|
4/4
|
47%
|
The Lords of Salem (2013) |
"
Rob Zombie understands horror as an aural-visual experience that should gnaw at the nerves, seep into the subconscious, and beget unshakeable nightmares."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 14, 2013
|
|
A
|
93%
|
Bigger Than Life (1956) (1956) |
"
A masterful melodrama whose aesthetic beauty works in service of a stinging social critique."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Jun 8, 2011
|
|
A
|
78%
|
The Thin Red Line (1998) |
"
Ultimately concerned less with specific tactical maneuvers or combat suffering than with the grand contradictions of life."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted May 11, 2011
|
|
A
|
98%
|
Badlands (1974) |
"
Malick's film, full of striking cutaways to the burning-sun horizon and the harsh landscape's solitary creatures, comes to operate at an overpoweringly chilling remove."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted May 11, 2011
|
|
A
|
88%
|
Certified Copy (Copie Conforme) (2011) |
"
An astonishingly multilayered portrait of a romantic relationship that doubles as a commentary on the value of reproductions - and, thus, the cinema itself."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Sep 22, 2010
|
|
4/4
|
91%
|
There Will Be Blood (2007) |
"
Paul Thomas Anderson's loose adaptation of Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil! finds the director exhibiting newfound maturity and restraint without sacrificing any measure of artistry."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Dec 13, 2007
|
|
4/4
|
94%
|
Days of Heaven (1978) |
"
To hell with equivocation or beating around the bush: Terrence Malick's 1978 Days of Heaven is the greatest film ever made."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 22, 2007
|
|
A
|
97%
|
Killer of Sheep: The Charles Burnett Collection (2007) |
"
A tale so smoothly and effortlessly constructed that the boundaries between the staged and the authentic seemingly cease to exist."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Apr 12, 2007
|
|
4/4
|
98%
|
Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre, the Wrath of God) (1972) |
"
A saga of adventurers driven headlong into annihilation by their own hubris and desire for immortality."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 3, 2006
|
|
A
|
100%
|
On Dangerous Ground (1952) |
"
One of noir's most soulful and poetic expressions of hope and redemption."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Aug 16, 2006
|
|
A
|
77%
|
Bad Lieutenant (1992) |
"
[Ferrara's] crowning achievement."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted May 5, 2006
|
|
4/4
|
100%
|
Stalker (1979) |
"
A tangled knot of memories, fears, fantasies, nightmares, paradoxical impulses, and a yearning for something that's simultaneously beyond our reach and yet intrinsic to every one of us."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 25, 2006
|
|
A
|
90%
|
Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006) |
"
Vividly captures Young's greatness by simply letting him do his thing."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Apr 6, 2006
|
|
4/4
|
97%
|
L'Armée des ombres (Army in the Shadows) (1969) |
"
Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows finally emerges from anonymity this April to assume its rightful canonical place alongside the French master's peerless Parisian noirs."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Feb 13, 2006
|
|
A
|
83%
|
Land of Silence and Darkness (Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit) (1973) |
"
Speaks volumes about the intrinsic human desire for empathetic communion."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Feb 12, 2006
|
|
A
|
69%
|
It's Alive (1973) |
"
A deeply terrifying portrait of child-parent relationships and intolerant fears of "otherness" defined as much by its sociological sharpness as its gore."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Jan 26, 2006
|
|
A
|
61%
|
The New World (2005) |
"
An unqualified masterwork...[that] feels less like a manipulative man-made construction than like a piece of organically produced art."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Dec 16, 2005
|
|
A
|
53%
|
Wolf Creek (2005) |
"
An austere descent into inexplicable, unbridled mayhem."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Dec 6, 2005
|
|
A
|
94%
|
The White Diamond (2004) |
"
A superb portrait of the dangers as well as euphoria that can come from chasing one's most treasured dreams."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Nov 29, 2005
|
|
4/4
|
100%
|
Le Samouraï (The Godson) (2005) |
"
Achieves an atmosphere of mesmerizing, otherworldly beauty and grace."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 24, 2005
|
|
A
|
93%
|
Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1998) |
"
A stunning tale of survival."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Oct 21, 2005
|
|
4/4
|
91%
|
Professione: reporter (The Passenger) (1975) |
"
A fatalistic tale of identity, destiny, coincidence, existential malaise, and the boundaries between the real and the imagined."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 5, 2005
|
|
4/4
|
86%
|
Zui hao de shi guang (Three Times) (2005) |
"
An act of auteurist self-reflexivity in keeping with the director's belief in the powerful influence of history on the here and now."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 4, 2005
|
|
A
|
86%
|
L'Enfant (The Child) (2006) |
"
A rigorously austere masterpiece infused with intense humanism."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Sep 26, 2005
|
|
4/4
|
100%
|
Hsimeng jensheng (The Puppetmaster) (1993) |
"
Hou Hsiao-hsien remains a master at conveying movement, progression, and a sense of the inexorable rotations of the wheel of time."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Sep 19, 2005
|
|
A
|
96%
|
The Long Goodbye (1973) |
"
Droll, cunning and magnificently woozy."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Jun 30, 2005
|
|
A
|
97%
|
Unforgiven (1992) |
"
Conveys the power of the Western genre's myths ... as well as the ugly, unromantic realities that lurk behind them."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted May 4, 2005
|
|
A
|
92%
|
Millennium Actress (Sennen joyû) (2001) |
"
The finest anime film I've ever seen."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted May 4, 2005
|
|
A
|
94%
|
Los Olvidados (The Young and the Damned) (1952) |
"
Starkly beautiful [and] diligently economical."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted May 4, 2005
|
|
A
|
96%
|
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) |
"
Astonishingly fleshed-out."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted May 4, 2005
|
|
A
|
88%
|
House of Flying Daggers (2004) |
"
Wonderfully conveys how the act of loving another can be a game, a sacrifice, a ruse, a weapon, a betrayal, and, most of all, a political act."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted May 4, 2005
|
|
4/4
|
100%
|
Laura (2005) |
"
A masterfully complex -- and frequently campy -- portrait of all-consuming romantic self-delusion."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Mar 17, 2005
|
|
4/4
|
75%
|
Night and the City (1950) |
"
The archetypal film noir."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Feb 15, 2005
|
|
4/4
|
91%
|
The Big Red One (1980) |
"
The film's overriding mission is to expose both the inherent absurdity and tragedy of war."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 6, 2004
|
|
4/4
|
43%
|
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (2004) |
"
Hodges, working from a bleak Trevor Preston script, is fascinated by the aspirations, desires, and base compulsions that propel society's murderous fringe population."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Jun 16, 2004
|
|
4/4
|
98%
|
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) |
"
Sergio Leone made a fistful of great films, but none better than 1968's ode to the fading American frontier, Once Upon a Time in the West."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Dec 2, 2003
|
|
4/4
|
91%
|
Straw Dogs (1971) |
"
Straw Dogs serves as the director's blistering treatise on man's inherent animalistic impulses."
—
Slant Magazine
Posted Mar 28, 2003
|
|
A-
|
93%
|
Looper (2012) |
"
A scintillating neo-noir gem of existential quandaries and inescapable fatalism."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Sep 30, 2012
|
|
A-
|
85%
|
The Master (2012) |
"
At once explosive and ramshackle, unpredictable and expertly modulated, it's a magnetic performance [by Phoenix]."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Sep 13, 2012
|
|
A-
|
93%
|
Drive (2011) |
"
[Refn's] stewardship is as precise and magnetic as Gosling's performance."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Sep 12, 2011
|
|
A-
|
85%
|
Donnie Darko (2001) |
"
Defines itself through sustained mood, otherworldly intrigue and deep, abiding humanism."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Jun 20, 2011
|
|
A-
|
92%
|
Pusher III: I Am The Angel of Death (2005) |
"
Expands [the trilogy's] overarching vision of underworld nastiness, the universal yearning for escape, and the cruel hand of fate."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Jun 9, 2011
|
|
A-
|
100%
|
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) |
"
Laced with a fatalism as romantic as its Beantown milieu is damp and grungy."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Jun 8, 2011
|
|
A-
|
80%
|
Fight Club (1999) |
"
A shrewd, scintillating work rooted in an investigation of varying degrees of masculinity and extremism."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Apr 22, 2011
|
|
A-
|
46%
|
Beyond The Black Rainbow (2012) |
"
A reverential ode to Kubrick, Argento, Cronenberg, Altered States, John Carpenter synth scores, '70s sci-fi and '80s fantasy, and mind-boggling, hyper-stylized madness."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Apr 19, 2011
|
|
A-
|
93%
|
Secret Sunshine (2010) |
"
An exemplary examination of coping that expands to entail questions of morality, absolution and faith."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Dec 5, 2010
|
|
A-
|
93%
|
Lourdes (2010) |
"
[An] aesthetically and tonally controlled knockout."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Nov 21, 2010
|
|
A-
|
90%
|
October Country (2009) |
"
[An] intensely raw, empathetic non-fiction portrait."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Nov 21, 2010
|
|
A-
|
94%
|
45365 (2009) |
"
Crafts a symphonic sense of time and place, and in doing so locates the profound in the prosaic."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Nov 21, 2010
|
|
A-
|
90%
|
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2011) |
"
From human to beast, old to young, and living to dead, Weerasethakul's characters are in constant evolution."
—
Lessons of Darkness
Posted Sep 22, 2010
|
74%
78%
61%
52%
26%
4%
