|
|
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge
(1995)
|
Sam Adams
|
Though American movies have largely discarded the family melodrama as passé, DDLJ reminds us of the genre's potency, its ability to stage social and generational conflicts.
Posted Nov 18, 2021
|
|
|
Everything for a Reason
(2000)
|
Sam Adams
|
A perfect mix of romantic warmth and worldly-wise cynicism, it's the work of a budding director who can deliver on both commercial and artistic levels. Shown with Sean McBride's That Special Monkey.
Posted Dec 30, 2020
|
|
|
Irma La Douce
(1963)
|
Sam Adams
|
Though Irma's 143-minute length is more than a little too much of a very good thing, it's hard to dislike a movie that keeps giving you more good stuff.
Posted Jan 26, 2019
|
|
|
Triumph of the Will
(1935)
|
Sam Adams
|
Leni Riefenstahl's infamous masterwork sits with The Birth of a Nation in the pantheon's "outcast unclean" section.
Posted Feb 17, 2016
|
|
|
X2
(2003)
|
Sam Adams
|
X2 still feels like a prologue. No matter how much goes on, you feel like nothing has happened.
Posted Jul 14, 2015
|
|
|
Gigli
(2003)
|
Sam Adams
|
Gigli won't be the worst movie to come out of Hollywood all year, but it's sure to be one of the most forgettable.
Posted Jun 22, 2015
|
|
|
Bettie Page Reveals All
(2011)
|
Sean Burns
|
A shoddily made, amateur-hour barrage of chintzy music, stock footage and flashy video effects that were presumably state of the art during the Reagan administration.
Posted May 12, 2015
|
|
|
The Great Beauty
(2013)
|
Sean Burns
|
A richly symbolic meditation on aging, mortality and precious time wasted.
Posted May 12, 2015
|
|
|
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
(2013)
|
Sean Burns
|
What a difference a director makes.
Posted May 12, 2015
|
|
|
Dallas Buyers Club
(2013)
|
Sean Burns
|
It follows the template of every Bill Murray slobs-vs.-snobs comedy from the '80s, except this time people are dying.
Posted May 12, 2015
|
|
|
Blue Is the Warmest Color
(2013)
|
Sean Burns
|
Exarchopoulos' performance is a miracle, with every raw emotion rippling across her yearning, endlessly expressive face.
Posted May 12, 2015
|
|
|
Last Vegas
(2013)
|
Sean Burns
|
It's a cast of relaxed old pros with easy chemistry, all of whom seem to be having a great deal of fun. The feeling is almost mutual.
Posted May 12, 2015
|
|
|
Chicago
(2002)
|
Sam Adams
|
Chicago may not rank with the classics, but it's the best traditional movie musical in many a moon.
Posted Feb 25, 2015
|
|
B
|
Obvious Child
(2014)
|
Sam Adams
|
Slate, who had a brief and unremarkable tenure on Saturday Night Live, proves a winning companion; it's a hang-out movie, and she's fun to hang out with.
Posted Jan 05, 2015
|
|
A-
|
Citizenfour
(2014)
|
Sam Adams
|
The scariest thing you'll see this Halloween is Edward Snowden swearing in disbelief at the end of Laura Poitras' gripping, disturbing documentary.
Posted Jan 05, 2015
|
|
B-
|
The Guest
(2014)
|
Sam Adams
|
Shot in lurid colors and drizzled with a squelchy synthesizer score, Adam Wingard's bloody thriller is so enamored of John Carpenter it might as well be passing him mash notes in social studies.
Posted Jan 05, 2015
|
|
|
Bad Santa
(2003)
|
Sam Adams
|
If Bad Santa does well at the box office, Zwigoff will get credit for being a savvy player. That Bad Santa is as vile and stupid as Ghost World was insightful and touching is something Hollywood has no interest in measuring.
Posted Dec 14, 2014
|
|
|
Howl's Moving Castle
(2004)
|
Sam Adams
|
Miyazaki isn't interested in the jolts of surrealism so much as imbuing his audience with the idea that reality can change at any moment, and change back just as quickly.
Posted Dec 08, 2014
|
|
|
Spirited Away
(2001)
|
Sam Adams
|
Chihiro's escapades don't always proceed one from the other, but let yourself go and you'll be swept away as well.
Posted Dec 07, 2014
|
|
|
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
(2002)
|
Sam Adams
|
Columbus' pacing is still murderously slow, his ideas as pedestrian as the worst TV.
Posted Dec 06, 2014
|
|
|
The Joy of Life
(2005)
|
Sam Adams
|
The Joy of Life combines intriguing but incompatible parts.
Posted Nov 07, 2014
|
|
B+
|
Land Ho!
(2014)
|
Sam Adams
|
It's a warm soak rather than a squirt in the eye.
Posted Aug 14, 2014
|
|
|
The Ring
(2002)
|
Sam Adams
|
The Ring is easily the most terrifying movie to come out of Hollywood in years.
Posted Jul 25, 2014
|
|
A-
|
A Most Wanted Man
(2014)
|
Sam Adams
|
Had Hoffman never played a role other than Günther Bachmann, he would still have been one of his generation's greatest actors.
Posted Jul 24, 2014
|
|
B+
|
Life Itself
(2014)
|
Sam Adams
|
James' film is less like a eulogy than a wake, a commemoration of his living spirit rather than a meditation on his loss.
Posted Jul 04, 2014
|
|
B
|
Museum Hours
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
It's lovely but lulling, and for a movie in which little happens, oddly predictable.
Posted Jul 04, 2013
|
|
B+
|
World War Z
(2013)
|
Sam Adams
|
The movie fares best in its quiet moments, between Pitt and wife Mirelle Enos, or in a climax set in the antiseptic maze of a Cardiff science lab.
Posted Jul 04, 2013
|
|
A-
|
Upstream Color
(2013)
|
Sam Adams
|
It's no surprise that Upstream Color is a head-scratcher, but its untrammeled emotionalism comes as a shock to the senses.
Posted May 23, 2013
|
|
|
At Any Price
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
Bahrani shares his characters' ambitions, and also their lack of perspective.
Posted May 23, 2013
|
|
A-
|
Something in the Air
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
Works with a light touch, but leaves a surprisingly lasting mark.
Posted May 23, 2013
|
|
D
|
The Hangover Part III
(2013)
|
Sam Adams
|
Dumps the fill-in-the-blanks structure for straightforward comic action. Unfortunately, the impetus has less to do with a push for novelty than simple franchise fatigue.
Posted May 23, 2013
|
|
B+
|
Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
Ricky Jay is the master of a discipline he created: trickster, archivist, showman and raconteur rolled into one.
Posted May 23, 2013
|
|
B+
|
The Place Beyond the Pines
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
It's easy to roll your eyes at the film's overreach, but every movie should be so flawed
Posted Apr 12, 2013
|
|
C+
|
Trance
(2013)
|
Sam Adams
|
A cracking thriller built around art auctioneer James McAvoy' convenient amnesia, Danny Boyle's Trance jumps the rails in the closing stretch.
Posted Apr 12, 2013
|
|
B+
|
To the Wonder
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
Malick doesn't reach for the sublime so much as lunge, arms outstretched, face turned to the sky. He stumbles, but still, it's a beautiful fall.
Posted Apr 12, 2013
|
|
A-
|
Beyond the Hills
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
Mungiu works in long takes and at a measured pace, burying the story's true-crime origins for half the film's two-and-a-half-hour length.
Posted Mar 30, 2013
|
|
B+
|
Ginger & Rosa
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
Potter's take on the '60s occasionally slides into Big Chill cliché, but with her actors, she's on virgin ground.
Posted Mar 30, 2013
|
|
B+
|
Stoker
(2013)
|
Sam Adams
|
Works mostly as a mood piece, but what a mood it is.
Posted Mar 21, 2013
|
|
A-
|
No
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
A canny comedy and cutting critique, Pablo Larraín's No looks back at the 1980 vote to extend or end Chilean autocrat Augusto Pinochet's rule through an adman's eyes.
Posted Mar 21, 2013
|
|
A-
|
Barbara
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
Petzold handles personal, formal and political concerns in such harmony that it's difficult, and not especially desirable, to separate one from the next.
Posted Mar 21, 2013
|
|
D+
|
On the Road
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
Clutching Jack Kerouac's peripatetic roman à clef like a besotted sophomore, Walter Salles trails Kerouac and Neal Cassady's novelistic doppelgängers like an eager puppy.
Posted Mar 21, 2013
|
|
B-
|
Happy People: A Year in the Taiga
(2010)
|
Sam Adams
|
Unmistakably part of the director's canon, and just as unmistakably a minor addition to it.
Posted Feb 23, 2013
|
|
A-
|
56 Up
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
In 49 Up, many of the series' subjects seemed to be just settling into their bliss; now they're committed to it, and the foreclosed possibilities that come alongside.
Posted Feb 23, 2013
|
|
A-
|
Wake in Fright
(1971)
|
Sam Adams
|
Many reissues claim the mantle of lost masterpiece, but Wake in Fright is the genuine article.
Posted Nov 15, 2012
|
|
B+
|
Lincoln
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
The most eloquent episode of Schoolhouse Rock ever made.
Posted Nov 15, 2012
|
|
B
|
Wreck-It Ralph
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
Rings a few welcome changes on the Disney-princess mythos, but it still feels like a game you've played before.
Posted Nov 01, 2012
|
|
C+
|
Flight
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
Zemeckis focuses on surfaces but never discovers what lies beneath them.
Posted Nov 01, 2012
|
|
B+
|
Cloud Atlas
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
A movie of big ideas, and only some of them are terrible.
Posted Oct 25, 2012
|
|
B+
|
Argo
(2012)
|
Sam Adams
|
Divorce it from awards-season hype, and Argo holds up fine: There's no need to pretend it's something it's not, when what it is works just fine.
Posted Oct 12, 2012
|
|
B
|
The Oranges
(2011)
|
Sam Adams
|
Follows through on its yuckster premise with uncommon insight and dedication, without a shirk or a smirk.
Posted Oct 04, 2012
|
