|
56%
|
Man of Steel (2013)
|
"By the end, Man of Steel has mutated into just another superhero action movie, with explosions galore and city buildings toppling like so many Legos. Lather, rinse, repeat. That's too bad because ... Man of Steel has so much going for it. "
|
Cary Darling
|
|
85%
|
This Is the End (2013)
|
"[It]gets derailed by [Rogen and Goldberg's] desire to keep upping the level of comedic absurdity and cheesy special effects. Still, there are lots of low-brow laughs, especially in the first half."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
34%
|
The Internship (2013)
|
"The Internship doesn't break any new comedic ground...But it's an amiable, occasionally laugh-out-loud fish-out-of-water tale that gently mocks our modern technological age while simultaneously embracing it."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
73%
|
The Kings of Summer (2013)
|
"The Kings of Summer is the cinematic equivalent of an Arctic-cold popsicle on a Sahara-hot day. Refreshing and satisfying but not overly sentimental, the film taps into the frustrations of adolescence with warmth and wit."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
80%
|
Pieta (2013)
|
"The film's big reveal may not come as that much of a surprise; you may figure out where it's going well before the end. But it's the getting there that is, if not exactly fun, then certainly hypnotic."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
11%
|
After Earth (2013)
|
"What do you give the kid who has everything? His own summer action-adventure blockbuster, of course ... Well, it certainly beats a cake and a card, but considering what a well-crafted bore After Earth turns out to be, perhaps not by much."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
91%
|
Frances Ha (2013)
|
"But there's just something so relentlessly likable about put-upon, impoverished Frances (Greta Gerwig) that it almost doesn't matter that her New York is just one big Williamsburg."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
71%
|
Fast & Furious 6 (2013)
|
"If Fast & Furious 6 were any dumber, the script would have been written in crayon ... [But] in terms of sheer action adrenaline, it may be the best film of the franchise. "
|
Cary Darling
|
|
87%
|
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
|
"Star Trek Into Darkness is a step forward from Abrams' initial foray into this universe in the 2009 movie."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
57%
|
Here and There (2013)
|
"Set in a village in (Mexico), the slow, thoughtful and absorbing portrait of a working-class family whose father has just returned from being an undocumented worker in New York, Aquí y Allá puts a face ... on the immigration debate. "
|
Cary Darling
|
|
50%
|
The Great Gatsby (2013)
|
"The perfectionist Luhrmann ... captures the exterior excesses of Gatsby's life but overlooks the interior torment that fuels them. Without the latter, Gatsby is less a film and more of a salute to production design."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
83%
|
Kon Tiki (2013)
|
"Kon-Tiki has the look and feel of a big, bracing adventure. It skirts many of the emotional issues in favor of high adventure with hungry sharks and monster storms."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
78%
|
Iron Man 3 (2013)
|
"Iron Man 3 manages to rise above its naked ambitions thanks to ... Robert Downey Jr.'s sly charm ... and Ben Kingsley's too-short and ... hilarious turn as the villainous Mandarin, a clever update on the comic-book character created in the '60s."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
45%
|
Pain & Gain (2013)
|
"But at heart, it's still a Michael Bay movie: loud as a Harley at midnight, empty as a dance club at noon, yet as beautiful to look at as a sunrise in Miami, where it's set."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
99%
|
Mud (2013)
|
"Mud has the feel of a novel ... that's rooted deep in American soil. Yet it was written specifically for the screen by [Jeff] Nichols, who has conjured up a coming-of-age story set in the South that doesn't resort to using caricatures and cliches."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
88%
|
Upstream Color (2013)
|
"Taken as a whole, it's an impressive piece of filmmaking that shows Carruth's talents as director, actor, cinematographer and composer."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
55%
|
Oblivion (2013)
|
"Stitched together from spare bits of other, often better films,[it]stumbles awkwardly in story and plot, shuffling toward the predictable explosions and fireballs of the third act. Yet...Oblivion is so beautiful to look at. "
|
Cary Darling
|
|
31%
|
Language of a Broken Heart (2013)
|
"Take (500) Days of Summer and Garden State, strip away their charms and you end up with Language of a Broken Heart, a handsomely shot but tired pile-up of indie rom-com clichés. "
|
Cary Darling
|
|
65%
|
Disconnect (2013)
|
"Built around several seemingly separate but ultimately interconnected stories, Disconnect will earn comparisons to Crash. Yet unlike Crash ... Disconnect tempers its more over-the-top moments with a real sense of tension and emotion."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
77%
|
42 (2013)
|
"Even the most woefully sports-ignorant probably know all the plot points here by heart. For all its feel-good sports-movie predictability, 42 ... is surprisingly effective and even, at a couple of points, moving. "
|
Cary Darling
|
|
7%
|
Tomorrow You're Gone (2013)
|
"Tomorrow You're Gone looks like it was made after reading the first chapter of Noir for Dummies."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
62%
|
Evil Dead (2013)
|
"[This] is an efficient, exceedingly grisly horror film that goes places that Raimi could only dream of in the '80s ... Yet, without the low-rent cheesiness ... that made the originals so enjoyable, [it] becomes a numbing exercise in overkill."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
9%
|
The Host (2013)
|
"By the time the film finally gets to its conclusion -- an obvious set-up for a sequel -- you may wish you'd been possessed by aliens for the previous couple of hours."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
20%
|
Gobots - Battle of the Rock Lords ()
|
"What the story lacks in depth it makes up for with exciting combat scenes, and with a tendency to make women characters more than stereotypes in constant need of rescuing."
|
Michael H. Price
|
|
65%
|
Spring Breakers (2013)
|
"A mash-up of last year's teensploitation opus Project X, Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers and a Girls Gone Wild video. "
|
Cary Darling
|
|
37%
|
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)
|
"There are a lot of big stars...What's missing are a lot of big laughs. Well, there are about four...so that's quite a bit of downtime between guffaws to contemplate just why so many people who should know better are involved in this. "
|
Cary Darling
|
|
59%
|
Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)
|
"Yet, like so many big-budget movies these days, it's hard to care much about what's going on, especially as the film builds to its special-effects-driven conclusion."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
52%
|
Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)
|
"Unlike Peter Jackson with the overstuffed The Hobbit,[director Bryan]Singer shies away from the epic and settles for entertaining. Sometimes that's more than enough. "
|
Cary Darling
|
|
94%
|
The King's Speech (2010)
|
"A polite, occasionally rousing, and more often than not, boring affair."
|
Christopher Kelly
|
|
84%
|
Side Effects (2013)
|
"If this is indeed Soderbergh's final theatrical film, as the director has said he's going into semi-retirement, it's not such a bad way to go out."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
80%
|
Warm Bodies (2013)
|
"Warm Bodies is a sweetly funny and touching riff on Beauty and the Beast or Romeo and Juliet -- if the Beast feasted on flesh or Romeo came back from the dead."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
30%
|
Broken City (2013)
|
"While Broken City is hardly revolutionary, it's a slyly entertaining cop saga that leans more heavily on acting and dialogue than gunplay and chases."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
60%
|
The Last Stand (2013)
|
"For sure, The Last Stand is no Terminator, but it is a fun, if predictable, action-thriller. "
|
Cary Darling
|
|
32%
|
Gangster Squad (2013)
|
"Gangster Squad may be loosely based on truth -- the takedown of notorious Los Angeles crime lord Mickey Cohen 60 years ago -- but it feels about as real as a mob-themed costume party."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
93%
|
Zero Dark Thirty (2013)
|
"[It's]a harrowing adventure behind the headlines that is at once a riveting procedural and, at the same time, a bracing political statement on the moral ambiguities of our war on terror."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
51%
|
Promised Land (2013)
|
"The movie threatens to become one of those late '60s/early '70s heavy-handed message movies, but it's somewhat salvaged by Damon's innate likability and the chemistry among the cast. "
|
Cary Darling
|
|
88%
|
Django Unchained (2012)
|
"A mashup of the spaghetti Western Django and '70s blaxploitation Westerns, it offers Tarantino another chance to show off his twist on history. While it worked with Inglourious Basterds, it just comes across as contrived and excessive here."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
93%
|
Barbara (2012)
|
"The plotting, the planning and the deepening relationships don't make for kinetic action, but they are the foundation for a smart, engrossing film."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
52%
|
This is 40 (2012)
|
"There are few laugh-out-loud scenes. Yet maybe that's the point. That life isn't about the grand gesture but the little day-to-day details that keep us grounded and human."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
77%
|
Any Day Now (2012)
|
"Any Day Now, about a gay couple in '70s LA trying to adopt a boy with Down syndrome, has movie-of-the-week melodrama written all over it. But it rises above the saccharin thanks to strong performances."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
65%
|
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
|
"His first installment of The Hobbit, Tolkien's relatively slim precursor to the sprawling "Rings" saga, is a technically impressive but bloated adventure that makes you feel every one of its 169 minutes. "
|
Cary Darling
|
|
44%
|
Bad Kids Go to Hell (2012)
|
"The movie isn't scary enough for horror fans, gruesome enough for the slasher crowd or campy enough to be funny, so it falls into something of a cinematic purgatory. "
|
Cary Darling
|
|
75%
|
Killing Them Softly (2012)
|
"The anvils of obviousness rain down so hard and fast in New Zealand-born/Australian-based director Andrew Dominik's meditation on low-rent crime and American decline, that it might as well be a Coyote-Road Runner cartoon "
|
Cary Darling
|
|
88%
|
Life of Pi (2012)
|
"Technology and transcendence may sometimes be at war, but in Life of Pi, Ang Lee's spectacular take on the popular Yann Martel novel, they instead make for graceful dance partners."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
89%
|
A Royal Affair (2012)
|
"History may not always be fun, but, at least in this case, it's fascinating."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
96%
|
Argo (2012)
|
"With Affleck's continued growth as a director, it makes you want to see what he will deliver next."
|
Robert Philpot
|
|
88%
|
The Other Dream Team (2012)
|
"In an era when so much of the focus in sports is on the glam and the glitz, it's nice to be reminded that it can still be about heart and soul, too."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
61%
|
Tai Chi Zero (2012)
|
"The cross-cultural, steampunk, martial arts/comic-book Sino-Anglo mash-up...[is]visually entertaining. But...its considerable charms may prove exhausting before its relatively brief, 95-minute run time is over."
|
Cary Darling
|
|
82%
|
Seven Psychopaths (2012)
|
"With its blend of low-rent gangster cool, high-body-count hipster violence, smart-mouth dialogue, inspired casting and a blissfully retro soundtrack...[this]might have been a groundbreaking film -- in 1992. "
|
Cary Darling
|
|
91%
|
The Revisionaries (2012)
|
"This frontline skirmish in the culture wars [over school textbooks] is the subject of Scott Thurman's engrossing documentary ... It's a symbolic fight of our times, making [the film] a compelling and involving work."
|
Cary Darling
|
74%
79%
62%
52%
26%
4%
