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| 1. |
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07/31/09 |
Fair |
 "...an elegant but unsatisfying drama of cross-cultural lesbian love triangles.... Cutting between past and present, Hamburg and Taipei, romance and regret, the movie generates an aura of thoughtful storytelling without actually possessing any notable thoughts." |
| 2. |
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07/24/09 |
Outstanding |
 "Its techniques and sensibility feel fresh, organic, evoked from the scene at hand. Remarkable stuff for a debut film, all the more impressive in that Mr. Fuller wrote the screenplay at 18 and shot the film at 21." |
| 3. |
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07/24/09 |
Very Good |
 "...this scrupulously designed essay film offers visual pleasure and a cozy sort of thematic melancholy. Ms. Schmitt is an undeniably skilled composer of images..." |
| 4. |
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07/17/09 |
Weak |
 "Unstructured and free-associative, cutting among interviews and images at breakneck speed to no discernible narrative or thematic purpose, the documentary is mercurial to the point of incoherence." |
| 5. |
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06/19/09 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...vital, if rhetorically clumsy... impressive in scope, gathering material from Alaska to Senegal, Malta to Tokyo, and righteous in its condemnation of industry, government and consumer alike." |
| 6. |
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06/17/09 |
Good |
 "...unfolds a supremely bizarre love triangle over the course of four hours.... this unhinged epic contemplates sex and sin vis-à-vis Japanese Catholicism and a cult of upskirt photography." |
| 7. |
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06/12/09 |
Good |
 "...absorbing documentary flirts with metaphysics... but mostly it keeps an amused eye on the effort of these driven brainiacs to set aloft an extremely sophisticated and fragile recording device." |
| 8. |
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06/12/09 |
Moderate |
 "...director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is in thrall to her subject, and dewy-eyed accounts of pop stars, even those with as compelling a biography as Mr. N'Dour, tend to wear out their welcome." |
| 9. |
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06/05/09 |
Weak |
 "...a banal life-lessons drama.... There are any number of reasons a group of filmmakers would choose so idyllic a locale to mount a production. Making an interesting movie, however, does not appear to have been one of them." |
| 10. |
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06/05/09 |
Fair |
 "The documentary finds some narrative drive through Mr. Ouma's quest to return home to Uganda. When he finally does, the catharsis is palpable, but not nearly enough to counter the rest of this featherweight saga." |
| 11. |
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06/05/09 |
Very Good |
 "...modest, touching... Motivated entirely by a love for art of a particularly severe and sophisticated type, the Vogels were never interested in the financial rewards that collecting could bring." |
| 12. |
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05/29/09 |
Good |
 "...a charming little movie, nothing more, but he brings a tonic freshness to his simple, even simple-minded tale of a plucky orphan, Thuy (Pham Thi Han), playing cupid in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon." |
| 13. |
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05/22/09 |
Poor |
 "Few things are as tiresome as listening to people rant about their conspiracy theories.... There's a movie to be made about the psychology of such men, their personal lives and private obsessions. 'New World Order' merely gawks at them." |
| 14. |
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05/15/09 |
Good |
 "...the most impressive special effect here is Mr. Matsumoto's hilariously restrained performance, a tour de force of comedic concision in a movie bloated by increasingly surreal developments." |
| 15. |
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05/08/09 |
Good |
 "Part cautionary tale for would-be filmmakers, part case study in spiritual craziness... illustrates how smoothly delusions of show business grandeur can dovetail with religious zealotry. Movies work in mysterious ways." |
| 16. |
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05/08/09 |
Excellent |
 "...with a script that snaps, characters that pop... 'Next Day Air' nears neo-blaxploitation perfection. Good things come in strange packages." |
| 17. |
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05/01/09 |
Moderate |
 "Culled from a four-month trip to Antarctica by the filmmaker Anne Aghion.... The film's hesitation, lack of rhetorical inflation and commitment to humble observation generate a tough poetry. 'Ice People' sticks in the mind." |
| 18. |
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05/01/09 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...all good clean fun; the movie is well intentioned to a blandly feminist fault.... self-esteem trips are less compelling to hear about than to experience firsthand." |
| 19. |
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04/29/09 |
Outstanding |
 "David Lynch is the key influence here, and Mr. Reznick proves himself a keen disciple of the master.... heralds a splendid new filmmaker with one eye on genre mechanics, one eye on avant-garde conceits and a third eye for transcendental weirdness." |
| 20. |
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04/25/09 |
Poor |
 "...shamelessly derivative... the 'Mutant Chronicles' experience can be simulated by jumbling together memories of 'Aliens,' 'Blade 2,' 'Resident Evil' and the Uwe Boll oeuvre, then turning your mental brightness setting to Indistinguishable Gloom." |
