Depressing and gut-wrenching, but always powerful and gripping.

Like the best French cuisine, Ratatouille is ambitious and delightful.

The film owes much of its success to the inspired pairing of Fincher and Sorkin.

Sophisticated and universal yet deeply intimate, A Separation is an exquisitely conceived family drama that has the coiled power of a top-notch thriller.

Director Hayao Miyazaki treats his audience as imaginative and intelligent human beings, rather than catering to kids with rote displays of silliness, stunts and scares.

For a brutal black comedy about L.A. hitmen, Pulp Fiction bursts out of its binding with loopy delights. [14 Oct 1994]

Both a psychological portrait and an exciting action film.

At once futuristic, funny and fantastical.

This is a building-block movie: Its stand-out excellence becomes apparent only gradually.

As good as each individual movie is, the third film vaults the work into the stratosphere of classic movies. Key characters are enhanced, new civilizations visited and battles fought more intensely, while feelings and motivations are plumbed more deeply and movingly.

If Silver is superb, Irons is transcendent. As some forgotten comic once said of George Sanders: A grapefruit wouldn't dare squirt in his eye. [17 Oct 1990]

This is a great movie, but it needs a sales job because it's in Mandarin.

With flawless precision, the movie flows seamlessly between a virtual newsreel approach (to chronicle senseless, arbitrary atrocities on the people) and a slightly more direct narrative technique that characterized the film's three dominant characters - each one cast to perfection. [15 Dec 1993]

Sarah Polley's memoir is a poignant, funny and engrossing film, challenging our notions of memory and family mythology.

The Class is a deeply moving film about the challenges of educating children in a complex and often turbulent world.

A searingly intense and artful tale that grabs hold of the viewer from its jarring and wordless opening scenes and doesn't let go.

This installment, the best of the three, is everything a movie should be: hilarious, touching, exciting and clever.

Both a nostalgic throwback to the silent-picture era and an ultra-modern animated tale, the slyly humorous Triplets of Belleville is artful, engrossing and oddly touching.

The Queen is the kind of thought-provoking, well-written and savvy film that discerning filmgoers long for but rarely get.

This is a fascinating movie experience. [30 June 1989, Life, p.1D]

Blethyn is so astonishing that you forget you're seeing a performance.

Still mesmerizes on the strength of George C. Scott's chew-your-behind performance. [5 Nov. 1999, p.6E]

The Coen brothers have fashioned a wry and riveting hybrid of a drama, Western, crime thriller and action film that is as powerful and thought-provoking as it is genre-bending.

This grade-A sleeper sends you out with an unexpected smile. [25 Nov 1992]

The rawest, most sustained screen portrayal of 20th century combat.

Every so often a film gets under our skin with its haunting authenticity, reinforcing our faith in the wonderfully transporting power of cinematic storytelling. Winter's Bone is unquestionably that film.

This sleek adaptation of James Ellroy's dauntingly complex novel has the black-and-white tabloid soul of an old "Confidential" magazine.

The film now seems both mellowed and --thanks in part to the most vibrant-looking prints in its 22-year history -- revitalized.