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| 1. |
|
09/19/10 |
Very Good |
 "...follows a performance tour of 100 famed cantors through Poland's darkest corridors... pays tribute to the talent destroyed (approximately 1,300 cantors died in death camps) and excavates a portrait of Jewish music during the 1910s and '20s..." |
| 2. |
|
03/16/13 |
Very Good |
 "...enchanting... gradually simplifies into an elaborate seesaw between general, journalistic scoopery and unabashedly personal confrontation..." |
| 3. |
|
05/28/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...with the cozy charm of an advertisement for Starbucks French Roast.... the storybook aesthetic dampens what could have been a marvelous noir-in-pastels." |
| 4. |
|
09/19/10 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "Despite the blunt activism of the secondary title (which likens the disability to a scolding parent)... it is a relatively benign probe into what is steadily becoming our species' most alarming epidemic." |
| 5. |
|
05/12/11 |
Very Good |
 "With sickeningly smooth digital cinematography and a terminally rusted conscience, the film pummels an assembly line of taboos beyond the point of recognition -- indeed, nearly beyond perversion." |
| 6. |
|
07/22/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...becomes a kind of update on the old debate: Does the telephone effectively bridge the distance between two people, or merely underscore their estrangement?" |
| 7. |
|
09/16/12 |
Moderate |
 "...lack of plausible conflict mars the movie's highly commendable depiction of San Francisco as a the new porn capital... it stutters with delicacy." |
| 8. |
|
12/12/11 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...patiently unspools... After the film tethers its narrative to the class action suit against Big Five Tobacco, it can't help but totter into anti-climax." |
| 9. |
|
09/06/10 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...casually entertaining... appears to deem the act of existing as a determined woman in an illustrious era Ruth Gruber's most noteworthy accomplishment." |
| 10. |
|
08/18/10 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...hypnotically braids strands of Incan mythology, Catholic voodoo, and campesino outrage to style a sympathetic outsider's portrait of South American mysticism.... But the directors overplay their lyricism..." |
| 11. |
|
09/25/11 |
Moderate |
 "...a curious blend of teacher-appreciation mandate and recruitment video -- though it's not always clear at whom the narration's gravely spoken factoids are directed." |
| 12. |
|
04/05/13 |
Very Good |
 "...the documentary's interspersing of gratingly 'domestic' content with heavier biographical material urges us to look beyond the face value of the stories..." |
| 13. |
|
04/04/11 |
Very Good |
 "To have been surviving amid the squalor and crime of Alphabet City was a fortunate fate too remarkable to go un-catalogued." |
| 14. |
|
03/24/12 |
Moderate |
 "Can a film be faulted for being too sympathetic toward its characters, for limning a milieu with extraneous humanism?" |
| 15. |
|
09/04/11 |
Weak |
 "...feels like a half-hearted deviation from the otherwise aggressive fidelity to Hollywood plug-and-play-isms. Broadness this indolent hardly even stirs one to antipathy." |
| 16. |
|
05/09/11 |
Moderate |
 "...the film offers precious little in the way of biographical piquancy to compensate for its subject's myriad of uninteresting projects." |
| 17. |
|
02/09/11 |
Very Good |
 "...a sophisticated appreciation of Winters as an unsung multi-talent.... like a friendly postcard to Winters's fans bearing ample proof of his intact faculties." |
| 18. |
|
08/30/10 |
Poor |
 "...a film that meditates upon post-9/11 psychology without an urgent sense of purpose or even an empathetic voice to guide us through the event's gnarl of grief isn't simply mediocre, it's dishonorable." |
| 19. |
|
12/10/12 |
Outstanding |
 "...immersive and artfully repulsive.... the rare animated feature whose subtext is as rich as its sensuality, even if the latter is so often fixated on the putrid." |
| 20. |
|
11/22/11 |
Moderate |
 "Part of the issue here may be the nature of the talking heads themselves, most of whom are culled from Trungpa's inner circle and lack the objectivity needed..." |
