|
C+
|
58%
|
Linsanity (2013) |
"
As a piece of filmmaking, Linsanity is scattershot and too reliant on newsreels. And the interviews, most of all with the religiously devout Lin are, alas, fairly unrevealing."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Oct 4, 2013
|
|
B-
|
80%
|
The Summit (2013) |
"
Nick Ryan's documentary The Summit pieces together the fateful expedition utilizing newsreel footage, new and old interviews with the climbers and their associates, and, regrettably, re-enactments."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Oct 4, 2013
|
|
B+
|
98%
|
Gravity (2013) |
"
Cuarón and his cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, keep the audience in weightless suspension right along with the astronauts. For most of us, Gravity is the closest we will ever get to the real deal."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Oct 4, 2013
|
|
B+
|
100%
|
Mother Of George (2013) |
"
The cinematography by Bradford Young is rich-toned and lustrous, and the film, until it bogs down in melodramatics, has a sensual ease. We are not looking at these people from the outside. Dosunmu pulls us deep inside."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Sep 27, 2013
|
|
B+
|
90%
|
Inequality For All (2013) |
"
It's unseemly, I know, to praise a movie like this for the stand-up-comic affability of its host. But Reich's engagingness also gives credence to the seriousness of his message."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Sep 27, 2013
|
|
C+
|
83%
|
Don Jon (2013) |
"
The movie becomes increasingly soft-edged and sappy."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Sep 27, 2013
|
|
C-
|
53%
|
The Muslims Are Coming (2013) |
"
The comedy routines are so-so (though the falling-in-the-aisles reaction shots tell another story) and the comics' patchwork odyssey often derails into irrelevancies."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Sep 20, 2013
|
|
B-
|
88%
|
Rush (2013) |
"
Rush isn't bad, exactly, but it's like a standard-issue male action programmer that somehow crept in from an earlier era."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Sep 20, 2013
|
|
B-
|
80%
|
Prisoners (2013) |
"
A film that, for all its pretensions and intermittent power, is essentially high-grade claptrap."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Sep 20, 2013
|
|
B
|
50%
|
Thanks For Sharing (2013) |
"
Most of all, there's Ruffalo, who in his scenes with a very good Gwyneth Paltrow, plays a man who, with heartbreaking vulnerability, is straining to normalize himself. It's a major performance in a minor movie."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Sep 20, 2013
|
|
B
|
95%
|
Enough Said (2013) |
"
Best is Gandolfini's sensitive-guy-in-a-bulky-physique performance. He was a marvelously versatile actor, and, with the knowledge that he is gone, it's doubly poignant to watch him here."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Sep 19, 2013
|
|
B-
|
95%
|
Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction (2013) |
"
Harry Dean Stanton is a marvelous actor and, at least from a visual standpoint, a marvelous camera subject. He's not much of a talker, though."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Sep 13, 2013
|
|
B
|
61%
|
My Father and the Man in Black (2013) |
"
You get a strong whiff of what it must have been like to be Johnny Cash, or his exasperated manager, from this film. It would make a good companion piece to "Walk the Line."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Sep 13, 2013
|
|
B
|
34%
|
Salinger (2013) |
"
By turns fascinating and infuriating."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Sep 6, 2013
|
|
B
|
91%
|
Our Nixon (2013) |
"
We get to see film of daughter Tricia's wedding (her father is a surprisingly agile ballroom dancer) and other oddities."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Sep 6, 2013
|
|
1.5/5
|
67%
|
Floundering (1994) |
"
All-too-aptly named."
—
Los Angeles Times
Posted Aug 26, 2013
|
|
C+
|
96%
|
Cutie And The Boxer (2013) |
"
Their 40-year marriage seems like more of a trial than this overweening, lightly likable movie acknowledges."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Aug 23, 2013
|
|
B-
|
81%
|
Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013) |
"
Lowery has a way with actors, though. As a local sheriff with an eye for Ruth, Ben Foster is excellent and, in a too-small role as a grizzled shopkeeper, Keith Carradine proves himself yet again to be one of our finest performers."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Aug 23, 2013
|
|
B
|
74%
|
The Grandmaster (2013) |
"
I've never been a big fan of Wong's phantasmagoric prettiness, but at least here it provides a welcome corrective to the usual martial-arts mayhem."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Aug 23, 2013
|
|
B
|
83%
|
The Patience Stone (2013) |
"
Amid these horrors, the young wife retains not only the frailty but also the incandescence, the sheer staying power, of beauty."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Aug 23, 2013
|
|
B-
|
73%
|
Lee Daniels' The Butler (2013) |
"
Winfrey is good, though, demonstrating yet again that she's an actress and not just a celebrity playing an actress."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Aug 16, 2013
|
|
C+
|
68%
|
Elysium (2013) |
"
If Elysium is an example of how recession-era Hollywood intends to dramatize the rift between the haves and the have-nots, let's hope the studios don't also bring back Smell-O-Rama."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Aug 9, 2013
|
|
C-
|
47%
|
We're The Millers (2013) |
"
Even tastelessness needs to have some taste. The blue humor in We're the Millers is just bland."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Aug 7, 2013
|
|
|
91%
|
Minority Report (2002) |
"
High-concept science-fiction escapades often try to impose new ways of seeing, but Spielberg seems intent on blistering our optic nerves."
—
New York Magazine
Posted Aug 5, 2013
|
|
B
|
68%
|
The Artist and the Model (2013) |
"
It's a miniature art history lesson that is also a rapt communion between two people who, at least in this moment, are joined in the ecstasy of creation."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Aug 2, 2013
|
|
B
|
91%
|
The Spectacular Now (2013) |
"
James Ponsoldt, who directed from a script by Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter, is a bit too glib to do justice to this material, but the young actors, especially Woodley, are quite fine."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Aug 2, 2013
|
|
C+
|
63%
|
2 Guns (2013) |
"
It's essentially a buddy-cop romp with the usual assortment pack of graphic gruesomeness."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Aug 2, 2013
|
|
3.5/5
|
93%
|
The Freshman (1990) |
"
Just when you've had it with the mistimed scenes and the clunky direction, writer-director Andrew Bergman comes through with an inspired piece of lunacy."
—
Los Angeles Times
Posted Aug 1, 2013
|
|
2/5
|
83%
|
Thelma & Louise (1991) |
"
If the only way a woman can light up the screen these days is with a .38-caliber pistol, isn't that just another form of subordination?"
—
Los Angeles Times
Posted Jul 30, 2013
|
|
B
|
91%
|
Blue Jasmine (2013) |
"
Why should we care about Jasmine? For me, the best reason was Blanchett's all-out performance, which is often frighteningly vivid."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jul 26, 2013
|
|
D
|
97%
|
The Act Of Killing (2013) |
"
Oppenheimer allows murderous thugs free rein to preen their atrocities, and then fobs it all off as some kind of exalted art thing. This is more than an aesthetic crime; it's a moral crime."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jul 26, 2013
|
|
B
|
69%
|
The Wolverine (2013) |
"
Mangold front-loads the action, but near the end there's a first-rate fight atop a bullet train between Wolverine/Logan and some especially pesky ninjas. It puts the train fights in the recent The Lone Ranger to shame."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jul 26, 2013
|
|
C
|
20%
|
Girl Most Likely (2013) |
"
This film suffers, as you can guess from this précis, from quirky-overload."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jul 19, 2013
|
|
B
|
98%
|
Blackfish (2013) |
"
Blackfish, a documentary by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, puts the "killer" back into killer whales by indicting those sea parks that, in her well-chronicled estimation, place profit above safety. "
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jul 19, 2013
|
|
B
|
93%
|
Still Mine (2013) |
"
Bujold amply conveys Irene's longing for Craig in deep-toned ways that one almost never sees in movies about people over the age of 70. Actually, you rarely see it in movies about people of any age anymore."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jul 19, 2013
|
|
C+
|
42%
|
Red 2 (2013) |
"
It's nice to see oldsters cavorting in kaboom movies, but a little of this stuff goes a long way."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jul 19, 2013
|
|
B
|
94%
|
Fruitvale Station (2013) |
"
Although Coogler surely wants his movie to serve as a weapon against racially charged police brutality, he's smart enough, and sensitive enough, to know that this is above all a human tragedy -- and not a political rallying point."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jul 12, 2013
|
|
3.5/5
|
60%
|
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) |
"
At its best, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is a bright, nasty psychological thriller with a joker up its sleeve."
—
Los Angeles Times
Posted Jul 10, 2013
|
|
C-
|
31%
|
The Lone Ranger (2013) |
"
Hammer plays the Lone Ranger as a clueless, stolid square, and the resulting contrast with Depp's cartoonishness isn't odd-couple funny, just blah."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jul 2, 2013
|
|
B+
|
90%
|
The Attack (2013) |
"
As this film demonstrates in so many ways, the intractability of the Arab-Israeli political situation is, to put it mildly, not easily resolved, least of all onscreen."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jun 28, 2013
|
|
C+
|
65%
|
The Heat (2013) |
"
It's not really such a great achievement to have women cops in the movies acting as boorish and rowdy as their male counterparts."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jun 28, 2013
|
|
C
|
47%
|
I'm So Excited! (2013) |
"
This farce set mostly aboard a transatlantic flight stuck in midair never launches."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jun 28, 2013
|
|
C+
|
50%
|
White House Down (2013) |
"
Emmerich isn't strenuous about setting a consistent tone. Action movie blow-ups are interlaced with dumb jokes and slapstick. He's an anything-for-effect guy, but some of his effects are none too effective."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jun 28, 2013
|
|
A-
|
97%
|
A Hijacking (2013) |
"
Lindholm doesn't present the film as a procedural for hostage negotiations because he knows too well that there are too many movable parts, too many things that can go wrong."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jun 21, 2013
|
|
B-
|
67%
|
World War Z (2013) |
"
Pitt conducts himself manfully throughout the proceedings -- he is never less than believable while facing off against this pandemic -- but if I never see another zombie in the movies, I will not feel deprived."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jun 21, 2013
|
|
B-
|
64%
|
Unfinished Song (2013) |
"
The director, Paul Andrew Williams, at least had the good sense to cast Terence Stamp and Vanessa Redgrave as his leads. Who can possibly look away from those two whenever they're on screen?"
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jun 21, 2013
|
|
B+
|
78%
|
Monsters University (2013) |
"
As prequels go, Monsters University is pretty nifty."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jun 21, 2013
|
|
|
91%
|
Murderous Maids (2002) |
"
Sylvie Testud gives such a ferociously controlled performance that the messy murder seems like a necessary release."
—
New York Magazine
Posted Jun 17, 2013
|
|
A
|
99%
|
20 Feet From Stardom (2013) |
"
I have rarely seen a movie that better expressed the revivifying nature of music."
—
Christian Science Monitor
Posted Jun 14, 2013
|
