|
4/4
|
99%
|
A Separation (2011) |
"
The film involves its audience in an unusually direct way, because although we can see the logic of everyone's position, our emotions often disagree."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Jan 26, 2012
|
|
4/4
|
80%
|
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2012) |
"
That the film works so brilliantly is a tribute in large part to the actors."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Jan 26, 2012
|
|
4/4
|
71%
|
Sorcerer (1977) |
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Jan 20, 2012
|
|
4/4
|
96%
|
Silent Souls (2011) |
"
This profound and immensely touching film in only 75 perfect minutes achieves the profundity of an epic."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Dec 8, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
100%
|
Kinyarwanda (2011) |
"
Each vignette adds to the mosaic. Characters from one turn up in another. Gradually a powerful outcome is arrived at."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Dec 1, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
80%
|
Shame (2011) |
"
This is a great act of filmmaking and acting. I don't believe I would be able to see it twice."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Dec 1, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
100%
|
Stagecoach (1939) |
"
Seen today, Stagecoach may not seem very original. That's because it influenced countless later movies in which a mixed bag of characters are thrown together by chance and forced to survive an ordeal."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Nov 24, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
94%
|
Hugo (2011) |
"
"Hugo" is unlike any other film Martin Scorsese has ever made, and yet possibly the closest to his heart: a big-budget, family epic in 3-D, and in some ways, a mirror of his own life."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Nov 22, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
90%
|
The Descendants (2011) |
"
We get vested in the lives of these characters. That's rare in a lot of movies. We come to understand how they think and care about what they decide."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Nov 17, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
89%
|
Into The Abyss (2011) |
"
I've long felt Herzog's personality is compelling and penetrating, and in evidence I could offer this film about Texans who are so different from the West German director."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Nov 10, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
89%
|
Il etait une fois le Havre, son port, ses navires () |
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Nov 4, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
78%
|
The Mill and the Cross (2011) |
"
If you see no more than the opening shots, you will never forget them."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Oct 20, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
100%
|
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari. (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) (1920) |
"
A case can be made that Caligari was the first true horror film."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Oct 7, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
92%
|
Take Shelter (2011) |
"
Here is a frightening thriller based not on special effects gimmicks but on a dread that seems quietly spreading in the land: that the good days are ending, and climate changes or other sinister forces will sweep away our safety."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Oct 6, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
94%
|
Moneyball (2011) |
"
A smart, intense and moving film that isn't so much about sports as about the war between intuition and statistics."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Sep 22, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
93%
|
Drive (2011) |
"
Here is still another illustration of the old Hollywood noir principle that a movie lives its life not through its hero, but within its shadows."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Sep 15, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
82%
|
Life, Above All (2011) |
"
"Life, Above All" earns the tears it inspires. The film is about deep human emotions, evoked with sympathy and love."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Sep 1, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
99%
|
The Interrupters (2011) |
"
It is difficult to imagine the effort, day after day for a year, of following this laborious, heroic and so often fruitless volunteer work."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Aug 10, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
86%
|
Terri (2011) |
"
Movies about high school misfits are common; this is an uncommon one."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Jul 21, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
91%
|
Tabloid (2011) |
"
As is often the case with Morris, we can never be sure what he thinks, only that he wants to baffle us with the impenetrable strangeness of reality."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Jul 14, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
98%
|
Bill Cunningham New York (2011) |
"
Here is a movie about a happy and nice man."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted May 19, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
75%
|
Putty Hill (2011) |
"
It looks closely, burrows deep, considers the way in which lives have become pointless and death therefore less meaningful."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Apr 15, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
77%
|
Trust (2011) |
"
It's easy to imagine how this story could have been exploited and dumbed down. It works instead with intelligence and sympathy."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Mar 31, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
88%
|
Rango (2011) |
"
"Rango" is some kind of a miracle: An animated comedy for smart moviegoers, wonderfully made, great to look at, wickedly satirical, and (gasp!) filmed in glorious 2-D."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Mar 2, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
90%
|
The Illusionist (L'illusionniste) (2010) |
"
"The Illusionist" represents the magically melancholy final act of Jacques Tati's career."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Jan 13, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
90%
|
My Dog Tulip (2010) |
"
It is told from and by an adult sensibility that understands loneliness, gratitude and the intense curiosity we feel for other lives, man and beast."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Jan 6, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
71%
|
Somewhere (2010) |
"
Coppola is a fascinating director. She sees, and we see exactly what she sees."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Dec 22, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
95%
|
The King's Speech (2010) |
"
If the British monarchy is good for nothing else, it's superb at producing the subjects of films."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Dec 16, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
93%
|
127 Hours (2010) |
"
From such harrowing beginnings, it's rather awesome what an entertaining film Danny Boyle has made with "127 Hours.""
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Nov 11, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
46%
|
Hereafter (2010) |
"
Clint Eastwood's Hereafter considers the idea of an afterlife with tenderness, beauty and a gentle tact."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Oct 19, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
98%
|
Inside Job (2010) |
"
An angry, well-argued documentary about how the American financial industry set out deliberately to defraud the ordinary American investor."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Oct 14, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
100%
|
Last Train Home (2010) |
"
Last Train Home suggests that the times they are a-changin'. The rulers of China may someday regret that they distributed the works of Marx so generously."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Oct 14, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
63%
|
Secretariat (2010) |
"
It is a great film about greatness, the story of the horse and the no less brave woman who had faith in him."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Oct 7, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
96%
|
The Social Network (2010) |
"
David Fincher's film has the rare quality of being not only as smart as its brilliant hero, but in the same way. It is cocksure, impatient, cold, exciting and instinctively perceptive."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Sep 29, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
71%
|
Never Let Me Go (2010) |
"
Never Let Me Go would have made a serious error in ramping up contrived melodrama toward some sort of science-fiction showdown. This is a movie about empathy."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Sep 23, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
66%
|
The American (2010) |
"
Here is a gripping film with the focus of a Japanese drama, an impenetrable character to equal Alain Delon's in Le Samourai, by Jean-Pierre Melville."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Sep 1, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
62%
|
Salt (2010) |
"
It's like a rebuke to all the lousy action movie directors who've been banging pots and pans together in our skulls. It winds your clock tight and the alarm doesn't go off for 100 minutes."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Jul 22, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
86%
|
Inception (2010) |
"
It's said that Christopher Nolan spent ten years writing his screenplay for Inception. That must have involved prodigious concentration, like playing blindfold chess while walking a tight-wire."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Jul 15, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
96%
|
Restrepo (2010) |
"
This is hard, hard duty. A 15-month tour. Our admiration for these men grows. Their jobs seem beyond conceiving. I cannot imagine a civilian thinking he could perform them."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Jul 1, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
80%
|
I Am Love (2010) |
"
Tilda Swinton is a daring actress who doesn't project emotions so much as embody them. I Am Love provides an ideal role for her, in that her actions speak instead of words."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Jun 24, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
94%
|
Winter's Bone (2010) |
"
There is a hazard of caricature here. Granik avoids it. Her film doesn't live above these people, but among them."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Jun 17, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
91%
|
The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos) (2010) |
"
Sometimes I watch a film unspool like a tape measure, and I can sense how far we are from the end. Sometimes my imagination is led to live right along with it."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Apr 22, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
94%
|
45365 (2009) |
"
The first shot tells us "45365 is the zip code of the town." In this achingly beautiful film, that zip code belongs to Sidney, Ohio, a handsome town of about 20,000 residents."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Mar 31, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
63%
|
Leaves of Grass (2010) |
"
Tim Blake Nelson's Leaves of Grass is some kind of sweet, wacky masterpiece. It takes all sorts of risks, including a dual role with Edward Norton playing twin brothers, and it pulls them off."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Mar 29, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
86%
|
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) |
"
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a compelling thriller to begin with, but it adds the rare quality of having a heroine more fascinating than the story."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Mar 18, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
52%
|
Green Zone (2010) |
"
Yes, the film is fiction, employs farfetched coincidences and improbably places one man at the center of all the action. It is a thriller, not a documentary."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Mar 11, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
86%
|
Red Riding Trilogy () |
"
This is the sort of undertaking the BBC excels at, and is approached in the United States only by ambitious cable TV series."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Mar 11, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
97%
|
A Prophet (Un prophete) (2010) |
"
The newcomer Rahim is an enigma. What is he thinking? I believe that's the quality Audiard wants. He's a newly poured man, and when the mold sets, it happens inside."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Mar 4, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
84%
|
The Ghost Writer (2010) |
"
Polanski at 76 provides a reminder of directors of the past who were raised on craft, not gimmicks, and depended on a deliberate rhythm of editing rather than mindless quick cutting."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Feb 25, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
90%
|
Fish Tank (2010) |
"
Arnold sees everything through Mia's eyes and never steps outside to explain things from any other point of view. She knows who the young girl is, and we are left to assume."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted Feb 4, 2010
|
