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(1952) |
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"There is a distinct hokeyness about Lang's vision of the West--pancake-flat sets in a generic studio-backlot Western town; giant, abstract crab-colored boulders made out of papier-mache, brazenly unnaturalistic stage-lighting--but it's the ardent phoneyne"
[movie review] |
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Not Coming to a Theater Near You |
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(2009) |
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"A grand gesture, an exercise in epic biography that explodes the intimate details of Isaiah's life and its effects on his family onto the screen."
[movie review] |
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(1956) |
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"The film's cinematography utilizes an unusual technique for a Mizoguchi film, the close-up, whereby the camera gets steadily closer to each protagonist as the various causes of their downfall to prostitution are revealed."
[movie review] |
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(2009) |
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"Sandwiched between Gondry and Bong's variously euphoric entries, Carax's contribution seems either a work of deep cynicism from an inveterate party-pooper or a welcome satirical sour note from one of the great talents of 80s and 90s French cinema."
[movie review] |
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(2008) |
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"Ultimately, like Lazarescu, Ovidiu becomes a mere cog in a social and economic system that would chew him up without a moment's consideration, and it's Puiu's goal to elevate this and other such stories above their banality and into the realm of myth."
[movie review] |
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(1956) |
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"Always a shrewd melodramatist, with a particular eye for the domestic space, Ray builds this sense of conflict into the Avery home itself, with its frequently competing horizontal and vertical patterns."
[movie review] |
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(2008) |
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"So bereft of creativity that it fails even to deliver to its base--teenage boys--the ghouls and boobs they so desperately want to see."
[movie review] |
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(1984) |
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"Hou's film places demands on our powers of observation, insisting that we, like Tung-tung, attend to the minutiae, ironies, and deeper meanings it offers us."
[movie review] |
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(2007) |
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"Shankman's crassly theatrical attenuation of Hairspray only draws gay culture away from a moment of American history with which it ought to have a great deal in common"
[movie review] |
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(1988) |
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"The shock Waters's cinema offers, then, is not transcendent, but almost reflexive, implicating the viewer in the awkward complexities of his own humanity and forcing him to either celebrate it or run screaming away."
[movie review] |
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(2008) |
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"Schnabel's set design, onstage projections, and postproduction add a good deal of visual noise to Reed & company's aural variety, which reproduces the album with a mixture of professional exactitude and unpredictable cacophony."
[movie review] |
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(2007) |
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"It is the war within him--and by extension, within the minds of many embittered, working class young men left behind in Thatcher's England--that Meadows's film most strikingly portrays."
[movie review] |
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(2009) |
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"As in all of Meadows's films, Somers Town emphasizes the importance of character and particularly of camaraderie amongst male characters--here, teenagers who nick clothes from the local laundry, get drunk in the park, and furtively investigate masculinity"
[movie review] |
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(2007) |
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"Ramps down Tolstoy's soap-opera grandiosity, while still managing to elevate the banalities of a high-society dalliance to the level of a cosmic psychodrama"
[movie review] |
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(2009) |
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""I knew it would come to this," hisses Sharon when finding Lisa lurking around her beautiful Brentwood home--at which point I exclaimed, "Me too!"--and then the fun (and, for many, the entire purpose of the film) starts."
[movie review] |
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(2007) |
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"A good deal more Transformers than Syriana, a movie that drapes a crisp, lightly browsed copy of The Economist over an enormous pubescent boner for grinding metal, busted glass, and crackling gunfire."
[movie review] |
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(2008) |
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"With this harsh and beautiful backdrop so attentively rendered, at once otherworldly and palpable, the desires of Tulpan's characters become almost metaphysical imperatives."
[movie review] |
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(1968) |
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"Melodrama, slapstick, romance, exploitation, and psychological horror all vie for dominance throughout the film, giving it an air of fickle, feminine hysteria, which the graphic sex scene at the end of the film makes still more difficult to pin down."
[movie review] |
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(2008) |
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"With its complex (and, at times, deeply problematic) intersection of an educated outsider with the stubborn realities of rural life, Blind Mountain explicitly harkens back to those classic works from the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, like Yellow"
[movie review] |
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(2008) |
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"Though Eastwood is not above self-deprecation and, here, downright silliness, Gran Torino is no orangutan movie."
[movie review] |
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(2008) |
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"A painfully old-fashioned trick, a game played many times before, by far more thoughtful filmmakers with greater commands of and ideas about their medium."
[movie review] |
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(2008) |
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"Each bend in the road positively screeches with the urgency of impending catharsis, but the film never earns its resolution."
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2007) |
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"There is much to "Shotgun Stories" that elevates it above the fray of Green derivatives and unflattering categorizations, bolstered by a roster of naturalistic, fully assimilated performances, led by "Bug"'s now ubiquitous Michael Shannon."
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"Begins with a shot of Meryl Streep practicing tai chi, and therein lies a precise encapsulation of the film's attitude toward the intersection of Eastern and Western cultures"
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"A hopelessly overblown melodrama, which oversteps its mark with pretensions of narrative complexity and social currency"
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"Nostalgic, deeply felt, and refreshingly astute, "Fugitive Pieces" is something of a rare bird these days%u2014a big-budget, transnational historical drama that actually justifies its scope and subject matter with more than visual opulence."
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2007) |
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"A bold effort to grapple with what truth lies behind these images, rather than to simply throw one's hands up in the face of them"
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"If there is a criticism to be lobbed at Nelson's judicious but otherwise highly entertaining tribute, it's that it too often plays the role of the fawning, autograph-hungry fanboy, willing to accept all of the abuse Ellison wishes to hurl at it."
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"In fact, "Quid Pro Quo" is not at all funny, merely occasionally sarcastic, its plot a succession of half-baked pop-psych speculations and its dialogue a glib sampling of sub-Diablo Cody incredibility"
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"Death and regret hang over the film palpably, and Miniucchi's willingness to put her characters through disaster and humiliation while still plainly empathizing with them is what keeps the film surprising and its characters winning, in spite of themselves"
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"Canet has covered his bases with enough swooping camerawork, narrative smoke-and-mirrors, and quick-sketched supporting characters for a dozen thrillers"
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"Cleaves too closely to the pattern set out by more original films with similar subject matter. Its obvious distinctions of time and place come through in clever details, but these don't seem to serve Weiland's autobiography so much as situate it into a fa"
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"Ultimately not quite as clever as it thinks it is. Even the action sequences are more about Foley than choreography, and so the film largely rests on the oddity of its mix of styles and its parade of genre in-jokes"
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2007) |
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"Mostly a little shrewder about stereotypes than your typical slacker comedy, deriving its edge from Yu and Tsai's mining of the cultural specificity of Asian-America for laughs"
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"Approaching its subject with a neat idealism and packaging its political fervor in the most facile of forms, the film boasts a cast loaded with Hollywoods both new and old and wraps its message up with eye-rolling naivete."
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2007) |
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"Wang's new film suggests not only a return to form but also the revival of an old theme from his early Asian-American dramedies: the different ways that certain generations translate and adapt their cultural heritage"
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"Cantet's film lulls the spectator into the rhythms of the everyday reality of school, belying a very carefully coordinated narrative structure that only becomes apparent in its final act."
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"Its surprisingly structured depiction of this relationship and its many private rituals and performances, which the film's unforgiving style continually strips bare"
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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" Even an offhand debate between a few students late in the film about whether or not Bush is a "retard," while not exactly insightful, nonetheless portrays a student body for whom politics%u2014or at least arguing about it%u2014is essential."
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"There aren't many surprises%u2014the characters end up more or less where we expect them to%u2014but it's useless and not at all fun to deny the simple pleasures of this film."
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"Bears a superficial resemblance to "The Conformist" and "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis," with their sense of dreary complacency, oppressively museum-like spaces, and curiously drab natural settings, but ultimately "Good" is less evocative"
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"Mostly strong, that is, with the major exception of Tom Guiry's portrayal of Joe Jr. Painfully broad, Guiry practically sinks the film with garishly slack-jawed and over-the-top manchildishness."
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2009) |
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"It's a wonder a group of experienced film professionals could not make "Reunion" look and sound the least bit proficient or even entertaining"
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2009) |
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"The talent and craftsmanship of "Is Anybody There?" is ample, but it remains uncertain whether there's anybody here still interested in this all-too-familiar story."
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"Relies heavily on Moreau's gripping, continually surprising performance to effectively convey the oracular urgency and fractured, Dionysian mentality of Seraphine de Senlis and her work."
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2009) |
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"Malkovich's titular mentalist is the primary focus of attention%u2014and sadly the source of many of the film's unique problems. In a career of strange performances, Malkovich turns in a true curiosity here%u2014and maybe it's because he is not, for once,"
[movie review] |
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indieWIRE |
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(2008) |
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"Grey and waterlogged, Jerzy Skolimowski's Four Nights with Anna is something like the Eastern European answer to Rear Window and Chungking Express, a deeply gothic, but no less romantic tale of voyeurism, breaking and entering, and secret love."
[movie review] |
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(2009) |
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"Giamatti's usual character%u2014at least, the one that Cold Souls wishes to exploit%u2014is paper-thin, working better on the periphery than in the center of the narrative."
[movie review] |
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(1985) |
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"Only Chuck - a libertarian redneck who simply wants to be left the fnck alone - has the red, white, and blue balls big enough to put an end to these problems."
[movie review] |
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Not Coming to a Theater Near You |
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(2009) |
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"A bad-ass film, probably the most overtly and self-consciously bad-ass film Jim Jarmusch has made."
[movie review] |
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Not Coming to a Theater Near You |
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