|
|
Come and See
(1985)
|
Michael Sragow
|
Klimov’s dramatic vitality, his control of shifting tones, and his mastery of surprise are what galvanize Come and See. Terrifying as this movie is, we always want to know what happens next.
Posted Mar 14, 2023
|
|
|
No Bears
(2022)
|
Jamsheed Akrami
|
A testament to the power of film to challenge a culture of blind obedience, and also to Panahi’s efforts, as a dissident filmmaker, to build a cinema of defiance against the propagandist film apparatus of the state.
Posted Dec 14, 2022
|
|
|
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
(1975)
|
Manny Farber and Patricia Patterson
|
[Akerman, Seyrig, and Mangolte] are seemingly in perfect accord as to what they want to say about a tradition-bound treadmill whose back-forth, up-down existence is the phenomenological stuff of this movie, what other movies leave out.
Posted Dec 07, 2022
|
|
|
Ash Is Purest White
(2018)
|
Amy Taubin
|
The film is a restless journey through the political and social mainstreaming of China in the first two decades of the 21st century.
Posted Oct 06, 2022
|
|
|
Up the Down Staircase
(1967)
|
Mark Harris
|
Up the Down Staircase remains a fascinating snapshot of an evolving film culture and of an evolving city, as revealing for what it can’t show as for what it can.
Posted May 04, 2022
|
|
|
The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs
(2020)
|
Devika Girish
|
The parallels to the Indian state's excesses are evident, but Singh doesn't belabor the point...
Posted Dec 09, 2021
|
|
|
The Green Knight
(2021)
|
Beatrice Loayza
|
The Green Knight's attempts to blend a young man's personal reckonings and psychic confrontations with Lowery's go-for-broke stylings feel less virtuously enigmatic than flat and disjointed in their opaque graspings at profundity.
Posted Dec 06, 2021
|
|
|
The Amusement Park
(1973)
|
Maitland McDonagh
|
The Amusement Park is sharp social commentary rooted in brutal reality, a clear cousin to Romero's Living Dead movies despite the fact that it was a work-for-hire project.
Posted Jun 16, 2021
|
|
|
Mother
(2019)
|
Eric Hynes
|
As with many resonant works of narrative art, its extreme particularity has universal echoes.
Posted Jan 21, 2021
|
|
|
Dick Johnson Is Dead
(2020)
|
Eric Hynes
|
It's in the film's non-dioramic elements, the observational and candid moments, that life is most urgently asserted. Yes, time is short.
Posted Sep 15, 2020
|
|
|
The Mole Agent
(2020)
|
Eric Hynes
|
The deadening/enlivening line that Alberdi walks here is something like that between surface twee and bone-deep pathos...but it's elevated through the buy-in of its subjects.
Posted Sep 15, 2020
|
|
|
Some Kind of Heaven
(2020)
|
Eric Hynes
|
I hazard to think that the film's mutual curiosity gives Some Kind of Heaven its vivifying spirit, that transforms what might have been familiarly charming and smirkily knowing into something more troubling, elusive, and enduring.
Posted Sep 15, 2020
|
|
|
The Girl
(2012)
|
Violet Lucca
|
Despite warranting "a trigger warning" for anyone who has been the victim of sexual harassment, The Girl too often feels too small.
Posted Aug 04, 2020
|
|
|
The Other Lamb
(2019)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
What you're left with is not so much a story as a concept presented handsomely but very frustratingly.
Posted Jul 07, 2020
|
|
|
Metropolitan
(1990)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
Metropolitan is a melancholic lament for not-quite-doomed youth-a self-styled new "lost generation" that isn't really lost, but might just never have a purpose.
Posted Jun 15, 2020
|
|
|
A White, White Day
(2019)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
A stark, controlled psychological thriller that unpicks its hero's troubled soul with forensic coolness.
Posted May 29, 2020
|
|
|
Night Warning
(1981)
|
Justin Stewart
|
Asher... directs with a meat-and-potatoes efficiency and visual sense, letting the casting, risk-taking performances, and the twisted, quirky screenplay carry the day.
Posted May 21, 2020
|
|
A+
|
Crip Camp
(2020)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
Crip Camp is a buoyant, illuminating, and very to-the-point historical documentary.
Posted Mar 27, 2020
|
|
|
The Hunt
(2020)
|
Michael Sragow
|
After a shocking 'gotcha' prologue, we're simply dumped with human targets on a killing field, as the hidden left-wing cadre picks them off with bullets, arrows, and grenades.
Posted Mar 18, 2020
|
|
|
The Cloud in Her Room
(2020)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
It's as if Zheng were shuttling from idea to idea, image to image, and leaving the viewer to latch on as best they can to this meandering train of thought.
Posted Mar 18, 2020
|
|
5/10
|
The Way Back
(2020)
|
Michael Sragow
|
The Way Back wants to be Manchester by the Sea on the hardwood, but it's more like Hoosiers with a hangover.
Posted Mar 09, 2020
|
|
A+
|
Days
(2020)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
Days was a reminder of the profundity and the emotional eloquence of stillness and near silence: this is a film where you can sit at length marveling at the curve in a country road at night.
Posted Mar 06, 2020
|
|
C+
|
The Call of the Wild
(2020)
|
Michael Sragow
|
This film clocks in at a mere 100 minutes, but, except for a race between a dog sled and an avalanche, it lacks crispness as well as elan.
Posted Mar 06, 2020
|
|
A+
|
Workforce
(2019)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
It's a taut, concise, bracingly uneasy film, all the more involving because it starts off promising a realistic drama of the working life, almost in a Loachian vein, then becomes something else entirely, something closer to an absurdist political parable.
Posted Mar 06, 2020
|
|
|
Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
(2018)
|
Molly Haskell
|
If Phoenix doesn't generate much humor, he also acts as an astringent against the potent sentimentality of Callahan's Saul-to-Paul transformation and pilgrimage of apology, underlined by a heart-tugging Danny Elfman score.
Posted Feb 27, 2020
|
|
|
The Favourite
(2018)
|
Molly Haskell
|
It's a dark view, but dark views, like sunny views, have to come from somewhere. Where is Lanthimos's dark sun? I don't know, but I'll definitely keep watching.
Posted Feb 27, 2020
|
|
|
The Cordillera of Dreams
(2019)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
[The Cordillera of Dreams] contains blunt talk and unvarnished footage of the brutal facts of modern Chilean history [that] makes for a compelling, revelatory essay.
Posted Feb 19, 2020
|
|
|
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
(2020)
|
Devika Girish
|
The most powerful moment in [Never Rarely Sometimes Always] is not one of confrontation but of self-realization.
Posted Feb 19, 2020
|
|
|
I Was at Home, But
(2019)
|
Jordan Cronk
|
There's no denying the boldness of [I Was at Home, But...]-fractured, elliptical, and highly mannered, the film hardly betrays Schanelec's ideology.
Posted Feb 19, 2020
|
|
|
Vitalina Varela
(2019)
|
Jordan Cronk
|
[Vitalina Varela] invests a tragic episode in its heroine's life with an intimacy and grace that forges new dimensions in Costa's cinema.
Posted Feb 19, 2020
|
|
|
Downhill
(2020)
|
Michael Sragow
|
For all its faults, Downhill is a gutsy little 'serious farce.' We've got to admire the chutzpah of a Valentine Day's opening that boldly proclaims, 'Love means having to say you're sorry.'
Posted Feb 14, 2020
|
|
6.5/10
|
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
(2020)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
But it exults in a vividly hued manic energy that qualifies it for membership of that select category: comic-book movies that actually look and feel like comic books.
Posted Feb 07, 2020
|
|
6/10
|
Incitement
(2020)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
Incitement is an extremely interesting film because of the story it tells, and is altogether watchable-but it's rather lacking in lightness, humor, or grace.
Posted Feb 03, 2020
|
|
2/10
|
The Rhythm Section
(2020)
|
Michael Sragow
|
This movie (The Rhythm Section) is devoid of thrills and personality and short on incident and local color.
Posted Feb 03, 2020
|
|
|
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
(2019)
|
Clinton Krute
|
By blending the very serious with the childlike, Heller's film locates real feeling in what could easily have been a run-of-the-mill tearjerker.
Posted Jan 31, 2020
|
|
|
The Report
(2019)
|
Sukhdev Sandhu
|
For a political thriller, The Report is more sad than revelatory, more melancholy than cathartic. Jones's work was not entirely in vain. His revelations of a cover-up, though heavily doctored, eventually were made public.
Posted Jan 31, 2020
|
|
|
Little Joe
(2019)
|
Yonca Talu
|
Hausner aims to convince us that the open-endedness at stake is a productive one, but it's difficult to shake the feeling of having been deceived and manipulated by Little Joe when the closing credits roll.
Posted Jan 31, 2020
|
|
|
The Assistant
(2019)
|
Devika Girish
|
Although affecting and even revelatory at points, The Assistant is ultimately a drama of resignation. The choice it dramatizes is a familiar one: we can all relate to the impulse to pick one's livelihood and career over challenging the rich and powerful.
Posted Jan 31, 2020
|
|
|
The Traitor
(2019)
|
Molly Haskell
|
Dense and brooding, but, like Scorsese's film, vigorously told, The Traitor also unfolds under the looming shadow of mortality, of time running out for aging kingpins, and of debts coming due.
Posted Jan 31, 2020
|
|
A
|
I Wish I Knew
(2010)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
Ending a minor but fascinating film in Jia's provocative oeuvre, the images of these sleepers are a prelude to the other troubled dreams of China (A Touch of Sin, Mountains May Depart, Ash Is the Purest White) that he has made since.
Posted Jan 24, 2020
|
|
C+
|
The Gentlemen
(2020)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
[Grant's] top value and way better than the film deserves: that is class, and given how he almost redeems the film, you can't begrudge Ritchie the luxury.
Posted Jan 24, 2020
|
|
D-
|
The Turning
(2020)
|
Michael Sragow
|
Sigismondi stumbles her way toward a bombastic, pseudo-psychological ending that undercuts her own terrible ideas and leaves audiences bemoaning their wasted time and money.
Posted Jan 24, 2020
|
|
C-
|
Color Out of Space
(2019)
|
Michael Sragow
|
Lovecraft provides Stanley with a sturdy frame: When you make a film called Color Out of Space, you don't have to color between the lines. The director throws everything into it, including a kitchen sink, and then fills the sink with blood.
Posted Jan 24, 2020
|
|
A-
|
Weathering With You
(2019)
|
Michael Sragow
|
Makoto Shinkai's sixth feature-length cartoon, Weathering with You, oozes visual lyricism and primal yearning.
Posted Jan 24, 2020
|
|
8/10
|
Earth (Erde)
(2019)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
By the time Earth has come to this sobering conclusion, it leaves you wanting to see Greta Thunberg, or some other emissary of the planet's future, rise up over those slag piles and utter an imperious "Enough!" If only, if only...
Posted Jan 13, 2020
|
|
5/10
|
1917
(2019)
|
Nick Pinkerton
|
Technical brio, however, cannot redeem all that is callow and crass in Mendes's movie: the dialogue is pure placeholder stuffing, the approach a clumsy collision of the Assassin's Creed video games and Elem Klimov's Come and See...
Posted Jan 13, 2020
|
|
6/10
|
Bombshell
(2019)
|
Sheila O'Malley
|
Deep at points but paper-thin at others, the film skips over questions of complicity, and pulls some of its punches, especially politically. But it's still an engaging look at life behind the scenes of one of the weirdest workplaces in existence...
Posted Jan 13, 2020
|
|
3/10
|
Like a Boss
(2020)
|
Michael Sragow
|
The movie (Like A Boss) isn't about sisterhood being powerful... It's about sisterhood being packageable.
Posted Jan 13, 2020
|
|
9/10
|
Invisible Life
(2019)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
Invisible Life is constructed on heightened emotional intensity in an everyday domestic milieu, with discreet touches of narrative contrivance playing their part--
Posted Jan 06, 2020
|
|
8/10
|
Little Women
(2019)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
Gerwig takes matters in a new direction, at once more playful and more sober, and very self-conscious.
Posted Jan 06, 2020
|
