|
——
|
Lucky Bastard (2013)
|
"Although it takes Nathan a bit too long to get his characters to Van Nuys, knowing in advance that Dave is likely to snap not only creates suspenseful dread, but ultimately makes the moviegoer complicit in the violence (which is believably haphazard)."
|
Chuck Wilson
|
|
70%
|
Somebody Up There Likes Me (2013)
|
"The film itself is so charming that you almost forget to ask whether these people truly deserve our empathy."
|
Ted Scheinman
|
|
100%
|
Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (Four Nights of a Dreamer) (1972)
|
"It's an affectionate tribute to the beauty of Parisian youth with a keen eye for the friction caused when whimsical idealism meets the messy demands of interpersonal reality."
|
Doug Cummings
|
|
88%
|
Upstream Color (2013)
|
"One eventually grows so weary of discerning the signal from the noise that it all blurs together."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
92%
|
Himizu (2013)
|
"Occasionally heavy-handed in the delivery of its ideas, but also a refreshingly sensitive character study."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
88%
|
The Turin Horse (2012)
|
"No movie could possibly live up to the monumental, forbidding grandeur of The Turin Horse's lengthy opening shot, but [Bela Tarr]... goes ahead and attempts the impossible, and comes frighteningly close to succeeding."
|
Mike D'Angelo
|
|
98%
|
Oslo, August 31st (2012)
|
"With a predilection for long takes, alternating between tripod setups and handheld camera work that's reflective of Anders' unease, Trier presents life as an unceasingly tepid stream of the mundane -- with an occasional, exquisite pinprick of hope."
|
Veronika Ferdman
|
|
96%
|
The Kid with a Bike (2012)
|
"It's nonetheless immensely satisfying - not least in its commitment to a child protagonist whose near-feral intensity and unthinking ingratitude make him the polar opposite of cute."
|
Mike D'Angelo
|
|
76%
|
Kill List (2012)
|
"When it's all over, audiences are sent reeling out of the theater with heads spinning and guts churning."
|
Mark Olsen
|
|
100%
|
The Invisible War (2012)
|
"Interview after interview, statistic after statistic, Dick's advocacy project thoroughly incenses -- and appears to be having results."
|
Melissa Anderson
|
|
82%
|
De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone) (2012)
|
"A disappointing use of Cotillard's estimable talent buoyed by striking visuals and inspired use of a Katy Perry song."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
89%
|
A Royal Affair (2012)
|
"Perhaps there's only so much to be done with a costume drama about illicit affairs and would-be coups."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
75%
|
The Intouchables (2012)
|
"Gives its subject too light a treatment for the life-affirming message to feel earned. "
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
93%
|
Amour (2012)
|
"On paper it's a welcome change of pace for Haneke, but his tendency to treat the couple as patients rather than characters -- at a cold remove rather than with a warm embrace -- feels at odds with the material."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
100%
|
The History Of Future Folk (2013)
|
"This is a film that sincerely has love for its characters, and the songs are actually quite catchy."
|
Veronika Ferdman
|
|
81%
|
Kon Tiki (2013)
|
"Could have used a bit more blood in the water, but its crystal-clear waves are a sight to behold nevertheless."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
67%
|
Cloud Atlas (2012)
|
"One man's ambitious, iconoclastic, like-nothing-ever-before-seen passion project is another man's Battlefield Earth."
|
Karina Longworth
|
|
——
|
Blue Collar Boys ()
|
"Nistico seems to have achieved what he wanted: He validates the question, If the American dream was stolen, wouldn't you want to steal it back?"
|
Kristina Bravo
|
|
——
|
Life is Strange (2012)
|
"May provide more catharsis to those directly involved in its making than it will to most viewers."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
——
|
Almost Perfect (2012)
|
"Hackneyed and forgettable though it may be, Almost Perfect is also pretty watchable until its breezy first half gives way to ill-advised melodrama. "
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
86%
|
The Master (2012)
|
"What seems revelatory in the moment is often obvious in retrospect."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
100%
|
Toy Story 2 (1999)
|
"No parent who's been roped into leading the troops to a matinee need fear being bored: gags are, Simpsons-like, conceived to tickle several generations at once."
|
F.X. Feeney
|
|
100%
|
Almayer's Folly (2012)
|
"There's little if any comfort to be found in death, just the sense that our quibbles -- few of which are so enticing as quests for buried riches -- amount to rather little."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
65%
|
Zidane, un Portrait du 21e Siècle (Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait) (2006)
|
"For all the fuss that's sometimes been made of the film's semi-experimental approach, it is first and foremost a sensory experience that puts the viewer right on the field."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
——
|
Nipples & Palm Trees (2012)
|
"Never succeeds in its attempts to instill this faux grittiness with enough substance or pathos to rise above its raunchy core and let its would-be emotional scenes hit the marks they're meant to. "
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
14%
|
Blind Revenge (2012)
|
"It's like turning on a lamp in a room that looked just fine by candlelight."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
——
|
Bro' (2012)
|
"We're not sure whether to laugh at, pity, or cheer for these people."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
——
|
A Drummer's Dream (2012)
|
"It lives up to its name."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
——
|
Peter Ford: A Little Prince ()
|
"At a mere 40 minutes, it's a novella of a documentary: dainty, reined-in, and a bit under-realized."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
87%
|
The Matchmaker (2012)
|
"Points to Nesher for maintaining an even balance between the darker and lighter shades of his palette, not to mention the subtlety with which he moves from one to the other."
|
Michael Nordine
|
|
77%
|
The Color Wheel (2012)
|
"Perry and co-writer/star Carlen Altman are Colin and J.R., the most loathsomely lovable brother-sister duo in the history of cinema."
|
Phil Coldiron
|
|
90%
|
Beyond The Hills (2013)
|
"A omething of a disappointment. The initially fascinating, ambiguous relationship between the two young women is overwhelmed by the hysteria spawned by her unflaggingly intense presence at the monastery"
|
Karina Longworth
|
|
81%
|
In Another Country (2013)
|
"The presence of Huppert in this one suggests an interest in branching out beyond the cult faithful."
|
Karina Longworth
|
|
82%
|
Like Someone in Love (2013)
|
"I was pleasantly disoriented throughout, and I thought the film's final moment was thrilling. "
|
Karina Longworth
|
|
74%
|
Laurence Anyways (2013)
|
"If anything, it's a bold manifesto aimed at critics like me who have slagged the filmmaker off as all style and no substance."
|
Karina Longworth
|
|
67%
|
Lawless (2012)
|
"Never-not-fun junk food enlivened by good actors and a thin ghosting of Hollywood-style "relevancy", but only barely enough actual substance to keep the shoot-em-ups interesting. "
|
Karina Longworth
|
|
93%
|
Amour (2012)
|
"Haneke is the first Competition film director at Cannes this year to both succeed totally on the terms he sets out for himself, and truly challenge the audience to bear witness to something they've never seen on screen before."
|
Karina Longworth
|
|
82%
|
De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone) (2012)
|
"If Audiard's mastery of plastic aesthetics makes this all go down a little too easy, that's maybe the point: perception is deceiving."
|
Karina Longworth
|
|
63%
|
Paradise: Love (2013)
|
"It would be fitting with Seidl's apparent project if Paradise (Love) was, in some sense, a documentary of its own making. But that doesn't make its facile ironies about still-pervasive, post-colonial exploitation and dehumanization any more enlightening"
|
Karina Longworth
|
|
100%
|
We Were Here (2011)
|
"A simple, powerful act of bearing witness, We Were Here is a sober reminder of the not-too-distant past, when gays were focused not on honeymoon plans but on keeping people alive."
|
Melissa Anderson
|
|
84%
|
Hipsters (2011)
|
"In a postwar Moscow where consuming Western products is considered a form of treason, their insouciant fetishization -- and charming lost-in-translation misinterpretation -- of American jazz culture are legitimate forms of political rebellion."
|
Karina Longworth
|
|
——
|
@urFRENZ (2011)
|
"Writer-director Jeff Phillips' critique of how social media shapes lives doesn't have the scope of David Fincher's Social Network, but in its own way it's just as ambitious."
|
Ernest Hardy
|
|
73%
|
Bellflower (2011)
|
"Bellflower is a mess, but one that's unquestionably the product of incredible ambition and potential."
|
Karina Longworth
|
|
100%
|
Position Among the Stars (2011)
|
"(Critic's Pick) This patient but wildly expressionistic mosaic uses a canvas so vast that not just the subjects but fighting fish, cockroaches and the mangiest rat yet committed to cinema complete a bizarre ecosystem of co-dependence."
|
Aaron Hillis
|
|
90%
|
Attack the Block (2011)
|
"Writer-director Joe Cornish's charmingly zippy debut wants to be taken seriously while evoking a childlike sense of marvel, or at least early-blockbuster nostalgia. (Is this the inner-city companion to Super 8?)"
|
Aaron Hillis
|
|
3%
|
Passion Play (2011)
|
"Mickey Rourke recently made headlines for dubbing Passion Play "a terrible movie," a proclamation that's ultimately most notable for its understatement."
|
Nick Schager
|
|
94%
|
Journal d'un curé de campagne (Diary of a Country Priest) (1951)
|
"Bresson's third feature and in many ways his first major work."
|
Doug Cummings
|
|
11%
|
Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011)
|
"Apart from its deficiencies as fiction, whatever its philosophical limitations (the rich and able should only help themselves in Rand's "Objectivism"), the book proves proudly indigestible on film. "
|
Brian Miller
|
|
85%
|
Fly Away (2011)
|
"The lead performances are solid, as are the supporting actors, and Grillo is more than competent as a director. But Fly Away could have been stronger if its antiseptic visual style... had been more adventurous."
|
Ernest Hardy
|
|
33%
|
Exodus Fall (2011)
|
"It's all broad strokes, resulting in performances (especially Arquette's) void of subtlety -- more the rendering of types than characters."
|
Ernest Hardy
|
73%
21%
63%
85%
46%
40%
