|
| 1. |
|
01/19/12 |
Good |
 "...at once the most essayistic of 21st-century Godards and the least interested in conventional communication, cinematic as well as linguistic." |
| 2. |
|
01/04/12 |
Outstanding |
 "A grand narrative yarn spun from a number of smaller ones... demonstrates the truism that the more we know, the less we understand. Or is it vice versa?" |
| 3. |
|
12/28/11 |
Excellent |
 "...an urgently shot courtroom drama designed to put you in the jury box.... writer/director Asghar Farhadi resists the notion of narrative closure." |
| 4. |
|
12/22/11 |
Moderate |
 "It's a bit late in the day to take seriously the guilty secret of Sweden's Nazi sympathizers, but even amateur torture theater is a perennial movie kick." |
| 5. |
|
12/22/11 |
Fair |
 "...what amounts to a generic Disney animal story seems to preclude any but the most hackneyed emotion. What catastrophe cannot be Spielbergized?" |
| 6. |
|
12/21/11 |
Moderate |
"...persists in pursuing three separate endings and, by the time they wrap, the movie is less a walk on the wild side than an evening stroll through a well-lit topiary garden." |
| 7. |
|
12/21/11 |
Fair |
"...served up with a self-aggrandizing, distracting surplus of Norman Rockwell backlighting, aerial landscape shots designed to out-swoop David Lean's." |
| 8. |
|
12/08/11 |
Good |
 "...there's no pot of small-town virtue at the end of this narrative rainbow. For all the revelations regarding the roots of her Mavis-ness, the girl's bitchiness remains intact." |
| 9. |
|
12/08/11 |
Good |
 "Director Tomas Alfredson is strong on chilly atmospherics. Smiley's London is scarcely less shabby or conspiratorial than early-'70s Budapest..." |
| 10. |
|
12/07/11 |
Good |
"...might be brushed off as curdled rom-com were it not for two things.... first is the depth of Theron's performance.... second is the utter absence of the corny..." |
| 11. |
|
12/07/11 |
Good |
"...brooding, fluidly crafted.... Gary Oldman's Smiley is less agonized nerd than Asperger brainiac..." |
| 12. |
|
12/01/11 |
Moderate |
 "Does the Lord really live in this cold, ethereal New York City? And is anyone even interested?" |
| 13. |
|
11/30/11 |
Moderate |
"The tone is impressionistic, cool, and programmatically anti-erotic.... leaves us less gasping in physical horror than grasping at metaphysical straws." |
| 14. |
|
11/24/11 |
Excellent |
 "...at once a lucid movie of ideas, a compelling narrative and a splendidly acted love story..." |
| 15. |
|
11/23/11 |
Good |
 "Director Bertrand Bonello's posh maison close is a realm of beautifully dressed (and undressed) whores, alternately languid or high-spirited, if sadly victimized." |
| 16. |
|
11/23/11 |
Excellent |
"...viscerally cerebral... at once a lucid movie of ideas, a compelling narrative, and a splendidly acted love story..." |
| 17. |
|
11/17/11 |
Fair |
 "...what has blunted this gifted writer-director's edge?" |
| 18. |
|
11/16/11 |
Fair |
"...insistently sincere and positively sudsy.... it left me cold. The pathos is as unearned as the protagonist's privilege." |
| 19. |
|
11/10/11 |
Excellent |
 "Like most Eastwood productions, 'J. Edgar' is frugal and underlit; like his better films, it has an undercurrent of nuttiness." |
| 20. |
|
11/09/11 |
Excellent |
"Although hardly flawless, Eastwood's biopic is his richest, most ambitious movie since the 'Letters From Iwo Jima-Flags of Our Fathers' duo, if not 'Unforgiven.' " |
