|
78%
|
Iron Man 3 (2013)
|
"Iron Man 3 displays no shortage of cocky swagger in-between - and often during - the requisite sequences of high-tech 3-D carnage."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
75%
|
I Declare War ()
|
"It's no small feat for the audacity of I Declare War's premise - presenting an afterschool game of war in a way that looks and feels as real to viewers as it does to the youngsters in the thick of it - to be matched by the cunning of its execution"
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
84%
|
Graceland (2013)
|
"Morales's often brutal morality tale has both a grim intensity and a shattering impact."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
49%
|
The Great Gatsby (2013)
|
"For all of its flash, the movie aims for the utmost sincerity as a grand love story. Alas, Luhrmann doesn't quite have Fitzgerald's finesse when it comes to handling the shift between gilt-edged satire and heart-rending pathos. "
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
90%
|
Portrait of Wally (2012)
|
"The film's troubling take on the moral flexibilities of the art world may also have viewers wondering about the provenance of what they see on museum walls."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
55%
|
The Company You Keep (2013)
|
"What with a cast that includes Robert Redford, Julie Christie, Nick Nolte, and Susan Sarandon, this might've been the most star-studded production of the year had it been made in 1975."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
33%
|
Tai Chi Hero (2013)
|
"Like its predecessor, Tai Chi Hero is continually hampered by its thin characters and badly convoluted narrative but at least this time there are more opportunities to savour the many oddball pleasures."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
70%
|
Wrong (2013)
|
"Quentin Dupieux's brand of absurdism lands somewhere between the plays of Eugène Ionesco, the looniest sketches of Monty Python, and the most adventurous efforts of the Adult Swim brigade."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
42%
|
To The Wonder (2013)
|
"Fragmentary to the point of being formless and devoid of any motivation or momentum, it's the first of Malick's works to feel more like a sketchbook than a film."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
71%
|
My Awkward Sexual Adventure (2013)
|
"The rare sex farce that is ultimately more adult than it is adolescent."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
56%
|
Love, Marilyn (2012)
|
"Garbus' use of Monroe's own words are plenty wrenching at times but they don't add much to our collective understanding of either the enduring myth or the truth about the damaged woman who existed behind that sexpot façade. "
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
62%
|
Evil Dead (2013)
|
"For all of his movie's predictability, director Fede Alvarez finds several ways to increase the creep factor, largely by playing the scares straight and sticking to an unabashedly old-school approach. "
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
67%
|
Stoker (2013)
|
"As fun as it can be to play this game of spot-the-reference, the movie's too besotted with its own cleverness and stylistic flourishes to generate a genuine sense of risk or menace."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
9%
|
The Host (2013)
|
"Director Andrew Niccol is completely unable to add any depth or elegance to Meyer's pedestrian storytelling and thin characters. We can only presume that those aliens have already gotten hold of his body already."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
100%
|
Wake in Fright (2012)
|
"This tale of sun-baked savagery has lost little of its audacity or ferocity while it languished unseen."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
90%
|
Beyond The Hills (2013)
|
"Such is the rigorous and high-minded nature of Romanian cinema that even a real-life exorcism story can inspire something loftier than a horror movie."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
28%
|
G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)
|
"The glib humour gives the endeavour an air of self-parody, but not always the fun kind. "
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
81%
|
From Up On Poppy Hill (2013)
|
"With its modest story and lack of cute magical furballs, From Up on Poppy Hill is a tad too uneventful and prosaic to match the best of Studio Ghibli but it's lovely all the same."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
69%
|
New World (2013)
|
"However familiar its moves may sometimes be, New World continually punches above its weight and that's true even when the screen isn't filled with black-suited extras assaulting each other with knives and baseball bats."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
47%
|
Olympus Has Fallen (2013)
|
"Olympus Has Fallen comes off like an entirely unironic attempt to revive the '80s cycle of let's-restart-the-Vietnam-War movies and home-turf variants like Invasion U.S.A. "
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
92%
|
No (2013)
|
"No continually impresses for its slyness and savvy -- rarely has such an eyesore been so worth watching."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
——
|
Blood Pressure ()
|
"Director Sean Garrity fashions something tense, steely, and affecting out of a premise that might've yielded an erotic fantasy if the events here weren't so rooted in its suburbanite heroine's mid-life malaise."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
37%
|
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)
|
"Though the best stretches flirt with the mix of cruel-edged comedy and abject despair that was once the forte of the Farrelly brothers, it soon settles for being a rote redemption tale."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
37%
|
Dead Man Down (2013)
|
"Dead Man Down's script falls prey to its own downward trajectory, its unwieldy array of cheap contrivances and half-witted switcheroos amounting to little more than a cut-rate riff on The Departed."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
58%
|
Snitch (2013)
|
"Snitch's storyline has distinct echoes of Breaking Bad but it's hard to say where to place it on the proverbial TV dial due to its sometimes clumsy shifts between Lifetime-style earnestness and a tougher sensibility better suited to FX."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
80%
|
Tower ()
|
"A confident statement of purpose by one of Toronto's most gifted young filmmakers"
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
94%
|
Neighbouring Sounds (2012)
|
"Neighbouring Sounds might be considered something of a horror movie for Brazil's urban bourgeoisie. One of Filho's most audacious tactics is to package what might've otherwise been an Altmanesque ensemble drama as a sort of existential thriller."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
20%
|
Identity Thief (2013)
|
"Hollywood's most skilled and fearless physical comedian since Jim Carrey in his '90s heyday, Melissa McCarthy is so dogged in her efforts to eke out a laugh that it's depressing to see a movie treat her as shabbily as this one does. "
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
93%
|
Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol (2011)
|
|
|
|
82%
|
Sightseers (2013)
|
|
|
|
79%
|
A Late Quartet (2012)
|
|
|
|
82%
|
The Place Beyond The Pines (2013)
|
|
|
|
75%
|
Berberian Sound Studio (2013)
|
"That keen awareness of aural matters also allows director Peter Strickland to convey the engineer's deteriorating hold on reality with genuine subtlety."
|
Jason Anderson
|
|
25%
|
Passion (2013)
|
"In the end, Passion feels like a bit of a private joke -- one where the set-up is a little bit funnier than the punchline."
|
Adam Nayman
|
|
88%
|
Head Games (2012)
|
"Its steady, methodical style, however, does justice to its overall aim, which is to touch a nerve that has been desensitized by the media's valorization of athletes as tough guys."
|
Adam Nayman
|
|
50%
|
Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance (2012)
|
"For all the juicy backstage stories and remarkable archival footage of early performances, the film still feels blandly affirmative."
|
Adam Nayman
|
78%
47%
100%
85%
45%
40%
