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| 1. |
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05/16/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "Bizarre, off-putting, and finally demanding of rubberneck respect... Far less mumblecore than manic shtick, sustained against all likelihood by the acting, which is three-fourths consistently witty..." |
| 2. |
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04/25/12 |
Moderate |
 "Plenty of twisty scripting makes the queasy damage seem conceptually neat and tidy, as if that's a good idea, but what we need here is a little more meat." |
| 3. |
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04/11/12 |
Weak |
 "A life-crisis farce custom-built exclusively for self-absorbed menopausal women, Julie Gavras's film wants nothing more than to have coffee and kvetch..." |
| 4. |
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03/29/12 |
Moderate |
 "...both spectrally beautiful and frozen in self-regard.... Rattigan's drama is a small room to maneuver in, and in the end Hester's despair is hers alone." |
| 5. |
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03/28/12 |
Moderate |
 "...queasily splices up our ideas of parenthood and family roles into pure nightmare salad.... Benedek Fliegauf is way too besotted with his barren beach locations, where a lot of silent brooding occurs." |
| 6. |
|
03/21/12 |
Weak |
 "Espionage pulp in a can, the movie can hardly avoid sensory-deprivation effects, compelling us to speculate on an it's-all-fake twist early on because the story has virtually nowhere else to go." |
| 7. |
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03/07/12 |
Poor |
 "Pernicious tripe suitable only for masochists and the intellectually disabled.... If you don't bridle at the pandering, nothing bothers you." |
| 8. |
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02/15/12 |
Poor |
 "...had enough of even true stories about white people rescuing black communities?... if there's an unironic audience for this kind of romantic jock-cup fondling, I'm not interested in knowing it." |
| 9. |
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02/08/12 |
Moderate |
 "...ramps up the discomfitures and also the tiresome squabbling that seems obligatory whenever a movie sequesters its characters in a closed space.... We've been here before." |
| 10. |
|
02/01/12 |
Very Good |
 "The best film ever made about competitive surfing in Papua New Guinea... just when you're thinking about tropical paradise, the realities of poverty and underdevelopment move in, and it becomes apparent that the sport is viewed by everyone as just a way out." |
| 11. |
|
11/30/11 |
Good |
 "If anything, writer/director Na Hong-Jin's film is too much of a good thing, exceeding credibility too often.... But that's the Korean way, and Na nails down the bottom-feeder realism while slouching toward video-game hyperbole." |
| 12. |
|
11/16/11 |
Good |
 "...in its muster of pungent period flavor, the film follows the resonant 'Cool Hand Luke'/'Cuckoo's Nest' formula pretty closely until the prison uprising (which this microgenre often avoids) blows up stirringly..." |
| 13. |
|
11/09/11 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "A movie of 5,000 lit cigs, William Monahan's directorial debut has verve and charisma, but, in the end, the tension of a late-night pub shrug." |
| 14. |
|
11/08/11 |
Outstanding |
 "A sublime meta-fictional trifle that evokes Abbas Kiarostami's '90s mirror-films of children... one of the most moving of recent films about being a kid and the evanescence of childhood." |
| 15. |
|
11/02/11 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "Women of a certain age will kvell, but the point might be better made for the rest of us by rewatching the autumnal Rampling in Ozon's 'Under the Sand.' " |
| 16. |
|
11/02/11 |
Poor |
 "...unfunny and thick with clichés... the migraine of a story arc needed sharp comedy reflexes or, at least, a live-wire/slummy star turn and got neither." |
| 17. |
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10/26/11 |
Very Good |
 "Director Jennifer Fox's film suggests a deep wariness with Eastern mysticism, of the needy Westerners who lap it up, and with figures like Rinpoche who exploit that jones. Which makes it, perhaps unintentionally, pointed and daring." |
| 18. |
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10/26/11 |
Weak |
 "The bizarre aggregate of growling star power on hand does not help substantiate this half-hearted redundancy, which often looks and sounds like something Charles Bronson paid bills with in 1979." |
| 19. |
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09/28/11 |
Excellent |
 "Exuding the DNA of compatriot movies like Aleksey Balabanov's 'Cargo 200' and Ilya Khrjanovsky's '4,' 'My Joy' is a maddening vision and one of the year's must-see provocations." |
| 20. |
|
09/22/11 |
Moderate |
 "...what's missing is the '70s sense of realistic ugliness, ambivalence, and moral relativism." |
