From All Movie Guide: A Canterbury Tale is a marvelous film -- and don't worry, one doesn't need an appreciation for Geoffrey Chaucer to be able to enjoy it. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger have once again shown how it is possible to work magic in the cinema -- and as with all the best magic, figuring out how it works is pretty darn difficult. By all rights, Canterbury shouldn't be such an absorbing, engrossing and charming piece of work. The story wanders, starting out as one thing, becoming another, and ending a third. It's even structured in three distinct acts, which should make it feel rather stiff. But Canterbury is anything but stiff. It melts, it floats, it simmers, it soars -- and yet it always knows where it's going, even if the viewer isn't always quite so clear. Perhaps the secret to the film's success is that Powell and Pressburger are only tangentially concerned with the actual details of the plot; what they're really interested in is making the gentlest kind of propaganda film, a war fi...

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