Fresh
| Fresh 72%
| Monsters vs. Aliens (2009) | "
The multilayered picture tends to have a gently immersive effect, akin to a stroll through the world's most expensive diorama." — Slate Posted Mar 26, 2009 |
Fresh 3/6
| Fresh 94%
| Gone Baby Gone (2007) | "
Flawed but impressive." — Time Out Posted Jun 5, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 82%
| The Legend of Drunken Master (1994) | "
Chan has always seemed like a silent-screen virtuoso self-catapulted into modern times." — Village Voice Posted Apr 15, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 76%
| The Puffy Chair (2006) | "
When everyone finally shuts up, the silence is startling." — Time Out Posted Apr 27, 2007 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 84%
| Old Joy (2006) | "
Such watchful reticence takes a bold, confident filmmaker." — Time Out Posted Jan 26, 2007 |
Fresh
| Fresh 87%
| Notes on a Scandal (2006) | "
Bill Nighy is stunning in the small but pivotal role of Sheba's devastated husband, and Dench locates the desperate pathos in Barbara's malevolence." — Time Out Posted Jan 25, 2007 |
Fresh
| Fresh 88%
| Who Killed The Electric Car? (2006) | "
Paine is preaching to the choir, but the sermon should be heard nonetheless." — Time Out Posted Aug 3, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 78%
| Fanfan La Tulipe (1952) | "
Cahiers-savvy cinephiles will recognize Fanfan as the type of handsome prestige production that the French New Wave overthrew in the early '60s, but this example of the 'cinéma de qualité' is hardly a musty artifact." — Village Voice Posted Jul 18, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Metropolitan (1990) | "
None of Stillman’s endearing characters quite fits their prescribed social context, and in its exhilarated final movement, Metropolitan finds an exit out of the stifling UHB salon." — Time Out Posted Jun 24, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 84%
| Mean Girls (2004) | "
Happily, Fey and Waters gently tweak the studios’ usual high-gloss caricature of adolescence and aim for acutely hilarious and surprisingly empathic sociology." — Time Out Posted Jun 24, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 87%
| Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005) | "
The film holds few surprises, though it builds a remarkable level of suspense during the fait-accompli interrogation scenes, and is a well-intended commemoration of a courageous young woman." — Time Out Posted Jun 24, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 73%
| War of the Worlds (2005) | "
The film succeeds as pure sensation, an exacting distillation of fear." — Time Out Posted Jun 24, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Anatomy of a Murder (1959) | "
Coolly absorbing, nonchalantly cynical." — Time Out Posted Jun 24, 2006 |
Fresh
| N/A | Animals and More Animals (1994) | "
Philibert is most enamored of the museum's vast collection of unheimlich mammalian heads and grants them many a haunting close-up." — Village Voice Posted Jun 6, 2006 |
Fresh
| N/A | Ice/Sea (2005) | "
Fun and free-associative, the movie ventures to Rio, Miami, Montpellier, the Dead and Black seas, and elsewhere, keeping a visual diary of lumpy beach bods, boardwalk architecture, and celebrity sightings..." — Village Voice Posted Jun 6, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 70%
| Friends With Money (2006) | "
As a creator of characters, Holofcener has strong instincts for emblematic situations and telling habits, yet she takes a reticent approach to development -- she observes her subjects closely, but doesn’t necessarily interpret." — Time Out Posted May 25, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Shakespeare Behind Bars (2006) | "
Albeit a tad repetitive, Shakespeare Behind Bars succeeds in humanizing men we might too easily label as monsters, and provides a solid argument in favor of prisons that place rehabilitation above retribution." — L.A. Weekly Posted May 11, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 88%
| The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2006) | "
The documentary holds no illusions about insanity as a career move; there's a whiff of the freak show in Johnston's latter-day concerts but never in Feuerzeig's approach." — Village Voice Posted Mar 28, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 87%
| The Beauty Academy of Kabul (2006) | "
The movie carefully obscures its attitude toward these stunning Samaritans, or so it would seem." — Village Voice Posted Mar 21, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 68%
| Mardi Gras: Made in China (2005) | "
This sly, engrossing doc is an expert riposte to smug proponents of the fetterless free market." — Village Voice Posted Mar 21, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 76%
| Joyeux Noël (2006) | "
Carion is no Jean Renoir, but he does strike an appealingly low key of tender, faintly goofy affinity between the combatants." — Village Voice Posted Feb 28, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 81%
| Tsotsi (2006) | "
That the story can be so easily transposed to the post-apartheid present day is one of the movie's saddest inferences." — Village Voice Posted Feb 21, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 72%
| Primer (2004) | "
This film imagines its viewers to be smart, possessed of a decent attention span and game for a challenge. It doesn’t happen all that often." — Time Out Posted Feb 9, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 96%
| Kiss Me Deadly (1955) | "
A crucial influence on what would become the French new wave, an irresistibly seedy trip through the Los Angeles underworld, and a valuable artifact of Cold War anxiety." — Time Out Posted Feb 9, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 88%
| X2: X-Men United (2003) | "
The emotional spectrum has widened, too, encompassing buoyant mirth and heroic tragedy." — Time Out Posted Feb 9, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 98%
| Raging Bull (1980) | "
This film does more than make you think about masculinity, it makes you see it -- in a way that's relevant to all men, not just Bronx boxers." — Time Out Posted Feb 9, 2006 |
Fresh
| Rotten 38%
| A Good Woman (2005) | "
This Good Woman is an amiable drama queen, sluggish of gait and reliant on retail therapy." — Village Voice Posted Jan 31, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) | "
Works marvel after marvel in expressing the bewildering beauty and existential horror of being trapped inside one's own addled mind, and in allegorising the self-preserving amnesia of a broken but hopeful heart." — Time Out Posted Jan 26, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 85%
| Pride and Prejudice (2005) | "
Director Joe Wright also coordinates a delightfully cohesive acting ensemble." — Village Voice Posted Nov 8, 2005 |
Fresh
| Fresh 76%
| Occupation: Dreamland (2005) | "
Without resorting to the steroid-pumped aggro flash of Gunner Palace, Occupation: Dreamland reinforces the impression that the American rodeo in Iraq was always a murderously pointless self-security op." — L.A. Weekly Posted Oct 13, 2005 |
Fresh
| Rotten 59%
| Oliver Twist (2005) | "
The quality of mercy is strained, but by some strange feat it doesn't dissolve entirely." — Village Voice Posted Sep 20, 2005 |
Fresh
| Fresh 70%
| Thumbsucker (2005) | "
Endearing and well-acted." — Village Voice Posted Sep 13, 2005 |
Fresh
| Fresh 66%
| Bride and Prejudice (2005) | "
Every so often, the unseen managers of the galaxy bestow on us mere mortals a vision of rare incongruous beauty: a solar eclipse, a streaking comet, a shooting star, Bollywood goddess Aishwarya Rai happily riding a tractor." — Village Voice Posted Aug 19, 2005 |
Fresh
| Fresh 87%
| Broken Flowers (2005) | "
A Jarmuschian bouquet of episodic structure, desultory road-tripping, and droll dislocation, each comic setup as simple and plywood-dry a contraption as ever." — Village Voice Posted Aug 2, 2005 |
Fresh
| Fresh 74%
| Wedding Crashers (2005) | "
Amiable and hollow." — Village Voice Posted Jul 12, 2005 |
Fresh
| Fresh 83%
| Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) | "
The film conjures a heightened reality where characters verbalize their thoughts, desires, and impulses without submitting them to the usual filters first; July takes in their foibles unblinkingly and folds them into an awkward, heartfelt embrace." — Village Voice Posted Jun 14, 2005 |
Fresh
| Fresh 77%
| Or (My Treasure) (2005) | "
With a cool head and level gaze, Keren Ye-daya's stark first feature attempts a Bressonian trajectory of tragic inevitability." — Village Voice Posted May 31, 2005 |
Fresh
| Fresh 95%
| The Best of Youth (2005) | "
The movie has the addictive episodic intimacy of great TV." — Village Voice Posted Mar 3, 2005 |
Fresh
| Fresh 90%
| Turtles Can Fly (2005) | "
The perpetual motion only temporarily staves off a pervading, self-evident despair." — Village Voice Posted Feb 15, 2005 |
Fresh
| Fresh 87%
| The Woodsman (2004) | "
An engrossing study of a protagonist who variously inspires pity, clinical interest, fondness, and revulsion -- sometimes all at once." — Village Voice Posted Dec 21, 2004 |
Fresh
| Fresh 96%
| Born Into Brothels (2004) | "
The specter of long odds and narrow choices shades every frame of the film, yet the tone is often buoyant and legitimately inspirational." — Village Voice Posted Dec 7, 2004 |
Fresh
| Fresh 82%
| Finding Neverland (2004) | "
Finding Neverland practices a tasteful restraint, embodied by Depp's unusually subdued performance." — Village Voice Posted Nov 9, 2004 |
Fresh
| Fresh 90%
| Last Life in the Universe (2004) | "
Cheeky and elusive, Last Life in the Universe inhabits a high-lonesome world unto itself, a bright daydream that dissipates in the aching gap of a missed connection." — Village Voice Posted Aug 3, 2004 |
Fresh
| Fresh 84%
| Mean Girls (2004) | "
Director Waters and screenwriter Tina Fey ... aim less for the usual high-gloss caricature than acutely hilarious sociology." — Village Voice Posted Apr 27, 2004 |
Fresh
| Fresh 62%
| Young Adam (2004) | "
Emily Mortimer ... McGregor, and especially Swinton are as frank and fearless with their NC-17 naked bodies as Mackenzie is uncompromised in conveying Trocchi's sulfurous purview on labor and lust to the screen." — Village Voice Posted Apr 13, 2004 |
Fresh
| Rotten 55%
| Ned Kelly (2004) | "
Marks a welcome departure from the usual rah-rah machismo of the semi-nationalist action adventure, but Jordan never escapes the mighty shadow of The Thin Red Line." — Village Voice Posted Mar 23, 2004 |
Fresh
| Fresh 98%
| The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) | "
A choreography of the everyday timed to Demy's floating long takes and Michel Legrand's at turns jaunty and lachrymose score." — Village Voice Posted Feb 10, 2004 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| Touching the Void (2004) | "
Though matter- of-factly presented, Simpson's endurance test exceeds the imagination, and reanimates every blurbable cliché in the film reviewer's word bank." — Village Voice Posted Jan 20, 2004 |
Fresh
| Fresh 74%
| Calendar Girls (2003) | "
A genial lesson in how to both honor and subvert womanly expectations." — Village Voice Posted Dec 16, 2003 |
Fresh
| Fresh 89%
| In America (2003) | "
Like a kid playing make-believe, In America is blithely confident of its own contrivances; it only benefits from a certain unselfconscious naivete." — Village Voice Posted Nov 25, 2003 |
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