|
| 1. |
|
03/29/12 |
Outstanding |
 "...unabashedly crass and violent, establishing a rare equilibrium between faithfully rendered splatter and jokes about skull-fucking." |
| 2. |
|
04/12/12 |
Outstanding |
 "More than a class full of convincing child actors and a genuinely affecting performance by Fellag... as believably wrenching, and finally cathartic, as the grieving process itself." |
| 3. |
|
04/26/12 |
Good |
 "...hits its marks when it's exploding the character's larger-than-life status, aided in large part by Speedman's career-best turn. But the film feels overloaded." |
| 4. |
|
05/04/12 |
Very Good |
 "...obsessed with ritual and detail... twists out its six narrative threads with measured compassion and even-handedness..." |
| 5. |
|
05/23/12 |
Moderate |
 "...flashes of honest-to-goodness delight that distinguish the original are replaced by a gaudy cynicism, never more so than in the film's barely sly condescension..." |
| 6. |
|
06/05/12 |
Weak |
 "...plays out like bogusly high-minded fan fiction.... seems to delusionally maintain that its modest thrills are being enlivened by deeper concerns." |
| 7. |
|
06/28/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "Even when they feel like they're on autopilot, many of Soderbergh's films are entertaining enough, well made enough, and plain good enough." |
| 8. |
|
07/12/12 |
Poor |
 "...pros like Malkvoich and Goodman don't so much elevate this off-off-off-Broadway material as much as they get mired in it, wading through the slop of the script..." |
| 9. |
|
07/22/12 |
Very Good |
 "...fits rather neatly into the cinema of Canadian coldness... it works -- quite successfully, in places -- as a warming tonic against this emotional nippiness." |
| 10. |
|
08/02/12 |
Weak |
 "...spoiled with stupid indexical nods to its predecessor, compounding its bankruptcy of imagination with active, self-conscious references to that very insolvency." |
| 11. |
|
08/02/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...occasionally affecting... The three principals give strong performances, especially given the complex emotional material and criss-crossing sexual allegiances." |
| 12. |
|
08/13/12 |
Very Good |
 "...feels like a juiced-up wish-fulfillment fantasy.... nothing if not a colossally silly indulgence... all the wink-nudge genre nostalgia seems entirely validated." |
| 13. |
|
08/16/12 |
Weak |
 "China's homespun response to the American popcorn picture.... the bloated blockbuster trappings bog the film down... the high fantasy elements seem too silly." |
| 14. |
|
09/17/12 |
Very Good |
 "...generalized pleasantness, the fuzzy sense that Baumbach and Gerwig are making their modern French New Wave movie for the fun of it, sustains 'Frances Ha'..." |
| 15. |
|
09/17/12 |
Outstanding |
 "...playful... its surrealism -- like its romance, its comedy, its historicism, its everything -- is retained with a light touch." |
| 16. |
|
09/17/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...even when the so-called Gatekeepers offer up damning testimony against their organization, there's no real threat that they'll ever be held accountable for it." |
| 17. |
|
09/18/12 |
Very Good |
 "Most compelling is the way filmmaker Christian Petzold adeptly conducts his tides of Cold War paranoia.... the film creates a thick feeling of Soviet unrest..." |
| 18. |
|
10/03/12 |
Weak |
 "...an obvious dud.... the original film grappled with some seriously icky themes (sex slavery, specifically). 'Taken 2' never feels excitingly unsettling..." |
| 19. |
|
10/10/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "The film's textures, jokes, and performances are uniformly wonderful, but this is a case of the whole feeling oddly deficient when balanced against the sum of its parts." |
| 20. |
|
10/23/12 |
Outstanding |
 "...a remarkable high water mark for the series: at once solemn and deeply funny, sexy and sad, self-conscious without all the rib-bruising elbowing." |
