|
3/5
|
——
|
Grand Central () |
"
The film has tobacco on its breath and sweat-rings at its armpits, although it's not as brawny as it would have us believe."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted May 19, 2013
|
|
3/5
|
——
|
Blood Ties () |
"
I'm not convinced that this hoary, hackneyed old cop-opera is entirely to be trusted ... although it is served with such relish that the fun proves infectious."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted May 19, 2013
|
|
4/5
|
89%
|
Fruitvale Station (2013) |
"
One has the sense of a man being slowly, surely written back into being."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted May 17, 2013
|
|
3/5
|
——
|
The Congress () |
"
It hunts high and low for the human element in a virtual world. And yet for all its modish gestures, there is something endearingly retro about Folman's handling."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted May 16, 2013
|
|
4/5
|
100%
|
A Hijacking (2013) |
"
Danish director Tobias Lindholm spins an exacting drama out of a crisis on this deft, verite-style account of Somali piracy in the Indian ocean."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted May 9, 2013
|
|
4/5
|
89%
|
Shell () |
"
A hushed and haunting coming-of-age drama, pungently played out in the remote Scottish highlands, where the wind boings off the microphone and passing lorries set the crockery rattling."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Mar 14, 2013
|
|
2/5
|
30%
|
Broken City (2013) |
"
It's stolid, it's dogged, it knows where it's going. Back and forth around the same old scenery."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Feb 28, 2013
|
|
3/5
|
67%
|
Stoker (2013) |
"
Beneath all the silk and powder, it transpires that Stoker is actually nothing more than a schlocky, screeching B-movie; an animated skeleton sent up to spook us. It's at its most entertaining when it shakes off its clothes."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Feb 28, 2013
|
|
2/5
|
65%
|
Mama (2013) |
"
Extended from a 2008 short and starring Jessica Chastain, this has become a proficient, machine-tooled horror flick."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Feb 21, 2013
|
|
4/5
|
93%
|
Lore (2013) |
"
As with all the best fairytales, there is a blackness and brutality at its centre."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Feb 21, 2013
|
|
2/5
|
67%
|
Cloud Atlas (2012) |
"
Unfortunately, these bold ambitions come to naught. They confuse the cosmos with the costume department and wind up lost in a world of wigs and bonnets."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Feb 21, 2013
|
|
4/5
|
98%
|
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In The House Of God (2012) |
"
A kind of unintentional leaving gift for the outgoing Pope Benedict, though it is not one he is likely to relish."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Feb 14, 2013
|
|
2/5
|
45%
|
Beautiful Creatures (2013) |
"
The plot is wildly silly and shot full of holes, maundering endlessly on its slow trawl towards the climax. But the cast at least play it like they mean it, and keep it honest for a spell."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Feb 14, 2013
|
|
2/5
|
15%
|
A Good Day To Die Hard (2013) |
"
I don't think it knows where it's going. I'm not even sure it cares."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Feb 14, 2013
|
|
2/5
|
47%
|
Bullet to the Head (2013) |
"
A wilfully old-fashioned, oddly soothing sprawl of cool cars, heavy weaponry, chain-link fences and cackling crooks."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Jan 31, 2013
|
|
3/5
|
74%
|
Rise of the Guardians (2012) |
"
If Rise of the Guardians is finally never more than the sum of its parts, the parts themselves have real appeal."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Nov 14, 2012
|
|
3/5
|
92%
|
Skyfall (2012) |
"
Works terrifically well up to a point."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Oct 13, 2012
|
|
4/5
|
75%
|
Big Boys Gone Bananas!* (2012) |
"
Gertten's film deftly lifts the lid on the black ops of 21st-century "brand management". Dole comes out smelling of ordure."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Sep 20, 2012
|
|
4/5
|
66%
|
Spring Breakers (2013) |
"
[Korine] bounces back like a man possessed, rekitted as some 21st-century Russ Meyer, playing disreputable paterfamilias to a fresh breed of supervixens."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Sep 5, 2012
|
|
5/5
|
86%
|
The Master (2012) |
"
Offers catnip for the senses and succour for the soul, riffing lightly off the life of Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard to conjure up a film that is both expansive and intimate, confident and self-questioning."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Sep 1, 2012
|
|
4/5
|
87%
|
The Dark Knight Rises (2012) |
"
The dark knight duly rises for the bruising final stanza in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, a satisfying saga of revolution and redemption that ends the tale on a note of thunder."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Jul 16, 2012
|
|
2/5
|
20%
|
The Prey (2013) |
"
A rough diamond con on the trail of a serial killer can't outrun this French thriller's weight of familiarity."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Jul 12, 2012
|
|
3/5
|
100%
|
Les géants (The Giants) (2011) |
"
Even the tale's sagging, aimless middle section feels oddly of a piece."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Jul 12, 2012
|
|
3/5
|
93%
|
King of Devil's Island (2011) |
"
Robust acting and crisp direction eases the old-rope material through to the inevitable conflagration."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Jun 28, 2012
|
|
2/5
|
53%
|
Think Like a Man (2012) |
"
Beware beaming self-publicists bearing relationship advice. Those bold, bright one-liners point the way to a life of abject humiliation."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Jun 21, 2012
|
|
1/5
|
41%
|
A Fantastic Fear of Everything () |
"
So spectacularly bungled that it leaves the viewer in a state of advanced petrification."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Jun 7, 2012
|
|
|
82%
|
In the Fog () |
"
It turns out to be another of those infuriating Cannes near-misses: an iron-clad dreadnought of a picture, impressive in its way but lacking the flash and fire of Loznitsa's previous picture, My Joy. "
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted May 26, 2012
|
|
|
64%
|
Cosmopolis (2012) |
"
Cosmopolis, praise be, is flat-out marvellous, a 21st-century American horror story, haunted by "the glow of cyber-capitalism"."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted May 26, 2012
|
|
|
92%
|
No (2013) |
"
The film provides a fascinating history lesson in the guise of backstage drama, honeycombed with antique-looking TV commercials full of Lycra-clad dancers and gambolling mimes. "
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted May 25, 2012
|
|
|
44%
|
The Paperboy (2012) |
"
Lee Daniels does not so much direct as distract, grabbing hold of Pete Dexter's splendidly lean and lethal source novel and gorging it on so much junk-food that the plot plays out as a series of cardiac arrests"
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted May 24, 2012
|
|
2/5
|
51%
|
Post Tenebras Lux (2013) |
"
Reygadas has elected to shoot large portions of his film through a bevelled camera lens, which refracts his figures, doubles the image and leaves the screen's borders blurred. I have no doubt he is deliberately setting out to vex us."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted May 24, 2012
|
|
2/5
|
23%
|
After The Battle (Baad El Mawkeaa) () |
"
The last shot is dynamite: a poetic crawl up the edge of a pyramid, rising in agonising, mesmerising degrees with seemingly no end in sight. The rest, however, is but a long, hard trudge."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted May 17, 2012
|
|
3/5
|
84%
|
Angel & Tony (Angèle et Tony) () |
"
At its best, Delaporte's film gives the impression of being uncovered as opposed to constructed, like an eccentric bit of driftwood exposed at low tide."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted May 3, 2012
|
|
4/5
|
97%
|
Monsieur Lazhar (2012) |
"
Only the most obstreperous delinquent could fail to be charmed by Monsieur Lazhar, in which an Algerian refugee plays ramshackle Mary Poppins to the kids at a Montreal primary."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted May 3, 2012
|
|
4/5
|
75%
|
Damsels in Distress (2012) |
"
If it's possible for a picture to be at once ideal and imperfect, then Damsels fits the bill."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Apr 5, 2012
|
|
4/5
|
85%
|
The Hunger Games (2012) |
"
The Hunger Games is that rarest of beasts: a Hollywood action blockbuster that is smart, taut and knotty."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Mar 16, 2012
|
|
2/5
|
85%
|
How To Re-establish A Vodka Empire () |
"
A glorified sales presentation with one eye on the Waitrose deal. I didn't buy it."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Mar 15, 2012
|
|
3/5
|
65%
|
The Woman in Black (2012) |
"
[A] busy, bustling ghost story that at times appears less indebted to the Susan Hill bestseller than the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Feb 9, 2012
|
|
3/5
|
94%
|
Patience (After Sebald) (2012) |
"
In keeping with the spirit of Sebald's writing, Gee's film is teasing, elegant and perhaps inevitably unresolved: an invitation as opposed to a destination."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Jan 27, 2012
|
|
2/5
|
67%
|
X: Night of Vengeance (2011) |
"
Hewitt's pungent early scenes of Oz's underbelly have a certain crystal-meth intensity, but the buzz can't last, and the film starts to wilt."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Jan 19, 2012
|
|
4/5
|
86%
|
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) |
"
In less experienced hands, this would surely have wound up as lurid, trashy pulp. Yet Fincher plays it straight and keeps it serious."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Dec 15, 2011
|
|
4/5
|
60%
|
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) |
"
A Game of Shadows assures us that escapism is good, that mischief must be celebrated. Holmes and Watson are happy and their escapades play out with such grace and brio that the fun is infectious."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Dec 13, 2011
|
|
2/5
|
43%
|
That Girl in Yellow Boots (2011) |
"
The yarn flounders under a crush of declamatory dialogue, sheds its plumage in an overheated final act and no amount of delirious closeups of Koechlin's lovely face (shot by her director husband, Anurag Kashyap) can restore its sheen."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Dec 1, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
100%
|
An African Election (2011) |
"
Paints a portrait of an engaged, energised electorate, thronging the rallies and queuing for 12 hours straight at the polling stations. It's a good foundation; something to build on."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Nov 25, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
52%
|
The Iron Lady (2012) |
"
A breezy, whistle-stop tour through the unstable nitroglycerin of Thatcher's life and times."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Nov 15, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
92%
|
The British Guide To Showing Off () |
"
Benstock's film is affectionate, indulgent and clearly in love with its subject..."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Nov 10, 2011
|
|
3/5
|
76%
|
The Help (2011) |
"
In dramatic terms it works a treat."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Oct 27, 2011
|
|
2/5
|
75%
|
The Adventures of Tintin (2011) |
"
While the big set pieces are often exuberantly handled, the human details are sorely wanting. Hergé achieved more expression with his use of ink-spot eyes and humble line drawings than a bank of computers and an army of animators were able to achieve"
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Oct 16, 2011
|
|
2/5
|
78%
|
Red White & Blue (2010) |
"
Dim the lights and raise the heat for this sputtering Texas noir, liberally spiced with strip-malls and pool-halls."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Sep 29, 2011
|
78%
——
——
85%
45%
40%
