NATURAL BORN KILLERS is a horrible movie—the victims are made ludicrous and pathetic, so you’re supposed to cheer the killers on. (1998)

[MEAN STREETS] Scorsese’s atmosphere is without the baroque glamour of evil that makes THE THIRD MAN so ambiguous in its appeal. There’s nothing hokey here; it is a low, malign world Scorsese sees. (1973)

[TRADING PLACES] Landis must think that he’s achieving a mock-thirties formal style; for the first hour he italicizes each scene, fixing it in place as if he wanted us to take an inventory of every detail. (1983)

Michael Mann seems to have got a dose of Robert Bresson via Paul Schrader. (1981)

Films like PARALLAX and CONDOR don't merely not give you anything—they seem to take away from you. (1975)

THE STORY OF VERNON & IRENE CASTLE (1939) And there's another problem—Astaire and Rogers lose their giddy personalities and their romantic breeziness when they're playing husband and wife, and in a period picture (the First World War) at that.

[KAGEMUSHA] The film doesn't seem contemplative—just uninvolving and spiritless. The narrative line is woozy, and the big showpiece sequences...don't appear to grow out of the narrative; the narrative appears to be shaped to encompass the showpieces. (1981)

[NADINE] Kim Basinger doesn’t have star presence, and Jeff Bridges doesn’t have it here, either. (He no longer has the manic, boyish spontaneity the role calls for.) (1987)

[THE GODFATHER, PART II] Twice, I almost cried out at acts of violence that De Niro's Vito committed. I didn't look away from the images, as I sometimes do at routine action pictures. I wanted to see the worst; there is a powerful need to see it. (1974)

[GREYSTOKE] One other performer comes through. Andie MacDowell, an unconscionably beautiful American model turned actress, is a softly enticing Jane...It's an elegant romantic performance (even if she's dubbed). (1984)

It is a depressing fact that Americans tend to confuse morality and art (to the detriment of both), and that, among the educated, morality tends to mean social consciousness. (1961)

[GUNGA DIN] There was fresh air between the thrills and the gags, there was time for digressions and for the pleasure of seeing actors you knew horsing around. The picture made you feel good, as if you were singing along with it. (1981)

CHARADE (1963) A debonair macabre thriller-romantic, scary, satisfying. "How do you shave in there?" Audrey Hepburn asks, putting her finger up to the cleft in Cary Grant's chin. (She's trying to seduce a legend.)

Artists who aim at nobility may achieve something pretentious and overscaled, but their aim tells us something about the feeling and tone of American life that is not wholly to be deprecated. (1955)

Satyajit Ray's method is perhaps the most direct and least impaired by commercial strategems in the whole history of film. He does not invent dramatic devices, shortcuts to feelings. (1963)

[Travolta] has demonstrated a great flair in comedy and in dance sequences, a gift for cockiness, and a rare ability to let something emotionally naked show through. What he hasn't yet demonstrated is a core of strength. (1980)

Tina Turner is what Ken Russell has always needed in a performer: she starts at climax and keeps going. In TOMMY, her Acid Queen was like pure, concentrated acid sex—the high may have even gotten too high for some viewers, and scared them. (1975)

[CARRIE] Piper Laurie’s face is soft—she’s like a rosy Elizabeth Taylor—and you feel that the daughter is bound to her by ties of love and pain. This fundamentalist mother is powerful and sexy, yet she sees herself as a virgin damaged by sex. (1976)

Who in the audience, what creature that ever lived, felt he was loved enough? (1955)

Explaining madness is the most limiting and generally least convincing thing a movie can do. (1973)

I think that popular culture is something you pick up. It seeps into you. It’s in the environment. I’ve heard of people getting jobs as movie critics and then watching ten classics to get educated in movies. The whole thought makes me want to throw darts at them. (1992)

With BABY BOOM, the writer-producer Nancy Meyers and the writer-director Charles Shyer prove themselves the monarchs of Yup. This movie is about the feminist as darling, and it rattles along cheerily and empty-headedly. (1987)

THE STARS LOOK DOWN (1939) Carol Reed was only 33 when he made this film and he had not yet acquired the technical virtuosity of his later style...But this straightforward film is, in some ways, his finest.

Have people become so accustomed to the series idea from television viewing that they go to another Dirty Harry movie because it's a known quantity? (1977)

[DRAGONSLAYER] Ralph Richardson, who has been otherworldly for some years now and moves so airily that he barely seems to touch earth, is ideally cast. (1981)

[CROSS CREEK] The picture seems to be suffering from earthshine: everything is lighted to look holy, and whenever the score isn't shimmering and burnishing, nature is twittering. (1983)

Now that the studios are collapsing, the movie industry has finally recognized what everybody has been telling it for fifteen years—that big, expensive productions are insane, because the hits don't make enough to pay for the blockbuster flops. (1970)

We like to see Redford because he doesn't make false, actorish moves; his humor and energy go beyond his roles and comment on them, indicating a stronger character—a man hiding as a juvenile. (1969)

Hemingway was the virile great writer that the age of photojournalism needed; he and LIFE were made for each other, and they both knew it. He played literary lion; he lived his fantasy life in public, and became a celebrity-clown before it was fashionable. (1977)

THE EXILES (1961) This account of people lost in our midst was made over a period of several years by a dedicated group of young USC film school graduates...It justifies their faith, though it may not have repaid their investment.