|
| 21. |
|
12/20/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...gives more attention to polymorphous bedroom and backseat experimentation than to exploration of the landscape." |
| 22. |
|
12/19/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
"...does build to a certain rueful poignancy. The film ends with a last, guilty meeting, Paradise's fortunes beginning to rise as Moriarty's fall..." |
| 23. |
|
12/19/12 |
Good |
 "...unflinching.... A movie in which incident is as spare as it is in 'Amour' can certainly be great; a movie in which ideas and feelings are so sparse cannot." |
| 24. |
|
12/19/12 |
Moderate |
 "...essentially a conversion story... Van Sant knows how to display the common touch, but the movie is a hard sell whose ending is never in doubt." |
| 25. |
|
12/13/12 |
Good |
 "It's all here, from the design contests to the farcical series of ribbon-cuttings, including a photo op cornerstone-laying, to the stupid Jeff Koons balloon that recurs..." |
| 26. |
|
12/06/12 |
Poor |
 "...by now, it is almost touchingly naive when the film kicks off with a gruesome double murder soundtracked by yuletide standard 'Up on the Housetop'..." |
| 27. |
|
12/06/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "It is hard to recall another film in which more than half of the interviews are interrupted by choking up, a fact that does not escape notice..." |
| 28. |
|
12/05/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
"Greatest-generation stoicism meets gushing contemporary sentiment... promotes an undeniably decent and worthy cause through sometimes invasive emotional prying." |
| 29. |
|
12/05/12 |
Poor |
"...plodding... Fans of nearly nude women being fed into wood chippers will not go home disappointed... makes even a child being handed a bloody candy cane boring." |
| 30. |
|
11/29/12 |
Poor |
 "...certainly exhibits Argento's narrative non-logic... [but] Dunstan and Melton's imaginations are too torpid to honor their inspiration." |
| 31. |
|
11/29/12 |
Very Good |
 "The script, by Aubrey Lam, bears a marked resemblance to David Cronenberg's 'A History of Violence' and a score of old westerns beside..." |
| 32. |
|
11/28/12 |
Poor |
"A murkily directed bore... doesn't have much to recommend it beyond a first-reel bloodbath rivaling 'Blade' and 'Death Ship.' " |
| 33. |
|
11/28/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "In spite of Bulger's errors of tone, the movie stands as an engaging tussle with the question of what is permissible with the excuse of art." |
| 34. |
|
11/28/12 |
Very Good |
"...an adept genre exercise with rare primal depths.... shorn of nearly 20 minutes for its U.S. release, but what remains is more than sufficient to do the job." |
| 35. |
|
11/22/12 |
Poor |
 "Perhaps Bradley feels obliged to blitz the audience to keep us from focusing on the manifold improbabilities here." |
| 36. |
|
11/21/12 |
Poor |
"Single-mindedly action-oriented to the point where Milius's original seems ruminative... What high school quarterback would be wearing a Dinosaur Jr. shirt in 2012?" |
| 37. |
|
11/21/12 |
Good |
 "...nimble, funny... when these men talk about their hobby, they broach a whole host of questions about masculinity, national identity, and heritage..." |
| 38. |
|
11/15/12 |
Good |
 "The most immediately striking element is the self-conscious theatricality of Joe Wright's staging.... Knightley's emotions come through with a gasping immediacy..." |
| 39. |
|
11/14/12 |
Good |
"Richard Hankin's film finally makes the indigenous variety of deadlock particular to New York politicos seem as quaintly comforting as a buttered bialy." |
| 40. |
|
11/14/12 |
Good |
"...confoundingly good performances gradually win the movie from Wright's puerile conceit, giving us an Anna Karenina if not for the ages, than at least for an evening." |
