|
99%
|
A Separation (2011)
|
"The complex realities of human emotions and experience are more than sufficient to carry a film, and Farhadi doesn't let fussy direction or attempts to be overly clever get in the way of letting this brilliant, quietly insightful story unfold."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
94%
|
Coriolanus (2011)
|
"A portrait of the birth of a fascist leader, Shakespeare's play sets his will to power in direct opposition to the people of Rome and their right to rule themselves. In modernizing the setting, Fiennes only makes the comparison more relevant."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
89%
|
In Darkness (2012)
|
"On the surface, In Darkness hits all the standard notes of Holocaust cinema...What sets it apart, though, is that subtle but unmistakeable undercurrent of anger, the sense that Holland is frustrated by the hate we all have inside of us."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
87%
|
Bullhead (2012)
|
"There's a lean, tough, streamlined film to be found here; the main problem is that Bullhead, just like its protagonist, is artificially bulked up until what's underneath is barely visible."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
91%
|
Corman's World: Exploits Of A Hollywood Rebel (2011)
|
"Stapleton's structure is fairly by-the-numbers, but with a subject as fascinating (and archival clips as entertaining) as this, the quality is onscreen as soon as you turn on the camera."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
86%
|
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
|
"What Fincher brings to the table is a particular talent for atmospheric, highly stylized mystery. What he can't really fix is the fact that the source material is, structurally, a mess."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
83%
|
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
|
"Alfredson is interested in more than just relating a not-so-simple mystery. What the director is after is the very character of the Cold War itself."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
78%
|
A Dangerous Method (2011)
|
"A Dangerous Method simply feels rushed and incomplete, a CliffsNotes version of events where a novel was required."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
80%
|
Young Adult (2011)
|
"This is how you do dark comedy, with an emphasis on the dark. The result is at once off-putting and the best work that either Reitman or Cody has yet accomplished."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
95%
|
Pariah (2011)
|
"The intensity of these performances, and their gorgeous rendering on film by cinematographer Bradford Young, carry a film that could easily have sunk into Sundance-indie inspirational cliché."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
99%
|
Le Havre (2011)
|
"While the film never reaches any hugely profound revelations with its parable-styled stories of compassion and community, and occasionally feels a little slight, it's also enormously enjoyable and gorgeous to watch."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
22%
|
The Sitter (2011)
|
"Despite its deficiencies -- and they are many -- The Sitter is a dumb comedy made by smart people who know how to make you have fun despite what might be in your best interests."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
94%
|
Hugo (2011)
|
"Hugo may not be entirely successful as a children's film, but as the culmination of a lifetime love of the pure magic of film, this movie is a gift to be treasured and revisited."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
80%
|
Shame (2011)
|
"An engrossing and unsettling examination of what happens when addiction unbalances a life enough to make it all come crashing down."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
89%
|
The Descendants (2011)
|
"Payne has a particular skill for making movie stars seem like normal people, and the resolute normalcy of the cast helps to show Hawaii not as a resort paradise, but as a place like any other where people live, work, love, and die."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
77%
|
Melancholia (2011)
|
"The blackly comic tone and bracing family drama of the first half is some of the best work von Trier has ever done."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
73%
|
Like Crazy (2011)
|
"Director and co-writer Drake Doremus does an excellent job at creating the casual, offhand feel of real interactions, while still managing to convey the heightened emotions of young love."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
36%
|
In Time (2011)
|
"The depth of the world Niccol has created is insufficient, while the metaphors he's employing are far more on the nose than they need to be."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
90%
|
Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
|
"Durkin lures us into the world of the cult slowly, just as Martha was, and the additive effect of gradually introducing its more extreme aspects is nearly imperceptible, yet as constricting as a slowly tightening vice."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
93%
|
Take Shelter (2011)
|
"Nichols is interested in more here than one man's sanity, and that coming storm -- real, dreamed, or hallucinated -- packs the metaphorical wallop of a category five hurricane."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
85%
|
The Ides of March (2011)
|
"What the film may lack in profundity, it more than makes up for in well-crafted, smart thrills, with a first rate ensemble of performers."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
92%
|
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (2011)
|
"The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu is all about created perception, and Ujică brilliantly manages to craft a film that is not just about a real character, but a formal reflection of its subject."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
66%
|
Love Crime (2011)
|
"Every office scene feels so blatantly like an actor trying to create an approximation of what office work and banter feels like, that it amounts to spending the entirety of a marionette show watching the puppeteer and not the puppets."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
95%
|
Moneyball (2011)
|
"For all the concentration on numbers, the film never loses sight of the fact that this is a game of people."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
93%
|
Drive (2011)
|
"Refn accomplishes the near impossible in modern movies: combining uncompromising art-house style with the real potential for mass-market accessibility, in a pitch-perfect blend of pulp narrative and pure cinema."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
86%
|
Circumstance (2011)
|
"When writer-director Maryam Keshavarz moves things out of the bedroom and stops self-consciously flirting with controversy, the film is provocative for all the right reasons."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
85%
|
Contagion (2011)
|
"A horror film without a safety release valve, because the fears it plants in our brains aren't the kind that can be chased away by the light of day."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
73%
|
Bellflower (2011)
|
"In a cinematic climate where bland compromise is often the rule, Bellflower may be impressive simply for its unapologetic willingness to be so bile-raising and hateful."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
64%
|
Amigo (2011)
|
"Sayles narrowly avoids the preachy direction in which Amigo pulls, largely because he isn't interested in making anyone into a punching bag."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
95%
|
The Guard (2011)
|
"While the film treads close to caricature at times, with standard-issue country cop vs. city cop conflicts, and a trio of self-consciously quirky baddies, McDonagh's wildly inventive writing compensates for any boilerplate aspects in the plot."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
96%
|
Cameraman: The Life And Work Of Jack Cardiff (2011)
|
"It's the images seen through Cardiff's lens that makes Cameraman such a joy to watch."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
91%
|
Point Blank (2011)
|
"This kind of lean and unadorned approached to the action-thriller is what's missing from most of the bloated American entries in the genre. "
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
72%
|
The Future (2011)
|
"July ties together these three characters' search for love, their desperate craving for contact, in a beautifully devastating narrative that employs time, space, and perception as simple props."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
77%
|
The Swell Season (2011)
|
"Their observational style, over the course of many weeks of shooting over a couple of years, yields some intensely personal footage of the tension of the road and the balancing of public and private personas."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
80%
|
Life in a Day (2011)
|
"It's a remarkable achievement, creating something that is meaningful, sad, and often funny from the home movies of thousands of people around the world."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
98%
|
Project Nim (2011)
|
"It's the scab of decades-old tension between those involved in the experiment and its aftermath that Marsh wants to pick at; and it doesn't take much prodding before the conflicts and petty human jealousies rise to the top."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
79%
|
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
|
""A film that, while never straying too far from comic book movie formula, still manages to be satisfying as both origin story and standalone adventure.""
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
86%
|
Terri (2011)
|
"Keeps just to the realistic side of quirk, finding moments of small revelation in subtle gestures."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
82%
|
Trollhunter (2011)
|
"Director André Øvredal can be a little on the nose when going after his allegorical targets, but the winking humor keeps it from getting too heavy handed."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
89%
|
The Trip (2011)
|
"The pacing is entirely different from the television version, much tighter and with a sometimes too-hurried drive to get to the next destination. But taken on its own, it's still absolutely hilarious."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
26%
|
Green Lantern (2011)
|
"A screenplay that was conceived in what will undoubtedly be remembered by the four writers who contributed to it as the blackest night of their creative lives."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
87%
|
Submarine (2011)
|
"While it's nowhere near as good as obvious influences like Rushmore or Harold & Maude, it also mixes in enough of Ayoade's own voice, and an overriding love of cinema, to compensate for some of its more insistent affectations."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
82%
|
Super 8 (2011)
|
"While there's nothing wrong with looking back on 30-year-old Spielberg flicks, or 60-year-old sci-fi B-movies with rosy adoration, doing so to the point of subverting Abrams' own artistic voice mars what might have been great instead of just good."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
84%
|
The Tree of Life (2011)
|
"Just as The Tree of Life is the sort of movie we rarely see, the kind of thinking it provokes isn't the kind we engage in regularly. Malick makes a strong case for the notion that perhaps we should. "
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
93%
|
Midnight in Paris (2011)
|
"Allen's self-directed criticism of nostalgia worshippers could still come off as hypocritical, but his inventive approach instead results in one of the most charming, funny, and genuinely likable films that he's made in years."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
92%
|
Incendies (2011)
|
"Manufactures shocks that have purpose, and that resonate long after the anxious feelings the movie prompts have finally settled."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
86%
|
Meek's Cutoff (2011)
|
"The subtle ways in which Reichardt explores how these characters have been playing their socially and religiously assigned parts throughout the movie, and likely their entire lives, is the core of an absolute masterpiece."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
90%
|
Bridesmaids (2011)
|
"The film's central friendship gives Bridesmaids a heart as big as its laughs. It pays particular attention to the details and realities of maintaining long term friendships, with special attention to the specifics of friendships between women."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
77%
|
Thor (2011)
|
"Kenneth Branagh and the team of writers who have brought the super-hero spin on the Norse god of thunder to the big screen decide to largely ditch the usual hero alter-ego bit. In its place is a movie with a split personality of its own."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
83%
|
Potiche (2011)
|
"A movie this thematically scattered, this unapologetically artificial, shouldn't be so enjoyable; but through the magical touch of cinematic alchemist François Ozon, this warm and weird tribute to the labor & women's movements of the 70s works."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
75%
22%
67%
85%
46%
40%
