|
5/5
|
100%
|
Red Desert (1964) |
"
Red Desert is Antonioni's clearest, most striking statement of purpose - and one of cinema's great films."
—
Little White Lies
Posted Jul 26, 2012
|
|
2/2
|
80%
|
Buried Prayers (2011) |
"
Steven Meyer's documentary treads a middle ground between illumination and cheap waterworks. "
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Nov 13, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
88%
|
The Turin Horse (2012) |
"
Béla Tarr is the cinema's greatest crafter of total environments and in The Turin Horse, working in his most restricted physical setting since 1984's Almanac of Fall, he dials up one of his most vividly immersive milieus."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Sep 27, 2011
|
|
4/4
|
100%
|
Der Letzte Mann (The Last Laugh) (1925) |
"
The Last Laugh can really best be understood as a horror story."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Sep 23, 2008
|
|
3.5/4
|
100%
|
The Act Of Killing (2013) |
"
In Joshua Oppenheimer's extraordinary The Act of Killing, film becomes the medium for a bold historical reckoning--and in more ways than one."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Mar 16, 2013
|
|
3.5/4
|
50%
|
Vamps (2012) |
"
A sense of anachronism is what provides the film with its melancholy heart."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 28, 2012
|
|
3.5/4
|
83%
|
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) |
"
While Tomas Alfredson's film is rich in ambiguity and a generalized sense of apprehension, it almost entirely avoids that spy-movie staple: the explosive set piece. "
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Dec 2, 2011
|
|
3.5/4
|
——
|
Extraordinary Stories (2011) |
"
The craft of storytelling is both the subject and the source of the exquisite pleasures on display in Argentinean director Mariano Llinás's film."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 29, 2011
|
|
3.5/4
|
79%
|
Attenberg (2012) |
"
A boldly conceived assemblage of diverse and seemingly random fictional materials."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Mar 27, 2011
|
|
3.5/4
|
93%
|
Of Gods and Men (2011) |
"
Breaking up its quiet, contemplative tone with occasional fevered outbursts of activity, Of Gods and Men maintains a tension borne of uncertainty while paying proper respect to the hushed, unhurried lifestyle of the monks."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Sep 24, 2010
|
|
3.5/4
|
83%
|
Kuroi Ame (Black Rain) (1989) |
"
While most of Black Rain takes place in 1950, the film's astonishing opening sequence places us at the epicenter of the event, August 1945."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 15, 2009
|
|
3.5/4
|
92%
|
Vincere (2010) |
"
If Bellocchio's film were nothing but a recreation of a forgotten historical footnote, it would stand as an accomplished bit of work and the discussion would end there. But crafting a skillful period drama is only the beginning of the filmmaker's ambition"
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Sep 21, 2009
|
|
3.5/4
|
71%
|
Tetro (2009) |
"
By the end the film, the plotting has achieved an impressive, if slightly overcooked, degree of complexity."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jun 8, 2009
|
|
3.5/4
|
87%
|
Kâbê (Kaabee) (Kabei: Our Mother) (2008) |
"
Yamada's masterpiece of balanced sensibilities is grounded in the sensitive performances of its cast."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted May 17, 2009
|
|
3.5/4
|
100%
|
Aruitemo Aruitemo (Still Walking) (2008) |
"
A family drama that gets the family dynamic exactly right, a film that understands the ways in which unspoken resentments tend to accumulate and unresolved conflicts later harden into regrets."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted May 3, 2009
|
|
3.5/4
|
80%
|
The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustada) (2010) |
"
The legacy of sexualized violence is the chief generational inheritance in Claudia Llosa's incisive, carefully observed Golden Bear-winner."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Mar 23, 2009
|
|
4/5
|
86%
|
De jueves a domingo (Thursday Till Sunday) () |
"
Sotomayor's movie is more than the sum of its carefully accumulated details."
—
Little White Lies
Posted Apr 4, 2013
|
|
4/5
|
92%
|
Himizu (2013) |
"
A near-masterpiece from one of the most significant directors working today, Himizu combines all the director's strengths while introducing a tentative humanism that proves remarkably affecting."
—
Little White Lies
Posted May 31, 2012
|
|
4/5
|
88%
|
Pink Ribbons, Inc. (2012) |
"
It's a powerful and subversive reminder that, pink or not, depoliticizing a worthy cause is never pretty."
—
Time Out New York
Posted May 29, 2012
|
|
4/5
|
100%
|
Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story (2012) |
"
It's a powerful testament to how far we both have and haven't come."
—
Time Out New York
Posted Apr 24, 2012
|
|
4/5
|
100%
|
Art Is...The Permanent Revolution (2012) |
"
[Offers] up compelling portraits of practicing artists intelligently probing their status as socially conscious image makers."
—
Time Out New York
Posted Feb 29, 2012
|
|
4/5
|
86%
|
Bhutto (2010) |
"
O'Hara's doc not only recounts the leader's life and career; it also offers a fascinating look back at the history of her troubled nation, wisely placing its current political volatility in an easily graspable context."
—
Time Out New York
Posted Dec 1, 2010
|
|
4/5
|
94%
|
45365 (2009) |
"
For the filmmakers, who wins or loses means little. The ongoing ritual of small-town American life is all."
—
Time Out New York
Posted Jun 16, 2010
|
|
3/4
|
66%
|
Spring Breakers (2013) |
"
One of the effects of Harmony Korine's feverish, hypnotic style is that the whole thing feels like a fantasy--or rather a nightmare perversion of the American dream."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Mar 12, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
80%
|
Only The Young (2012) |
"
Tippet and Mims's achievement is to reveal that culture, subtly, achingly, by allowing those who grew up under its influence to live and narrate their lives in the only terms they know."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Dec 7, 2012
|
|
3/4
|
79%
|
Ginger & Rosa (2013) |
"
Sally Potter packs so much detail and thematic heft into 90-minute films that, given her elliptical and often unemphatic presentation, feel tantalizing but never overstuffed."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 9, 2012
|
|
3/4
|
——
|
Fill the Void (2013) |
"
The film unfolds in unhurried dramatic terms that come to take on an almost fatalistic force."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 3, 2012
|
|
3/4
|
93%
|
The House I Live In (2012) |
"
A powerful indictment of a program that has decimated communities, cost taxpayers roughly a trillion dollars, and hasn't reduced the amount of drugs being consumed one iota."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Sep 29, 2012
|
|
3/4
|
81%
|
Pitch Perfect (2012) |
"
Jason Moore's film is more or less successful in inverse proportion to the degree that it plays its material by the book. "
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Sep 25, 2012
|
|
3/4
|
88%
|
Tears of Gaza (2012) |
"
There's no coddling the audience in Vibeke Løkkeberg's verité heave of disgust as the full consequences on the Palestinian people of Operation Cast Lead are made sickeningly clear."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Sep 16, 2012
|
|
3/4
|
73%
|
Hello I Must Be Going (2012) |
"
Thanks to Melanie Lynskey's performance, the movie feels like a believably worked-out, sympathetically presented study in thirtysomething uncertainty."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Sep 5, 2012
|
|
3/4
|
70%
|
The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (2012) |
"
Tsui Hark's film is the veteran director's chance to let his imagination run riot in the context of a high-budget, 3D IMAX production."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Aug 28, 2012
|
|
3/4
|
76%
|
Premium Rush (2012) |
"
Rarely has a movie been so well served by its superficiality; Premium Rush proves how invigorating genre filmmaking can be in the hands of a savvy, perpetually inventive director."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Aug 23, 2012
|
|
3/4
|
——
|
Drought (2012) |
"
Everado González isn't above capturing some striking landscape shots, seemingly for the shear desolate prettiness of it, but they always double as a reminder of the very real plight facing the subjects. "
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Aug 6, 2012
|
|
3/4
|
97%
|
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012) |
"
The director's clear-minded approach allows her subject's more challenging aesthetic-political mix to shine through, even if it's at the inevitable expense of her own filmmaking proclivities."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jul 22, 2012
|
|
3.5
|
94%
|
Moonrise Kingdom (2012) |
"
For the first 15 minutes or so, Moonrise Kingdom feels like the movie Wes Anderson's detractors have always accused him of churning out. Then it finds its footing and becomes a film that only Anderson could have made."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted May 17, 2012
|
|
3/4
|
64%
|
The Five-Year Engagement (2012) |
"
The film proves that neither gross-out gags nor pseudo-sophisticated Woody Allenisms are necessary to make a smart, funny comedy."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 25, 2012
|
|
3/4
|
98%
|
The Island President (2012) |
"
The film shares Mohamed Nasheed's pessimism, but it's also able to celebrate that wonderfully stubborn individual's constant need to fight on regardless of the eventual result."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Mar 25, 2012
|
|
3/4
|
67%
|
Porfirio (2013) |
"
The discomforts of the body define Alejandro Landes's Porfirio."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Mar 21, 2012
|
|
3/4
|
85%
|
Crazy Horse (2012) |
"
Crazy Horse is the story of the interplay of commerce and art, the possibility of the latter always reliant on the support of the former."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jan 15, 2012
|
|
3/4
|
90%
|
London River (2011) |
"
Although the film occasionally cuts away to contextualized clips from news reports, it keeps its focus small-scale, filtering the world historical through the intimately personal."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Dec 4, 2011
|
|
3/4
|
91%
|
Tabloid (2011) |
"
The truth is an ever elusive concept, especially in the films of Errol Morris."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jul 10, 2011
|
|
3/4
|
100%
|
Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness (2011) |
"
The equation of biography and literary output never feels overly schematic, thanks to the range of intelligent voices on hand to explain the richness and deeper significance of Aleichem's deceptively simple tales."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jul 3, 2011
|
|
3/4
|
89%
|
Crime After Crime (2011) |
"
The film presents a portrait of the incarcerated woman as a determined, optimistic individual who profited from her jail time by helping others to educate themselves."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jun 26, 2011
|
|
3/4
|
100%
|
Louder Than A Bomb (2011) |
"
The filmmakers showcase an art form diverse enough to include a panoply of styles and methods."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted May 15, 2011
|
|
3/4
|
91%
|
Caterpillar (2011) |
"
Aesthetically, emotionally, and intellectually crude, Koji Wakamatsu's brutally effective Caterpillar finds the director making obvious points about Japanese nationalism/militarism and less obvious ones about the sexual dynamic of marriage. "
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 29, 2011
|
|
3/4
|
100%
|
The Miners' Hymns (2012) |
"
In contrast to the vast, impersonal sweep of the contemporary footage, the archival material, some of which dates back over 100 years, is eerily intimate. "
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 22, 2011
|
|
3/4
|
84%
|
The Princess Of Montpensier (2011) |
"
Bertrand Tavernier relies less on distanciation than his fellow countrymen, while still refusing to normalize the historical setting."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 9, 2011
|
|
3/4
|
——
|
Winter Vacation (Han jia) (2010) |
"
An existential inquiry, and a rhetorical declaration of cosmic futility."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Mar 25, 2011
|
|
3/4
|
——
|
Çogunluk (Majority) (2010) |
"
As much a portrait of incipient fascism as it is a tale of young love thwarted."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Mar 23, 2011
|
78%
——
——
85%
45%
40%
