|
21%
|
The Hangover Part III (2013)
|
"Three times the enervation...but Jeong has achieved the performance artist's dream of using nudity as a weapon and the immigrants' dream of using pidgin English to put the well-spoken in their place. "
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
87%
|
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
|
"The best tear-pumpers are the simplest: the passing mention of a starship called the USS Bradbury, or Kirk helplessly extending his arm to a crewman falling past him to his death. "
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
50%
|
The Great Gatsby (2013)
|
"He's introduced with a cloudburst of fireworks over his King Ludwig/Thomas Kincaid castle while "Rhapsody in Blue" crescendos; add in the zizzing of shooting stars a la Tinkerbell, and it's obvious that Lurhmann thinks of Gatsby as Walt Disney. "
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
78%
|
Iron Man 3 (2013)
|
"As always in director/co-writer Shane Black-and this goes back to his cantaloupe-testicled actioners of the 1980 like The Last Boy Scout: Why waste energy mocking a convention that it might be better to do without in the first place? "
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
42%
|
To The Wonder (2013)
|
"If you have the ability to ignore Affleck, To the Wonder is a visual stunner, with a surprising transcendental enthusiasm for everything."
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
82%
|
The Place Beyond The Pines (2013)
|
""It's up to the actors to figure this out, and they try...but The Place Beyond the Pines displays a strange paternalistic streak.""
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
90%
|
Beyond The Hills (2013)
|
"When the ill and unstable Alina returns to the monastery, just so she can be with her beloved, Beyond the Hills becomes a species of those exorcism movies that audiences gorge on, only done with a realism and ambiguity usually missing from the genre. "
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
81%
|
From Up On Poppy Hill (2013)
|
"As in so many Studio Ghibli films, the tension is between renovation and cherishing of tradition.The movie is staged during a beautifully chosen moment of transition-the months right before the Tokyo Olympiad. "
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
52%
|
This is 40 (2012)
|
"This Is 40 (40 minutes too long, that is) is getting at something, but it doesn't get there by 40 miles-not more than 40 people outside L.A. will understand it. This is not a refinement of the frat-pack comedy as much as a tombstone for a subgenre."
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
93%
|
Zero Dark Thirty (2013)
|
"Indulges Cheneyian fantasies complete with the bad-movie scene of the prisoner's defiance: "You're just a garbage man in the corporation," shouts the Arab who needs a lesson in manners from the Ph.D. (in torture?) who is racking him."
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
47%
|
Bullet to the Head (2013)
|
"The film could be summed by its product placement for Bulleit Bourbon, treated like a rare luxury when it's actually $20 a bottle at Trader Joe's; director Walter Hill serves this inexpensive, everyday material with a serious flourish."
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
30%
|
Emperor (2013)
|
"If you can't take this movie for history, what may it be taken as? As romance it's not believable. Much of the history is censored, including the rumored "Operation Blacklist" involving the pressure from above to clear the names of the royal family."
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
93%
|
Barbara (2012)
|
"An intelligent, mature love triangle...It also functions as a tense, rarefied thriller about escape from a police state, as well the kind of medical procedural drama audiences gorge upon. "
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
64%
|
Cosmopolis (2012)
|
"Cosmopolis is something like the anti-matter version of Atlas Shrugged."
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
——
|
Around the Bay ()
|
"This remarkably talented newcomer make a compelling story out of well-chosen images and unsaid, unheard or overheard words."
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
96%
|
Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea (2004)
|
"Plagues and Pleasures is the best kind of short vacation; you get to lounge with some interesting people, plus you get to learn a little something about the local environment and what can be done to keep it going."
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
100%
|
North by Northwest (1959)
|
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
|
83%
|
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005)
|
"In a movie in which the color is muted as close to black-and-white as possible, this bride is radiantly blue."
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
30%
|
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
|
""The last great Universal Frankenstein movie, despite the overstuffed title.""
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
73%
|
Stand and Deliver (1988)
|
""The greatest John G. Avildsen movie John G. Avidlsen never made. Olmos is far more understated than the average tough-teacher is in this kind of film.""
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
——
|
Dung fong tuk ying (Eastern Condors) (1987)
|
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
75%
|
The Mosquito Coast (1986)
|
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
——
|
Eclipse (1999)
|
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
83%
|
Keane (2005)
|
"There's more than a few spots where the improvisation [in Keane] spins out of control..."
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
49%
|
Rory O'Shea Was Here (Inside I'm Dancing) (2005)
|
"Tries and fails to juggle humor, sentimentality and political correctness with its punk war cry."
|
Jeffrey M. Anderson
|
|
53%
|
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2004)
|
"directror Larry Blamire has understood it all perfectly: the tautological dialogue Stiff-as-a-plank thespians in spacesuits, waterlogged messages of interstellar brotherhood."
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
84%
|
Gloomy Sunday (Ein Lied von Liebe und Tod) (2003)
|
"Erika Marozsan's frequent bathtub scenes suggests how a movie called "Gloomy Sunday" hopes to appeal to today's sugarfed film audience."
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
13%
|
The Haunted Mansion (2003)
|
"A dispirited, so to speak, adaptation of the best ride at Disneyland. As such, it's one more treasured piece of your childhood mangled on screen."
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
91%
|
Riff-Raff (1993)
|
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
88%
|
The Man Who Knew Too Much (2003)
|
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
77%
|
Bad Santa (2003)
|
"A Christmas movie that would make old Bukowski's bloodshot eyes shine."
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
63%
|
Love Actually (2003)
|
"There's good acting in Love Actually, but director Richard Curtis threatens to take the cool out of London."
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
96%
|
Monsters, Inc. 3D (2012)
|
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
|
74%
|
Under the Sun (Under solen) (2000)
|
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
|
82%
|
Charlotte Sometimes (2003)
|
"The film produces enough sexual tension to power a small island and fuel hours of cafe discussion."
|
|
|
78%
|
Maryam (2002)
|
"It's good; indeed, it's important."
|
Richard von Busack
|
|
86%
|
El Hijo de la novia (Son of the Bride) (2002)
|
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
|
43%
|
Phish: Bittersweet Motel (2000)
|
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
|
95%
|
Monsoon Wedding (2002)
|
"A feast for the eyes and the ears, and sometimes... the brain."
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
|
54%
|
Spriggan (2001)
|
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
|
64%
|
O (2001)
|
"There are episodes of Boston Public that are far more exploitative than O."
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
|
43%
|
The Monkey's Mask (2001)
|
"Porter's turn as a lesbian sleuth is too big for a picture that's small...Porter reveals depths about her character that [the film] is too lead-footed to further explore."
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
|
55%
|
An American Rhapsody (2001)
|
"[It] will resonate with anybody in the audience who's an immigrant or a child of immigrants, even though Gardos loses her grip on the material in the third act."
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
|
52%
|
American Pie 2 (2001)
|
"[It] has an edge over its predecessor: the uninteresting characters in the cast are shunted aside, and the funnier ones are given more emphasis."
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
|
29%
|
Jackpot (2001)
|
"[Garrett Morris has] never been this good or given a character this wonderful to play--not even Chico Escuela counts."
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
|
52%
|
Rush Hour 2 (2001)
|
"The Rush Hour movies are far from the prime of Chan's Police Story and Armour of God days."
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
|
55%
|
Jin-Roh - The Wolf Brigade (1998)
|
"The screenplay is a cut above cheesecake-and-carnage schlockiness...Too bad the dialogue often sounds as stilted as it did in Ghost in the Shell."
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
|
73%
|
The Score (2001)
|
"As a heist movie, The Score is adequate, but as a historic meeting of the minds of Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando, it's an underwritten disappointment."
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
|
82%
|
The Vertical Ray of the Sun (At the Height of Summer) (Mua he chieu thang dung) (2000)
|
"Perhaps [its] greatest strength - besides [Mark Lee] Ping-Bin's gorgeous cinematography - is that it's as untidy and unpredictable as life itself."
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
|
81%
|
Jump Tomorrow (Life: A User's Manual) (2001)
|
"[It] may be a fluffy leap into screwball romance territory, but it's anything but banal."
|
Jimmy Aquino
|
72%
21%
63%
85%
46%
40%
