Rotten 1.5/4
| Fresh 73%
| City Island (2010) | "
Everybody's got their secrets in City Island, something we're reminded of early and often by writer-director Raymond De Felitta." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 17, 2010 |
Fresh
| Rotten 20%
| Shutterbug (2010) | "
Papas makes our familiar city seem just as invitingly sinister as you once imagined it to be." — Village Voice Posted Mar 16, 2010 |
Rotten 2/4
| N/A | Kimjongilia (2010) | "
A classic case of a documentary filmmaker not trusting her material." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 15, 2010 |
Fresh 2.5/4
| N/A | I Am Love (2010) | "
Its central story and its tributaries are rich enough to overcome much of the director's odd and arguably unmotivated catalogue of visual and aural trickery." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 13, 2010 |
Fresh 3/4
| N/A | Last Train Home (2009) | "
Lixin's approach in the film has been to withhold direct commentary, either in the form of narration or on-screen interviews with her subjects." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 12, 2010 |
Rotten 2.5/4
| Rotten 16%
| Our Family Wedding (2010) | "
The interracial meet-the-parents setup pioneered in 1967 by Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner gets a modest comic update in Rick Famuyiwa's Our Family Wedding." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 10, 2010 |
Rotten 2/4
| Rotten 0%
| Stolen (2010) | "
Stolen reveals a filmmaking hand in need of a considerable amount of seasoning." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 9, 2010 |
Fresh 2.5/4
| Fresh 75%
| Severe Clear (2010) | "
The battles we see resemble less Coppola's clear-eyed surrealism and more the incoherence-skirting camera jostles of contemporary action directing." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 8, 2010 |
Rotten
| Rotten 13%
| Harlem Aria (2010) | "
Racial tensions and bawdy humor carry the day, until, following an unfunny set piece at a fancy hotel and a street robbery, black and white (far too) easily come together to help their young charge." — Village Voice Posted Mar 2, 2010 |
Rotten 1.5/4
| Rotten 40%
| Brooklyn's Finest (2010) | "
Watching an Antoine Fuqua film can be exhausting; the Training Day helmer directs every scene as if it's the most important thing that ever happened." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 2, 2010 |
Rotten 2/4
| Fresh 71%
| The Yellow Handkerchief (2010) | "
The film fails to provide Kristen Stewart the courtesy of a role with scene-stealing potential." — Slant Magazine Posted Feb 22, 2010 |
Fresh 3/4
| Fresh 89%
| Prodigal Sons (2010) | "
A testament to film's documentary function to record moments of queasy immediacy as well as to Reed's thoughtful self-analysis." — Slant Magazine Posted Feb 22, 2010 |
Rotten 2/4
| Fresh 67%
| Shutter Island (2010) | "
Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island walks a fine line between institutional thriller and what-is-reality? inquest." — Slant Magazine Posted Feb 16, 2010 |
Rotten 1.5/4
| Fresh 69%
| Phyllis and Harold (2010) | "
What is intrinsically fascinating to the filmmaker (because of familial ties) must be of equal significance to an audience who has no vested interest in the subjects." — Slant Magazine Posted Feb 15, 2010 |
Fresh 3/4
| Fresh 100%
| American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein (2010) | "
Even for those likely to be sympathetic to his point of view, Norman Finkelstein can be a difficult figure to embrace." — Slant Magazine Posted Feb 9, 2010 |
Rotten 2/4
| Fresh 95%
| Ajami (2010) | "
More impressive as a formal exercise than as a means to deepen our understanding of the characters or their situations." — Slant Magazine Posted Feb 1, 2010 |
Rotten 2/4
| Fresh 90%
| Terribly Happy (2009) | "
This is one avant-garde western (and film noir and psychodrama) that no one, Pig Bodine or otherwise, need recommend." — Slant Magazine Posted Feb 1, 2010 |
Rotten 2/4
| Fresh 78%
| Mine (2010) | "
Geralyn Pezanoski's doc about the efforts to reunite Hurricane Katrina victims with their lost pooches is pretty soapy stuff." — Slant Magazine Posted Jan 13, 2010 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Garbage Dreams (2010) | "
In Garbage Dreams, Mai Iskander's handsomely shot and intermittently fascinating look at Cairo's Zaballeen community of trash collectors, the filmmaker documents an entire population faced with extinction." — Village Voice Posted Jan 5, 2010 |
Rotten 2/4
| Fresh 69%
| Youth in Revolt (2010) | "
But even apart from the film's vaguely insane endorsement of love at all costs, there's the fact that much of it is simply not very funny." — Slant Magazine Posted Jan 5, 2010 |
Rotten
| Rotten 50%
| Streamers (1983) | "
Mid-level Altman from the forgotten '80s, a period that ought not to be forgotten entirely." — Slant Magazine Posted Jan 4, 2010 |
Fresh 3/4
| Rotten 50%
| Streamers (1983) | "
What elevates the film above a dated topical discussion is Altman's imagining of the army barracks as a hothouse environment where tensions and fears play out in oddly manic outbursts%u2014and his direction of his actors accordingly." — Slant Magazine Posted Jan 4, 2010 |
Rotten 2/4
| Fresh 91%
| Old Partner (2009) | "
The film's unrelenting presentation of raw misery not only shortchanges the fullness of the subjects' experience, but with its hovering, pitch-perfect camera-eye, feels dangerously like an invasion." — Slant Magazine Posted Dec 27, 2009 |
Fresh 3/4
| Fresh 86%
| A Town Called Panic (2009) | "
The film posits an endlessly malleable universe whose objects can be remade nearly as fast as they're destroyed." — Slant Magazine Posted Dec 15, 2009 |
Rotten 2/4
| Fresh 85%
| A Single Man (2009) | "
In A Single Man, his debut effort as film director, fashion designer Tom Ford seems determined to err not on the side of caution, but on that of aesthetic overload instead." — Slant Magazine Posted Dec 6, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 79%
| Before Tomorrow (2009) | "
The directors nevertheless manage to locate great reserves of sadness in the material, tapping a particularly rich vein in the wrinkled look of resignation on actress/co-director Ivalu's face." — Village Voice Posted Dec 2, 2009 |
Rotten 2/4
| Fresh 67%
| Loot (2009) | "
As periodically enticing as the film's mysteries may be, it's hard to escape the feeling that the real story lies in what Marder has left off the screen." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 30, 2009 |
Rotten 1/4
| Fresh 69%
| The Last Station (2009) | "
Drawing on Jay Parini's novel of the same name, Hoffman's film is potentially rich in dramatic situation, but it squanders these possibilities by making them dependant on the director's underimagined central quartet." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 30, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Home (2009) | "
Working with all-star DP Agnès Godard, Meier effectively communicates the sense of upended privacy." — Village Voice Posted Nov 25, 2009 |
Rotten 2/4
| Fresh 83%
| Me and Orson Welles (2009) | "
The film's pleasures are to be found almost entirely in the meticulously recreated period design." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 22, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | My Dear Enemy (2009) | "
It gets by on the subtle interplay of its contrasting leads, a welcome store of deadpan humor and, especially, Choi Sang-ho's gorgeous widescreen photography, which makes even a trip to an impound lot into a luminous, dusk-lit experience." — Village Voice Posted Nov 17, 2009 |
Rotten 2/4
| Fresh 64%
| Missing Person (2009) | "
The film's second half appears primed to tread some interesting existential territory, but Buschel seems confused about what direction he means to take his material." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 15, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 60%
| The End of Poverty? (2009) | "
For all his film's sober analysis, Diaz never loses sight of the human cost of global capitalism." — Village Voice Posted Nov 10, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 67%
| Dare (2009) | "
Zach Gilford's game performance is still no match for the film's catalog of easy ironies, awkward framings, and advice on how to play Blanche DuBois cribbed from season 4, episode 2 of The Simpsons." — Village Voice Posted Nov 10, 2009 |
Rotten 1/4
| Rotten 21%
| Oh My God (2009) | "
In Oh My God, those who disagree with the party line are summarily contradicted." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 8, 2009 |
Fresh 3/4
| Fresh 78%
| That Evening Sun (2009) | "
That Evening Sun gets at something essential about man's sense of his own dignity and the importance to the American notion of self that comes with the possession of a property of one's own." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 1, 2009 |
Fresh 3/4
| Fresh 92%
| La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (2009) | "
Wiseman is principally concerned with process here, the process of art's creation and, to a lesser degree, the process of an institution's functioning." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 1, 2009 |
Rotten 1/4
| Rotten 16%
| Gentlemen Broncos (2009) | "
Hess still seems to see his characters as little more than objects of comedic fun." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 27, 2009 |
Rotten 1/4
| Rotten 42%
| Turning Green (2009) | "
An Irish-set comedy-drama, Turning Green is not particularly comic or compellingly dramatic." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 25, 2009 |
Fresh 3/4
| Fresh 73%
| Storm (2009) | "
A finely graded legal thriller, Storm effectively builds its moral and political investigation into the fabric of its central court case." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 25, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 27%
| The Canyon (2009) | "
Another one for the bad-stuff-happens-to-stupid-people file, The Canyon might at least offer the satisfaction of a few squirmy thrills, if it weren’t so insistent on treating its central couple’s plight as the stuff of high tragedy." — L.A. Weekly Posted Oct 22, 2009 |
Rotten 2/4
| Rotten 37%
| Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009) | "
It's hard to escape the feeling that this is one film that already has its eye on the next chapter." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 22, 2009 |
Fresh 2.5/4
| Fresh 94%
| The Wedding Song (2008) | "
In The Wedding Song, director Karin Albou shrewdly links national politics with its domestic sexual counterpart." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 20, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 0%
| Eulogy for a Vampire (2009) | "
Despite the occasional keeper of an image... this is one gay vampire film that's surprisingly anemic." — Village Voice Posted Oct 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 83%
| Black Rain (1989) | "
Following the recent releases of The Ballad of Narayama and Criterion's Pigs, Pimps and Prostitutes box set, the posthumous celebration of a Japanese master continues." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 15, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/4
| Fresh 83%
| Black Rain (1989) | "
While most of Black Rain takes place in 1950, the film's astonishing opening sequence places us at the epicenter of the event, August 1945." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 15, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Adela (2009) | "
[An] art-perfect snapshot of a community-in-flux." — Village Voice Posted Oct 14, 2009 |
Rotten 2/4
| Rotten 39%
| New York, I Love You (2009) | "
If at first you partially succeed, repeat the formula." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 11, 2009 |
Fresh 2.5/4
| Fresh 62%
| Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution (2009) | "
Jean-Paul Jaud's Food Beware is more concerned with focusing on solutions than in simply sounding the alarm." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 11, 2009 |
Fresh 3/4
| Rotten 58%
| Trucker (2009) | "
In his tough-minded commitment to both his characters and to their lower-middle-class milieu, the filmmaker recasts his potentially disastrous material into something that feels emotionally honest, if not exactly revelatory." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 7, 2009 |
