|
87%
|
Cropsey (2010)
|
"The core of the story is standard TV fare (and the techniques aren't exactly original), but the filmmakers tell it with wit, verve, and compassion."
|
Richard Brody
|
|
82%
|
Solitary Man (2010)
|
"The role is so tailor-made for Douglas, who has put in years of screen time on the horizontal, that the rest of the story has to fit in around him, leaving scant room for maneuver."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
91%
|
The Father of My Children (Le pere de mes enfants) (2010)
|
"You could argue that the film fails to revive the harassed intensities of its first hour, but I doubt whether they could have been sustained; and what we get instead, with its stunned and glassy air, yields a slow-breathing drama of its own."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
75%
|
John Rabe (2010)
|
"One of the main virtues of John Rabe is to demonstrate that, however much we know about the worst of all wars, it still has little-known corners that can amaze us."
|
David Denby
|
|
35%
|
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
|
"Prince of Persia is meant purely as light entertainment, but the way it draws on layers of junk is depressing."
|
David Denby
|
|
43%
|
Robin Hood (2010)
|
""And so the legend begins," the new movie tells us at the end. But it's too late."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
69%
|
Babies (2010)
|
"The movie is pleasing -- who doesn't love gurgling babies? -- but as anodyne as a series of episodes from America's Funniest Home Videos."
|
David Denby
|
|
90%
|
The Oath (2010)
|
"Poitras's movie digs deep; it hints at the violently conflicting drives that an intelligent human being may be liable to."
|
David Denby
|
|
81%
|
Anton Chekhov's The Duel (2010)
|
"Little happens onscreen. The characters bicker, picnic, bathe, and borrow money: the usual small change of the Chekhovian deal."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
73%
|
Iron Man 2 (2010)
|
"To find a comic-book hero who doesn't agonize over his supergifts, and would defend his constitutional right to get a kick out of them, is frankly a relief."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
96%
|
Exit Through The Gift Shop (2010)
|
"Exit Through the Gift Shop feels dangerously close to the promotion of a cult -- almost, dare one say it, of a brand."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
76%
|
Kick-Ass (2010)
|
"When filmmakers nudge a child into viewing savagery as slapstick, are we not allowing them to do what we condemn in the pornographer -- that is, to coarsen and inflame?"
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
67%
|
Date Night (2010)
|
"Fey, in particular, finds herself in the situation of a prima ballerina unaccountably dancing with the Rockettes."
|
David Denby
|
|
91%
|
The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos) (2010)
|
"From scene to scene, the movie has an enormously vital swing to it."
|
David Denby
|
|
28%
|
Clash of the Titans (2010)
|
"On July 10th, it will be released on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, and only then, I feel, will it truly come into its own."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
13%
|
The Bounty Hunter (2010)
|
"Even considered as no more than an assembly-line Hollywood product, The Bounty Hunter falls well below factory standards."
|
David Denby
|
|
81%
|
City Island (2010)
|
"[It] won't put [Garcia] back on the main road, but he tries some new things in it, and it's fun to watch him work."
|
David Denby
|
|
61%
|
Leaves of Grass (2010)
|
"The movie is a showcase for digital technology and for Norton's virtuosity, but I wish it weren't such a weightless shambles."
|
David Denby
|
|
51%
|
Chloe (2010)
|
"What seemed like standard practice for Parisians comes across here as unsmiling porno-farce."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
86%
|
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)
|
"Noomi Rapace throws herself into the title role, but something about the conception of her character, and about the far-reaching urgency of the sociopathic shocks behind the killing, smacks of a filmmaker pushing too hard."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
92%
|
Vincere (2010)
|
"Her story is one of endurance and martyrdom, and Bellocchio treats her with grave courtesy, focussing on her battered face as she is subjected to years of beatings in the asylum, and on her drive to escape."
|
David Denby
|
|
74%
|
Greenberg (2010)
|
"This is tricky, ambiguous material, seemingly better fitted to a short literary novel than to a movie, and it could have gone wrong in a hundred ways, yet Baumbach handles it with great assurance."
|
David Denby
|
|
95%
|
Mother (Madeo) (2010)
|
"The fact that Mother keeps its balance is a tribute to the leading actress..."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
53%
|
Green Zone (2010)
|
"Green Zone approaches every human activity as if preparing to defibrillate."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
83%
|
The Ghost Writer (2010)
|
"The best thing Polanski has done since the seventies, when he brought out the incomparable Chinatown and the very fine Tess."
|
David Denby
|
|
68%
|
Shutter Island (2010)
|
"Umberto Eco wrote, "Two clichés make us laugh but a hundred clichés move us, because we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion." Shutter Island is that reunion, and that shrine."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
97%
|
A Prophet (Un prophete) (2010)
|
"Jacques Audiard's film, which lasts two and a half hours, maintains an unflagging urgency, stalling only when the double-dealing grows too dense."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
89%
|
Red Riding: 1983 (2009)
|
|
David Denby
|
|
86%
|
Red Riding Trilogy ()
|
"The Red Riding Trilogy is an exhausting, morbidly fascinating, and finally thrilling experience."
|
David Denby
|
|
98%
|
The Red Shoes (1948)
|
"No wonder Britain, still rationed in color, food, and feeling in the wake of an exhausting war, could not cope with what the movie proposed. Catch it here now, and you will not just be seeing an old film made new; you will have your vision restored."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
58%
|
Edge of Darkness (2010)
|
"I liked the pace and the pulse of the film, but it launches no genuine surprise and, despite being irradiated with scenes of sickness and morbid one-liners, has little afterglow."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
79%
|
Politist, adj. (Police, Adjective) (2009)
|
"Simultaneously a police procedural, an analysis of language and imagery, a philosophical debate about law and justice, and a very, very dry Romanian Martini -- so dry that, at first, one doesn't quite taste much of anything."
|
David Denby
|
|
41%
|
44 Inch Chest (2010)
|
"A very strange, often terrible affair that is nevertheless mesmerizing, in a limited way."
|
David Denby
|
|
79%
|
The Girl on the Train (La Fille du RER) (2010)
|
"At the age of sixty-six, [Téchiné] approaches the exploits of his characters with a gusto, and a willingness to be led astray, that borders on the adolescent."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
45%
|
Creation (2010)
|
"As a journey through Darwin's discoveries, Creation fails, although, given the intricacy and the patience of his working methods, it is hard to imagine how such a film might succeed."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
70%
|
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
|
"Downey and Law are terrific together. For me, watching them act is the movie's principal pleasure."
|
David Denby
|
|
83%
|
Avatar (2009)
|
"James Cameron's Avatar is the most beautiful film I've seen in years."
|
David Denby
|
|
85%
|
A Single Man (2009)
|
"Two characters trying and failing to drown their hopes and regrets, and two strong actors refusing to be tight-laced by a director's exercise in style: here is a mood piece looking for a fight."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
76%
|
The Young Victoria (2009)
|
"Blunt strikes me as the real deal: languid but biting, like Jeanne Moreau, yet able to command a scene while somehow appearing to shift to one side (as Moreau would never do) and observe with a skeptic's smile."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
64%
|
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)
|
"[Gilliam] can follow any train of thought, so he does, and it's no surprise when the trains run out of steam."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
37%
|
Nine (2009)
|
"You long for the ghost of Lorenz Hart to be unleashed on the whole affair, with a hard blue pencil and a head full of rhymes."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
32%
|
The Lovely Bones (2009)
|
"The Lovely Bones has been fashioned as a holiday family movie about murder and grief; it's a thoroughly queasy experience."
|
David Denby
|
|
62%
|
Brothers (2009)
|
"Brothers, the new home-from-the-war film, written by David Benioff and directed by Jim Sheridan, has been made with obvious devotion and sincerity, and I wish I could take it seriously."
|
David Denby
|
|
91%
|
Crazy Heart (2009)
|
"If ever a movie demonstrated how country music emerges from private sorrows, this is it. But something can always be done to make a movie better."
|
David Denby
|
|
70%
|
The Last Station (2010)
|
"It's the most emotionally naked work of Mirren's movie career; she gives poetic form to the madness and the violence of commonplace jealousy."
|
David Denby
|
|
91%
|
Up in the Air (2009)
|
"The tension between the bleak and the blithe, the prime source of this movie's strength, is sustained by Reitman to the end."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
88%
|
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
|
"Herzog, who seems to be drawing on the audience's affection for him as an inspired madman, may not care to tell a story straight anymore."
|
David Denby
|
|
85%
|
Me and Orson Welles (2009)
|
"Quippy, fast, and enjoyably corny, Welles is like a musical comedy without songs."
|
David Denby
|
|
39%
|
2012 (2009)
|
"2012 is so long, and its special effects are at once so outrageous and so thunderously predictable, that by the time I lurched from the theatre I felt that three years had actually passed and that the apocalypse was due any second."
|
Anthony Lane
|
|
81%
|
Broken Embraces (2009)
|
"Seems a touch too long, too airless, and too content with its own contrivances to stir the heart."
|
Anthony Lane
|
78%
38%
100%
85%
45%
40%
