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Vincent Canby, New York Times

1. The Piano 1993 Ms. Campion somehow suggests states of mind you've never before recognized on the screen. full review
2. Ethan Frome 1992 full review
3. Housesitter 1992 full review
4. Ladybugs 1992 full review
5. Reservoir Dogs 1992 A small, modestly budgeted crime movie of sometimes dazzling cinematic pyrotechnics and over-the- top dramatic energy. full review
6. Barton Fink 1991 It's an exhilarating original. full review
7. The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear 1991 The enthusiastic Zucker, Zucker & Abrahams style of movie parody is too rarely seen to prompt much head-shaking about gags that don't work. full review
8. Paris Is Burning 1991 full review
9. Slacker 1991 full review
10. Crazy People 1990 full review
11. Ghost Dad 1990 Unctuous, flat and phony, a farce that has the pace of a Broadway bus at rush hour. full review
12. The Grifters 1990 The Grifters is so good that one leaves the theater on a spellbound high. full review
13. Hardware 1990 full review
14. The Hunt for Red October 1990 full review
15. Mermaids 1990 Miss Ryder is so good, in fact, that "Mermaids" might have dared to be a tougher, more satisfying movie than the stylish sitcom it is. full review
16. Miller's Crossing 1990 Without much point at all. full review
17. The Russia House 1990 full review
18. Tremors 1990 full review
19. The Dream Team 1989 full review
20. Erik The Viking 1989 Doesn't measure up to the best of the Python films, but it consistently entertains through the occasional gags that do not work and dialogue that is sometimes obscured by sound effects. full review
21. Harlem Nights 1989 full review
22. My Left Foot 1989 An intelligent, beautifully acted adaptation of Christy Brown's first book. full review
23. Pet Sematary 1989 full review
24. The Accused 1988 full review
25. Biloxi Blues 1988 With superb performances by Mr. Broderick and Christopher Walken, who plays Mr. Simon's nearly unhinged, very funny variation on the drill sergeant of movie myth, ''Biloxi Blues'' has a fully satisfying lif...[ END HERE ] of its own full review
26. Coming to America 1988 A screenplay that seems to have escaped its doctors before it was entirely well. full review
27. A Fish Called Wanda 1988 It's not easy to describe the movie's accumulating dimness or to understand what went wrong. full review
28. Rain Man 1988 Its end effect depends largely on one's susceptibility to the sight of an actor acting nonstop and extremely well, but to no particularly urgent dramatic purpose. full review
29. Scrooged 1988 In spite of the jokes at the expense of television-network censors, there's very little in the film, aside from naughty words, that wouldn't be perfectly acceptable on prime-time television. full review
30. Talk Radio 1988 Talk Radio...is a nearly perfect example of how not to make a movie of a play. full review
31. Black Widow 1987 full review
32. Dirty Dancing 1987 Dirty Dancing works best when it's most direct and unpretentious. full review
33. The Karate Kid Part II 1987 full review
34. The Last Emperor 1987 The Last Emperor is like an elegant travel brochure. It piques the curiosity. One wants to go. Ultimately it's a let-down. full review
35. No Way Out 1987 It's so effective, in fact, that when it's all over, you might want to sit through the beginning again just to see if the end is justified by the means. I suspect that it is. full review
36. Raising Arizona 1987 Like Blood Simple, it's full of technical expertise but has no life of its own. full review
37. The Untouchables 1987 It's vulgar, violent, funny and sometimes breathtakingly beautiful. full review
38. Black Moon Rising 1986 Like a stolen car, it moves pretty fast, if erratically. full review
39. Crimes of the Heart 1986 [It] has the dubious distinction of calling attention to just about everything the play isn't, and was never meant to be. full review
40. F/X 1986 The film is as much a demonstration of various kinds of special effects as it is about them. full review
41. The Manhattan Project 1986 full review
42. Mona Lisa 1986 It's like watching the departure of an ocean liner. After all of the initial excitement, you're left on the dock, alone, wondering what all the fuss was about. full review
43. A Room With A View 1986 A Room With a View is not only uncharacteristically benign for Forster, but also blithely, elegantly funny, which is a fit description of [this]first-rate film adaptation... full review
44. Sherman's March 1986 full review
45. Working Girls 1986 full review
46. The Boys Next Door 1985 full review
47. Remo Williams - The Adventure Begins 1985 full review
48. Teen Wolf 1985 full review
49. Witness 1985 It's pretty to look at and it contains a number of good performances, but there is something exhausting about its neat balancing of opposing manners and values. full review
50. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension 1984 Buckaroo Banzai may well turn out to be a pilot film for other theatrical features, though this one would be hard to top for pure, nutty fun. full review
51. Conan the Destroyer 1984 full review
52. The Black Stallion Returns 1983 full review
53. Doctor Detroit 1983 full review
54. Lone Wolf McQuade 1983 full review
55. Monty Python's The Meaning of Life 1983 full review
56. Tank 1983 full review
57. To Be or Not to Be 1983 full review
58. The Border 1982 full review
59. Frances 1982 full review
60. The Man from Snowy River 1982 full review
61. The Secret of NIMH 1982 The story manages to be sentimental without being especially moving. full review
62. The Thing 1982 Mr. Carpenter has demonstrated that he can make good, comparatively plain, old-fashioned scare movies and effective suspense thrillers, but he seems to lose his own head when he combines two or more genres, as he [does here]. full review
63. Zapped! 1982 A half-baked, rather retarded parody of Carrie and a number of other films that, using the awesome power of their ignorance, drove telekinesis into the ground. full review
64. The Dogs of War 1981 Mr. Walken is unusually convincing in a difficult, hermetic kind of role. full review
65. Eyewitness 1981 A thoroughly delightful but far from plausible mystery melodrama that operates exclusively on high spirits and a no-nonsense intelligence that is never sidetracked by coherence. full review
66. The Fox and the Hound 1981 This is a pretty, relentlessly cheery, old-fashioned sort of Disney cartoon feature, chock-full of bouncy songs of an upbeatness that is stickier than Krazy-Glue and played by animals more anthropomorphic than the humans that occasionally appear. full review
67. Raggedy Man 1981 full review
68. Reds 1981 Reds is an extremely fine film. full review
69. Saturday the 14th 1981 full review
70. Taps 1981 full review
71. Time Bandits 1981 A cheerfully irreverent lark -- part fairy tale, part science fiction and part comedy. full review
72. True Confessions 1981 Quite simply it's one of the most entertaining, most intelligent and most thoroughly satisfying commercial American films in a very long time. full review
73. The Final Countdown 1980 The special effects are funnier than, I suspect, they were intended to be. full review
74. Hangar 18 1980 full review
75. Hopscotch 1980 full review
76. Nine to Five (9 to 5) 1980 It's clearly a movie that began as someone's bright idea, which then went into production before anyone had time to give it a well-defined personality. full review
77. Ordinary People 1980 A moving, intelligent and funny film about disasters that are commonplace to everyone except the people who experience them. full review
78. Popeye 1980 A thoroughly charming, immensely appealing mess of a movie, often high-spirited and witty, occasionally pretentious and flat, sometimes robustly funny and frequently unintelligible. full review
79. Slap Shot 1980 Slap Shot has a kind of vitality to it that overwhelms most of the questions relating to consistency of character and point of view. full review
80. Escape from Alcatraz 1979 What Mr. Siegel has made is fiction, a first-rate action movie that is about the need and the decision to take action, as well as the action itself. full review
81. Manhattan 1979 Mr. Allen's progress as one of our major filmmakers is proceeding so rapidly that we who watch him have to pause occasionally to catch our breath. full review
82. The Muppet Movie 1979 There's always room in movies for unbridled amiability when it's governed by intelligence and wit. full review
83. Murder by Decree 1979 full review
84. The Tempest 1979 full review
85. Blue Collar 1978 full review
86. Convoy 1978 A bad joke that backfires on the director. full review
87. The Last Remake of Beau Geste 1977 full review
88. The Rescuers 1977 Efficiently short, charming, mildly scary in unimportant ways, and occasionally very funny. full review
89. The Bad News Bears 1976 [Ritchie] keeps the sentimentality in check most of the time and obtains first-rate performers from his miniature cast all of the time. full review
90. Car Wash 1976 A cheerful, somewhat vulgar, very cleverly executed comedy... full review
91. King Kong 1976 full review
92. Swashbuckler 1976 full review
93. The Great Waldo Pepper 1975 full review
94. Airport 1975 1974 full review
95. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz 1974 An alternately sad and hilarious movie of dreams rampant. full review
96. Chinatown 1974 A new private-eye melodrama that celebrates not only a time and a place (Los Angeles) but also a kind of criminality that to us jaded souls today appears to be nothing worse than an eccentric form of legitimate private enterprise.
97. The Great Gatsby 1974 The movie can't see this through all its giant closeups of pretty knees and dancing feet. It's frivolous without being much fun. full review
98. Charley Varrick 1973 full review
99. The Day of the Jackal 1973 The details are minutely observed and, to me, just a bit boring. full review
100. The Long Goodbye 1973 [Altman] attempts the impossible and pulls it off. full review
101. The Paper Chase 1973 By the end it has melted into a blob of cliches. full review
102. Serpico 1973 A remarkable record of one man's rebellion against the sort of sleaziness and second-rateness that has affected so much American life, from the ingredients of its hamburgers to the ethics of its civil servants and politicians. full review
103. Tales That Witness Madness 1973 full review
104. Frogs 1972 full review
105. Slaughterhouse Five 1972 full review
106. Ulzana's Raid 1972 full review
107. The Beguiled 1971 full review
108. Minnie and Moskowitz 1971 The fact is that although I admired specific things about the film, I never laughed very much and only felt slight, distant tremors of the joy that, I assume, rocked everyone connected with the movie during its production. full review
109. The Nightcomers 1971 full review
110. Sometimes a Great Notion (Never Give an Inch) 1971 Surprisingly effective. full review
111. They Might Be Giants 1971 full review
112. The Trojan Women 1971 full review
113. Airport 1970 full review
114. Love Story 1970 The only really depressing thing about Love Story is the thought of all of the terrible imitations that will inevitably follow it. full review
115. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes 1970 The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is comparatively mild Billy Wilder and rather daring Sherlock Holmes, not a perfect mix, perhaps, but a fond and entertaining one. full review
116. Battle of Britain 1969 full review
117. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969 Very funny in a strictly contemporary way-the last exuberant word on movies about the men of the mythic American West who have outlived their day. full review
118. Midnight Cowboy 1969 It is ultimately a moving experience that captures the quality of a time and a place. It's not a movie for the ages, but, having seen it, you won't ever again feel detached as you walk down West 42nd Street.
119. True Grit 1969 A marvelously rambling frontier fable packed with extraordinary incidents, amazing encounters, noble characters, and virtuous rewards. full review