Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Rancho Notorious (1952) | "
There is a distinct hokeyness about Lang's vision of the West--pancake-flat sets in a generic studio-backlot Western town; giant, abstract crab-colored boulders made out of papier-mache, brazenly unnaturalistic stage-lighting--but it's the ardent phoneyne" — Not Coming to a Theater Near You Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 79%
| In a Dream (2009) | "
A grand gesture, an exercise in epic biography that explodes the intimate details of Isaiah's life and its effects on his family onto the screen." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 80%
| Street of Shame (1956) | "
The film's cinematography utilizes an unusual technique for a Mizoguchi film, the close-up, whereby the camera gets steadily closer to each protagonist as the various causes of their downfall to prostitution are revealed." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 75%
| Tokyo! (2009) | "
Sandwiched between Gondry and Bong's variously euphoric entries, Carax's contribution seems either a work of deep cynicism from an inveterate party-pooper or a welcome satirical sour note from one of the great talents of 80s and 90s French cinema." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 70%
| Stuff and Dough (2008) | "
Ultimately, like Lazarescu, Ovidiu becomes a mere cog in a social and economic system that would chew him up without a moment's consideration, and it's Puiu's goal to elevate this and other such stories above their banality and into the realm of myth." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 94%
| Bigger Than Life (1956) | "
Always a shrewd melodramatist, with a particular eye for the domestic space, Ray builds this sense of conflict into the Avery home itself, with its frequently competing horizontal and vertical patterns." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 46%
| The Ruins (2008) | "
So bereft of creativity that it fails even to deliver to its base--teenage boys--the ghouls and boobs they so desperately want to see." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | A Summer at Grandpa's (1984) | "
Hou's film places demands on our powers of observation, insisting that we, like Tung-tung, attend to the minutiae, ironies, and deeper meanings it offers us." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 91%
| Hairspray (2007) | "
Shankman's crassly theatrical attenuation of Hairspray only draws gay culture away from a moment of American history with which it ought to have a great deal in common" — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 97%
| Hairspray (1988) | "
The shock Waters's cinema offers, then, is not transcendent, but almost reflexive, implicating the viewer in the awkward complexities of his own humanity and forcing him to either celebrate it or run screaming away." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 77%
| Lou Reed's Berlin (2008) | "
Schnabel's set design, onstage projections, and postproduction add a good deal of visual noise to Reed & company's aural variety, which reproduces the album with a mixture of professional exactitude and unpredictable cacophony." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| This Is England (2007) | "
It is the war within him--and by extension, within the minds of many embittered, working class young men left behind in Thatcher's England--that Meadows's film most strikingly portrays." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 96%
| Somers Town (2009) | "
As in all of Meadows's films, Somers Town emphasizes the importance of character and particularly of camaraderie amongst male characters--here, teenagers who nick clothes from the local laundry, get drunk in the park, and furtively investigate masculinity" — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Chouga (2007) | "
Ramps down Tolstoy's soap-opera grandiosity, while still managing to elevate the banalities of a high-society dalliance to the level of a cosmic psychodrama" — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 19%
| Obsessed (2009) | "
"I knew it would come to this," hisses Sharon when finding Lisa lurking around her beautiful Brentwood home--at which point I exclaimed, "Me too!"--and then the fun (and, for many, the entire purpose of the film) starts." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 51%
| The Kingdom (2007) | "
A good deal more Transformers than Syriana, a movie that drapes a crisp, lightly browsed copy of The Economist over an enormous pubescent boner for grinding metal, busted glass, and crackling gunfire." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 97%
| Tulpan (2008) | "
With this harsh and beautiful backdrop so attentively rendered, at once otherworldly and palpable, the desires of Tulpan's characters become almost metaphysical imperatives." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 75%
| The Killing of Sister George (1968) | "
Melodrama, slapstick, romance, exploitation, and psychological horror all vie for dominance throughout the film, giving it an air of fickle, feminine hysteria, which the graphic sex scene at the end of the film makes still more difficult to pin down." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 80%
| Blind Mountain (2008) | "
With its complex (and, at times, deeply problematic) intersection of an educated outsider with the stubborn realities of rural life, Blind Mountain explicitly harkens back to those classic works from the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, like Yellow" — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 80%
| Gran Torino (2008) | "
Though Eastwood is not above self-deprecation and, here, downright silliness, Gran Torino is no orangutan movie." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 0%
| Bullet in the Head (2008) | "
A painfully old-fashioned trick, a game played many times before, by far more thoughtful filmmakers with greater commands of and ideas about their medium." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 18%
| Sleepwalking (2008) | "
Each bend in the road positively screeches with the urgency of impending catharsis, but the film never earns its resolution." — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| Shotgun Stories (2007) | "
There is much to "Shotgun Stories" that elevates it above the fray of Green derivatives and unflattering categorizations, bolstered by a roster of naturalistic, fully assimilated performances, led by "Bug"'s now ubiquitous Michael Shannon." — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 37%
| Dark Matter (2008) | "
Begins with a shot of Meryl Streep practicing tai chi, and therein lies a precise encapsulation of the film's attitude toward the intersection of Eastern and Western cultures" — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 24%
| The Life Before Her Eyes (2008) | "
A hopelessly overblown melodrama, which oversteps its mark with pretensions of narrative complexity and social currency" — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 66%
| Fugitive Pieces (2008) | "
Nostalgic, deeply felt, and refreshingly astute, "Fugitive Pieces" is something of a rare bird these days%u2014a big-budget, transnational historical drama that actually justifies its scope and subject matter with more than visual opulence." — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 64%
| Battle For Haditha (2007) | "
A bold effort to grapple with what truth lies behind these images, rather than to simply throw one's hands up in the face of them" — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 95%
| Dreams with Sharp Teeth (2008) | "
If there is a criticism to be lobbed at Nelson's judicious but otherwise highly entertaining tribute, it's that it too often plays the role of the fawning, autograph-hungry fanboy, willing to accept all of the abuse Ellison wishes to hurl at it." — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 61%
| Quid Pro Quo (2008) | "
In fact, "Quid Pro Quo" is not at all funny, merely occasionally sarcastic, its plot a succession of half-baked pop-psych speculations and its dialogue a glib sampling of sub-Diablo Cody incredibility" — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 59%
| Expired (2008) | "
Death and regret hang over the film palpably, and Miniucchi's willingness to put her characters through disaster and humiliation while still plainly empathizing with them is what keeps the film surprising and its characters winning, in spite of themselves" — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| Tell No One (2008) | "
Canet has covered his bases with enough swooping camerawork, narrative smoke-and-mirrors, and quick-sketched supporting characters for a dozen thrillers" — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 64%
| Sixty Six (2008) | "
Cleaves too closely to the pattern set out by more original films with similar subject matter. Its obvious distinctions of time and place come through in clever details, but these don't seem to serve Weiland's autobiography so much as situate it into a fa" — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 58%
| Sukiyaki Western Django (2008) | "
Ultimately not quite as clever as it thinks it is. Even the action sequences are more about Foley than choreography, and so the film largely rests on the oddity of its mix of styles and its parade of genre in-jokes" — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 66%
| Ping Pong Playa (2007) | "
Mostly a little shrewder about stereotypes than your typical slacker comedy, deriving its edge from Yu and Tsai's mining of the cultural specificity of Asian-America for laughs" — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 50%
| Battle in Seattle (2008) | "
Approaching its subject with a neat idealism and packaging its political fervor in the most facile of forms, the film boasts a cast loaded with Hollywoods both new and old and wraps its message up with eye-rolling naivete." — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 77%
| A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (2007) | "
Wang's new film suggests not only a return to form but also the revival of an old theme from his early Asian-American dramedies: the different ways that certain generations translate and adapt their cultural heritage" — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 97%
| The Class (2008) | "
Cantet's film lulls the spectator into the rhythms of the everyday reality of school, belying a very carefully coordinated narrative structure that only becomes apparent in its final act." — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 83%
| Nights and Weekends (2008) | "
Its surprisingly structured depiction of this relationship and its many private rituals and performances, which the film's unforgiving style continually strips bare" — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 85%
| Frontrunners (2008) | "
Even an offhand debate between a few students late in the film about whether or not Bush is a "retard," while not exactly insightful, nonetheless portrays a student body for whom politics%u2014or at least arguing about it%u2014is essential." — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 94%
| Moscow, Belgium (2008) | "
There aren't many surprises%u2014the characters end up more or less where we expect them to%u2014but it's useless and not at all fun to deny the simple pleasures of this film." — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 32%
| Good (2008) | "
Bears a superficial resemblance to "The Conformist" and "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis," with their sense of dreary complacency, oppressively museum-like spaces, and curiously drab natural settings, but ultimately "Good" is less evocative" — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 55%
| Yonkers Joe (2008) | "
Mostly strong, that is, with the major exception of Tom Guiry's portrayal of Joe Jr. Painfully broad, Guiry practically sinks the film with garishly slack-jawed and over-the-top manchildishness." — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 7%
| Reunion (2009) | "
It's a wonder a group of experienced film professionals could not make "Reunion" look and sound the least bit proficient or even entertaining" — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 66%
| Is Anybody There? (2009) | "
The talent and craftsmanship of "Is Anybody There?" is ample, but it remains uncertain whether there's anybody here still interested in this all-too-familiar story." — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 89%
| Séraphine (2008) | "
Relies heavily on Moreau's gripping, continually surprising performance to effectively convey the oracular urgency and fractured, Dionysian mentality of Seraphine de Senlis and her work." — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 72%
| The Great Buck Howard (2009) | "
Malkovich's titular mentalist is the primary focus of attention%u2014and sadly the source of many of the film's unique problems. In a career of strange performances, Malkovich turns in a true curiosity here%u2014and maybe it's because he is not, for once," — indieWIRE Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Four Nights with Anna (2008) | "
Grey and waterlogged, Jerzy Skolimowski's Four Nights with Anna is something like the Eastern European answer to Rear Window and Chungking Express, a deeply gothic, but no less romantic tale of voyeurism, breaking and entering, and secret love." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 75%
| Cold Souls (2009) | "
Giamatti's usual character%u2014at least, the one that Cold Souls wishes to exploit%u2014is paper-thin, working better on the periphery than in the center of the narrative." — Reverse Shot Posted Aug 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 30%
| Invasion U.S.A. (1985) | "
Only Chuck - a libertarian redneck who simply wants to be left the fnck alone - has the red, white, and blue balls big enough to put an end to these problems." — Not Coming to a Theater Near You Posted Jul 7, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 39%
| The Limits of Control (2009) | "
A bad-ass film, probably the most overtly and self-consciously bad-ass film Jim Jarmusch has made." — Not Coming to a Theater Near You Posted May 3, 2009 |
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