the Arab world gets you thinking.- Posted May 16, 2013
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 100
Morally cunning and with a tone as black as pitch, Pieta, the 18th film from the South Korean director Kim Ki-duk, is a deeply unnerving revenge movie in which redemption is dangled like a cat toy before a cougar.- Posted May 16, 2013
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
The visual beauty of the film, rather than distracting from the troubling story, makes it more troubling still. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
You come away from his film overwhelmed, hopeful and, perhaps paradoxically, illuminated. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
Winter Sleepers has many such breathtaking moments in which sounds and images synergize with an explosive precision. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
In juxtaposing two extraordinary personal histories, it ponders in a refreshingly original way unanswerable questions about memory, imagination, history and that elusive thing we call truth. -
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 90
Though small in physical scope, Reservoir Dogs is immensely complicated in its structure, which for the most part works with breathtaking effect. [23 Oct 1992] -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
Scene by scene, The Rookie does a better job of capturing the rhythms and rituals of the playing field and the electricity that flows between a team and its fans than well-regarded baseball films like "Field of Dreams" and "The Natural." -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
Humorously and fondly, with an entertaining supply of what he has called "prosaic license," Stillman again displays a pitch-perfect ear for both the cattiness and the camaraderie that bind his characters into collective friendship. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
Brilliant, over-the-edge concert film Notorious C.H.O. carries candid sexual humor into previously uncharted territory. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Is, in the end, a boisterous love song -- a funny valentine to London, to chaos and to human decency. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
The raw intimacy of some of the scenes -- whether they take place at a diner, in the death house or in the bedroom -- is breathtaking. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
One of the most subtle and inspired comedies you'll see this year. -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 90
One of those films that create a mix of erudition, pageantry and delectable acting opportunities, much as "Shakespeare in Love." -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Documenting war is a small, partial but indispensable step toward its eventual eradication. Mr. Frei's quiet, engrossing film is a sad and stirring testimony to this vision and to the quiet, self-effacing heroism with which Mr. Nachtwey has pursued it. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
This dream of a movie is set in such a place; with its delicate shifts of tone, it could be a fairy tale by Faulkner -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
A refreshing movie that's so good natured, so confident of its ability to provoke not queasy awe or numb exhaustion but pure delight. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
Ms. Zellweger accomplishes the small miracle of making Bridget both entirely endearing and utterly real. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
Fastidious and smart, and Ms. Swinton's fixated intensity isn't ever remote; we're always aware of how deeply she's feeling. Her work is magnificent. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Every shot seems measured for maximum effect, and when the pace suddenly quickens in a late action sequence on a deserted subway train, it results in a moment of pure Hitchcockian panic that reverberates like thunder in the fretful, melancholy air. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
Smoothly directed and acted with glee... showing quick-witted comic spirit. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
She (Varda) plucks images and stories from the world around her, finding beauty and nourishment in lives and activities the world prefers to ignore. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
This movie operates in the limbo between memory and oblivion that we recognize as daily life. It bears courageous and stringent witness to the impossibility of bearing witness. -
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 90
A Grin Without a Cat is a work of extraordinary journalism, but it is also a work of deft and subtle poetry, visual (in the rhyming of gestures and shapes across images and sequences) as much as verbal. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
Ultimately lacks the epic dimension of "Y Tu Mamá También," but its vision of that awkward age when sex threatens to overwhelm everything else is acute enough to make everyone who has been there squirm with recognition. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
It tells a finely nuanced tale of right, wrong and the gray area in between. -
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 90
A strange and funny film, smart, complex and difficult to shake. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
Even better on a second viewing because the film is such a pure expression of the director's love for the music, a love so infectious it should leave you elated. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
The purity and breadth of this meticulous study are all the more gratifying in view of its unprepossessing style. -
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 90
A fine and loving memorial that preserves his charm, his intellect and his splendid body of work. -
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 90
Propelled by a captivating, wrenching performance by Karine Vanasse as Hanna, a 13-year-old girl adrift in a sea of powerful emotions in Montreal in 1963. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
It's not one of Kurosawa's great films.... But it is, within its own proportions, nearly perfect. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
An unexpected delight, a film that weds the humor and magic of a folk tale with a very modern feel for the psychological dynamics between men and women and for the subtle politics of male rivalry in a macho culture. It has been made and acted with intelligence and evident love, which deserves to be requited. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
Has enough going on to make it a classic. You'll want to own it. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
The concert scenes find the stage awash in such intense joy, camaraderie and nationalist pride that you become convinced that making music is a key to longevity and spiritual well-being. -
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 90
Mysterious, poetic and allusive, The Werckmeister Harmonies beckons filmgoers who complain of the vapidity of Hollywood movie making and yearn for a film to ponder and debate. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
If you have any affection at all for traditional American music, the movie itself -- is pretty close to heaven. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
The lovely clarity of this story, which seems to have been drawn from the literature of an earlier age, is well served by the artful subtlety of the telling. Mr. Majidi prefers imagery to exposition, and his shots are as dense with meaning, and as readily accessible, as Dutch paintings. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
Much more than a perfectly realized vignette about seduction. It is the latest and most powerful dispatch yet from Ms. Breillat, France's most impassioned correspondent covering the war between the sexes. -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 90
Eminently likable...a splendid performance from Alec Baldwin in a far cry from his usual roles. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Essential viewing for anyone who desires a sense of the finer human grain of a war that now commands the attention of the world as never before. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
What appears on the screen has a starkness that is almost indelible. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
One of the great movies of the 1960's, but it has been, in this country at least, maddeningly elusive. In spite of its bitter edge, Billy Liar is pure Ambrosia. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
As La Ciénaga perspires from the screen, it creates a vision of social malaise that feels paradoxically familiar and new. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Moves with fluidity and ease through brisk opening conventions to a perfectly poised and balanced endgame. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Its effects seem more like those of a poem or a piece of music than a movie. Requires the reverent darkness and communal solitude of a theater. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
You probably won't feel comfortable when Humanité is over, but as you leave the theater you will feel more alive than when you entered. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
Beautiful and heartfelt, an oasis of humanity in a season of furious hyperbole. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
When you get the shivers watching this wintry tale unfold, it won't be from the cold. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
Such an accomplished piece of filmmaking that it interweaves enough characters and themes to fill three movies. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
Even when it turns turbulent, the film sustains its warm summer glow, and makes itself a conversation piece about the moral issues it means to raise. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
The political implications of the film are manifest, as is the quiet courage of making it. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
It is, all in all, a rambunctious and inspired ride in which the Coen brothers' voracious fascination with the arcana of American popular culture and their whiz-kid inventiveness reach new heights of whimsy. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
One of the best entertainments this season has yet offered. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
Their comedy gives audiences that have never seen anything like it a hilarious window on a new world. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
So good it leaves you starved for more. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
Morris has fashioned a brilliant work of pulp fiction around this crime. [26 Aug 1988, p.C6] -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
Jerry Maguire is loaded with them: bright, funny, tender encounters between characters who seem so winningly warm and real. [13 December 1996, p.C-1] -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
This modest, enormously likable film, about love and temptation and ties that bind, is about brotherhood most of all. [9 August 1995, p.C9] -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
A narrative path leading from the sincere to the ludicrous, and culminating in a final image of flabbergasting transcendance, gives Breaking the Waves its surprising power. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
You are left with an overall impression of a movie so full of life that it is almost bursting at the seams. -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 90
When this hugely ambitious project began, it was a longitudinal study of class divisions among English schoolchildren. But time and persistence have turned it into much more. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
One of the juiciest male characters to pop up in an independent film this year. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
The masterstroke of this small, heartfelt directorial debut (by Peter Care, from a screenplay by Jeff Stockwell) is its integration of animated sequences (by Todd McFarlane) in which action-adventure caricatures of the comic book characters parallel or comment on events in the boys' lives. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
It proves to be one of the more exotic blooms in the Disney hothouse, what with voluptuous flora, hordes of fauna, charming characters and excitingly kinetic animation that gracefully incorporates computer-generated motion. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
Recoing's performance is a sensitive portrayal of a man in the throes of an excruciating spiritual crisis. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
A rueful, warmly affecting film featuring a wonderful performance by Mr. Troisi, The Postman would be attention-getting even without the sadness that overshadows it. [14 June 1995, p. C15] -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
This film has a conquering spirit. The dankness is replaced by an optimistic blast of sunlight at the end, a contrast to the earlier lighting dimmed with human misery. Mr. Frears blasts away the blight, though he doesn't have to work to restore Okwe's dignity. It shines through from the start. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
There hasn't been a film in years to use creative energy as efficiently as Monsters, Inc. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
What lifts the film above many other high-minded documentaries dealing with poverty and the welfare cycle is this filmmaker's astounding empathy for both Diane and Love. -
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Critic Score 90
Though it cannot regain the brash originality of ''Raiders of the Lost Ark,'' in its own way 'The Last Crusade' is nearly as good, matching its audience's wildest hopes. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
Who would have expected Ms. Zellweger --- and Miramax -- to come through in a musical? And it's one of the few Christmas entertainments to run under two hours. Who couldn't love that? -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
Gives you the steady pulse of life in a beautiful city viewed through the eyes of a character who, in spite of tragic loss and increasing decrepitude, knows in his bones that he is one of the luckiest men alive. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
One of the funniest, and most telling, films of the year. The filmmakers call "Kid" a documentary, but the movie is one of the unusual kind that is firmly lodged inside the subject's perspective. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
By allowing the stories to play off one another and allowing layers of meaning to accumulate before we even notice them, the filmmakers capture some of the essential strangeness of life -- the way our relations are governed by laws that remain invisible to us until art reveals their workings. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
Mr. Patwardhan has located so much information and found so many willing interview subjects that his War and Peace has a riveting intelligence all its own and earns its epic title. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
Mr. Peck's gambit works, and the result is a great film and a great performance. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
Offers the clearest analysis of globalization and its negative effects that I've ever seen on a movie or television screen. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
Never has a film so strongly been a product of a director's respect for its source. Mr. Jackson uses all his talents in the service of that reverence, creating a rare perfect mating of filmmaker and material. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
The movie is full of juices that give it a healthy, pungent flow. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
The film's strength is that it sustains an intimate and realistic tone. Mr. Fishburne, who is called upon to deliver several lectures, manages to do so with enormous dignity and grace, and makes Furious a compelling role model, someone on whom the whole film easily pivots. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Thrillingly smart, but not, like so many other pictures in this vein, merely an elaborate excuse for its own cleverness. As you puzzle over the intricacies of its shape, which reveal themselves only in retrospect, you may also find yourself surprised by the depth of its insights. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
Unfolds beautifully, with a rueful, knowing intelligence that rises above easy assumptions. [27 September 1996, p.C1] -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
It is the work of a master -- of more than one, for that matter. Mr. Godard, who once called it "my first real film," was showing the obsession with, and mastery of, cinematic technique that would make him one of the culture heroes of the 1960's. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
There is no denying that Amélie is, to paraphrase its title, fabulous. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Polanski, who was a Jewish child in Krakow when the Germans arrived in September 1939, presents Szpilman's story with bleak, acid humor and with a ruthless objectivity that encompasses both cynicism and compassion. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
In spite of its limited perspective on Vietnam, its churning, term-paperish exploration of Conrad and the near incoherence of its ending, (it) is a great movie. It grows richer and stranger with each viewing, and the restoration of scenes left in the cutting room two decades ago has only added to its sublimity. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
Stunning...a film much tougher and more transfixing than its wan title. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
So verbally dexterous and visually innovative that you can't absorb it unless you have all your wits about you. And even then, you may want to see it again to enjoy its subtle humor and warm humanity. -
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Critic Score 90
The French Connection is a film of almost incredible suspense, and it includes, among a great many chilling delights, the most brilliantly executed chase sequence I have ever seen. [8 October 1971] -
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 90
One of the most pleasant foreign films of the year, a funny, graceful and immensely good-natured work. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
This comic jigsaw puzzle is crammed with deliriously funny little bits. -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 90
Is still sleek, gripping entertainment with a raw-nerved, changeable camera style that helps to amplify its meaning. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
Doesn't try to cram messages of uplift down its audience's gullet. It's a great eggscape from banality. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
It's undeniably a trifle, but rarely is something like this done with such skill and, well, savoir-faire. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
The Coens have used the noir idiom to fashion a haunting, beautifully made movie that refers to nothing outside itself and that disperses like a vapor as soon as it's over. -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 90
Making sure that computer-generated animation will never be the same. -
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 90
No admirer of Mr. von Trier's work should miss this compelling rarity. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
Here the clinical, stopwatch precision of Mr. Tykwer's explorations of synchronicity and Kieslowski's warmer, metaphysically dreamy speculations about the role of chance and coincidence in human affairs synchronize into a film whose formal elegance is matched by its depth of feeling. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
There's more to everyone here than we're initially led to think. The Good Girl is like a neurotically charged post-millennial take on the trailer-park comedies that Jonathan Demme once claimed for himself. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
Sweet Sixteen shows that he's (Loach) as capable of anger as his protagonist and just as eager to draw attention to an unchanging problem: the blight of generational poverty. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
For all its exaggerated ordinariness, this film seems to start where others leave off. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
What makes the performance(s) even better is that Mr. Irons invests these bizarre, potentially freakish characters with so much intelligence and so much real feeling. [23 Sept 1988, p.C10] -
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 90
All sorts of macabre things have gone on, and are still going on just offscreen, in Jonahan Demme's swift, witty new suspence thriller.[14 February 1991] -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 90
Switching gears radically, bravely defying conventional wisdom about what it takes to excite moviegoers, Lynch presents the flip side of "Blue Velvet" and turns it into a supremely improbable triumph. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
Director Alfonso Cuarón works with a quicksilver fluidity, and the movie is fast, funny, unafraid of sexuality and finally devastating. -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 90
It weaves life and art into a rich tapestry of love, loss and compassion. -
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 90
As Lucy Honeychurch, Miss Bonham Carter gives a remarkably complex performance of a young woman who is simultaneously reasonable and romantic, generous and selfish, and timid right up to the point where she takes a heedless plunge into the unknown. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
It is easily the finest American comedy since David O. Russell's "Flirting With Disaster," another road movie that never ran out of poignantly funny surprises. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Metropolis retains its power to overwhelm, trouble and move because it is connected to the deep anxieties of modern life as if by a high-voltage cable. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
He's (Kingsley) pure violence, a sociopath who radiates menace even while sitting perfectly still mouthing pleasantries. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
Kubrick left one more brilliantly provocative tour de force as his epitaph. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
Paxton's Dad may be the most terrifying father to appear in a horror film since Jack Nicholson went crazily homicidal in "The Shining." -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
A nifty example of how to make something out of nothing. Nothing but imagination, and a game plan so enterprising it should elevate its creators to pinup status at film schools everywhere. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
It has taken only two films, "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and now Happiness, for Todd Solondz to establish his as one of the most lacerating, funny and distinctive voices in American film. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
Kirk Jones, who wrote and directed this blithe comedy, has been a prize-winning director of television commercials. And he has the knack of finding rubbery, expressive faces and letting each villager's quirks emerge on cue. -
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 90
Nothing Miss Close has done on the screen before approaches the richness and comic delicacy of her work as the Marquise. [21 Dec 1988, p.C22] -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
Witty, exquisitely fine-tuned screen adaptation of Nick Hornby's 1995 novel -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
The script's bare bones are familiar, yet the film also has fine acting, steady momentum, a sharp eye and a very warm heart. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
A handmade dream, cobbled together from dirt, wood and more imagination than most of us can muster in our most fevered states. Because this Czech master refuses to work in the scrubbed, antiseptic manner of most animators, this fable comes to life as hilarious and creepy. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Offers the kind of experience that makes you glad movies exist. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Mr. Ozon gives the movie to Ms. Rampling, whose performance is like a perfectly executed piano etude, finding precise, impossibly subtle shadings of pleasure, confusion and distress. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
Extremely enjoyable, though a few degrees shy of perfection. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
The level of accomplishment in the filmmaking is overwhelming. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Mr. Parker has brilliantly updated his source and grasped its essence, composing a sorrowful and hilarious tone poem about alienated labor, or an absurdist workplace sitcom, as if a team of French surrealists had been put in charge of "The Drew Carey Show." -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
The film they have put together is dense with sound and information, but it moves with a swift, lilting rhythm that is of a piece with the musical heritage it explores. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
Mr. Jarecki finds a way to show that denial and hope often grow from the same vine. Lives are built around the way they're harvested -- and this talented director has a feel for the soil. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
It's amazing to see a film so brazenly experimental, so committed to reflecting on the circumstances and techniques of its making, that is at the same time so intent upon delivering old-fashioned cinematic pleasures like humor and pathos, character and plot. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
Mr. Cage digs deep to find his character's inner demons while also capturing the riotous energy of his outward charm. [27 October 1995, p. C3] -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
There are times when The Shawshank Redemption comes dangerously close to sounding one of those "triumph of the spirit" notes. But most of it is eloquently restrained. [23 Sept 1994, p.C3] -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
(Spielberg) tells the story slowly and films it with lucid, mesmerizing objectivity, creating a mood as layered, dissonant and strange as John Williams's unusually restrained. modernist score. -
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 90
So entertaining, so flip and so genially irreverent that it seems to announce the return of the great gregarious film maker whose "Nashville" remains one of the classics of the 1970's. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
Not since "Y Tu Mamá También" has a movie so palpably captured the down-to-earth, flesh-and-blood reality of high-spirited people living their lives without self-consciousness. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
May be the first Hollywood movie since Robert Altman's "Nashville" to infuse epic cinematic form with jittery new rhythms and a fresh, acid- washed palette. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
Packed with revelations and withheld information that comes to life; it is like an old movie castle full of false fireplaces and trap doors. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
Fowler may be the richest character of Mr. Caine's screen career. Slipping into his skin with an effortless grace, this great English actor gives a performance of astonishing understatement whose tone wavers delicately between irony and sadness. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Like so many European pictures these days, Read My Lips seems destined to be remade in Hollywood, and it is unlikely to be improved by the addition of vainer actors, a simpler screenplay and flashier direction. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
At the end, when they have created a vibrant new theater program for their school, their sense of triumph is infectious. " 'Our Town' Is Ghetto!" one of them exults. Thornton Wilder, wherever he is, would understand and take it as a compliment. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
In an era whose culture was defined by what the literary critic Richard Poirier called the performing self, Mr. Ali's persona was one of the greatest performances of all. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
The playful spookiness of Mr. Jackson's direction provides a lively, light touch, a gesture that doesn't normally come to mind when Tolkien's name is mentioned. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
As the movie's frenetic visual rhythms and mood swings synchronize with the zany, adrenaline-fueled impulsiveness of its lost youth on the rampage, you may find yourself getting lost in this teeming netherworld. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
The anomalous proliferation of scenic beauty gives Mr. Nolan irony to play with, and he uses it spectacularly. The director and his gifted cinematographer, Wally Pfister, are clearly turned on by all this wasted beauty. -
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 90
If Mr. Ghobadi's dominant theme is the devastation of the Kurds, his subdominant tone is one of strength, resistance and fertility. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
To call The Son a masterpiece would be to insult its modesty. Like the homely, useful boxes Olivier teaches his prodigals to build, it is sturdy, durable and, in its downcast, unobtrusive way, miraculous. -
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 90
The real thing. It's a sneakily rude, truly zany farce that treats its lunatic characters with a solemnity that perfectly matches the way in which they see themselves. -
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 90
It seems to me that by describing horror with such elegance and beauty, Kubrick has created a very disorienting but human comedy, not warm and lovable, but a terrible sum- up of where the world is at... Because it refuses to use the emotions conventionally, demanding instead that we keep a constant, intellectual grip on things, it's a most unusual--and disorienting--movie experience. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
Elegant, festive and very, very funny. [9 March 1994, p. C15] -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 90
A landmark feat of Japanese animation from the acknowledged master of the genre. -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 90
If you don't share the film's piercing vision of what really matters, someday you will. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Like the great films of the 1930's and early 40's, it is at once artful and unpretentious, sophisticated and completely accessible, sure of its own authority and generous toward characters and audience alike -- a movie whose intended public is the human race. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
The most remarkable achievement of the film is its presentation of Lilya's story as both an archetypal case study and a personal drama whose spunky central character you come to care about so deeply that you want to cry out a warning at each step toward her ruination. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Enough drama, humor and unfiltered nail-biting suspense to put all the thrill-mongering screenwriters in Hollywood to shame. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
One of the few recent movies I have seen that plunged me into that rare, giddy state of pleasurable confusion, of not knowing what would happen next, which I associate with the reading and moviegoing experiences of my own childhood. But there is no reason that children should have a monopoly on this primal, wonderful experience. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
The picture is more fun than it has a right to be. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
The towering, lost dreaminess at the heart of the film is an unmistakable obsession of this director. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
So good because it is one of those rare documentaries that combine information with smashing entertainment. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 90
Ronin can be watched as appreciatively for its hard-boiled performances as for its visceral excitement. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Heist is a pleasure to watch, and the greatest pleasure is to watch Mr. Lindo and Mr. Hackman steal it. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
The cumulative effect is that of watching misspent lives disintegrate before your eyes. Ms. Miller's canny accomplishment is a triumph, giving the material weight and heart. This is one of the finest pictures of the year. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
The kind of movie that seduces you into becoming putty in its manipulative card-sharking hands and making you enjoy being taken in by its shameless contrivance. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
This is historical filmmaking without the balm of right-thinking ideology, either liberal or conservative. Gangs of New York is nearly a great movie. I suspect that, over time, it will make up the distance. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
Since her character wears no historical costumes and suffers from no debilitating ailment, it is likely that Ms. Curtis will be overlooked when Oscar season rolls around. This is a shame, since it is unlikely that any other actress this year will match the loose, energetic wit she brings to this delightful movie. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
The humor bubbling through Finding Nemo is so fresh, sure of itself and devoid of the cutesy, saccharine condescension that drips through so many family comedies that you have to wonder what it is about the Pixar technology that inspires the creators to be so endlessly inventive. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
A brilliant feat of rug-pulling, sure to delight fans of movies like "The Usual Suspects" and "Pi." -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 90
There is nothing quite like this movie, and I'm not altogether sure there is much more to it than its lovely peculiarity. But at a moment when so many films strive to be obvious and interchangeable as possible, it is gratifying to find one that is puzzling, subtle and handmade. -
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 90
A more concise and affecting summation of the Tibetan crisis would be hard to imagine. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 90
The sweet, solemn music of George Harrison, who died two years ago, has rarely sounded more majestic than in the sweeping performances of the enlarged star-studded band that gathered in London at Royal Albert Hall on Nov. 29 to commemorate his legacy. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 90
The movie's writer and director, Tom McCarthy, has such an appreciation for quiet that it occupies the same space as a character in this film, a delicate, thoughtful and often hilarious take on loneliness. -
