|
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
|
|
5/5
|
92%
|
Blade Runner (1982) |
"
Blade Runner, in all its various, shimmering incarnations, is deathless."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Nov 23, 2007
|
|
5/5
|
97%
|
Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) (1955) |
"
Fresh as a daisy after all these years, Satyajit Ray's 1955 spellbinder comes underpinned by a tumultuous Ravi Shankar sitar and paints a ground's-eye portrait of life in an impoverished Bengali village."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Oct 24, 2007
|
|
5/5
|
96%
|
Ratatouille (2007) |
"
I loved Ratatouille. I was even tempted to drop the odd bit of popcorn, like tipping the waiter after a particularly good meal."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Oct 12, 2007
|
|
5/5
|
100%
|
Le Chagrin et la Pitié (The Sorrow and the Pity) (1970) |
"
The film is so boldly conceived, richly textured and beautifully paced that its marathon running time feels more like a sprint."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Oct 6, 2007
|
|
5/5
|
89%
|
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) |
"
If anything, Robert Altman's self-styled "anti-western" looks even richer, stranger and more daring than it did when it first appeared back in 1971."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted May 4, 2007
|
|
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
|
|
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
|
|
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
|
|
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
|
|
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
|
|
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
|
|
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
|
|
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
|
|
4/5
|
82%
|
Mademoiselle Chambon (2010) |
"
Slow your pace and pause for breath and there's a world of pleasure to be had from this unhurried small-town tragedy."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Sep 22, 2011
|
|
4/5
|
80%
|
Shame (2011) |
"
This is fluid, rigorous, serious cinema; the best kind of adult movie."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Sep 5, 2011
|
|
4/5
|
75%
|
Alps (2012) |
"
Follow the film-maker. Let him lead you by the nose. Lanthimos knows exactly where he's going."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Sep 5, 2011
|
|
4/5
|
83%
|
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) |
"
A marvellously chill and acrid cold war thriller from Swedish director Tomas Alfredson."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Sep 5, 2011
|
|
4/5
|
72%
|
Carnage (2011) |
"
The acting comes at full throttle while the pacing cranks up the tension in agonising, incremental degrees."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Sep 1, 2011
|
|
4/5
|
93%
|
Drive (2011) |
"
Buckle up; it's quite a ride."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted May 20, 2011
|
|
4/5
|
88%
|
My Kidnapper () |
"
My Kidnapper - charged, complex and always compelling - revisits the ruins and speaks to the ghosts."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Feb 10, 2011
|
|
4/5
|
100%
|
Enemies of the People (2010) |
"
Extraordinary..."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Dec 9, 2010
|
|
4/5
|
86%
|
Inception (2010) |
"
It is that rarest of beasts: a slippery, cerebral summer blockbuster that slaloms from illusion to reality and back again and leaves its viewer bewitched, bothered and bewildered."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Jul 15, 2010
|
|
4/5
|
94%
|
The Unloved (2009) |
"
The climactic scene, in which Morton's heroine confronts her mum, is one of the most quietly gut-wrenching things I've seen in years."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Feb 19, 2010
|
|
4/5
|
89%
|
Séraphine (2009) |
"
A measured, soulful and tactile work; a film with gouache beneath its fingernails."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Nov 27, 2009
|
|
4/5
|
58%
|
The Invention of Lying (2009) |
"
His comedy pretends to be unthreatening, a harmless little wheeze, and then pushes the envelope to its logical conclusion."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Oct 4, 2009
|
|
4/5
|
93%
|
Sugar (2008) |
"
Sugar is a revelation, not least in the way it ducks an onrush of cliche to expose the whole rags-to-riches mantra as a bright and shining lie."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Jun 5, 2009
|
|
4/5
|
63%
|
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) (2008) |
"
The acting is heartfelt, but the film carries a heaped cargo of conceits that has it wavering between the stark and the sentimental, the nuanced and the schematic."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Sep 12, 2008
|
|
4/5
|
96%
|
WALL-E (2008) |
"
Does Andrew Stanton's film amount to much more than a brilliant aesthetic exercise? I'm not convinced it does."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Jul 18, 2008
|
|
4/5
|
100%
|
The Killers (1946) |
"
A near-classic of 40s film noir."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Apr 8, 2008
|
|
4/5
|
97%
|
Once (2007) |
"
A soulful valentine to music, friendship and the joys of honest hard graft, played out in the bedsits and recording studios of a deglamourised Dublin."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Oct 19, 2007
|
|
4/5
|
84%
|
The Sound of Music (1965) |
"
Check your cynicism at the door: Robert Wise's adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical still has a little soul in its bones."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Sep 22, 2007
|
|
4/5
|
93%
|
Withnail and I (1987) |
"
It is at once a coming-of-age comedy and a fond farewell to an era."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Sep 8, 2007
|
|
|
87%
|
Welcome (2010) |
"
Phillippe Lioret's drama turns heavy-handed at the end. What keeps it afloat are the sharp performances, together with a pungent, docu-style portrait of the dockyards."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Nov 6, 2009
|
|
|
87%
|
Funny Ha Ha (2003) |
"
Smart, subtle and excruciatingly honest."
—
Guardian [UK]
Posted Mar 16, 2007
|
|
|
94%
|
American Splendor (2003) |
"
Harvey Pekar is not your average superhero. He's at once author and character, hero and victim, his life and his art the result of a perpetual two-way osmosis."
—
Sight and Sound
Posted Jan 6, 2004
|
|
|
63%
|
Wonderland (2000) |
"
A consistently bewitching experience."
—
Sight and Sound
Posted Dec 2, 2002
|
|
|
82%
|
Ghost Dog - The Way of the Samurai (2000) |
"
This is a picture by turns amusing and melancholic, sweet-centred and dark-edged."
—
Sight and Sound
Posted Dec 2, 2002
|
|
|
48%
|
Bamboozled (2000) |
"
Yes, Bamboozled is a picture of genuine importance. Yes, it is also crude, unstable and hazardous."
—
Sight and Sound
Posted May 30, 2001
|
|
|
39%
|
Black and White (2002) |
"
A study in multiculturalism, Toback's film is something of a melting-pot itself: mixed-up, messy and teeming with vitality."
—
Sight and Sound
Posted Apr 17, 2001
|
|
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
|
50%
|
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
|
|
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
|
|
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
|
|
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
|
78%
——
100%
85%
45%
40%
