| 1. |
|
09/18/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
"...a straightforward chronicle of a pair of the sport's dinosaurs... But the two central pitchers, both low-key family men off the mound, become compelling underdogs..." |
| 2. |
|
09/16/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
"...links the birth of free-form broadcasting with the zeitgeist of 1960s counterculture while remaining clear-eyed about the limitations, and mysteries, of both." |
| 3. |
|
09/10/12 |
Moderate |
"...encouragingly ambitious, but 'Francine' ultimately suffers from keeping its anti-heroine's stunted emotional capacities at arm's length." |
| 4. |
|
09/04/12 |
Weak |
"Using the well-worn template of a tony, 11th-hour, damaged-family reunion, the film depends on the sporadic charms and truths expressed amid the formulaic narrative..." |
| 5. |
|
08/13/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
"A serviceable primer on the digital-celluloid divide in commercial cinema... in danger of being made obsolete by the next version of the RED camera..." |
| 6. |
|
08/09/12 |
Moderate |
"Nearly all of it registers as desperate mayhem, not comedy.... the drollest bits hearken back to Jay Roach's 'Austin Powers' days..." |
| 7. |
|
07/25/12 |
Weak |
"...trumpeted as a Danish 'Hangover,' but more closely resembles 'Two and a Half Men' with handheld camerawork, anti-erotic nudity, and unexpurgated dick jokes." |
| 8. |
|
07/23/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
"...hews closely to the mythic demands of its source, the 800-year-old play 'The Orphan of Zhao,' which has undergone Western adaptations by everyone..." |
| 9. |
|
07/16/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
"Auteuil hasn't sufficiently reimagined or given new weight to the material... curiously anecdotal, lacking the dramatic dynamism that could give Pagnol's tale new life." |
| 10. |
|
06/26/12 |
Very Good |
"...a sunny Venetian noir that never quite bursts into full-blown mayhem.... As always, André Téchiné's style is fluid and crucially subjective... characteristically curious..." |
| 11. |
|
06/25/12 |
Moderate |
"...plods to an entirely foreseeable classical finish that, given its fresh cast and intuitive moments, squanders promise in favor of a sub-Shakespearean dead end." |
| 12. |
|
06/18/12 |
Poor |
"...its four narrative threads afflicted with feeble timing... Women in Allen's films are now mere bystanders when they aren't basket-case man-eaters or Mediterranean whores..." |
| 13. |
|
06/12/12 |
Weak |
"...an odd hybrid of adult child in-search-of-mother quest and lurid border-town pulp.... swiftly deflates with a slew of lazy and frequently offensive clichés..." |
| 14. |
|
06/09/12 |
Very Good |
"...the voices of this revolution shout with the energy of self-discovery and the promise of persistence: 'The Egyptians are here!' " |
| 15. |
|
05/30/12 |
Weak |
"All of it registers as forced 'poetry' that doesn't signify in a fresh way.... as bland as its transitional shots of water fowl and snow-covered beaches..." |
| 16. |
|
05/29/12 |
Very Good |
"A righteously outraged study of how health-related fundraising is circumscribed by the profit motive... 'This is how capitalism works,' one advocate sighs..." |
| 17. |
|
05/10/12 |
Moderate |
"Even the one-liners grow lame, with Alice Cooper gender jokes that seem transcribed from a '72 Bob Hope cue card..." |
| 18. |
|
04/25/12 |
Weak |
"...never achieves pathos, only shticky (Jack) Black farce.... from small-town satire to cheap laugh-at-the-rubes cartoonishness... surprisingly shapeless..." |
| 19. |
|
04/24/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
"...overcomes its juggling of multiple nonfiction narratives through Jennifer Baichwal's capture of fleeting, significant moments rather than via her often unwieldy ambition." |
| 20. |
|
03/29/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
"...a haunted family history... the comic fillips the director calls his 'joy buzzers' partly recede to expose a starker -- and more remote -- case of cinema therapy." |