|
|
54%
|
The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2013) |
"
At times it's dense and sluggish, too much like a novel. But there is some exhilaration to be had ..."
—
Village Voice
Posted Apr 23, 2013
|
|
|
63%
|
Vanishing Waves (2013) |
"
Buozyte and her co-writer and "visual style author" Bruno Samper make the most of pricey-looking production design, cocooning their leads in soft white light, prowling dolly shots, and shimmering special effects."
—
Village Voice
Posted Mar 12, 2013
|
|
|
86%
|
Welcome To Pine Hill (2013) |
"
At times the improvised dialogue seems too schematic and superfluous, especially in view of such exploratory and observant handheld camera work. Otherwise, though, this is wonderful stuff."
—
Village Voice
Posted Mar 1, 2013
|
|
|
40%
|
As Luck Would Have It (2013) |
"
Family is the truest wealth, insists a strenuous orchestral score, but neither Feldman nor Iglesia seems to buy it, so how can we?"
—
Village Voice
Posted Jan 29, 2013
|
|
1/5
|
32%
|
Fanboys (2008) |
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Jan 22, 2013
|
|
|
76%
|
Hors Satan (2013) |
"
Ultimately less an arty provocation than a secular invocation, Outside Satan seems almost helplessly exploratory, an honest account of groping for grace."
—
Village Voice
Posted Jan 15, 2013
|
|
|
0%
|
Gottfried Helnwein and the Dreaming Child (2012) |
"
Suffers some dramatic slackness from the inevitable drawing board tedium of performance preparation."
—
Village Voice
Posted Nov 20, 2012
|
|
|
61%
|
Tai Chi Zero (2012) |
"
Give some points to a genre flick whose style mash-up reflects uneasy relations between Asia and the West just as its fracas-intensive plot tries to dramatize them."
—
Village Voice
Posted Oct 16, 2012
|
|
|
36%
|
Yogawoman (2012) |
"
Yogawoman clearly is a fan of yoga and of women. And as it gently reminds us, these two special interests have not always been compatible."
—
Village Voice
Posted Oct 16, 2012
|
|
|
70%
|
The Thieves (2012) |
"
Easier to like than it is to follow, Choi Dong-hoon's glossy caper boasts all the pomp and cajolery of the true international blockbuster."
—
Village Voice
Posted Oct 9, 2012
|
|
|
44%
|
The Paperboy (2012) |
"
Sometimes hot messiness has its charms."
—
Village Voice
Posted Oct 2, 2012
|
|
|
20%
|
Now, Forager (2012) |
"
A slow-food procedural, commendably devoted yet still underdone."
—
Village Voice
Posted Oct 2, 2012
|
|
|
100%
|
The Waiting Room (2012) |
"
What makes The Waiting Room worth visiting is how well it does without the usual narcotizing doc tactics."
—
Village Voice
Posted Sep 25, 2012
|
|
|
54%
|
The Inbetweeners (2012) |
"
To say it's basically a British Superbad or American Pie doesn't allow for the real and nearly surreal comic possibilities of poise and genteel wit applied to randy scatological high jinks."
—
Village Voice
Posted Sep 4, 2012
|
|
|
22%
|
True Wolf (2012) |
"
The movie amounts to a crude assembly of sincere testimony, somehow too long at 76 minutes and maybe actually a job for Werner Herzog instead."
—
Village Voice
Posted Aug 14, 2012
|
|
|
87%
|
ParaNorman (2012) |
"
Butler called it "John Carpenter meets John Hughes," and that does just about sum ParaNorman up, though the actual math still feels a little fuzzy."
—
Village Voice
Posted Aug 14, 2012
|
|
|
37%
|
Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) |
"
The best bits are basic and all but voiceless: those Scrat-intensive set pieces, still inspiredly squirrelly if much too far apart."
—
Village Voice
Posted Jul 13, 2012
|
|
3/5
|
72%
|
Fuel (2008) |
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Apr 13, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
76%
|
Cidade dos Homens (City of Men) (2007) |
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Apr 13, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
61%
|
The Joneses (2010) |
"
Even with decent turns from the leads, and a usefully soulful one from Gary Cole as a neighbor inclined to do the proverbial keeping up, the film can't always manage to justify itself as an actual movie instead of merely a clever concept."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Apr 12, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
91%
|
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009) |
"
Sidibe's Susan Boyle moment of misdirected public pity notwithstanding, hers is a rare and welcome presence in American independent film."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Apr 4, 2011
|
|
4/5
|
93%
|
The Kids Are All Right (2010) |
"
A slight but bittersweet tale about a neurotic lesbian couple whose formerly anonymous sperm donor becomes their potential home wrecker."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Jul 29, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
55%
|
The Killer Inside Me (2010) |
"
It's a fine idea to turn Affleck's squawky self-assurance into a lens on sociopathy, but Winterbottom and co-writer John Curran seem neither to examine nor to indulge, and the result feels strangely inconsequential."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Jul 22, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
81%
|
Despicable Me (2010) |
"
It's also just silly and funny, and doesn't that warm your cynical heart even just a little bit?"
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Jul 15, 2010
|
|
2/5
|
38%
|
X-Men Origins - Wolverine (2009) |
"
It's just too bad a movie sharp enough to rip through flesh and helicopter blades and nuclear-reactor smokestack walls has to feel so disappointingly dull."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Jul 7, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
81%
|
I Am Love (2010) |
"
Swinton makes short work of stuff like this. Without her, Guadagnino would not have a movie, but that's reason enough to be glad he does."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Jul 6, 2010
|
|
4/5
|
87%
|
Please Give (2010) |
"
Writer-director Nicole Holofcener seems to get better with every film, and now she's cruising along the well-trodden path of neurotic New Yorker comedy-drama with grace and comely confidence."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Jul 6, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
91%
|
Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work (2010) |
"
More or less what you'd expect: charitable, shrill, redundant, hit-and-miss funny."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Jul 6, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
67%
|
Date Night (2010) |
"
Thank goodness, then, that the well-paired leads are as charming and, yes, relatable, as ever. They're not really boring, even if the movie is."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Jul 6, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
71%
|
Waking Sleeping Beauty (2010) |
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Jun 17, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
64%
|
Harry Brown (2010) |
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Jun 17, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
95%
|
No One Knows About Persian Cats (Les Chats Persans) (2010) |
"
If the whole enterprise seems underdeveloped, that's obviously in part a symptom of the system it gently but resoundingly critiques."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Jun 17, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
74%
|
Splice (2010) |
"
It's not quite the subversive cult-movie romp it might have been, but transgenderism, incest and bestiality all at once has to count for something."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Jun 10, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
92%
|
Vincere (2010) |
"
It's all a grand and flashy affair -- but also weirdly prone to the incoherence, redundancy and bullying dehumanization that characterized the political history it presumes to critique."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted May 27, 2010
|
|
2/5
|
18%
|
Princess Ka'iulani (2010) |
"
Historically fanciful and dramatically doltish."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted May 27, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
82%
|
Solitary Man (2010) |
"
This lucid and darkly comic character study gives us Michael Douglas in top form."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted May 21, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
73%
|
Iron Man 2 (2010) |
"
Don Cheadle, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell and again Gwyneth Paltrow are gladly on hand, but only Robert Downey Jr. can so comfortably guide us through the conspicuous outlay."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted May 20, 2010
|
|
4/5
|
82%
|
Panique au village (A Town Called Panic) (2009) |
"
Aubier and Patar would have us believe that Panic really can be reduced to child's play, which just makes it seem all the more like a place worth visiting."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted May 20, 2010
|
|
4/5
|
79%
|
Mother and Child (2010) |
"
The leads have excellent support from Jimmy Smits, Cherry Jones, Shareeka Epps and S. Epatha Merkerson-plus, that most welcome rarity, a subtle turn from Samuel L. Jackson."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted May 7, 2010
|
|
4/5
|
80%
|
Le Couperet (2005) |
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted May 6, 2010
|
|
2/5
|
19%
|
The Back-up Plan (2010) |
"
The premise alone might induce vomiting."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Apr 23, 2010
|
|
4/5
|
96%
|
Exit Through The Gift Shop (2010) |
"
It's a colorful cocktail of subversiveness, self-seriousness, wonder, horror and joy."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Apr 16, 2010
|
|
2/5
|
28%
|
Clash of the Titans (2010) |
"
Here comes director Louis Leterrier and his team of mercenary screenwriters to make sure a dated, lumbering mytho-fantastical clunker from 1981 gets a bland, moronic, computer-enhanced warming over."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Apr 2, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
96%
|
Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (2009) |
"
It's a story good enough to withstand the conventional documentary formula of archive footage and talking heads -- and maybe even good enough to withstand a few ill-advised sprinkles of hokey music, animation and re-enactments."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Apr 1, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
74%
|
Greenberg (2010) |
"
Baumbach is as perceptive about aimlessness as he is adept at offhandedness; whether these gifts are ideally complementary may have to remain an open question."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Mar 26, 2010
|
|
4/5
|
76%
|
The Eclipse (2010) |
"
It's a film of measuredness and maturity, and a fine one to curl up with."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Mar 26, 2010
|
|
3/5
|
84%
|
North Face (Nordwand) (2010) |
"
With knuckles alternately white from suspense and black from frostbite, the alpinists get progressively harder to tell apart. But the most compelling character, for all its brutal enormity, always was the mountain."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Mar 11, 2010
|
|
4/5
|
83%
|
The Ghost Writer (2010) |
"
The movie's masterful control -- from its elegantly foreboding opening to the mordant glee of a striking final shot -- is pure Polanski."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Mar 11, 2010
|
|
4/5
|
97%
|
A Prophet (Un prophete) (2010) |
"
It may be grim, but ultimately it's a story of survival, both topical and timeless."
—
Sacramento News & Review
Posted Feb 26, 2010
|
76%
32%
94%
85%
45%
40%
