|
92%
|
Insomnia (2002)
|
"Scene by scene, screenwriter Hillary Seitz follows director Erik Skjoldbjaerg's original closely, but this remake deepens and improves upon the Norwegian film by giving Dormer a more complex relationship with Eckhart."
|
David Ansen
|
|
68%
|
The Crucible (1996)
|
"I recommend Hytner's movie highly, but a part of me resists a work that makes the audience feel as noble in our moral certainty as the characters it invites us to deplore. Some part of its power seems borrowed from the thing it hates."
|
David Ansen
|
|
91%
|
Downfall (Der Untergang) (2004)
|
|
David Ansen
|
|
22%
|
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1994)
|
"There are just too many half-cooked ingredients in this utopian stew of a movie."
|
Jack Kroll
|
|
61%
|
Disclosure (1994)
|
"In this world of Information Highway sophistication and virtual-reality marvels, the pivotal plot points are all rickety coincidences: an overheard conversation, a fortuitous phone call."
|
Jack Kroll
|
|
88%
|
The Usual Suspects (1995)
|
"For many true movie fiends, noir is the key American movie type, and the most fun when it's done right. The Usual Suspects is done right."
|
Jack Kroll
|
|
67%
|
Night and the City (1992)
|
"Relish the movie's snappy, low-life high spirits."
|
David Ansen
|
|
64%
|
The Public Eye (1992)
|
"In its moody, daffy way, The Public Eye gives off an authentic reek of artistic compulsion."
|
David Ansen
|
|
52%
|
Shadows and Fog (1992)
|
"Shadows and Fog is Woody Allen's first mystery movie. The mystery: what caused this total breakdown of a unique artist?"
|
Jack Kroll
|
|
63%
|
Strange Days (1995)
|
"Director Kathryn Bigelow comes closer than any other filmmaker to turning movies into a virtual reality trip."
|
Jack Kroll
|
|
54%
|
City Hall (1996)
|
"Its chief pleasure is the acting of the big cast, notably Pacino. At 55, he has a haggard, life-wrestling beauty and a street eloquence that has more innocence than De Niro and more sincerity than Nicholson."
|
Jack Kroll
|
|
63%
|
Kansas City (1996)
|
"Altman loves to explode movie genres, and his script, co-written with Frank Barhydt, fuses the classic '30s screwball comedy and crime film."
|
Jack Kroll
|
|
96%
|
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
|
"This cautionary fable (Be True to Your Ghoulish Self) may be a little too twisted for little kids but anyone 8 or older will spot the friendly glint behind jack's empty eye sockets."
|
David Ansen
|
|
24%
|
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)
|
|
David Ansen
|
|
63%
|
Contact (1997)
|
"When it's good, it's very good. And when it's not, it can be as silly and self-important as a bad '50s sci-fi movie."
|
|
|
67%
|
The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
|
"The Long Kiss Goodnight is the fall's best summer movie."
|
David Ansen
|
|
71%
|
Somewhere (2010)
|
"Casting the less-than-charismatic Dorff may bolster Coppola's thesis, but it's dramatically self-defeating. How can we feel for Johnny, when there's no there there?"
|
David Ansen
|
|
18%
|
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009)
|
|
David Ansen
|
|
86%
|
Rabbit Hole (2010)
|
"How do you patch together a relationship that has been sundered by grief? The answers it gives, tentative and hard-won, may not be surprising, but they feel right."
|
David Ansen
|
|
91%
|
The Fighter (2010)
|
"The suspense isn't just about who's going to win the big fight, but who's going to emerge from Ward's big, fierce jungle of a family with their lives intact."
|
David Ansen
|
|
94%
|
The Town (2010)
|
"The Town is part of a career turnaround so amazing that he looks like the new Clint Eastwood. Seriously."
|
Caryn James
|
|
66%
|
The American (2010)
|
"Even on its own artsy terms, the film falls apart long before the end."
|
Caryn James
|
|
43%
|
Dinner for Schmucks (2010)
|
"Though the premise of Dinner for Schmucks is deeply cruel, we are supposed to laugh, because we trust that by the closing credits the characters will have matured into upstanding men."
|
Jennie Yabroff
|
|
57%
|
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
|
"Sillier than the Singer versions, Ratner's movie is also -- for this less-than-reverent X-Men fan -- more satisfying."
|
David Ansen
|
|
45%
|
Daredevil (2003)
|
"Torn between moody grandiosity and cartoonish mayhem, Daredevil tries to have it both ways, and succeeds at neither."
|
David Ansen
|
|
81%
|
Batman Returns (1992)
|
"Something about the filmmaker's eccentric, surreal, childlike images seems to strike a deep chord in the mass psyche: he makes nightmares that taste like candy."
|
David Ansen
|
|
91%
|
Minority Report (2002)
|
"Ferociously intense, furiously kinetic, it's expressionist film noir science fiction that, like all good sci-fi, peers into the future to shed light on the present."
|
David Ansen
|
|
96%
|
Waltz with Bashir (2008)
|
"These depictions of the dementia of war have a hallucinatory power that can stand alongside those of Apocalypse Now."
|
David Ansen
|
|
94%
|
Pulp Fiction (1994)
|
"Just when you thought the last thing the world needed was another violent, self-conscious, hipster homage to film noir, along comes Tarantino to blow away your deja vu."
|
David Ansen
|
|
63%
|
8: The Mormon Proposition (2010)
|
"It seems impossible that anyone will have their minds changed or even piqued by watching this film. No one will really listen to The Mormon Proposition because we've heard it all before."
|
Marc Peyser
|
|
80%
|
Cyrus (2010)
|
"Cyrus successfully walks the line between dark comedy and scary movie, thanks to the performances by Hill, Reilly, and Tomei, which are uniformly great."
|
Jennie Yabroff
|
|
15%
|
Sex and the City 2 (2010)
|
"Remember the old, boundary-breaking, taboo-toppling Sex and the City? Forget it. Neither sex nor the city plays any role in this film."
|
Jessica Bennett
|
|
83%
|
Daddy Longlegs (2010)
|
"Daddy Longlegs may shock you, but it will also make you reexamine your ideas about parenthood, and what it means to be a father."
|
Jennie Yabroff
|
|
67%
|
Date Night (2010)
|
"In Date Night, Carell is the cake batter that holds up Fey's icing."
|
Ramin Setoodeh
|
|
53%
|
Green Zone (2010)
|
"What Chandrasekaran did so well -- tenaciously cataloging the colossal morass of America's small and not-so-small mistakes -- Greengrass eschews for the popcorn-crunching conventions of a Hollywood potboiler."
|
Ilana Ozernoy
|
|
48%
|
The Book of Eli (2010)
|
"For those of us in the reading and writing business-for anyone, really, who loves the written word-the movie has a powerful resonance. It reminds us that literacy can't be taken for granted."
|
Lisa Miller
|
|
76%
|
Invictus (2009)
|
"The lapses fade in the face of such a soul-stirring story -- one that would be hard to believe if it were fiction."
|
David Ansen
|
|
85%
|
Me and Orson Welles (2009)
|
"Welles comes off as an imperious, duplicitous, philandering brat. But he's also funny, seductive, and ingenious."
|
Jeremy McCarter
|
|
85%
|
A Single Man (2009)
|
"The movie has a hushed, sensual intensity and formal elegance that leaves no doubt Ford knows what he's doing behind the camera."
|
David Ansen
|
|
91%
|
Crazy Heart (2009)
|
"Crazy Heart gets to you like a good country song -- not because it tells you something new, but because it tells it well. It's the singer, not the song."
|
David Ansen
|
|
90%
|
Up in the Air (2009)
|
"In its funny, rueful way, Up in the Air touches contemporary American notes few Hollywood movies acknowledge."
|
David Ansen
|
|
70%
|
The Last Station (2010)
|
"The Last Station slides gracefully between comedy and pathos (it aims for tragedy, but doesn't quite get there)."
|
David Ansen
|
|
32%
|
The Lovely Bones (2009)
|
"How do you literalize heaven? It's a problem moviemakers have struggled with forever, and Jackson hasn't solved it."
|
David Ansen
|
|
62%
|
Brothers (2009)
|
"Brothers shows us that even when our troops do come home, their war may be far from over."
|
Ramin Setoodeh
|
|
27%
|
The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)
|
"If only director Chris Weitz had managed to tease out the real drama -- Bella's fear of aging -- instead of a tired one."
|
Louisa Thomas
|
|
84%
|
The Princess and the Frog (2009)
|
"This is the first Disney animated film about an African-American princess, and this delightful fairy tale couldn't come at a better time, what with the two little African-American princesses who live in the White House."
|
Allison Samuels
|
|
93%
|
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
|
"Mr. Fox doesn't just rescue Dahl's legacy on film. In a year stuffed with kid-lit movie adaptations, it's the only one to successfully reach out to children and adults."
|
Ramin Setoodeh
|
|
49%
|
Antichrist (2009)
|
"Though it's hard to deny the fierce purity of Gainsbourg's performance, Antichrist plays like an incoherent mix of Gothic horror claptrap and Bergmanesque power struggle. I was more bored and puzzled than shattered and provoked."
|
David Ansen
|
|
34%
|
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)
|
"G.I. Joe is like watching fireworks with a blindfold on: it's deafening and you feel under attack."
|
Ramin Setoodeh
|
|
92%
|
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
|
"For all its state-of-the-art pyrotechnics and breathtaking thrills, this bruisingly exciting movie never loses sight of its humanity. That's its point, and its pride."
|
David Ansen
|
