Rotten
| Rotten 21%
| Fred Claus (2007) | "
The exceptional cast -- Vaughn, Giamatti, Kathy Bates, Kevin Spacey, Rachel Weisz -- is an embarrassment of riches for a script this thin and this beholden to family-fare protocol, with its mushy-minded moral and slick sentimentality." — Village Voice Posted Nov 6, 2007 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Satantango (1994) | "
Critics have rightfully hailed Tarr as one of filmdom's criminally undersung geniuses." — Village Voice Posted Oct 5, 2007 |
Rotten
| N/A | Anger Me (2007) | "
One of the most important artists of the last century deserves far better than this." — Village Voice Posted Aug 21, 2007 |
Fresh
| Fresh 99%
| Metropolis (1927) | "
Lang's impossibly vast skyscraper-ziggurats (inspired, it's said, by his first view of the Manhattan skyline) are the blueprint for nearly every science-fiction movie city of the past 30 years." — Village Voice Posted Jul 17, 2007 |
Fresh
| Fresh 86%
| Shadow Company (2007) | "
Shadow Company attempts to provide a balanced view of a potentially polarizing issue, interviewing historians, security firm heads, war journalists, and former contractors themselves (the Army declined)." — Village Voice Posted Jul 5, 2007 |
Fresh
| Fresh 83%
| Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (2007) | "
Smith's own work, here montaged for easy digestion, is already too rich and sumptuous to require any further frosting." — Village Voice Posted Apr 10, 2007 |
Fresh
| Fresh 86%
| Cobra Verde (1987) | "
It's easy to understand why this was Herzog's final collaboration with the actor, but Kinski's performance nevertheless serves up a potent confusion of documentary and fiction that has long been an essential element of Herzog's filmmaking." — Village Voice Posted Mar 20, 2007 |
Fresh
| Fresh 71%
| The GoodTimesKid (2005) | "
Though the film never transcends its own neo-boho quirk, it concludes in a marvelous final shot: a long take set to Gang of Four, grungy and materialist in the Jacobs tradition." — Village Voice Posted Jan 16, 2007 |
Rotten
| Rotten 17%
| The Tiger and the Snow (2006) | "
Roberto Benigni here plays out a madcap tale of romantic obsession against the backdrop of the Iraq invasion. The results are neither profound nor funny." — L.A. Weekly Posted Jan 4, 2007 |
Rotten
| Rotten 57%
| Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) | "
A noble experiment in pushing the limits of cinema, but one too many sequences of ruffling silks and dreamy flower bouquets evoke little more than the ad-agency clichés of an elongated Chanel No. 5 commercial." — L.A. Weekly Posted Jan 4, 2007 |
— | Rotten 17%
| The Tiger and the Snow (2006) |
Click here to read article — Village Voice Posted Jan 2, 2007 |
Rotten
| Rotten 17%
| The Tiger and the Snow (2006) | "
Neither profound nor funny, but merely uncomfortable. A hubristic failure at risky humor, The Tiger and the Snow provides Benigni his own Michael Richards moment." — Village Voice Posted Dec 28, 2006 |
Rotten
| Rotten 57%
| Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) | "
It's a noble experiment in pushing the limits of cinema, but Tykwer never achieves true profundity." — Village Voice Posted Dec 27, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| My Dad Is 100 Years Old (2006) | "
A micro-doc packing more intoxicating beauty and invigorating ideas into its 17 minutes than most other films do in 90 or more." — Village Voice Posted Dec 5, 2006 |
Rotten
| Fresh 88%
| Bergman Island (2006) | "
As little more than an extended interview, it remains hobbled by determinedly uninspired cinematography and a mundane televisual setup." — Village Voice Posted Dec 5, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| Cleo de 5 a 7 (1962) | "
Varda transforms the typical French cinema gamine into a complex, tragic figure: the girl who's all too good at playing plaything, forced to face the hollowness of her youth." — Village Voice Posted Nov 21, 2006 |
Rotten
| Fresh 60%
| The Last Atomic Bomb (2006) | "
The trauma is real, and the facts disturbing, but the doc doesn't have the chops to deliver what should be a more powerful statement." — Village Voice Posted Nov 7, 2006 |
Rotten
| Fresh 68%
| The Wild Blue Yonder: A Science Fiction Fantasy (2006) | "
Though occasionally striking, the footage doesn't pack the evocative punch Herzog intends, and segments that should be lyrical mind trips only result in overstretched longueurs." — Village Voice Posted Oct 24, 2006 |
Fresh
| N/A | Out of Place: Memories of Edward Said (2006) | "
Though Out of Place uses quotations from Said's writings to frame its chapters, the result is less a picture of Said himself than of the environments that shaped him." — Village Voice Posted Oct 11, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Edward Said: The Last Interview (2004) | "
Though physically weakened and near the end of his life, his discourse is sharp and incisive, creating a remarkably compelling self-portrait." — Village Voice Posted Oct 11, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film (2006) | "
Burns argues for a cogitating, agitating Warhol: deep thinker, cultural barometer, and world changer." — Village Voice Posted Aug 30, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 90%
| Fratricide (2005) | "
Yilmaz Arslan's hard-edged story of Turks and Kurds on the mean streets of urban Germany veers between moments of sensitive humanism and horrifying brutality." — Village Voice Posted Aug 22, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 75%
| The Photographer, His Wife, Her Lover (2006) | "
[Yule] reveals a struggle far more complicated, suggesting that the manic entanglement of human relationships can't always conform to the winner-loser narratives that the lawyer-driven court system demands." — Village Voice Posted Jul 25, 2006 |
Fresh
| N/A | Film About a Woman Who... (1974) | "
[A] stark black-and-whiter about the mental intricacies of male-female relationships..." — Village Voice Posted Jul 21, 2006 |
Rotten
| N/A | Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela (2006) | "
Thomas Allen Harris's Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela takes on an intensely dramatic topic -- the struggle against apartheid -- yet paradoxically transforms its powerful source material into a stiff and sometimes awkward tutorial." — Village Voice Posted Jul 7, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 69%
| Room (2005) | "
Kyle Henry's Room is one of those rare American indies that confidently and successfully propose their own narrative logic, drawing viewers into a mental puzzle that may not contain a single clear solution." — Village Voice Posted Jun 27, 2006 |
Rotten
| Rotten 57%
| Drawing Restraint 9 (2006) | "
An unsatisfying marriage of excessive production values with insipid cinematography and flat-footed editing." — Village Voice Posted Mar 28, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Dave Chappelle's Block Party (2006) | "
This picture remains faithful to the underlying affability of both Chappelle and Gondry, orchestrating a feel-good homestyle vibe that, while peppered with moments of sly political commentary, never harshes its own, slightly bittersweet mellow." — Village Voice Posted Feb 28, 2006 |
Rotten
| Fresh 73%
| Who Gets to Call it Art? (2006) | "
Surely a figure as crucial as Geldzahler deserves more incisive treatment." — Village Voice Posted Jan 31, 2006 |
Rotten
| Fresh 76%
| Breaking News (2006) | "
Well executed but ultimately unsatisfying ..." — Village Voice Posted Jan 25, 2006 |
Rotten
| Fresh 67%
| Gay Sex in the 70's (2005) | "
[The film] falls in line with the celebratory doc fare often found at gay film festivals: sub-TV production values, middling archival footage, and a hesitancy to separate history from nostalgia in the course of enshrining the first-person record." — Village Voice Posted Nov 1, 2005 |
Fresh
| N/A | The Time We Killed (2004) | "
The Time We Killed achieves a quiet power through rough-edged, handcrafted means." — Village Voice Posted Oct 18, 2005 |
Fresh
| Fresh 63%
| Chain (2006) | "
A dreamlike travelogue that transforms a mundane world into something strange and new." — Village Voice Posted Sep 13, 2005 |
Fresh
| N/A | Mind Game (2005) | "
A virtuoso narrative loop-the-loop that travels through a phantasmagoric catalog of animation styles." — Village Voice Posted Aug 30, 2005 |
Fresh
| Fresh 89%
| William Eggleston In The Real World (2005) | "
[A] subtle, elegant documentary." — Village Voice Posted Aug 30, 2005 |
Rotten
| Fresh 67%
| Reel Paradise (2005) | "
Unfortunately, what could have been a superficially amusing IFC reality series was stretched into a thin, overlong feature that follows the rocky integration of this very New York clan into a somewhat ruffled island society." — Village Voice Posted Aug 16, 2005 |
Fresh
| N/A | Pound (1970) | "
Part wacky comedy (with plenty of jailhouse humping), part existential allegory, Pound betrays its stage-play roots with too much actorly grandstanding but is peppered with ecstatic funk-powered freak-outs." — Village Voice Posted Aug 16, 2005 |
— | N/A | No Picnic (1987) | "
Well shot in fat-grained monochrome 16mm (by experimental filmmaker Peter Hutton, who typically turns his lens toward expansive landscapes), No Picnic partakes of the shabby-chic downtown aesthetic that was once a New York cinematic mainstay." — Village Voice Posted Aug 16, 2005 |
Fresh
| N/A | Lost Lost Lost (1976) | "
A photographic Homer of his own odyssey, Mekas journeys -- like us all -- in irrevocable exile from his own past, attempting to reconstruct that invisible nation of youth to which he can never return." — Village Voice Posted Aug 9, 2005 |
Rotten
| Rotten 13%
| Stealth (2005) | "
If we're going to be fighting the war on terror in perpetuity, could we at least get better movies out of it?" — Village Voice Posted Aug 2, 2005 |
Fresh
| Fresh 67%
| Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen (2004) | "
[A] well-wrought investigation of the often mysterious life of Edgar G. Ulmer." — Village Voice Posted Jul 26, 2005 |
Rotten
| Rotten 46%
| Dark Water (2005) | "
It fails to deliver the narrative thrill twists its origins would promise." — Village Voice Posted Jul 12, 2005 |
Rotten
| Fresh 83%
| Rize (2005) | "
Few of the interviews get much further than recording surface boasts and assertive self-definitions; LaChapelle connects all their stories with common threads of resisting gang culture, but at the expense of flattening out each person's character." — Village Voice Posted Jun 21, 2005 |
Fresh
| Fresh 80%
| Cinderella Man (2005) | "
Despite the tale's dusty pedigree, Ron Howard spins a ticket-worthy two-plus hours of movie-movie entertainment." — Village Voice Posted May 31, 2005 |
Fresh
| Rotten 55%
| Lords of Dogtown (2005) | "
Leaner and sharper than its fast-and-furious TV spots would let on." — Village Voice Posted May 31, 2005 |
Rotten
| Rotten 31%
| The Longest Yard (2005) | "
No uplifting populism here." — Village Voice Posted May 31, 2005 |
Rotten
| Fresh 80%
| Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005) | "
Anakin's defection from Jediism to Sithdom should provide the film's backbone, but neither the script nor Christensen delivers the needed nuance." — Village Voice Posted May 13, 2005 |
Rotten
| Rotten 40%
| The Girl from Monday (2006) | "
Streaky low-frame-rate DV, Dogme-style mundane interiors, and merely unembarrassing televisual performances add up to a monotonous, unenlightening experience." — Village Voice Posted May 3, 2005 |
Fresh
| N/A | The Flower Thief (1960) | "
Taylor Mead traipses with elfin glee through a lost San Francisco of smoke-stuffed North Beach cafés, oceanside fairgrounds, and collapsed post-industrial ruins." — Village Voice Posted Mar 17, 2005 |
Rotten
| Rotten 33%
| Conspiracy of Silence (2004) | "
It's unclear whether this is an actual issue, or just something spicy to be cooked up in the potboiler." — Village Voice Posted Nov 30, 2004 |
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