|
10/10
|
85%
|
The Tree of Life (2011) |
"
The Tree of Life is astonishing in some spots, almost incoherent in others and if it doesn't frustrate you at least some of the time ... you're not paying attention."
—
NPR
Posted May 31, 2011
|
|
10/10
|
92%
|
Incendies (2011) |
"
The storytelling in Incendies strikes me as primal the way Greek tragedy is primal. Shattering. Cathartic. It is a breathtaking film."
—
NPR
Posted Apr 22, 2011
|
|
10/10
|
95%
|
The King's Speech (2010) |
"
Director Tom Hooper...could here be said to cross up underdog-biopic expectations in what amounts to a high-toned, elegantly upholstered buddy flick. "
—
NPR
Posted Nov 29, 2010
|
|
10/10
|
96%
|
The Social Network (2010) |
"
The Social Network is terrific entertainment - an unlikely thriller that makes business ethics, class distinctions and intellectual-property arguments sexy"
—
NPR
Posted Sep 30, 2010
|
|
9.6/10
|
94%
|
Slumdog Millionaire (2008) |
"
Romantic, action-packed and always held together by an intriguing social conscience, Slumdog Millionaire is a rapturous crowd pleaser."
—
NPR.org
Posted Nov 13, 2008
|
|
9.5/10
|
94%
|
The Dark Knight (2008) |
"
An explosively provocative [film]. ... Exhilaratingly straightforward action sequences matched by moral complexity of a sort not usually associated with comic-book movie franchises."
—
NPR.org
Posted Jul 17, 2008
|
|
9/10
|
88%
|
Rango (2011) |
"
Rango's not just a kiddie-flick (though it has enough silly slapstick to qualify as a pretty good one). It's a real movie lover's movie, conceived as a Blazing Saddles-like comic commentary on genre that's as back-lot savvy as it is light in the saddle."
—
NPR
Posted Mar 4, 2011
|
|
9/10
|
98%
|
Inside Job (2010) |
"
Clarity and efficiency may not be the sexiest of cinematic virtues, but in Inside Job ? Charles Ferguson's rip-roaring, Wall-Street-damning documentary about 2008's global financial meltdown ? they sure prove powerful tools."
—
NPR
Posted Oct 8, 2010
|
|
9/10
|
93%
|
The Tillman Story (2010) |
"
The Tillman Story is ferocious filmmaking, but it wouldn't have half the force it does if the director didn't also get at the complicated man Pat Tillman was ..."
—
NPR
Posted Aug 20, 2010
|
|
9/10
|
85%
|
A Single Man (2009) |
"
Wrenching and ravishing. ... An exquisite, almost sensual grief suffuses every frame."
—
NPR
Posted Dec 11, 2009
|
|
9/10
|
91%
|
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009) |
"
Daniels may be indulging in stunt casting, and slamming plot points home with sledgehammer subtlety, but the film's milieu and characters feel alarmingly real. And its story ends up packing an emotional wallop."
—
NPR
Posted Nov 5, 2009
|
|
9/10
|
94%
|
In the Loop (2009) |
"
Blistering satire ... scabrous laughs. And it's so easy to imagine that this really is how governments make earth-shaking decisions."
—
NPR.org
Posted Jul 24, 2009
|
|
9/10
|
97%
|
The Hurt Locker (2009) |
"
When it comes to getting an audience's attention, there's nothing quite like blowing up a major star within the first five minutes of a movie."
—
NPR.org
Posted Jun 25, 2009
|
|
9/10
|
95%
|
Star Trek (2009) |
"
The aim here is to court a new generation of fans without alienating the true believers speaking Klingon in the box-office lines."
—
NPR
Posted May 7, 2009
|
|
9/10
|
94%
|
Milk (2008) |
"
Penn is so engaging, physically loose and just plain smart in the title role, he's bound to top everyone's shortlist come awards time."
—
NPR
Posted Nov 26, 2008
|
|
9/10
|
96%
|
WALL-E (2008) |
"
Pixar's robot romance is crazily inventive, deliriously engaging and emotionally true."
—
NPR.org
Posted Jun 27, 2008
|
|
8.5/10
|
91%
|
The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos) (2010) |
"
Leaping around in time, Campanella uses the aftermath of [a] sadistic murder case to expose not just law-enforcement shortcomings but fault lines in Argentine society."
—
NPR
Posted Apr 16, 2010
|
|
8.5/10
|
91%
|
The Secret of Kells (2010) |
"
There's something kind of captivating about a film that's been painstakingly drawn to glorify the craft of illustration — and that's comfortable using retro techniques."
—
NPR
Posted Mar 5, 2010
|
|
8.5/10
|
90%
|
The Messenger (2009) |
"
Messengers with the worst possible message, they nonetheless manage to be human and alive .... In a film that itself bears sad tidings about the costs of war, that is an affirming, even an inspiring, gift."
—
NPR
Posted Nov 13, 2009
|
|
8.5/10
|
78%
|
12 (2007) |
"
The stories the jurors tell, of course, are different ... filled with arguments that reference local tensions and situations possessing a distinctly Chekhovian flavor."
—
NPR.org
Posted Mar 5, 2009
|
|
8.5/10
|
90%
|
Coraline (2009) |
"
Selick puts his real faith not in the gimmickry that Coraline's audiences will think they've shown up for, but in the stronger virtues that they'd likely view as old-fashioned: character, and story, and so on."
—
NPR.org
Posted Feb 6, 2009
|
|
8.5/10
|
73%
|
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008) |
"
[A]lmost more remarkable than Nick, Norah or their playlist ... is the quirky, melting-pot world Sollett creates around them: vibrant like New York, youthful like the stars, awkward like the characters they're playing..."
—
NPR
Posted Oct 3, 2008
|
|
8/10
|
93%
|
50/50 (2011) |
"
In other hands, Adam might well be hard to take. But as the comedy in 50/50 turns darker, Gordon-Levitt, who's maybe the most natural, least affected actor of his generation, makes prickly plenty engaging."
—
NPR
Posted Sep 30, 2011
|
|
8/10
|
91%
|
Point Blank (2011) |
"
Director Fred Cavayé has a reputation in France for getting the audience's pulse pounding, and in Point Blank, he does that while mixing in some intriguing social themes and character types that are usually outsiders to the genre."
—
NPR.org
Posted Jul 28, 2011
|
|
8/10
|
54%
|
Hesher (2011) |
"
Director Spencer Susser doesn't try to make Hesher anything other than a sociopath - a walking, profanity-spewing id - and to his credit, neither does Gordon-Levitt."
—
NPR
Posted May 12, 2011
|
|
8/10
|
71%
|
I Love You Phillip Morris (2010) |
"
[Both] stars prove to be enormous fun in a gay love story played straight in a thoroughly crooked context -a comic crooked context, mind you..."
—
NPR
Posted Dec 3, 2010
|
|
8/10
|
88%
|
Undertow (2010) |
"
Undertow, for all its narrative tricks, has been given the rhythm and texture of real life, as well as emotional undercurrents that are haunting."
—
NPR
Posted Nov 29, 2010
|
|
8/10
|
52%
|
White Wedding (2010) |
"
White Wedding is about connections, and it has the good sense to pull them together in a film that's sweet, inclusive and sunny."
—
NPR
Posted Sep 2, 2010
|
|
8/10
|
69%
|
The Girl Who Played with Fire (Flickan som lekte med elden) (2010) |
"
...the first picture's ferocity remains intact here, as do its fetishes regarding political corruption, sexual violence and the riveting [Noomi] Rapace..."
—
NPR
Posted Jul 9, 2010
|
|
8/10
|
81%
|
Despicable Me (2010) |
"
It's all thoroughly adorable, and with an overlay that's nearly as odd as Carell's accent: Despicable Me looks a lot like other computer-animated pictures..."
—
NPR.org
Posted Jul 9, 2010
|
|
8/10
|
80%
|
Cyrus (2010) |
"
...still had me guessing at the final fade, which is something I can't say about any other Hollywood comedy so far this year, and something I wish I could say more often."
—
NPR
Posted Jun 18, 2010
|
|
8/10
|
83%
|
Daddy Longlegs (2010) |
"
At first glance, the laughing, wisecracking, adventure-promoting dad in Daddy Longlegs seems like a parent any kid would love to have."
—
NPR
Posted May 14, 2010
|
|
8/10
|
98%
|
How to Train Your Dragon (2010) |
"
What gives [this] story emotional heft has to do with a different kind of dimension: a depth of feeling surrounding the Black Stallion-style bonding of boy and beast."
—
NPR
Posted Mar 26, 2010
|
|
8/10
|
81%
|
Disgrace (2008) |
"
Steve Jacobs' elegantly disturbing film follows the exploits - or, more accurately, the exploitations - of 52-year-old professor David Lurie, a dissolute aesthete whose erudition does little to mask grotesque character flaws."
—
NPR
Posted Sep 18, 2009
|
|
8/10
|
78%
|
Humpday (2009) |
"
The film ends up being about not just a really idiotic dare, but about the bounds of friendship and the bonds of marriage — and about much more besides."
—
NPR.org
Posted Jul 10, 2009
|
|
8/10
|
90%
|
Séraphine (2009) |
"
Yolande Moreau's Seraphine, all doughy and unreadable at first, lets you see how the passion that enriches her work might also upend her life."
—
NPR
Posted Jun 10, 2009
|
|
8/10
|
81%
|
Okuribito (Departures) (2009) |
"
Multiplexes are crowded with noisy summer films, from which Departures will represent a sophisticated and elegant departure."
—
NPR.org
Posted May 28, 2009
|
|
8/10
|
87%
|
Earth (Disneynature's Earth) (Planet Earth) (2009) |
"
When a subject is as big as all outdoors, the big screen has some advantages."
—
NPR
Posted Apr 22, 2009
|
|
8/10
|
90%
|
Every Little Step (2009) |
"
A briskly self-aware, thoroughly stage-struck portrait ... of a show that itself is a stage-struck theatrical portrait."
—
NPR
Posted Apr 16, 2009
|
|
8/10
|
94%
|
Sugar (2008) |
"
Scenes that would usually be mere setup ... become engaging in their own right. ... game and practice sequences have an easy authenticity from the start."
—
NPR
Posted Apr 9, 2009
|
|
8/10
|
92%
|
Frost/Nixon (2008) |
"
It wasn't really Frost who did Nixon in: It was Nixon's old nemesis, the TV camera — that unblinking eye, capturing every bead of perspiration, every nervous shift of posture ..."
—
NPR
Posted Dec 5, 2008
|
|
8/10
|
100%
|
Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2008) |
"
Without their guns, the men prove surprisingly helpless. And when a [mediator] tells them that if they want the women to stop treating them like children, they must behave responsibly, you sense a corner has been turned."
—
NPR.org
Posted Nov 7, 2008
|
|
8/10
|
69%
|
Synecdoche, New York (2008) |
"
As with nearly all the films Kaufman wrote before this one ... Synecdoche, New York is one heck of a head-trip."
—
NPR.org
Posted Oct 24, 2008
|
|
8/10
|
93%
|
Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) |
"
Poppy is upbeat — so relentlessly upbeat that it won't take long before you're wondering just how the director plans to wipe the smile off her face."
—
NPR
Posted Oct 9, 2008
|
|
8/10
|
88%
|
Boy A (2007) |
"
Carefully calibrated to explore the solitariness of a character who cannot let himself be known ... Turns Boy A's very particular story into a scary, universal and wrenching social statement."
—
NPR.org
Posted Jul 24, 2008
|
|
8/10
|
21%
|
The Doorman (2008) |
"
A brightly observant comedy of jet-set manners."
—
NPR.org
Posted Jul 17, 2008
|
|
7.0
|
76%
|
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2012) |
"
The film's bluntness doesn't diminish the power of the nature-versus-nurture questions Eva's asking herself. Or of Swinton's harrowing portrait of parental guilt."
—
NPR
Posted Dec 9, 2011
|
|
7.5
|
80%
|
Young Adult (2011) |
"
In a less acid romp, Mavis would learn life lessons in the final reel, but director Jason Reitman makes it a point not to let her off the hook. "
—
NPR
Posted Dec 9, 2011
|
|
7.5/10
|
74%
|
Mozart's Sister (2011) |
"
Gorgeous, with candlelit shots looking like old master paintings - a fine match for music that takes your breath away."
—
NPR
Posted Aug 18, 2011
|
|
70
|
73%
|
The Whistleblower (2011) |
"
It's a thriller sobering enough in its graphic portrayal of forced violence against women that it would be tough to watch if not for the controlled fury Weisz brings to her performance as a down-to-earth avenging angel."
—
NPR
Posted Aug 5, 2011
|
62%
——
97%
