|
64%
|
The Woman in Black (2012)
|
"Simple story, standard elements, to be sure, but handled by director James Watkins with a stunning insight into why things that go bump in the night ranks as one of the most primal of primal fears"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
53%
|
Albert Nobbs (2012)
|
"Close's performance is flawless, so much so that it's possible that she could have passed to an audience not expecting to see her in the role"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
32%
|
Man on a Ledge (2012)
|
"the energy level never quite gets the adrenaline pumping properly for a film so dependent on split-second timing and dire situations, but as escapist popcorn fare with pretty people and simple characters, it's not at all bad."
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
99%
|
A Separation (2011)
|
"Emotionally resonant beyond the filmmaker's own country and culture, it is a compassionate yet searingly precise film that refuses to name villains, nor to let any of its protagonists off the hook"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
77%
|
The Grey (2012)
|
"On the surface, a story of survival (and) the primal human fear of what lies beyond the light of the campfire. On a deeper level, it delves into the equally human, equally primal fear of what lies beyond the light of civilization and of reason. "
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
95%
|
Pina (2011)
|
"Wenders, who so wanted to see the world through Pina's eyes, has done something even better. He's allowed posterity to see her world, and in a way as breathtaking as the work itself."
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
36%
|
Red Tails (2012)
|
"the sight of a sky full of planes swerving, swooping, and engaging in graceful, ferocious battle is thrilling. It's not enough to save RED TAILS from being a glorious failure, but it saves it from being a total loss"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
80%
|
Haywire (2012)
|
"in one memorable sequence she strangles a man, with only her thighs, and stares him down as she does it...it's a moment that can be taken many different ways, from high camp to trenchant observation on how the genders interact"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
34%
|
Joyful Noise (2012)
|
"a holy hot mess of digressions that tries to be all things to all people. A dash of social consciousness, a whiff of social commentary, and a heaping helping of cornpone family problems rendered with a broad brush and little insight"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
48%
|
Contraband (2012)
|
"the reason for the remake is nowhere apparent. It is not suspenseful. It is not high-action. The dialogue is as flat as the delta mud, and the direction by Kormakur is a study in understanding style, but not storytelling"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
54%
|
In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011)
|
"Jolie's is a lean direction, with a fine eye for evocative composition and a blistering sense of outrage cloaked equally well in the tension of shocked silence as in the expected wails of anguish"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
53%
|
Puncture (2011)
|
"(Evans) turns in a performance that gives no quarter. It is raw, it is dangerous, and it is unforgettable"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
77%
|
A Dangerous Method (2011)
|
"In truth, Mortensen has a far more intimate and palpably emotional relationship with Freud's omnipresent cigar than he does with Fassbinder's Jung"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
44%
|
The Flowers of War (2011)
|
"In the midst of unthinkable brutality, Zhang has found a savage poetry, not to soften the horror, but rather to compel the audience to watch it without being able to turn away. Using his trademark fascination with satu"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
87%
|
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
|
"Rooney's Lisbeth takes matters large and small into her own hands with a ferocious self-sufficiency that leaves the audience gasping with both horror and a provocative delight not entirely undiluted with envy. Likable, no, but impossible to easily dismiss"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
60%
|
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)
|
" is as fiendishly clever as it is intricately constructed. It remains true to the original appeal of Holmes and his methods, while going as large as 21st-century CGI can go, as well as incorporating a bracing modern sensibility"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
75%
|
The Adventures of Tintin (2011)
|
"What Snow White was to the advancement of hand-drawn animation into a genuine art form, so is The Adventures of Tintin is to animation derived from motion capture and generated from a computer. "
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
76%
|
The Help (2011)
|
"how the novel came to be published against all odds, the film to be made with Taylor as director, once known become integral to the film experience. Perfectly written, acted, directed, and produced, it's as moving on its fiftieth viewing as on its first."
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
82%
|
Young Adult (2011)
|
"Mavis is a sort of anti-Joan of Arc fueled not by the voice of angels, but rather that of the reality show stars that form her preferred and constant background noise. "
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
22%
|
The Sitter (2011)
|
"Things funny and serious have happened in an uncertain proportion, and the audience is left hoping for another pairing of Hill and Rockwell, and a better script with which they can work"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
92%
|
Arthur Christmas (2011)
|
"The holiday season is an emotional rollercoaster for many reasons and Arthur Christmas does a neat job of exploring many of them while still being both heart-warming and wonderfully entertaining"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
84%
|
My Week with Marilyn (2011)
|
"a bold performance that revels in the complexity of Marilyn's personality, and while full of compassion, is not afraid to bring in the sharp edges of what made Marilyn impossibly neurotic ... emotionally needy and monstrously selfish."
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
97%
|
The Muppets (2011)
|
"The writing is clever, with giddy self-reference, time-honored tropes, and a bevy of dancing chickens who beat out a completely credible tattoo"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
36%
|
Immortals (2011)
|
"Immortals looks gorgeous. The CGI is rendered with imaginative care and a real sense of wonder and danger in underscoring the action. It is the real star "
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
69%
|
A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (2011)
|
"The writing is sharp, unflinchingly funny as it slyly extols family values while using the sort of crass trappings that send the stiff-necked and the sanctimonious into fits of apoplexy"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
50%
|
The Rum Diary (2011)
|
"raggedly uneven in its execution [with several stories] all vying with one another in tone and mood and point and nothing but Depp's chameleon-like performance to tie them all together"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
37%
|
In Time (2011)
|
"more irritating for what it should have been than satisfying for what it is"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
47%
|
Anonymous (2011)
|
"As historical entertainment, it is bracing in its twists and turns. As a tribute to the power of words and the beauty of language in the hands of a genius, it is superb"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
48%
|
The Mighty Macs (2011)
|
"has a gentle sweetness that is never cloying, never condescending. Instead there is an exuberance that is heart-warming -- the point of the exercise "
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
36%
|
The Thing (2011)
|
"an exercise is side-long suspicious glances, ooey-gooey alien-human interaction, and idle speculation by the audience about how people can survive running around the Antarctic cold without wearing anything to prevent cranial heat loss"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
39%
|
The Big Year (2011)
|
"The question that comes most readily to mind is why the powers that be went to the trouble of hiring three actors with vivid on-screen personas and then did everything in their power to render them non-entities."
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
59%
|
Real Steel (2011)
|
"action-packed and genuinely moving as it aspires to be, and is, more than a live-action version of a popular 60s robot boxing game"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
85%
|
The Ides of March (2011)
|
"lean, stark, and to the point [with] respect for the way conversations are conducted, the smiling insincerity of professionals working for and against each other has the steely toughness that makes loyalty the most elusive and most desired of qualities"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
69%
|
Horrible Bosses (2011)
|
"a subversively prescient black comedy"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
7%
|
Dream House (2011)
|
"The accumulating weirdness never becomes all-pervasive eerieness, much less terror, though Craig gives Will's descent into confused madness a raw and potent edge of despair"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
85%
|
Tucker & Dale vs Evil (2011)
|
"a mordant comedy of errors that juggles the clichés of its genre with a buoyant impudence. And blood. A whole lot of blood."
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
47%
|
3 (2011)
|
"robust and tantalizing morsels of semiotics, synchronicity, existential identity, with a romantic spirit at work that not only invokes, but also externalizes Hesse. Simple it is not, fascinating, absorbing, confusing, and enlightening it is"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
94%
|
Moneyball (2011)
|
"the unfathomable blend of chance and expertise at work do more than dazzle, they explain why men and women will surrender their lives to a dream."
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
25%
|
Killer Elite (2011)
|
"the audience learns that Jason Statham, tied to a chair and unarmed, is more dangerous than men who are both armed and unfettered. Moments like that of pure physicality are too few and too far between"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
17%
|
I Don't Know How She Does It (2011)
|
"not the worst example of the genre. Nor is it even the worst of its own particular sub-genre, the Sarah Jessica Parker chick-flick. This should not, however, be misconstrued as an endorsement"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
84%
|
Contagion (2011)
|
"Soderbergh's cold style is oddly suited to this kind of story, that of a virus impersonally killing a hefty percentage of all who come into contact with it"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
80%
|
Littlerock (2011)
|
"Expectations are subverted, assumptions exploded, and the meaningless nature of words is replaced by the importance of conversation"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
83%
|
Circumstance (2011)
|
"a beautifully constructed film that is as gritty as the subject matter, and as lyrical as the redemption and the peace its characters all seek."
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
83%
|
Warrior (2011)
|
"enough ancillary surprises, and clever spins on classic tropes, to add a piquant sense of discovery, as well as some genuinely gripping suspense"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
59%
|
Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark (2011)
|
"craftily pushes the audience's emotional buttons in visceral ways that deftly heighten the supernatural embellishments"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
68%
|
Our Idiot Brother (2011)
|
"liltingly transcendent "
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
72%
|
Bellflower (2011)
|
"So determined to depict the emptiness within the two main characters, it has become the thing it portrays."
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
23%
|
Conan the Barbarian (2011)
|
"for all the yelling, the screaming, and the clanging of weapons, the whole is as muted as the colors in the art director's palette, making this a grim excursion on many levels"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
36%
|
One Day (2011)
|
"as arch and penetrating as it is effective in stripping the story of any trace of flabby exposition and getting to the heart of the infinite complexity of relationships"
|
Andrea Chase
|
|
76%
|
The Help (2011)
|
"has its own revolutionary atmosphere, refusing to divide the world into, pardon the expression, black and white. Without intricacies of the relationships, without the emotional stakes that those intricacies represent, the film would fail monumentally"
|
Andrea Chase
|
