There are epic impulses everywhere you look in There Will Be Blood; what's missing is character development, focused storytelling and, most significantly (apart from that terrific opening sequence), any sense of raw, intuitive drama.

You can talk film theory till you're blue in the face, but in the end, the thing that may haunt you most about a movie is a pair of eyes.

Oldboy makes us feel a part of something bigger than ourselves. It's a grand, gritty, indelible experience, the sort of picture that mimics great literature in the way it envelops you in a well-told story while also evoking subtle but strong gradations of emotion.

Monster is a compassionate picture without any obvious agenda. And it's effective precisely because it's not a polemic.

I can't remember ever feeling so glad that a movie was finally over. [Director George] Lucas may have held my imagination hostage for two hours, but reclaiming it afterward wasn't hard at all.

There are epic impulses everywhere you look in There Will Be Blood; what's missing is character development, focused storytelling and, most significantly (apart from that terrific opening sequence), any sense of raw, intuitive drama.

While "9 Songs" is sexually explicit in the basic sense, its directness is what's most fascinating, and ultimately most moving, about it.