|
44%
|
Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End (2007)
|
|
Michael Hubbard
|
|
85%
|
Le Serpent (The Snake) (2006)
|
"You will be thrilled all the way through Le Serpent, and once the final credits roll, you will be awed by the muscular solidity of its construction."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
68%
|
Disturbia (2007)
|
|
Ben Lee
|
|
78%
|
Surf's Up (2007)
|
|
Lisa Hunt
|
|
63%
|
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
|
|
Shawn Fitzgerald
|
|
94%
|
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
|
"the true subject of The Bourne Ultimatum is not Bourne's identity, but America's, post-9/11."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
88%
|
Waitress (2007)
|
"no amount of quality service can cover up a slice of life that has been so overbaked."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
——
|
Stray Dogs (Sag-haye velgard) (2004)
|
"a richly picaresque journey to childhood's end through the dusty streets of Kabul."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
57%
|
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
|
"It may be just another superhero movie (or several of them, all frantically playing out at the same time), but it delivers everything you could want from the genre several times over."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
75%
|
The Upside of Anger (2005)
|
"Always more than a mere by-numbers domestic drama, The Upside of Anger is desperately, darkly funny, with dialogue to, er, die for, and a perfect cast."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
9%
|
Ultraviolet (2006)
|
"Undemanding, unengaging, and glaringly unoriginal, Ultraviolet gives real comic books a bad name."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
22%
|
Typhoon (2006)
|
"what on paper just sounds like adrenaline-pumped nonsense turns out on screen to be a sensitive and surprisingly sombre study of the personal tragedies afflicting the divided Koreas."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
74%
|
Sunshine (2007)
|
"Sunshine is canny enough to avoid being reducible to the sum of its parts, and finds a perfect balance between claustrophobic thrills and eye-goggling awe."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
68%
|
Snakes on a Plane (2006)
|
"Even if viewed entirely on its own terms, this film, like any snake, tapers at its end."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
66%
|
Shortbus (2006)
|
"There may be a variety of erotic practices on parade here, but the film leaves viewers with few real insights into either human nature or sexuality."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
——
|
Shanghai Dreams (Qinghong) (2005)
|
"Revolution is shown as a force both for liberation, and for tragic catastrophe"
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
78%
|
The Page Turner (La Tourneuse de pages) (2006)
|
"here the business of revenge is as measured and well-tempered as a piano score, and it will turn out that Melanie's Bach is far worse than any bite."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
74%
|
Avenue Montaigne (Fauteuils d'orchestre) (Orchestra Seats) (2006)
|
"a frothy confection that, much like its characters, often seems at odds with its own ambitions."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
56%
|
Shutter (They Are Around Us) (2004)
|
"a tale of guilt, revenge and twisted love, set in a world that, for all its sanitised modernity, still remains haunted by fears that are primal and timeless."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
81%
|
Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
|
"Marrying punishing action set-pieces to an unnerving disaster movie scenario, it grips the viewer with vice-like intensity, while never forgetting to revel in its own amiable absurdity."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
56%
|
The Notorious Bettie Page (2006)
|
"a subtle, understated study of a complex individual."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
75%
|
Look Both Ways (2006)
|
"an impressive, intelligent and moving tragicomedy of manners - any way you look at it."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
42%
|
Lives of the Saints (2007)
|
"dares, from the unlikely vantage of Britain's criminal underworld, to look heavenwards - and, in its darkly pessimistic way, to see nothing there."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
91%
|
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
|
"a family road movie brimming with spot-on performances, hilarious situations, and plenty of good feeling - and it treats its comic characters with a rare affection."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
86%
|
Little Fish (2006)
|
"Little Fish will leave you full of admiration for its undeniable craft, but perhaps also not entirely sure what its point is."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
——
|
King (2005)
|
"...like a new biblical myth for our times, prickly and uncomfortable enough to linger in the mind."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
83%
|
Keane (2005)
|
"Only Kerrigan's previous Clean, Shaven surpasses Keane as a sympathetic study of a man unravelled."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
58%
|
Ju-on: The Grudge 2 (Ju-on 2) (2003)
|
"its device of a film-within-a-film, far from being some clever-clever postmodern contrivance, adds another layer of disorientation to Shimizu's carefully constructed hall of mirrors."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
69%
|
Hollywoodland (2006)
|
"every bit as ambitious, if never as flawed, as the characters it portrays."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
25%
|
Half Light (2005)
|
"if you strip away all the references to other films, and all the play on genres, what remains is a film without its own soul, as insubstantial, and as difficult to credit, as a spectre half-glimpsed through the Scottish mist."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
73%
|
Flags of Our Fathers (2006)
|
"carefully dismantling one heroic archetype only to replace it with another, more nuanced one"
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
43%
|
Duelist (Hyeongsa) (2005)
|
"as much a quirkily combative love story, or a kaleidoscopic reverie on the shifting seasons, as a piece of period police procedural."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
93%
|
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Moartea domnului Lazarescu) (2006)
|
"blending social commentary with spiritual allegory, it traces one man's nocturnal descent into the Circle of Hell that is Romania's healthcare service"
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
88%
|
The Cave of the Yellow Dog (Die Hohle des gelben Hundes) (2005)
|
"a mournful elegy for the passing of an entire culture."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
——
|
Big Nothing (2007)
|
"Tense, cruel and hilariously absurd all at once, it may, as its title suggests, not add up to so very much, but it is a deliciously entertaining journey into the night which, at under 90 minutes, never overstays its welcome."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
100%
|
Atomised (Elementarteilchen) (Elementary Particles) (2006)
|
"a hybrid of the morbid and the mordant, the decadent and the darkly delicious, which will not necessarily make you happy, but will certainly leave you satisfied."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
40%
|
Open Water 2 (Adrift) (2007)
|
"an allegorical commentary (from a non-American director) on the United States, all lost at sea and at odds with itself now that it is under the steerage of an incompetent and deceitful helmsman."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
100%
|
11:14 (2003)
|
"anatomises a moment in time when smalltown idiocy suffers the most surreally awful repercussions of cause and effect."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
37%
|
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)
|
"Kids will probably have a blast - but pity their parents having to explain afterwards what exactly those American federal agents were doing torturing a gurneyed prisoner in a secret Siberian base."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
81%
|
Fong juk (Exiled) (2006)
|
"a moody crime drama that doubles as a revolutionary political allegory - ringing the changes on China's evolving reunification even as it longs for a future that will return to the noblest values of the past."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
90%
|
Zodiac (2007)
|
"Fincher manages the pace brilliantly, making the viewer feel as frustrated, paranoid and, most importantly, driven, as the film's characters."
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
84%
|
Black Gold (2006)
|
"It is attractively shot, thoughtfully edited, provocatively argued, and might just have you turning its issues over in your mind late into the night - or is that just the effect of so much coffee?"
|
Anton Bitel
|
|
98%
|
Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams (Esma's Secret - Grbavica) (2007)
|
|
Danuta Kean
|
|
62%
|
Blood Diamond (2006)
|
|
Michael Hubbard
|
|
44%
|
Angel-A (2005)
|
|
Danuta Kean
|
|
66%
|
Miss Potter (2007)
|
|
Lisa Hunt
|
|
65%
|
Apocalypto (2006)
|
|
Lisa Hunt
|
|
95%
|
Casino Royale (2006)
|
|
Shawn Fitzgerald
|
|
33%
|
Breaking and Entering (2007)
|
|
Michael Hubbard
|
|
91%
|
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
|
|
Shawn Fitzgerald
|
79%
30%
100%
85%
45%
40%
