|
| 1. |
|
05/23/12 |
Good |
 "...stands as moving evidence that Bud Clayman's trust in the value of the filmmaking process ultimately outweighed the extreme difficulty he says he has making even the smallest decisions." |
| 2. |
|
05/23/12 |
Weak |
 "...a veritable festival of fury... The mood is generally melodramatic and ends as mushy, aided by the soft-focus cinematography that drenches it all in melancholic nostalgia." |
| 3. |
|
05/23/12 |
Fair |
 "A narcissistic spectacle of male grief... the trio's mourning feels more like immature self-absorption." |
| 4. |
|
05/23/12 |
Outstanding |
 "...emphasizes both the ephemerality of pre-teen feelings and the ways in which our inability to go back and relive a cherished moment fossilizes it in memory." |
| 5. |
|
05/23/12 |
Outstanding |
 "...mines emotional chaos without tipping over into mawkishness... as this elegiac movie reminds us, even a shattered life matters, leaving behind an indelible, intricate imprint." |
| 6. |
|
05/23/12 |
Excellent |
 "What makes '5 Broken Cameras' stand out is its insistence on nuance and its refusal to get caught up in the self-defeating war of words over who is the bigger victim." |
| 7. |
|
05/23/12 |
Good |
 "...a cheeky backstage farce of the poverty-film genre.... The novel and wickedly funny topic is mined for only a portion of its potential, but a little ironic astringency is certainly more unsettling than by-the-book slum drama." |
| 8. |
|
05/23/12 |
Moderate |
 "As for the time-travel culture shock, you get a few hippies with speaking roles and no significant engagement with the zeitgeist of the era.... one can pluck out a few pleasing distractions..." |
| 9. |
|
05/16/12 |
Poor |
 "...can't sustain interest in the endless unraveling of Molly's psyche, which, as handled by Eduardo Sánchez, has all the interest of watching an inexplicably untreated wound fester." |
| 10. |
|
05/16/12 |
Good |
 "With taciturn camerawork and a scalpel-like precision dissecting class that recalls Claude Chabrol, Zvyagintsev's film observes Elena making the decision of which family to be loyal to and how to assert her newfound power." |
| 11. |
|
05/16/12 |
Good |
 "Instead of cautiously toeing the realist line, 26-year-old Alex Ross Perry takes a caricaturist's approach. This is a movie that's consistently unafraid to get confrontational and plain weird..." |
| 12. |
|
05/16/12 |
Weak |
 "...passes by potentially interesting digressions without more than a wayward glance... It's the last thing you want a movie about appearances to be: superficial." |
| 13. |
|
05/16/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "Peter Berg, creator of 'Friday Night Lights' and director of the estimable 'The Rundown,' is in street-fighting mode here... he does not hesitate to pull any dirty trick in order to get the job done." |
| 14. |
|
05/16/12 |
Moderate |
 "...it's state-of-now documentary filmmaking... But there are so many complicated political, religious, and cultural issues swirling around Yoni's story, and 'Follow Me' keeps them on the sidelines. It is pure hagiography." |
| 15. |
|
05/16/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...the film is a bit disjointed. Its elements never quite gel. They do, however, serve up an engrossing portrait of a remarkable man who remained humble even as he became something of a revolutionary." |
| 16. |
|
05/16/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...insightful... [however,] it tells us nothing about the success-failure ratio of indie entrepreneurs, the broader vid-game market, or a youth culture that has been profoundly changed by gaming." |
| 17. |
|
05/16/12 |
Good |
 "The protracted section with the sour, loud middle-age blind man and his family is uneven, yet viewers can grow only so irritable when a dog (or series of dogs) as magnificent as this one is on-screen." |
| 18. |
|
05/16/12 |
Poor |
 "...a tedious, clumsy diddle, constantly reminding viewers how much progress has been made since the Victorian era." |
| 19. |
|
05/16/12 |
Poor |
 "...insists that pleasure ends when parenting begins, yet also that the parenting life is the only one worth living. God forbid there could be something in between." |
| 20. |
|
05/16/12 |
Weak |
 "Much of the material that isn't dusty feels strained, as if the film is reaching to simulate the anarchic 'no you didn't!' moments... a rehearsal of old-hat culture-clash stereotypes..." |
