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| 1. |
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03/20/10 |
Outstanding |
 "...what remains after unpacking the film's dusty, raisined imagery is an unshakeable dreaminess, an uncertainty that the movie's non-events haven't simply been a hallucination..." |
| 2. |
|
07/05/10 |
Poor |
 "...director Daniel Alfredson can't quite wrench the tension he needs from the saggy script and often confusedly mislays his efforts." |
| 3. |
|
07/19/10 |
Very Good |
 "...cinema-as-journalism... has both the perilous, buzz-worthy backstory of a 'Burma VJ' and the patient, landscape-aware mise-en-scène of a Maysles film." |
| 4. |
|
07/26/10 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...treads its familiar territory most ably when dramatizing the paradoxical desire to break violently free from affectionate, if complacent, roots.... plot saunters from one typical twentysomething malaise to the next..." |
| 5. |
|
08/01/10 |
Moderate |
 "For all its ostensible delving into the immutable psychology of hot-blooded vendettas, 'The Sicilian Girl' fails to inspire, or express, cinematic passion." |
| 6. |
|
08/05/10 |
Weak |
 "...illustrates that to applaud the disabled for mediocrity is not only to condescend to them, but to abusively corner their identities within the social implications of their medical conditions alone." |
| 7. |
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08/06/10 |
Moderate |
 "A uniquely unfamiliar interpretation of crime-world hierarchy by a fatally dampening vendetta plot that feels like a defiantly rusty gasp for old-world filial values..." |
| 8. |
|
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..." |
| 9. |
|
08/23/10 |
Weak |
 "...its vapid flashiness reeks of commercialism, and director Dana Brown seems to think himself deserving of devotee points simply for showing up with a camera." |
| 10. |
|
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." |
| 11. |
|
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." |
| 12. |
|
09/08/10 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...an adequate if off-the-mark and overlong introduction... likely to alienate rabid devotees who've already heard all the early acetates via invaluable blog-shrines." |
| 13. |
|
09/12/10 |
Very Good |
 "...what defines this most indelibly is its quietness.... learns to manage its musicality by perceiving the MOF hopefuls as an awkward yet profoundly sympathetic community..." |
| 14. |
|
09/12/10 |
Weak |
 "...forces the issue in such broad, often clumsy strokes, that the message grows stale with each passing frame.... the film never gets past its own reflection." |
| 15. |
|
09/12/10 |
Moderate |
 "...director Josh Fox doesn't seem to realize that the issue he's clumsily investigating is of far more significance than his shitty little film." |
| 16. |
|
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..." |
| 17. |
|
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." |
| 18. |
|
09/27/10 |
Very Good |
 "...an explosive exercise in bare-knuckled myth-biography.... The clichés are our brightly jangling keys to this singular magisteria of fists." |
| 19. |
|
10/04/10 |
Very Good |
 "...comes close to pinning down an only-cursorily defined subgenre: the formative-years dramatization that views the biographical subject's future success as tangential." |
| 20. |
|
10/04/10 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...mildly political investigation of an undeniably polemical tragedy.... another socio-political passion play where the crown of thorns is as sadistic as it is meticulous and the sins are as nebulous as they are scattershot." |
