|
|
80%
|
Scream (1996) |
"
Scream builds to a splattering finale that should leave genre fans highly satisfied. Here's one of the year's better thrillers."
—
New York Daily News
Posted Oct 6, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
98%
|
Evil Dead 2 (1987) |
"
Evil Dead 2 is, pardon the expression, consistently lively -- a ghoulish splatter comedy that uses wildly excessive gore to provoke the kind of shock that lies between a laugh and a scream."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Oct 1, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
85%
|
Yaaba (1989) |
"
Ouedraogo films all this with great formality and stateliness of pace."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Sep 12, 2013
|
|
|
80%
|
True Heart Susie (1919) |
"
One of D.W. Griffith's most beautiful films, a pastoral fable of a sort that no one could ever make again, because the sensitivity and spirit have vanished along with the landscape."
—
Chicago Reader
Posted Aug 19, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
88%
|
Misery (1990) |
"
Like any good work of popular culture, Rob Reiner's film of Stephen King's best-selling book Misery functions on more than one level."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 12, 2013
|
|
1/4
|
94%
|
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) |
"
It's a gnarled, brutal, highly manipulative film that, at its center, seems morally indefensible."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 12, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
88%
|
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) |
"
McNaughton's direction combines a strict social realism with a cool, Fritz Langian sense of pre-determination, while his work with actors has the improvisational freshness of a John Cassavetes."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 12, 2013
|
|
4/4
|
91%
|
The Fly (1986) |
"
The Fly seizes on our ingrained, instinctive horror of sexuality, the sense of shame that our fundamentally puritanical society can't help but teach us, and by confirming our worst fears, helps us, for a moment, to move beyond them."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 4, 2013
|
|
3.5/4
|
93%
|
Out of Sight (1998) |
"
There isn't a character in the large, excellent cast that doesn't emerge with depth and precision."
—
New York Daily News
Posted Aug 4, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
69%
|
Cliffhanger (1993) |
"
Like the roller-coaster ride Cliffhanger clearly wants to be, the film sends you out pleasantly rattled and wobbly of gait."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 3, 2013
|
|
|
88%
|
Nico Icon (1995) |
"
As recorded in the great wealth of documentary footage Ofteringer has assembled, the cheekbones slowly collapse and the blue eyes become watery, their owner becoming more and more dependent on hard drugs and fast living."
—
New York Daily News
Posted Aug 2, 2013
|
|
|
91%
|
Men in Black (1997) |
"
Its attitude is poised somewhere between the deadpan ghoulishness of the Coen brothers and a Letterman-like sense of the absurdity of life in New York's rich ethnic stew."
—
New York Daily News
Posted Aug 2, 2013
|
|
|
100%
|
Jazz on a Summer's Day (1960) |
"
The sense of well-being is immense."
—
New York Daily News
Posted Aug 2, 2013
|
|
|
92%
|
Saving Private Ryan (1998) |
"
Saving Private Ryan is Steven Spielberg's best war film and one of the two or three best movies the director has made."
—
New York Daily News
Posted Aug 2, 2013
|
|
3.5/4
|
94%
|
Dave (1993) |
"
It's a beautifully proportioned, wonderfully complete movie."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 2, 2013
|
|
3.5/4
|
93%
|
The Freshman (1990) |
"
It's the kind of material that could easily fly apart into silliness, yet Brando and Broderick help the director to keep it anchored in a certain emotional reality, which is always the source of the richest comedy."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 1, 2013
|
|
2/4
|
85%
|
Presumed Innocent (1990) |
"
This deliberately paced, almost monochromatic movie reserves its real energy and color for blaming the victim."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 31, 2013
|
|
2/4
|
92%
|
Parenthood (1989) |
"
With Parenthood, Howard as a director has discovered weight, but not gravity. For all of its admirable seriousness, the film finally floats away."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 31, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
88%
|
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) |
"
Fans of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas' Indiana Jones series may rest assured that the latest installment, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, is fully up to, as well as virtually indistinguishable from, its predecessors."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 31, 2013
|
|
|
94%
|
Ruthless People (1986) |
"
It's a rare kind of craftsmanship, and it produces a rare kind of pleasure."
—
Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 31, 2013
|
|
|
81%
|
An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) |
"
Taylor Hackford's 1982 film is an awesomely, stiflingly professional piece of work, with a fleet, superficial visual style, perfectly placed climaxes, and a screenplay that doesn't waste a single character or situation."
—
Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 31, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
88%
|
The Big Easy (1987) |
"
It's sleek, briskly paced, firmly controlled and shrewdly dosed with humor, action and romance."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 31, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
93%
|
A Fish Called Wanda (1988) |
"
The movie's basic joke holds that the overbearing, unselfconscious Americans will do anything and say anything (and usually as loudly as possible), while the timorous British are nearly too polite to breathe."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 30, 2013
|
|
3.5/4
|
95%
|
Midnight Run (1988) |
"
Midnight Run touches on one of the great mysteries of the movies: How is it that the tritest material can come to life when touched by the right director and the right actors?"
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 30, 2013
|
|
|
92%
|
WarGames (War Games) (1983) |
"
Classic humanist-didactic filmmaking, effectively presented as a thriller."
—
Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 30, 2013
|
|
4/4
|
98%
|
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) |
"
More than a technological wonder, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is brilliantly funny, bracingly smart and surprisingly moving."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 30, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
88%
|
When Harry Met Sally (1989) |
"
Reiner wants to maintain the sitcom sense of comfort and familiarity; he creates types that we somehow already know, slightly out-of-focus images in which we can see ourselves and our friends."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 30, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
97%
|
Big (1988) |
"
When Marshall brings Hanks and Perkins together, she discovers a grace and lightness in their relationship that transcends the pinched thematics of the script."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 29, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
92%
|
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) |
"
The pathos of the film is the pathos of its leading character -- it is a magnificent machine, but a machine it remains."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 29, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
92%
|
No Way Out (1987) |
"
No Way Out emerges, paradoxically, as a film that is better than it has to be and not as good as it ought to be, but there is skill here, as well as an admirable willingness to try something new."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 29, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
60%
|
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) |
"
Unpretentious and efficient."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 10, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
92%
|
Die Hard (1988) |
"
McTiernan, who directed last summer's Predator, composes the action cleanly and logically, making good use of Jackson DeGovia's elaborate post-modernist set-the building becomes something of a character in itself."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 9, 2013
|
|
|
83%
|
An American Romance (1944) |
"
Even as the drama disintegrates, Vidor's skill in presenting the rhythms of collective action (here, the work of the mills and factories) raises the documentary sections of the film to the level of his best work."
—
Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 1, 2013
|
|
3.5/4
|
64%
|
A Rage in Harlem (1991) |
"
Bill Duke's Harlem has the heft of an imaginatively heightened reality; it's a great place to visit."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 1, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
23%
|
Dying Young (1991) |
"
Where most contemporary directors would be looking for ways to demonstrate their superiority to the material -- dropping in campy asides or meaningless technical flourishes -- Schumacher is looking for ways to make it work."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 1, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
48%
|
Flatliners (1990) |
"
It`s much to Schumacher's credit that Flatliners, for all of its crazy excess, does not turn into camp. Despite two or three bad laughs, the picture retains a basic conviction."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 1, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
97%
|
The Princess Bride (1987) |
"
The film works well enough, providing its fair share of laughs and thrills, and in technical terms it is by far Reiner`s most professional job of direction."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jun 28, 2013
|
|
|
89%
|
Law (2000) |
"
'The result, of course, is not one good shot in two hours of film,' Godard wrote, somewhat unjustly. There is at least one good shot near the beginning."
—
Film Comment Magazine
Posted Jun 28, 2013
|
|
2.5/4
|
91%
|
Stand by Me (2000) |
"
Stand by Me is a film of honorable ambitions severely compromised by a creeping show-biz phoniness."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jun 26, 2013
|
|
|
80%
|
The Untouchables (1987) |
"
It's an action film without much personality or drive and without enough imaginative detail to make the action gripping or meaningful."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jun 25, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
74%
|
Ghost (1990) |
"
What it offers, apart from the overblown special effects that seem inescapable in American movies, is an unusual and effective combination of swooning, morbid romance and screwball comedy."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jun 25, 2013
|
|
3.5/4
|
94%
|
Full Metal Jacket (1987) |
"
There is a real fear at the heart of this monstrously armored, desperately defensive film."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jun 21, 2013
|
|
|
80%
|
The Hole (2012) |
"
The Hole doesn't have the frantic wit of Dante's Gremlins 2 or the political import of his Small Soldiers, but it has something just as satisfying: a thorough understanding of the psychological underpinnings of the genre."
—
Film Comment Magazine
Posted Jun 17, 2013
|
|
1/4
|
8%
|
Problem Child 2 (2004) |
"
How exciting can flatulence jokes still be, once you've seen them on cable?"
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jun 5, 2013
|
|
1/4
|
5%
|
Caddyshack II (1988) |
"
It's shoddy, lazy and numbingly stupid."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted Jun 4, 2013
|
|
3/4
|
35%
|
Young Einstein (1988) |
"
The next Serious movie could well be something special."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted May 21, 2013
|
|
2/4
|
8%
|
Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (1987) |
"
The leading characters may have high IQs, but most of the humor rests a few degrees south of lowbrow."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted May 21, 2013
|
|
2/4
|
6%
|
Vibes (1988) |
"
The romantic suspense soon takes a back seat to some singularly unimpressive special effects."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted May 21, 2013
|
|
2/4
|
5%
|
Cocktail (1988) |
"
Cocktail is a meandering, shapeless film, without the force of character to resist any of the cliches that come its way."
—
Chicago Tribune
Posted May 21, 2013
|
