|
25%
|
Pearl Harbor (2001)
|
"There's a certain symbolic symmetry here. The Navy and Walt Disney have teamed up on the production, and both view history as something to be managed and exploited. "
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
59%
|
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
|
"Prior to "Tora!" movies showing the attack were jingoistic propaganda; afterwards, the attack was an excuse to indulge in Hollywood's fascination with American self-loathing."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
——
|
The Land Of Eb ()
|
"A rare, extraordinary film that celebrates the dignity of hard work, as well as the tenuous connections of cultural legacy in a fragmented community."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
67%
|
The Road (2012)
|
"... Enough rattling thrills for the date-night crowd, and enough story and character for older film buffs to chew on. The ride home afterwards might require your high beams."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
95%
|
Marley (2012)
|
"The film never shows us Marley in a complete performance. It's hard to understand the magic of a man whose most awesome moments are reduced to edited snippets."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
88%
|
Titanic (2012)
|
"It is, simply, a great film, a throwback to classic filmmaking, and more than that, an experience with unusual resonance to the world of today."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
——
|
Dancing Queen (2012)
|
"Rom-com fantasy that dips precariously into real feeling late in the reels, and because leads Hwang Jung-Min and Um Jung-Hwa have real talent for empathy, we're carried along."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
22%
|
October Baby (2012)
|
"Heavily vested in its peculiarly glossy agitprop that, like Saint Sebastian, it invites the arrows of kneejerk derision. Too bad, as the film has really lovely performances."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
51%
|
John Carter (2012)
|
"Great fun as we endure scrape after scrape in this wild, near-hallucinatory landscape, and director Stanton finds the right balance of cheerful solemnity and cheeky humor."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
64%
|
Tomorrow, When the War Began (2012)
|
""Tomorrow" is less realistic than "Red Dawn," if you can wrap your head around that without making it pop off."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
42%
|
Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012)
|
"Hey, it moves right along. It rockets on a certain goofy bliss. Never mind the filmmakers have clearly never read the original Verne/Stevenson/Swift books beyond cover blurbs"
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
——
|
All's Well Ends Well 2012 (2012)
|
"Nothing subtle about the production, which operates as a Cantonese Three Stooges on a neon-colored bender. Which means you often laugh out loud, and then wonder why you did."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
——
|
Big in Bollywood ()
|
"A funny, insightful meditation on the trappings of fame, and the key word there is "trap." Also helps explain the foreign excitement of Bollywood to American audiences."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
39%
|
Red Tails (2012)
|
"A canny homage to a certain genre of film, the aerial adventure story, a type that was popular when airplanes were considered marvelous machines and not merely flying buses."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
56%
|
The Viral Factor (2012)
|
"A monster rush of muscular action sequences, tepidly glued together with rapidly evaporating logic. Secret agent Man's brain turns to mush, and it spreads to the audience."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
41%
|
The Flowers of War (2011)
|
"What we have here is a movie that believes it is a massive and glorious heroic epic, when it's really a backlot melodrama."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
——
|
Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011)
|
"This is defiantly old-fashioned, high-value entertainment with a glamorous, talented cast. You used to see this sort of thing all the time from Hollywood."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
77%
|
War Horse (2011)
|
"A tearjerker finale suggests that Joey has the power of restoring sight to the blind. Oh, the noble creatures that make us see ourselves as we really are!"
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
——
|
Living In Seduced Circumstances ()
|
"OK, it's a low-budget Misery. It's made with technical panache and an interesting palette, however, and the actors are up to the challenge."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
33%
|
Arirang ()
|
" Arirang is insufferable, and it's approaching torture to sit through it. Although we do wish Ki-Duk would climb out of his hole and get on with his life."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
86%
|
The Forgiveness of Blood (2012)
|
"We start out hoping that new freedoms will start to cancel out age-old blood feuds, and wind up simply wishing that a cease-fire can be maintained."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
50%
|
The Journals Of Musan (2011)
|
"A journey through a world of moral and ethical conundrums makes a sobering couple of hours, and also a lively discussion afterwards for amateur Christian theologians. "
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
92%
|
Senna (2011)
|
"While this documentary is unreeling, we're definitely along for the ride. But there's no aftertaste, except for that of burnt metal."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
100%
|
Semper Fi: Always Faithful (2012)
|
"Semper Fi: Always Faithful carefully follows the conduct of this case, which is largely unknown by the general public. It is superbly constructed without being preachy."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
——
|
With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story (2012)
|
"A hagiographic valentine constructed by overly excited fanboys. Lee's imprint on popular culture deserves better and deeper than this."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
89%
|
The Descendants (2011)
|
"A large patch of the movie's social contract are the Hawaiian notions of 'aina, malama and pono. It joins the short list we aren't embarrassed to screen for malahini."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
80%
|
Littlerock (2011)
|
"A neatly plotted, observational film about being on the outside looking in, and on the inside looking out."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
81%
|
Red Dog (2012)
|
"Miners are telling Red Dog stories, and so it's essentially a series of personal flashbacks that grow larger with the retelling, exactly the way mythology gets kickstarted."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
75%
|
Leave it on the Floor (2012)
|
"Clearly not aimed at a mass audience, who, even if they're open to gay issues, may be turned off by on-the-cheap production values and self-conscious "acting" by principals. "
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
——
|
Sector 7 IMAX (2011)
|
"She rides motorcycles, handles gigantic drills, punches out monsters and gets just the right amount of grime and sweat rubbed into her tightly stretched tanktop. Yeah, baby."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
——
|
Sector 7 (2011)
|
"Eventually the creature is vanquished by the last person standing. If this sounds like every monster movie cliche ever invented, "Sector 7" manages to drag in them all."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
85%
|
Tucker & Dale vs Evil (2011)
|
"Beginning psychologists take note - hillbillies and college kids may kill each other, but the greatest assets in maintaining the peace, on both sides, are hot coeds."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
9%
|
1911 (2011)
|
"Students of revolutionary Chinese history can have fun checking them off. Look, there's Li Yuanhong! And over there, Feng Guozhang!"
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
——
|
The Legend Is Born: Ip Man (Yip Man chinchyun) (2010)
|
"There is nothing in this bubbling soap opera of a plot that can't be solved with drawn-out fight scenes. And so they jump and kick, poke, slap and twirl for half the film."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
——
|
Quick (2011)
|
"It's heartening to discover that the Koreans can make stunt movies as dim-witted and as attention-deficited as Hollywood. "
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
100%
|
The Interrupters (2011)
|
"If this were a fiction movie out of Hollywood, we'd be hooting at the preposterousness of it all. I mean, really. "
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
85%
|
Contagion (2011)
|
"It proves the creepiest movies are also the quietest. Although "Contagion" is a horror movie, it's also a response about a viral apocalypse. The end arrives with tiny coughs ..."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
74%
|
Shaolin (2011)
|
"This is not a subtle film, and certainly not a great one, but it's made with bubbling brio and it's spectacular to look at. It's action filmmaking of the highest order."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
26%
|
Colombiana (2011)
|
"The movie delivers slam-bang action, so much so that we're reminded that movies have to MOVE to carry us along, and with 'Columbiana,' we're along for the ride, baby."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
24%
|
Conan the Barbarian (2011)
|
"Absolutely spastic in the way it pretends to tell a story, the work of someone who doesn't understand choreography, coherent storytelling and basic structural editing."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
33%
|
Flyboys (2006)
|
"Each air battle has been scripted as a set piece that not only shows off the capabilities of the pilots and their machines, but also advances the plot. Bring your Dramamine!"
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
64%
|
Amigo (2011)
|
""Amigo" is probably too didactic and period-bound to find a wide audience, and the Americans who would benefit most from it are likely to be confused by it."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
——
|
Sunny (Sseo-ni) (2011)
|
"Writer-director Kang Hyeong-Cheoi has a keen grasp of what motivates teenagers, which is mostly a desire to be an individual while also being exactly like everyone else."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
72%
|
Fright Night (2011)
|
"Finally - after a long dry spell - here's a vampire movie that doesn't suck. This makes it seem better than it is, as long as you don't squeeze your eyeballs in a 3D theater."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
76%
|
The Help (2011)
|
"A Southern gothic comedy-drama with wickedly observed performances and a story arc that feels absolutely epic, despite the modest, domestic setting."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
96%
|
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (2011)
|
"The Potter universe, magical as it is, is more grounded in heart and soul than many fictions. You don't read Harry Potter to escape, you read Harry Potter to find your way."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
79%
|
Page One: Inside the New York Times (2011)
|
"An affectionate and rambling look at professionals trying to save a ship they believe is sinking, and the deck tilts every whichway. They don't know whether to jump or bail."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
21%
|
Snow Flower And The Secret Fan (2011)
|
"This isn't really a movie made for guys, although I can appreciate the artfulness of its construction and the solemnity of its purpose and the studied intensity of the acting."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
70%
|
Horrible Bosses (2011)
|
"Hollywood, ever-sensitive to the heated scent of the national zeitgeist, is in the business of trotting out movies that greedily feed on subliminal obsessions."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
|
78%
|
Dai-Nipponjin (Big Man Japan) (2009)
|
"An affectionate parody of Japanese giant-monster hero shows to make points about the unraveling of Japan's cultural heritage."
|
Burl Burlingame
|
78%
31%
100%
85%
45%
40%
