Category: the classics
-

Crashing and Burning in ‘Showing Up’ and ‘Fast X’
New Kelly Reichardt and ‘Fast and Furious’ nonsense.
-

You Feel Like You Could Watch ‘Unzipped’ Forever
On one of the great fashion documentaries.
-

Paul Newman Gives One of His Best Performances in ‘The Verdict’
The intensity of ‘The Verdict’ reverberates even more because its quest for justice, if everything goes right, doubles as a type of salvation for its lawyer protagonist.
-

‘Love Letters” Bad Romance
The movie, featuring one of Jamie Lee Curtis’ best performances, is like a yellow-paged romance potboiler with the emotional dishonesty taken out.
-

Though Minor in Stature, ‘A Very Natural Thing’ Feels Major
‘A Very Natural Thing”s quality is near equal to its importance.
-

Love Games
On ‘Love & Basketball’ and ‘Disappearing Acts’
-

‘Skinamarink’ Makes You Feel Like a Little Kid Again
‘Skinamarink’ taps into a child’s fear of the dark — and the monsters maybe lurking with it — with chilling clarity.
-

The Cautious Optimism of ‘The Big City’
‘The Big City’ is blunt about the professional and personal difficulties that come with shifting tides.
-

Overnight Successes and Falls from Grace in ‘Babylon’
‘Babylon’ intoxicatingly — if exaggeratedly and not always accurately — evokes the sugar-rush quality of silent moviemaking and the behind-the-scenes dramas surrounding them.
-

‘À Nos Amours’ is One of the Great Coming-of-Age Movies
Where other directors might moralize or condescendingly diagnose, Maurice Pialat delicately and sensitively handles the emotional complications of a teenage girl’s budding sex life.
-

The Quiet Menace of ‘La Cérémonie’
Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert make for an unsettling pair in Claude Chabrol’s excellent psychological thriller.
-

‘The Fabelmans’ is One of the Year’s Best Movies
‘The Fabelmans’ is, among other things, a sublime love letter to the joys of filmmaking.