|
93%
|
Turn Me On, Dammit! (2012)
|
"Its even-handed treatment of imperfect characters compares quite favorably with mainstream Hollywood stuff like Easy A."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
41%
|
Silent House (2012)
|
"Despite spending too much screen time sobbing, shrieking, or putting on a game face as the camera peers down her shirt, Elizabeth Olsen comes out ahead. "
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
80%
|
Haywire (2012)
|
"Soderbergh's approach is a little too stripped-down - when you're making a conventional genre movie, the absence of conventional genre elements becomes distracting in itself."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
98%
|
The Artist (2011)
|
"The Artist plays less like an original take on the early sound era than as fan fiction set in the world of Singin' in the Rain."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
78%
|
A Dangerous Method (2011)
|
"Scenes built on line after line of historically accurate but awkward, overly mannered dialogue distract and eventually grate."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
86%
|
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
|
"You get the sense Blomkvist and Salander might march with Occupy Sweden protesters; in its way The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is another movie about the 99 percent."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
95%
|
Pina (2011)
|
"It's not an overview of Bausch's career or a statement on her art, but a celebration of her work and the dancers who bring it to life."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
72%
|
The Dead (2011)
|
"You get used to the sight of the slow-moving undead swaying against the film's natural landscapes like half-imagined phantoms, and somehow that makes them more unnerving."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
——
|
Rote Sonne (Red Sun) (1970)
|
"Puts an alluring, unnerving, yet weirdly dispassionate spin on social unrest in Germany circa 1969."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
91%
|
Tabloid (2011)
|
"First-tier documentarian Errol Morris finds himself slumming a bit with Tabloid."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
88%
|
X-Men: First Class (2011)
|
"I'm generally sick of remakes and relaunches and reboots, but this revamped X-Men origin story is kind of fun."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
84%
|
The Tree of Life (2011)
|
"Terrence Malick is hardly the first filmmaker to show us characters who cry out at the silence of God, but he is perhaps the most unquestionably American."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
34%
|
Hall Pass (2011)
|
"Sporadically funny, but it wastes a lot of time on dreary clichés."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
96%
|
The Social Network (2010)
|
"There's a real mischievousness to David Fincher's approach."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
——
|
Soul Patrol (2001)
|
"Gives off a subtle but unusual vibe that's somehow suggestive of the rifts in South African culture."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
100%
|
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
|
"Immaculately designed, evocatively photographed, and easy to watch but also spiky, morally complex, and ultimately unsettling."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
36%
|
Repo Chick (2011)
|
"It shouldn't even be watchable, but writer-director Alex Cox manages to keep the cheese factor low."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
73%
|
The Housemaid (2011)
|
"The perverse thing is that the film goes down so easily and elegantly, like a fine chocolate and a swig of merlot."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
87%
|
Black Swan (2010)
|
"Robert Altman's paean to this behind-the-scenes process was affectionately dubbed The Company. Aronofsky's may as well be titled Army of One."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
88%
|
Certified Copy (Copie Conforme) (2011)
|
"This is one of the great films about film, a master class in performance and character and narrative."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
90%
|
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2011)
|
"Uncle Boonmee is less a case study in death by degrees than it is a magical and baffling tone poem on the idea of reincarnation."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
72%
|
Enter the Void (Soudain le vide) (2010)
|
"Full of stimulating, often challenging imagery that's rooted in a kind of sentimentality."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
86%
|
Buried (2010)
|
"Cleverly written and staged with plenty of wound-up energy, plus a climax that sucks the air out of the theater."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
94%
|
The Town (2010)
|
"The Town has showcase heist sequences and car chases that avoid the usual pitfalls of over-the-top silliness and/or incoherence."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
85%
|
Easy A (2010)
|
"The whole affair is PG-13 toothless and TV slick - I kept feeling that the movie was insisting on its own embraceability, and I resisted."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
92%
|
Dogtooth (Kynodontas) (2010)
|
"Director Giorgos Lanthimos may be influenced by Michael Haneke's clinical approach as well as by David Lynch's affection for the weird."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
86%
|
Inception (2010)
|
"Christopher Nolan's films are things of beauty, precisely constructed and expertly executed. But you wouldn't want to live there."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
55%
|
The Killer Inside Me (2010)
|
"In this terrific, magnetic performance, Affleck is a bit charismatic, somewhat awkward, and utterly despicable, all at the same time"
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
94%
|
Winter's Bone (2010)
|
"Strikingly unsentimental. Winter's Bone has no time for backstory, moral lessons, or other cute stuff."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
74%
|
Splice (2010)
|
"When Splice is in full flower, there's something magnificent about it."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
96%
|
Exit Through The Gift Shop (2010)
|
"A treatise on Bad Art and a screed against tone-deaf patterns of consumption that drive trends in the art world."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
92%
|
Vincere (2010)
|
"Evokes the historical weight of Europe's Fascist tragedy on a small, resolutely humane, scale."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
30%
|
Survival of the Dead (2010)
|
"This one's really for fans only."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
53%
|
Green Zone (2010)
|
"This is a kind of experiment, and it's only partly successful. But, set against the most expansive, otherworldly backdrop this side of James Cameron's Pandora, it's an appropriately spooky experience."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
83%
|
The Ghost Writer (2010)
|
"Too many scenes here are a bit perfunctory, but they're balanced out well enough by the occasional directorial flourish or long moment of nicely sustained tension."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
74%
|
Banlieue 13 - Ultimatum (District 13: Ultimatum) (2009)
|
"When D13: Ultimatum is firing on all cylinders, it's a bad-ass action movie. When it functions as a delivery mechanism for a social message, it's corny as all hell, but still pleasant enough."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
90%
|
Fish Tank (2010)
|
"Fish Tank walks well-trod ground, but it's still riveting from start to finish."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
42%
|
Jennifer's Body (2009)
|
"Jennifer's Body is full of ideas, but it doesn't have much in the way of tonal control."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
64%
|
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)
|
"An invigorating paean to the revelatory powers of entertainment."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
88%
|
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
|
"Nicolas Cage, a born Hollywood skin-walker, somehow hints at a spiritual dimension to all this lunatic mayhem."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
93%
|
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
|
"Fantastic Mr. Fox isn't exactly a kids' movie. It's just kid-friendly."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
39%
|
2012 (2009)
|
"2012 is the expensive, large-scale version of the same spectacle presented by downmarket counterparts like the Final Destination and Saw franchises."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
48%
|
Antichrist (2009)
|
"For this kind of Satan-in-the-woods scenario, Von Trier is doing a little too much Scenes From a Marriage and not quite enough The Evil Dead."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
55%
|
Hardware (1990)
|
"They say all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun. But if you've got a girl and a killer robot, then you're really onto something."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
100%
|
Playtime (Play Time) (1967)
|
"Tati is constantly fiddling with his images, constructing sets and placing his camera in exactly the right place to execute a visual transformation of space."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
88%
|
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
|
"It's a violent wish-fulfillment fantasy, and if such a thing is necessarily immoral, then Inglourious Basterds is immoral. But it's also -- necessarily -- a provocation."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
67%
|
Grace (2009)
|
"Grimaces its way through 85 long, low-key minutes just to marvel again and again that, gosh, mommies really love their babies."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
87%
|
Flammen & Citronen (Flame & Citron) (The Flame and the Lemon) (2008)
|
"Despite the panache, Flame & Citron maintains a generally dour sensibility."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
7%
|
Ghosted (2009)
|
"A blandly romantic drama with just the whiff of the otherworldly about it."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
|
55%
|
Orphan (2009)
|
"Its many outright depictions of children in jeopardy are scary, but its marital drama is even more unsettling."
|
Bryant Frazer
|
73%
21%
63%
85%
46%
40%
