|
95%
|
On the Bowery (1957)
|
|
Nick Pinkerton
|
|
69%
|
Les Misérables (2012)
|
"As Fantine, a gaunt Anne Hathaway plunges into her character's suffering with such unseemly relish that she practically licks her chops with self-indulgent woe. "
|
Dan Callahan
|
|
82%
|
Empire of the Sun (1987)
|
"Arguably Spielberg's strangest object."
|
Keith Uhlich
|
|
86%
|
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
|
"Everything else we're meant to care about is an afterthought compared to the sketch of a relationship at the fringe of the film which somehow benefits from not being at the center."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
73%
|
Bellflower (2011)
|
"At first appearing youthfully naïve, Bellflower would, by film's end, be more accurately described as almost hopelessly disenchanted."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
64%
|
Another Earth (2011)
|
"A study in what two fractured spirits hide from one another, and what they reveal."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
40%
|
Vanilla Sky (2001)
|
"Crowe asks the viewer to absorb this more viscerally than intellectually; how much one enjoys (or even accepts) the experience will likely depend on the extent to which one is willing to do so. "
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
68%
|
Black Death (2011)
|
"Smith isn't presenting a peace offering so much as a reminder of the ease with which we slip into violence."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
84%
|
A Somewhat Gentle Man (2011)
|
"Hans Petter Moland's film is either a jack of all trades, master of none -- well-rounded but unclear in its overall intentions -- or an experiment in balance whose results are difficult to ascertain."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
27%
|
The Keep (1983)
|
"Mann must share the blame for the movie's failures. But nor should its beauties be denied."
|
Keith Uhlich
|
|
——
|
À double tour (Web of Passion) (Leda) (1959)
|
"Chabrol was a hedonist who made no bones about how much he relished food and sex, usually in that order."
|
Dan Callahan
|
|
84%
|
The Tree of Life (2011)
|
"A movie of infinite moments ... placed side-by-side in a free-floating mosaic."
|
Keith Uhlich
|
|
94%
|
A Woman Under the Influence (1975)
|
"By discreetly dismantling our familiar frame of reference rather than alienatingly flying in the face of it, A Woman Under the Influence is singularly effective in its radical intent. "
|
Eric Hynes
|
|
82%
|
After Dark, My Sweet (1990)
|
"Patric plays one of those sweet and totally limited ex-boxers that only seem to exist in the movies and in pulp novels."
|
Dan Callahan
|
|
73%
|
V for Vendetta (2006)
|
"Alan Moore may be greatest victim of Hollywood's comic book adaptation craze."
|
Eric Kohn
|
|
94%
|
The Dark Knight (2008)
|
"Flawed and overrated."
|
Adam Nayman
|
|
93%
|
Iron Man (2008)
|
"Clever and cogent beats idiotic and incoherent, and Iron Man is spryer than the overwhelming majority of films in its budget range."
|
Adam Nayman
|
|
75%
|
Superman Returns (2006)
|
"The movie runs nearly half an hour longer than it should, with a new plot strand introduced in the third act that has questionable vitality in the presumed sequel."
|
Eric Kohn
|
|
100%
|
Ghost Town (2010)
|
|
Andrew Chan
|
|
81%
|
Taxidermia (2006)
|
|
Elbert Ventura
|
|
79%
|
Chasing a Dream (Miles from Nowhere) (2009)
|
"A grand gesture, an exercise in epic biography that explodes the intimate details of Isaiah's life and its effects on his family onto the screen."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
82%
|
Akasen chitai (Street of Shame) (1956)
|
"The film's cinematography utilizes an unusual technique for a Mizoguchi film, the close-up, whereby the camera gets steadily closer to each protagonist as the various causes of their downfall to prostitution are revealed."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
73%
|
Tokyo! (2008)
|
"Sandwiched between Gondry and Bong's variously euphoric entries, Carax's contribution seems either a work of deep cynicism from an inveterate party-pooper or a welcome satirical sour note from one of the great talents of 80s and 90s French cinema."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
70%
|
Stuff and Dough (Marfa si banii) (2008)
|
"Ultimately, like Lazarescu, Ovidiu becomes a mere cog in a social and economic system that would chew him up without a moment's consideration, and it's Puiu's goal to elevate this and other such stories above their banality and into the realm of myth."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
93%
|
Bigger Than Life (1956) (1956)
|
"Always a shrewd melodramatist, with a particular eye for the domestic space, Ray builds this sense of conflict into the Avery home itself, with its frequently competing horizontal and vertical patterns."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
48%
|
The Ruins (2008)
|
"So bereft of creativity that it fails even to deliver to its base--teenage boys--the ghouls and boobs they so desperately want to see."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
——
|
Dongdong de jiaqi (A Summer at Grandpa's) (1984)
|
"Hou's film places demands on our powers of observation, insisting that we, like Tung-tung, attend to the minutiae, ironies, and deeper meanings it offers us."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
91%
|
Hairspray (2007)
|
"Shankman's crassly theatrical attenuation of Hairspray only draws gay culture away from a moment of American history with which it ought to have a great deal in common"
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
97%
|
Hairspray (1988)
|
"The shock Waters's cinema offers, then, is not transcendent, but almost reflexive, implicating the viewer in the awkward complexities of his own humanity and forcing him to either celebrate it or run screaming away."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
78%
|
Lou Reed's Berlin (2008)
|
"Schnabel's set design, onstage projections, and postproduction add a good deal of visual noise to Reed & company's aural variety, which reproduces the album with a mixture of professional exactitude and unpredictable cacophony."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
93%
|
This Is England (2007)
|
"It is the war within him--and by extension, within the minds of many embittered, working class young men left behind in Thatcher's England--that Meadows's film most strikingly portrays."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
96%
|
Somers Town (2009)
|
"As in all of Meadows's films, Somers Town emphasizes the importance of character and particularly of camaraderie amongst male characters--here, teenagers who nick clothes from the local laundry, get drunk in the park, and furtively investigate masculinity"
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
——
|
Shuga (Chouga) (2007)
|
"Ramps down Tolstoy's soap-opera grandiosity, while still managing to elevate the banalities of a high-society dalliance to the level of a cosmic psychodrama"
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
19%
|
Obsessed (2009)
|
""I knew it would come to this," hisses Sharon when finding Lisa lurking around her beautiful Brentwood home--at which point I exclaimed, "Me too!"--and then the fun (and, for many, the entire purpose of the film) starts."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
51%
|
The Kingdom (2007)
|
"A good deal more Transformers than Syriana, a movie that drapes a crisp, lightly browsed copy of The Economist over an enormous pubescent boner for grinding metal, busted glass, and crackling gunfire."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
96%
|
Tulpan (2009)
|
"With this harsh and beautiful backdrop so attentively rendered, at once otherworldly and palpable, the desires of Tulpan's characters become almost metaphysical imperatives."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
75%
|
The Killing of Sister George (1968)
|
"Melodrama, slapstick, romance, exploitation, and psychological horror all vie for dominance throughout the film, giving it an air of fickle, feminine hysteria, which the graphic sex scene at the end of the film makes still more difficult to pin down."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
83%
|
Mang Shan (Blind Mountain) (2007)
|
"With its complex (and, at times, deeply problematic) intersection of an educated outsider with the stubborn realities of rural life, Blind Mountain explicitly harkens back to those classic works from the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, like Yellow"
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
80%
|
Gran Torino (2009)
|
"Though Eastwood is not above self-deprecation and, here, downright silliness, Gran Torino is no orangutan movie."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
0%
|
Tiro en la cabeza (Bullet in the Head) (2008)
|
"A painfully old-fashioned trick, a game played many times before, by far more thoughtful filmmakers with greater commands of and ideas about their medium."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
67%
|
Cztery Noce z Anna (Four Nights with Anna) (2008)
|
"Grey and waterlogged, Jerzy Skolimowski's Four Nights with Anna is something like the Eastern European answer to Rear Window and Chungking Express, a deeply gothic, but no less romantic tale of voyeurism, breaking and entering, and secret love."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
74%
|
Cold Souls (2009)
|
"Giamatti's usual character%u2014at least, the one that Cold Souls wishes to exploit%u2014is paper-thin, working better on the periphery than in the center of the narrative."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
66%
|
The Brothers Bloom (2009)
|
|
Michael Joshua Rowin
|
|
91%
|
Downfall (Der Untergang) (2004)
|
|
|
|
87%
|
Into Great Silence (2007)
|
"The film's "great silence" is, like much of monastic life, an ascetic ideal to be pursued, but never attained."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
91%
|
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
|
"A force of political provocation less on the level of the cuddly Archie Bunker and more on that of Pasolini's libertines in Salò and Pink Flamingos' "filthiest people alive.""
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
43%
|
The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (2006)
|
"Exquisitely detailed, difficult to grasp hold of, and always obscured by molds and corrosions. The Quay Brothers are distinct oddities in the landscape of contemporary cinema."
|
Leo Goldsmith
|
|
32%
|
The Black Dahlia (2006)
|
"Ghost World: Keith Uhlich on The Black Dahlia for Reverse Shot's Brian de Palma symposium."
|
Keith Uhlich
|
|
89%
|
Brothers (Brødre) (2004)
|
|
|
|
94%
|
Reds (1981)
|
"A left-leaning pretty boy's distended, black book ramblings."
|
Keith Uhlich
|
73%
81%
62%
52%
26%
4%
