|
91%
|
Frances Ha (2013)
|
"Has the earnest, wonky charm of a homemade valentine."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
86%
|
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
|
"For two movies in a row now -- and possibly even more in the second than the first -- [Abrams has] caught some of the spark of the first Star Trek without either mimicking or desecrating the original."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
49%
|
The Great Gatsby (2013)
|
"It is, as I suspected, a gargantuan hunk of over-art-directed kitsch, but it makes for a grandiose, colorful, pleasure-drenched night at the movies."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
67%
|
The Iceman (2013)
|
"Shannon inhabits this character so completely that by the end of this hard-to-watch, hard-to-look-away-from movie you feel you can, if not understand Richie, at least wish he had found some redemption in life."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
78%
|
Iron Man 3 (2013)
|
"Unfortunately, [its] sharp-eyed domestic comedy is dwarfed by the far less well-written supervillain crime plot that surrounds it."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
55%
|
The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2013)
|
"Nair is so busy making sure we never lose sympathy for her handsome and charming protagonist that the film ultimately founders in a tangle of humanist platitudes."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
46%
|
Pain & Gain (2013)
|
"I'm still not sure whether to mildly like or mildly hate this movie."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
77%
|
42 (2013)
|
"By burnishing Jackie Robinson's legend to such an unnaturally high polish, 42 does Robinson the man (and the actor who plays him, the relative newcomer Chadwick Boseman) a disservice."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
42%
|
To The Wonder (2013)
|
"I didn't like the movie at all-found it boring, unintentionally comical, at times even (a word I seldom use) pretentious ..."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
62%
|
Evil Dead (2013)
|
"Though it never channels the raw DIY energy of the original Evil Dead series -- what big-budget version could? -- this polished, clever remake remains true to the spirit of the original, which was at once viscerally terrifying and weirdly lighthearted."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
67%
|
Philip Roth: Unmasked (2013)
|
"That neither Krauss nor anyone has anything remotely unflattering to say about the subject points to the fundamental dishonesty of the work, which extends from its excessive reverence."
|
Troy Patterson
|
|
47%
|
Heaven's Gate (1980)
|
"On a purely sensory level, Heaven's Gate is overpowering."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
82%
|
The Place Beyond The Pines (2013)
|
"Each chapter of The Place Beyond the Pines gets successively less interesting than the last ..."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
92%
|
Top of the Lake (2013)
|
"It gets beneath the skin by examining the state of isolation at the bottom of the world."
|
Troy Patterson
|
|
43%
|
Admission (2013)
|
"This would be a good movie for a parent to watch with a high-school-age child facing down the college admissions slog-it's mildly snarky but resolutely uncynical."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
66%
|
Spring Breakers (2013)
|
"Any irregularity in tone becomes a part of the movie's intentionally rough, imperfect surface-a formal strategy I might find interesting if I could make head or tail of what the movie that's using it is trying to say."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
——
|
Bollywood Hero (2010)
|
"It must be said that Bollywood Hero is an entirely novel kind of slog."
|
Troy Patterson
|
|
79%
|
Reality (2013)
|
"[Arena's] feverish urgency matches his character's, right up through the movie's dreamlike final scene ..."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
79%
|
Ginger & Rosa (2013)
|
"Packs an impressive amount of personal and political history into a wispy 90 minutes of screen time."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
37%
|
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)
|
"It's a long, limping slog from the halfway point to the finish line, even if the actors have built up enough goodwill by then that it's bearable to coast the movie out."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
90%
|
Beyond The Hills (2013)
|
"The complexity of the film's moral world makes the movie far more than a simple anti-religious screed."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
60%
|
Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)
|
"A visually over-crammed, emotionally empty mega-spectacle on the model of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
92%
|
No (2013)
|
"There will have to be a hell of a lot of good movies released in 2013 for No not to make my list of the year's 10 best."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
91%
|
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
|
"It's impressive, in the sense that a sucker-punch impresses itself on your skull."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
77%
|
Gladiator (2000)
|
"Gladiator's combination of grim sanctimony and drenching, Dolby-ized dismemberings left me appalled."
|
David Edelstein
|
|
82%
|
Like Someone in Love (2013)
|
"Like Someone in Love is a movie that never quite lets you through to the other side of the glass, but it's dazzling to watch whatever drifts by on the surface."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
15%
|
A Good Day To Die Hard (2013)
|
"Few fans of the series would disagree that this sclerotic fifth installment should probably be the last."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
20%
|
Identity Thief (2013)
|
"Thanks to McCarthy's abundant comic gifts and those of her equally ill-served straight man Jason Bateman, Identity Thief doesn't leave nearly as icky a taste as it could have, but Gordon only taps into a fraction of his actors' potential."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
85%
|
Side Effects (2013)
|
"Provides a minor but distinct kind of cinematic pleasure: the joy of sitting back and letting a master manipulator mess with your head."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
80%
|
Warm Bodies (2013)
|
"These bodies, whether human or zombie, feel room-temperature at best."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
87%
|
Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2013)
|
"It's Herzog's inventive use of voice-over that elevates the film above an extremely well-researched episode of Nature."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
65%
|
Mama (2013)
|
"Even if the beats are familiar, Muschietti sustains a remarkable mood throughout: wintry, elemental and stark, like a late Sylvia Plath poem."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
60%
|
John Dies at the End (2013)
|
"John Dies at the End is joyously heterodox in its method, an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink mélange of sci-fi, black comedy, and action, with disquieting body-horror sight gags that at times recall David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
30%
|
Broken City (2013)
|
"Less than 24 hours later, I recall it with all the clarity of something I half-watched on a plane with a hangover in 1996."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
69%
|
Les Misérables (2012)
|
"We're all familiar with the experience of seeing movies that cram ideas and themes down our throats. Les Misérables may represent the first movie to do so while also cramming us down the throats of its actors."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
88%
|
Django Unchained (2012)
|
"There's something about [Tarantino's] directorial delectation in all these acts of racial violence that left me not just physically but morally queasy."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
61%
|
Jack Reacher (2012)
|
"Jack Reacher is an absurdly self-confident, sociopathically laser-focused detective-bot. That is to say, he's a hero that only Tom Cruise could love."
|
Dan Kois
|
|
93%
|
Amour (2012)
|
"A compassionate, rigorously unsentimental masterwork from a director who doesn't normally truck in emotions like the one named in the title."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
45%
|
On the Road (2012)
|
"On the Road is not a great movie, but it's a pretty interesting work of literary criticism."
|
David Haglund
|
|
81%
|
The Impossible (2012)
|
"The movie is not, as the trailer suggests, a tale of the triumph of the human spirit. It's about luck. It's about sadness. But it's also about the way that victims of the disaster -- of any disaster -- band together."
|
Dan Kois
|
|
52%
|
This is 40 (2012)
|
"As funny as a hemorrhoid."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
93%
|
Zero Dark Thirty (2013)
|
"A vital, disturbing, and necessary film ..."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
44%
|
Save The Date (2012)
|
"Save the Date ... is appealingly ambivalent about whether growing up is really such a great idea."
|
Dan Kois
|
|
65%
|
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
|
"It's hard to overstate the degree to which the 48fps format interfered with my ability to get lost in this movie's story."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
38%
|
Hyde Park on Hudson (2012)
|
"I wish I could say that Bill Murray's performance as FDR was so wonderful it transcended the material, but the truth is that Murray's character never fully emerges from the fog."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
82%
|
De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone) (2012)
|
"Rust and Bone is a movie about letting go of shame and making way for the advent of pleasure. Let that be your guide to watching it as well."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
75%
|
Killing Them Softly (2012)
|
"It's hard to deglamorize the criminal life when you can't resist showing a bullet leaving a gun barrel in stylized super-slow motion or scoring the anti-hero's first entrance to a Johnny Cash song."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
63%
|
Hitchcock (2012)
|
"A pleasant but unambitious, small-scale biopic ..."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
88%
|
Life of Pi (2012)
|
"The movie's energy peters out in a series of book-club conversations about divine will, the power of storytelling, and the resilience of the human spirit."
|
Dana Stevens
|
|
92%
|
Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
|
"It's lopsided and spotty, but it's alive in a way that suddenly makes you remember to what degree most Hollywood movies aren't."
|
Dana Stevens
|
78%
——
——
85%
45%
40%
