|
98%
|
Wadjda (2013)
|
"In Saudi filmmaker Haifaa al-Mansour's winsome wonder Wadjda, a young girl's aspirations provide an intimate glimpse into the possibilities and limitations of a cloaked culture."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
97%
|
Gravity (2013)
|
"Nerve-racking, sentimental and thrilling, Gravity honors terra firma even as it reaches for the stars with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
71%
|
Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve (2013)
|
"Money For Nothing lacks the rush of Rush, but you still might find your pulse racing and your blood boiling by the film's end."
|
Ricardo Baca
|
|
95%
|
Enough Said (2013)
|
"In the terse space film provides, Holofcener capturing her characters deftly. We know their fears, needs, lonesomeness. We trust the cars they drive, the food they eat, the rooms they keep tidy, or not."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
88%
|
Rush (2013)
|
"This is a deeply adult drama, not least because Howard shows the costs of being so driven in a sport in which a driver is encased in a potential fireball."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
——
|
The Hollow Crown: Richard II ()
|
"This rich and rewarding rendering is powerful thanks to the enduring words, the casting and the terrific performance of Ben Whishaw as Richard."
|
Joanne Ostrow
|
|
81%
|
Prisoners (2013)
|
"Prisoners is unforgettably relentless in asking moviegoers if Keller has gone too far. And, by extension, asking us how far we would go."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
99%
|
Short Term 12 (2013)
|
"Short Term 12 captures the complex rhythms of institutional life -- for worker and inhabitant -- while weaving the story of Grace's journey through anguish toward, we hope, happiness."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
34%
|
Adore (2013)
|
"What's shocking here is how not shocking all this is. Watts and Wright provide interesting portraits of two friends who really do appear to have an unconditional fondness for each other. They make the unfathomable believable -- almost. "
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
46%
|
Closed Circuit (2013)
|
"Sharp ensemble work ups this thriller's intelligence quotient."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
91%
|
In a World... (2013)
|
"An indie comedy as surprisingly tender and wise as it is deftly wise-cracking."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
89%
|
The World's End (2013)
|
"The movie throws itself headlong toward the ridiculous when it begins to live up to its title."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
91%
|
The Spectacular Now (2013)
|
"So many films featuring teens seem overstimulated or familiar. This one strikes a deep, rich note and holds it."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
73%
|
Lee Daniels' The Butler (2013)
|
"A history lesson in violence and endurance. A sentimental journey. A tribute. Director Daniels and the dedicated cast of The Butler deliver all that."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
91%
|
Blue Jasmine (2013)
|
"Jasmine resembles one of those '50s wives -- widowed or dumped -- who find themselves with nary a skill to survive, or at least not in the manner they'd grown accustomed."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
68%
|
Elysium (2013)
|
"Elysium is a gripping, visceral, disconcerting bit of business. Just as writer-director Neill Blomkamp intended."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
90%
|
Bridesmaids (2011)
|
"Onetime Saturday Night Live castmates Wiig and Rudolph make Annie and Lillian's friendship believable. Which is why Annie's shenanigans are sad -- and hilarious."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
93%
|
Still Mine (2013)
|
"Writer-director Michael McGowan covers all the bases here -- the long-standing romance between the aging couple, the hovering concerns of their son and daughter, the constant head-butting with the building inspector -- with well-paced confidence."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
64%
|
2 Guns (2013)
|
"The biggest guns this action flick brandishes are stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg who have very different acting styles that work surprisingly well together."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
94%
|
Fruitvale Station (2013)
|
"It's hard not to watch Fruitvale Station with a coiled dread... Yet, Coogler's greatest achievement may be in reminding us that Grant was a work in progress with people who loved him in spite of his flaws and because of his hopes."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
42%
|
Red 2 (2013)
|
"Ridiculously action-packed and just as endearing, Red 2 is why we go to sequels despite our well-earned cynicism about studios churning them out."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
61%
|
Byzantium (2013)
|
"Jordan is no stranger to the yearnings of vampires. He directed Interview With the Vampire. But Byzantium is a kinder, gentler yet pretty durn bloody affair."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
31%
|
The Lone Ranger (2013)
|
"The Lone Ranger is too often as vast and empty as Utah's Monument Valley. Only the film's wide stretches aren't awe-inspiring so much as much as tiring."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
65%
|
The Heat (2013)
|
"Laughter can be magical. It can also be crass. In the formidable person of Melissa McCarthy it is typically both. And no director seems to know what to do with that tension quite like Paul Feig."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
67%
|
World War Z (2013)
|
"As compelling as Pitt is at reflecting the world's pain through Lane's eyes, the movie treats him too often as if he truly is the only one with loved ones to lose or a world to save."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
59%
|
The Bling Ring (2013)
|
"s Coppola offering a critique (a stated hope) or somehow being complicit? These questions seem to coil in on themselves, making The Bling Ring that weird yet common hybrid of tsk-tsking and celebration."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
56%
|
Man of Steel (2013)
|
"The chief problem here is one of rhythm and balance in the storytelling and directing. The movie swings between destructive overstatement and flat-footed homilies."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
35%
|
The Internship (2013)
|
"Today's weather forecast in Mountain View? Giddy with a chance of delirious."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
51%
|
Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf's (2013)
|
"Much of the window dressing has gone out of fashion. It's nice to revisit it here."
|
Suzanne S. Brown
|
|
95%
|
Behind the Candelabra (2013)
|
"The stunning and quite intimate performances by Michael Douglas and Matt Damon are award-worthy."
|
Joanne Ostrow
|
|
74%
|
Love Is All You Need (2013)
|
"Pierce Brosnan isn't the only reason to see Love is All You Need. He's merely the best reason to seek out Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier's entertaining if familiar romantic comedy."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
69%
|
Fast & Furious 6 (2013)
|
"Some of the action sequences are insane. No, really. Absurd, impossible, physics defying, triage-required stuff. No matter. That's the foolish rush of a franchise that must go faster and faster and furiouser and furiouser."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
67%
|
The Iceman (2013)
|
"Shannon gets at his character's pent-up torment as well as his efficient disconnect. When his two worlds start to converge -- on his daughter's sweet 16th birthday, no less -- you feel for him."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
87%
|
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
|
"For all its reckoning with mass destruction, this franchise's vision of a future Earth remains optimistic. The film mixes the iconically familiar with the futuristic."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
49%
|
The Great Gatsby (2013)
|
"Even while being admirably faithful to so much of the novel's language, Luhrmann and Pearce still can't quite maneuver Carraway's more cautionary contours about America."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
79%
|
Iron Man 3 (2013)
|
"Iron Man 3 feels like an exploitative mulching of present-day anxieties. The script is ambitious but not wise enough to be rightfully cathartic. It's more Cuisinart than art."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
55%
|
The Company You Keep (2013)
|
"What gets revealed should rattle, but it doesn't."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
85%
|
Upstream Color (2013)
|
"Sci-fi might have been too familiar a word, for what may induce a kind of hallucinatory melancholy in its viewers."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
44%
|
To The Wonder (2013)
|
"There's little doubt this film will deepen, open up with a second viewing. But to what end?"
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
79%
|
42 (2013)
|
"This story inspires and entertains with a vital chapter in this nation's history."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
92%
|
The Sapphires (2013)
|
"The harmonies they strike in this reality-inspired charmer are sweetly sublime."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
82%
|
The Place Beyond The Pines (2013)
|
"With the arrival of The Place Beyond the Pines, the American dramatic film has found a loyal, gifted advocate in director Derek Cianfrance."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
79%
|
Ginger & Rosa (2013)
|
"What hurt, nuanced terror and exhilaration there is in Sally Potter's beautiful coming-of-age drama Ginger & Rosa."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
69%
|
The Croods (2013)
|
"It captures the wonder (and more gently, the anxiety) of discovery time and time again. And the filmmakers have a hoot playing with the Croods' encounters with, as well as their misunderstandings of, all things new."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
93%
|
Sugar (2008)
|
"Not only have director-writers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck crafted a poignant immigrant tale, they've made a sports saga rife with rare truths."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
36%
|
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)
|
"This comedy about a magician who must hit bottom before rising again to the wonder of his beloved craft pulls plenty of sweet moments and a slew of laughs out of a story that might have been thin air."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
89%
|
A Place at the Table (2013)
|
"You don't have to be a fan of info-graphics in social-justice docs to be troubled by one showing that the price of processed food has decreased in almost exact proportion to the rise in cost of fresh fruits and vegetables."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
93%
|
The Gatekeepers (2013)
|
"The level of candor here may not satisfy hard-liners of either stripe, but it can help viewers begin to formulate new questions about the philosophical, strategic and moral challenges of conflict, in particular "wars on terror.""
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
59%
|
Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)
|
"Let us take a moment to praise two great and surprisingly powerful characters: a winged monkey and a wee girl made out of china. Because so much human wonder resides in these two creations of make-up, puppetry, digital effects and lovely performances."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
|
71%
|
Bless Me, Ultima (2013)
|
"Theater firebrand and big-screen presence Miriam Colon portrays Ultima with a minimum of fuss and a gorgeous supply of elder authority."
|
Lisa Kennedy
|
