|
96%
|
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
|
"If [Romero's] original vision of the undead looks dulled by today's standards, his embedded political commentary on racism feels just as sharp."
|
Amos Barshad
|
|
93%
|
Let The Fire Burn (2013)
|
"Let the Fire Burn is a time machine. It shows there are truths out there waiting to be found-that footage already shot can make history in all its terrible finality breathe."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
82%
|
Don Jon (2013)
|
"The movie is a broad ethnic comedy, but there's nothing broad about the wicked-smart way it's executed. Even long-played-out stereotypes take on new life."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
81%
|
Prisoners (2013)
|
"Villeneuve is trying like hell to elevate what turns out to be a dumb genre picture...Prisoners is a long sentence."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
96%
|
Mother Of George (2013)
|
"This world is ravishingly beautiful, but there's also something oppressive about its exoticism. The color doesn't just saturate the frame; it thickens it."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
73%
|
Lee Daniels' The Butler (2013)
|
"You can object to the thuggish direction and the script that's a series of signposts, but not the central idea, which is genuinely illuminating."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
89%
|
The World's End (2013)
|
"This is by light-years the most entertaining movie of the year. How many apocalyptic sci-fi action extravaganzas leave you feeling as if the world is just beginning?"
|
David Edelstein
|
|
68%
|
Elysium (2013)
|
"The action is bludgeoning."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
91%
|
Minority Report (2002)
|
"High-concept science-fiction escapades often try to impose new ways of seeing, but Spielberg seems intent on blistering our optic nerves."
|
Peter Rainer
|
|
54%
|
Lovelace (2013)
|
"Lovelace is a respectable job, but it never goes deep."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
87%
|
X-Men: First Class (2011)
|
"The climax is the biggest letdown, a giant hash of crosscutting and unremarkable (in an era in which we've seen everything) CGI."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
90%
|
Bridesmaids (2011)
|
"Bridesmaids is likely to be a hit with both women and men, being half formula chick-flick, half raunchy comedy of humiliation. It's hilarious -- and too bifurcated to be satisfying."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
98%
|
Jaws (1975)
|
"The result is a fast-paced, straight-line thriller that moves without pause toward the climactic contest at sea between three men and a 25-foot, 3-ton great while killer shark."
|
Judith Crist
|
|
91%
|
The Spectacular Now (2013)
|
"Most teen movies are cocktails of melancholy and elation. This one is best at its most un-transcendent-when it most evokes that period when we never knew what we were supposed to do with the pain."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
91%
|
Blue Jasmine (2013)
|
"[Allen's] new drama Blue Jasmine comes this close to being a wheeze. But he sells it beautifully."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
89%
|
Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)
|
"Pirates is a hoot."
|
John Leonard
|
|
97%
|
The Act Of Killing (2013)
|
"Bizarre to the point of trippiness, yet it's one of the most lucid portraits of evil I've ever seen."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
72%
|
Pacific Rim (2013)
|
"It's as if Del Toro neuro-linked with a robot and then couldn't figure out how to work the controls -- and so watched impotently as the machine made the major creative decisions."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
94%
|
Fruitvale Station (2013)
|
"Fruitvale Station will rock your world -- and, if the life of Oscar Grant means anything, compel you to work to change it."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
91%
|
Murderous Maids (2002)
|
"Sylvie Testud gives such a ferociously controlled performance that the messy murder seems like a necessary release."
|
Peter Rainer
|
|
61%
|
Byzantium (2013)
|
"The movie is gorgeous, mesmerizing, poetic; the lyricism actually heightened by harsh jets of gore."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
56%
|
Man of Steel (2013)
|
"The movie isn't dead on arrival, like Snyder's over-reverent Watchmen. But it's pleasure-free."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
59%
|
The Bling Ring (2013)
|
"The Bling Ring is enjoyable. And it's always easy on the eyes."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
99%
|
20 Feet From Stardom (2013)
|
"You gasp at the ecstatic convergence of lung power and spirit."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
88%
|
What Maisie Knew (2013)
|
"As Maisie, Aprile seems lit from within; a more vividly natural child actress I have trouble imagining."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
11%
|
After Earth (2013)
|
"By the standards of M. Night's Shyamalan's recent films, After Earth is surprisingly not horrible."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
86%
|
Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie (2013)
|
"It's a riveting Oedipal tragedy."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
84%
|
Much Ado About Nothing (2013)
|
"I'd be pressed to imagine a more sure-footed Much Ado. When Shakespeare's done right, you can't imagine him ever being done wrong. The clarity is blinding."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
95%
|
Behind the Candelabra (2013)
|
"Whether the biopic Behind the Candelabra ends up being a swan song for director Steven Soderbergh or merely the last entry in one phase of a long career, it's an impressive work."
|
Matt Zoller Seitz
|
|
98%
|
Before Midnight (2013)
|
"Before Midnight counts on our previous investment to keep us riveted. We are."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
95%
|
We Steal Secrets: The Story Of Wikileaks (2013)
|
"Much of the material is out there, but Gibney has a talent for creating a one-stop shop for anyone who wants to experience the full scope of this ugly, scary story."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
93%
|
Frances Ha (2013)
|
"Baumbach has a hard time letting go of the notion that drama means building to humiliation. When he does, though, Frances Ha is beautiful and surprising."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
87%
|
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
|
"Abrams has a gift for making us feel as if Star Trek Into Darkness vaulted from our own Trek-ish daydreams."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
49%
|
The Great Gatsby (2013)
|
"The best thing about Baz Luhrmann's much-anticipated/much-dreaded The Great Gatsby is that, for all its computer-generated whoosh and overbroad acting, it is unmistakably F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. That is no small deal."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
95%
|
Stories We Tell (2013)
|
"Polley has gone meta-exuberantly, entertainingly, with all her heart."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
49%
|
Pain & Gain (2013)
|
"Now [Bay] hits new levels of both artistry and sleaziness in the black comedy Pain & Gain, which I strongly recommend if you don't overvalue taste, subtlety, and moral decency. I liked it."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
98%
|
Mud (2013)
|
"It's hard to believe Nichols thinks he can get away with all this and harder still to believe he does."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
75%
|
The Adventures of Tintin (2011)
|
"There are so many variables moving so fast that it's a wonder Spielberg didn't have someone onboard from Princeton's department of Higher Math to help keep track. But his crack team here is enough."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
44%
|
To The Wonder (2013)
|
"To the Wonder feels like generalized woo-woo -- and self-parody."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
85%
|
Upstream Color (2013)
|
"I've seen Upstream Color twice and liked it enormously while never being certain of anything."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
93%
|
Top of the Lake (2013)
|
"It's only March, but I already expect the Sundance Channel miniseries Top of the Lake to make my year-end "Top 10" list."
|
Matt Zoller Seitz
|
|
82%
|
The Place Beyond The Pines (2013)
|
"The segments are essentially monodramas, so sketchily written that the big moments feel less like recognizable human behavior than recognizable screenwriter overreaching."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
47%
|
Olympus Has Fallen (2013)
|
"The carnage is cruel and crude."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
93%
|
Sugar (2008)
|
"The camera is on Sugar the whole time, but the faux-documentary approach keeps him out of reach in all the ways that really matter."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
38%
|
Admission (2013)
|
"Fey has the Sandra Bullock role -- exactly the kind of part that she has spent the last decade transcending. She's not bad in it, though."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
38%
|
Dead Man Down (2013)
|
"More a dark fairy tale about vengeance than the action-packed crime thriller it purports to be, the film is at times exhilarating, bold, and beautiful -- when it's not busy being ludicrous, fragmented, and just plain stupid."
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
|
59%
|
Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)
|
"Aside from a trio of witches that can hold its own with Eastwick's in the dishiness department, Oz the Great and Powerful is a peculiarly joyless occasion. "
|
David Edelstein
|
|
16%
|
The Last Exorcism Part II (2013)
|
"This matter-of-fact, brick-by-brick approach to building scares and tension probably won't work for audiences who just want to scream a lot, so Gass-Donnelly undercuts it all by haphazardly tossing in jump scares of the cheapest, most predictable kind."
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
|
69%
|
Stoker (2013)
|
"The problem with Park Chan-Wook is that there's no real drama in his worldview. The drive toward cruelty is absolute -- and in this case, absolutely boring."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
87%
|
Chicago (2002)
|
"The song-and-dance numbers are calisthenic but unspectacular, with too much fast cutting, and the tone throughout is harmlessly facetious."
|
Peter Rainer
|
