|
4/4
|
90%
|
Voyage in Italy (1992) |
"
Befitting a filmmaker who defined as well as challenged the definition of Italian neorealism, it unfolds simultaneously as thorny narrative and profoundly personal documentary."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 29, 2013
|
|
4/4
|
75%
|
The Long Day Closes (1992) |
"
The Long Day Closes posits its pubescent protagonist as a tiny camera absorbing and transforming the reality all around him. "
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Mar 26, 2012
|
|
4/4
|
——
|
Battle of Chile (2009) |
"
A present-tense record of nation-splitting turmoil, Patricio Guzmán's monumental documentary The Battle of Chile remains a landmark of activist cinema."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Dec 29, 2009
|
|
4/4
|
89%
|
Made in U.S.A. (1966) |
"
Godard's films are records (documentaries, even) of personal interests, ecstasies, and agonies at a particular time in the artist's life."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jul 21, 2009
|
|
4/4
|
100%
|
La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV (The Taking of Power by Louis XIV)(The Rise of Louis XIV) (1970) |
"
Despite accusations of academic dryness, Louis XIV can be an almost overwhelmingly physical picture."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jan 12, 2009
|
|
4/4
|
90%
|
White Dog (1982) |
"
Hate is a dog from hell in White Dog, Samuel Fuller's abused and abandoned late-career masterpiece about homegrown racism."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Dec 12, 2008
|
|
4/4
|
87%
|
Lola Montès (The Fall of Lola Montes) (The Sins of Lola Montes) (1955) |
"
A bodice-ripper invested with the profundity of a Stendhal novel, Lola Montes is also, even more than La Ronde, Ophüls's definite commentary on movie-watching."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Sep 20, 2008
|
|
4/4
|
100%
|
The Earrings of Madame De... (Diamond Earrings) (1954) |
"
Evanescence is an integral part of cinema, and no other director captured it as lyrically and yet as savagely as Ophüls."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Mar 16, 2007
|
|
4/4
|
100%
|
Un Chant D'Amour (A Song of Love) (2004) |
"
A revolutionary vision of emancipation through sensuality, Un Chant d'Amour is a song of love both universal and eternal."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Mar 5, 2007
|
|
4/4
|
95%
|
The Crowd () |
"
Plot in The Crowd is structured as the progression of a life, with all the undulations of ups and downs driven by the director's faith in human emotion."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Feb 25, 2007
|
|
4/4
|
67%
|
Je Vous Salue, Marie (Hail Mary) (1985) |
"
Hail Mary is limpid, serene, and, for all the pubic hair on display, glowingly chaste."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 8, 2006
|
|
4/4
|
95%
|
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) |
"
Frank Tashlin never could harmonize his celebratory/critical impulses toward American pop culture, so it comes as no surprise that this is both his funniest and most despairing picture."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Aug 12, 2006
|
|
4/4
|
94%
|
Faust (1926) |
"
Films from the German Expressionism era are famous for their fiercely stylized mise-en-scene, and to Murnau the medium's very artificiality provided the keys to locating its truths."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jul 6, 2006
|
|
4/4
|
——
|
The Tall Target (1951) |
"
As in Reign of Terror, Anthony Mann fashions a noir mini-masterpiece out of incongruous period reconstruction."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jun 8, 2006
|
|
4/4
|
88%
|
Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) |
"
Not the least among its achievements, Terence Davies's wondrous Distant Voices, Still Lives offers a crystallization of the appeal of the musical."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jun 4, 2006
|
|
4/4
|
——
|
Krug Vtoroy (The Second Circle) (1990) |
"
The Second Circle is awash in the pain of loss, yet how often grim comedy breaks through the austere surface."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 3, 2006
|
|
4/4
|
80%
|
Marnie (2000) |
"
Viewed from the safe distance of four decades after its release, Marnie, perhaps even more than The Birds, emerges as the director's definitive late-period masterpiece."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Feb 17, 2006
|
|
4/4
|
100%
|
Shadow of a Doubt (1943) |
"
Like Lynch's fever-dream of transcendental perversity Blue Velvet, Shadow of a Doubt is about awakening, the simultaneous darkening and enlarging of the world."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Feb 17, 2006
|
|
4/4
|
80%
|
Sei donne per l'assassino (Blood and Black Lace) (Six Women for the Murderer) (1960) |
"
The dummies here reflect a society's ruthless commoditization of the body and flesh."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Nov 20, 2005
|
|
4/4
|
86%
|
Le Plaisir (House of Pleasure) (1999) |
"
Le Plaisir illustrates not merely Ophüls's unparalleled sense of flow and texture, but also his proto-feminism."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Nov 3, 2005
|
|
4/4
|
50%
|
Bolwieser (The Stationmaster's Wife) (1977) |
"
The film is often compared to Madame Bovary, but the overall effect is closer to that of Von Sternberg's The Devil is a Woman."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 4, 2005
|
|
4/4
|
100%
|
The Flowers of St Francis (Francesco, giullare di Dio) (Francis, God's Jester) (1950) |
"
The theme is less the simplicity of religion than the religiosity of simplicity."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Aug 9, 2005
|
|
3.5/4
|
75%
|
Alps (2012) |
"
Both a companion piece to and in many ways a reversal of Dogtooth, it builds on that film's surreally terse style and notions of communication and identity without diluting its singularity or concentration"
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jul 9, 2012
|
|
3.5/4
|
96%
|
The Kid with a Bike (2012) |
"
Per usual, the Dardennes introduce a conflict and jump right in, with subsequent details gradually illuminating the narrative. "
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 3, 2011
|
|
3.5/4
|
84%
|
Mysteries of Lisbon (2011) |
"
Operatic and droll, Mysteries of Lisbon wears its period compositions and magisterial length (four-and-a-half hours, edited from a six-hour miniseries) lightly. "
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 7, 2010
|
|
3.5/4
|
89%
|
A Serious Man (2009) |
"
Are the Coens jokers who tread on despair, or tragedians with a penchant for death's-head humor?"
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Sep 29, 2009
|
|
3.5/4
|
100%
|
Liverpool (2008) |
"
To Lisandro Alonso's wandering characters, every place they go seems like the edge of the world."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Aug 31, 2009
|
|
3.5/4
|
86%
|
Lorna's Silence (2008) |
"
Lorna, the young Albanian immigrant at the center of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Lorna's Silence, is both the newest addition to the twin auteurs' gallery of spiritually anguished outsiders, and a subtle departure from it."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jul 28, 2009
|
|
3.5/4
|
97%
|
The Hurt Locker (2009) |
"
A coolly elegant kineticist, Kathryn Bigelow specializes in impressionistic phallus jostles."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jun 22, 2009
|
|
3.5/4
|
100%
|
IL Generale della Rovere (General della Rovere) (1959) |
"
A fascinating crossroads in Rossellini's career."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Mar 30, 2009
|
|
3.5/4
|
91%
|
Irma Vep (1996) |
"
The post-modern compulsions on display here may bring movies together, but they also keep people apart."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jan 7, 2009
|
|
3.5/4
|
80%
|
Ashes of Time (2008) |
"
Wong heightens action tropes the way Sergio Leone found arias in western showdowns, though in his version of the Hong Kong martial-arts netherworld the mandatory melees play second fiddle to the characters' melancholic languor."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Sep 26, 2008
|
|
3.5/4
|
100%
|
The Outlaw and His Wife (1990) |
"
A tale of redemption played out against the vast expenses of nature."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jul 23, 2008
|
|
3.5/4
|
92%
|
Chris & Don: A Love Story (2007) |
"
One of the most positive, affecting portrayals of queer romance in recent memory."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jun 12, 2008
|
|
3.5/4
|
36%
|
Mandingo (1975) |
"
Mandingo is excessive, yet its excesses invariably reveal the caustic truths of social critique."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jun 4, 2008
|
|
3.5/4
|
100%
|
The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) |
"
Put bluntly, the difference between El Cid and Fall is the difference between faith in a concept of heroism that can transcend even death."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 26, 2008
|
|
3.5/4
|
70%
|
The Duchess of Langeais (Ne Touchez Pas La Hache)(Don't Touch the Axe) (2007) |
"
The film is a piercing pas de deux that excoriates romance even as its doomed characters are consumed by it."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Feb 17, 2008
|
|
3.5/4
|
65%
|
An Affair to Remember (1957) |
"
Often regarded (or dreaded) as the ultimate chick flick, due in no small amount to its fetish-object role in Sleepless in Seattle, An Affair to Remember deserves better than to be the receptor of Meg Ryan's crocodile tears."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jan 20, 2008
|
|
3.5/4
|
90%
|
Sanxia Haoren (Still Life) (2006) |
"
Jia Zhangke has an uncanny knack for grounding his portraits of Chinese alienation in settings that are at once schematically allegorical and tangibly lived-in."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jan 11, 2008
|
|
3.5/4
|
83%
|
Underworld (1927) |
"
Josef von Sternberg's Underworld is a fascinating early cornerstone of both the director's worldview and the gangster genre."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Sep 18, 2007
|
|
3.5/4
|
86%
|
Colossal Youth (Juventude Em Marcha) (2006) |
"
A unique metaphysical vision that, tracing its characters' dislocation, seems to weave between alternate worlds as easily as it navigates from image to image."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jul 30, 2007
|
|
3.5/4
|
70%
|
The Panic in Needle Park (1971) |
"
The Panic in the Needle Park rolls up the drug culture's sleeve and picks at the scabs underneath."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted May 9, 2007
|
|
3.5/4
|
100%
|
Fires of the Plain (Nobi) (1959) |
"
The scabrous fury of Fires on the Plain feels closer to the heart of the notoriously hard-to-pin-down Japanese director."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Mar 29, 2007
|
|
3.5/4
|
——
|
Lavoura Arcaica (To the Left of the Father) (2006) |
"
Long, heavy, and soberly elating, the film envisions a heightened reality, like Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Dec 1, 2006
|
|
3.5/4
|
94%
|
Phantom of the Paradise (1974) |
"
As in that other great musical spoof, The Girl Can't Help It, Phantom of the Paradise draws withering links between product and consumer."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Sep 5, 2006
|
|
3.5/4
|
75%
|
The Girl Can't Help It (1956) |
"
Years before Kenneth Anger, Frank Tashlin located the decadent Babylon in Hollywood and found it not that different from the splashy Looney Tunes bonanzas he used to fashion during his salad days as an animator."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Aug 8, 2006
|
|
3.5/4
|
97%
|
Rope (1948) |
"
"A crime for most, a privilege for some" is how Rupert classifies murder, but Hitchcock's eye-am-a-camera technique in Rope is after more than Nazi-superman residue still lurking after WWII."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jun 19, 2006
|
|
3.5/4
|
85%
|
Modern Romance (1981) |
"
Nearly as much as Jerry Lewis, Albert Brooks's comic persona is defined by its unlikability."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted May 3, 2006
|
|
3.5/4
|
——
|
Vidas Secas (Barren Lives) (1963) |
"
Like Ford's The Grapes of Wrath, another oft-misread seditious text, the film seems primed for a revolution."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jan 21, 2006
|
|
3.5/4
|
100%
|
7 Men From Now (Seven Men from Now) (1956) |
"
The effect is not one of (pre) post-modern nudging, but a questioning of the conventions through the director's humanizing gaze."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Dec 24, 2005
|
73%
78%
62%
52%
26%
4%
