Emblematizes De Palma's refusal to take Hollywood seriously.

Resembles Crumb in its depiction of damaged souls whose only refuge is art.

Plain-good storytelling: rigorous acting, handheld urgency, and editing prowess render the whiff of manipulation moot.

There's a casual informality to Pollack's documentary technique....results are semi-revealing.

In the film's best scene, Roth interrogates Lange about potatoes. Unfortunately such moments are rare.

A buffoonish but bitter social satire that runs to classical depths, Seduced and Abandoned takes no prisoners for society's misogynistic crimes in the name of familial honor.

In his laughing-outlaw way, Hooper pointed a new direction for horror cinema. [2-Disc Ultimate Edition Reviewed]

A painfully protracted muddle of dull deals and somnambulent standoffs.

Sprinkled comments provide enough intellectual provocation to begin debate, but the main course is Koko's wide-ranging behavior.

By Columbo's fifth season, the character was firmly established....every detail contributed delicious eccentricity to a character as unpredictable to criminals as the proverbial curious cat.

The writers deserve credit for continuing to whip up entertaining iterations on the Monk formula.

May prove to be the feel-good movie of the year...the only problem is that we can't enjoy the live performances in their entirety.

Haneke's exploration of willful ignorance, guilt, and history takes hold, and doesn't quite let go when the lights come up.

As usual, Antonioni's pace is langorous, but The Passenger is never less than compelling.

Miraculously fresh after seven seasons on the air, Frasier continued to spin complicated farcical situations and....expertly brought the Daphne-Niles relationship to a boil.

Arguably, the more satisfying elements of the series were its miniaturized sitcom elements, which in their way did The Bob Newhart Show one better in their low-key, true-to-life ramblings.

Served up a solid-gold sitcom character in Silvers' conniving Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko.

The alpha sitcom of the fifties and forever more, I Love Lucy went out, without ceremony, at the top of the ratings heap.

It's bad news when a Bruckheimer movie makes one downright nostalgic for The Rock...

Late Spring exemplifies Ozu's rich, mature style, an apparent stylelessness of patient, lifelike rhythms, unobtrusive camerawork, and credibly subtle performances.

Wenders bops around Tokyo with the assurance of a skilled filmmaker, and emerges with an understated but certainly curious sociological postcard of '80s Tokyo.

The sixth season proved there was still life in the now-classic sitcom...[and] Knotts shows up in an Emmy-winning return appearance.

[The] soft-glowing facade always seems more real to Ivory than harsh reality...represent[s] our own attempts to stave off reality with the romantic projections of cinema.

The appeal of Schultz's pop philosophy hasn't faded in forty years: this kind of sincerity can't be faked.

The collaborationist anti-hero finds Malle instantly broaching a cultural taboo, compounded when the traitorous young man forces himself into a sexual relationship with a not-entirely unyielding girl named France.

In all their messiness, here are love, sex, society, and family, met with cleansing laughter.

As Parker and Stone see it, you can't laugh without first dropping your jaw.

The sympathy toward the obvious evil of a contract killer never flies...Still, the clever central gimmick and a streak of sly humor lift [the] film, just barely, a cut above.

Thorough skewerings of celebrity foibles and fearless campaigns on taboo subjects.

A character plans out a 42-hour-and-11 minute journey accompanied by a 16-CD soundtrack....Elizabethtown feels every bit as long and music-saturated...

Keaton's Columbia shorts inspire a certain amount of sympathy and ruefulness at a star's misuse, but also inspiration as Keaton occasionally spins gold out of chaff.

With intelligence and style (inspired by the art of Gustave Doré and Francisco Solé), Polanski makes a rewarding contribution to Dickens' legacy on screen.

[Renoir's] expertise behind the camera--and his driving curiosity for human constructs and human nature...elevate La bete humaine to an unforgettable filmic experience.

Sincere performances--under the director's sympathetic eye--allow humanity to overshadow the machinery of plot.

In the callused hands of director David Mackenzie...the rigorously tough-minded Asylum lives up to its potential as a modern masterpiece of psychological terror.

Howard's work as Djay is sort of dazzling, but his character's unrelentingly selfish behavior makes audience identification an uphill battle.

A bit of a sprightly-tragic mess, but if one doesn't try to sum up its parts, it's plenty entertaining in a nostalgic, old-movie way.

So good-natured and well-intentioned (showcasing as it does up-and-coming Latino bands) that it's tempting to overlook its significant narrative flaws.

Rhyming narration and highly-stylized disproportionate designs distinguished the theatrical cartoon[s]....colorful divertissements for kids.

A startlingly relevant 'social problem film' (shakai-mono)--of its time and our own--and an existential melodrama by way of Hamlet.

Pierre Salvadori's consistently engaging Après vous... begins with an interesting situation and complicates it into delightfully excruciating farce.

From whence comes a filmmaker as original and strange as David Lynch?

Unprecedented nonsense that--fashions aside--will remain timeless comedy cinema. [new DVD review]

Stands out for its sheer audacity of subject matter and its sustained emotional-roller-coaster effect: it's quite possibly the most high-strung movie ever made.

An unusual and rich blend of epic film and memory play.

The film's ambition makes Burnett's occasional overstatement easy to forgive.