|
| 1. |
|
11/03/11 |
Very Good |
 "Hong has made more incisive movies ('Turning Gate,' 'Night and Day,' 'Tale of Cinema'), but this one may be his friendliest and funniest." |
| 2. |
|
11/03/11 |
Very Good |
 "Director Joseph Cedar's depiction of petty politicking boasts a sly, knowing wit... throughout, his sense of familial resentment could scarcely be more acute." |
| 3. |
|
11/03/11 |
Very Good |
 "...if this were a William Castle production, viewers would be handed cyanide pills with their tickets -- but there's no denying the powerful integrity of Tarr's all-encompassing desolation." |
| 4. |
|
11/03/11 |
Outstanding |
 "...captures like no other film the ways that parents unwittingly manipulate and even emotionally terrorize their kids, convinced that they're acting in the child's best interest.... Miss this masterpiece at your peril." |
| 5. |
|
11/03/11 |
Very Good |
 "Nearly every shot is a magnificently choreographed single-take tour de force that will have Michael Mann and Paul Greengrass taking notes." |
| 6. |
|
11/03/11 |
Excellent |
 "...immensely satisfying -- not least in its commitment to a child protagonist whose near-feral intensity and unthinking ingratitude make him the polar opposite of cute." |
| 7. |
|
11/03/11 |
Very Good |
 "Even if you think this couldn't possibly be your thing, give it a chance. At the very least, it's one of a precious few recent 3-D films in which the extra dimension feels expansive rather than distracting." |
| 8. |
|
05/20/11 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...cares about nothing but its ludicrous plot.... the only real charge this movie offers is the gradual and increasingly fucked-up reveal of what's actually going on." |
| 9. |
|
05/18/11 |
Moderate |
 "...there's a disconnect here between concept and execution -- 'Melancholia' feels like therapy poorly disguised as drama." |
| 10. |
|
05/16/11 |
Outstanding |
 "...another uncommonly intelligent provocation from the guys at Borderline Films, which also gave us 'Afterschool'... one of the best films at Sundance; it's the best I've seen at Cannes as well." |
| 11. |
|
05/16/11 |
Good |
 "...so baldly metaphorical at its climax that it began to feel pretentious to me... There's an intriguing idea here, but it needed to be better disguised." |
| 12. |
|
11/04/10 |
Moderate |
 "...the sheer absurdity of this over-the-top spectacle makes for fine black comedy, but well before the finale, [Takeshi] Kitano's empty parade of functionally anonymous butchery becomes monotonous, numbing, even dull. He's reached an aesthetic dead end." |
| 13. |
|
11/04/10 |
Weak |
 "...means to use this forgotten chapter of [Filipino] history to make pointed statements about our current adventures in the Middle East. Trouble is, it does so entirely via earnest platitudes and schematic irony." |
| 14. |
|
11/04/10 |
Very Good |
 "...the entire second half of the movie is one long, kickass battle sequence, at once kinetically thrilling in the Kurosawa/Kobayashi tradition and as goofily absurdist..." |
| 15. |
|
11/04/10 |
Fair |
 "...handsome but painfully dull... scrupulously accurate, immaculately designed, ably acted, highly intelligent. All it's missing, really, is even a microscopic hint of the wit and fire that, say, Jacques Rivette brought to his magnificent 'The Duchess of Langeais.' " |
| 16. |
|
11/04/10 |
Fair |
 "Director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun has a keen eye for wide-screen composition, but he leans ridiculously hard on the weathered visage of his impassive lead actor..." |
| 17. |
|
11/04/10 |
Good |
 "...threadbare... but watching Dolan enthusiastically explore the medium's lush, seductive, expressionistic possibilities feels like gulping your fill at a watering hole in the middle of contemporary art cinema's New Austerity." |
| 18. |
|
11/04/10 |
Fair |
 "...throws a bunch of tonally disparate elements together and dares you to assemble them into something coherent -- an approach easily mistaken for profundity. Yun Jung-hee is a marvel as Mija..." |
| 19. |
|
05/14/09 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...awfully familiar... a contemporary gloss on the classic British kitchen sink/angry young (wo)man drama, albeit with a welcome and occasionally piercing emphasis on adolescent female sexuality." |
