Rotten 2/4
| Fresh 76%
| The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009) | "
Pippa Lee is conceived as a portrait of a woman's long-delayed emotional blossoming, but its dopey, privileged-set fantasy winds up as obvious as crawling through Keanu's open window." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 22, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Say Anything (1989) | "
He gave her his heart, she gave him a pen, and Say Anything still gives off a sweet, enveloping glow." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 19, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/4
| Fresh 100%
| Say Anything (1989) | "
Say Anything was a singularly three-dimensional teen romance after a decade of broad gags and breakfast-club stereotypes in John Hughesland." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 19, 2009 |
Rotten 2/4
| Rotten 57%
| The Hand of Fatima (2009) | "
It'd be tempting to call it ambitious if the large emotions felt by its subjects were transmitted in terms other than the increasingly common tropes of the family-therapy doc." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 10, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| North by Northwest (1959) | "
There is no George Kaplan, but there is still spiffy, hypnotic pleasure in this apex of the Master's perpetual-motion mode." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 8, 2009 |
Fresh 4/4
| Fresh 100%
| North by Northwest (1959) | "
The picture is hugely pleased with itself, but it's too funny and expertly calibrated to mind in the least." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 8, 2009 |
Rotten 2.5/4
| Fresh 67%
| William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe () | "
His oft-spoken use of Michelangelo's David as a personal symbol of the individual's decision to bring "power to the people" gives better insight into this jurist's fiery heart than any case study." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 97%
| Wings of Desire (1987) | "
Even for non-fanatics, this packaging of perhaps the most beloved European film of a generation is heaven-sent." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 2, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/4
| Fresh 97%
| Wings of Desire (1987) | "
It's hard to think of another movie of its era that makes the viewer so fully feel like a denizen of its setting; the roving, dollying, craning camera makes angels of us all." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 2, 2009 |
Rotten 1.5/4
| Rotten 54%
| The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) | "
A jokey mess so far from the humane, satirical alchemy of Three Kings that a revocation of the producer-star's cinematic passport to the land of military-industrial japery seems in order." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 1, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 90%
| Z (1969) | "
This edition of Z lives, perhaps ironically, through the beauty of its surface and sheen." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 26, 2009 |
Fresh 3/4
| Fresh 90%
| Z (1969) | "
It's still an eye-catching, fast-paced watch." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 26, 2009 |
Fresh 2.5/4
| Fresh 100%
| Rembrandt's J'accuse (2009) | "
This immersive tour of the mortal manipulations fueling Europe's 17th-century cultural capital supplies wit and intellect while it starves the emotions." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 20, 2009 |
Rotten 1/4
| Rotten 26%
| Motherhood (2009) | "
Director Katherine Dieckmann, who demonstrated some natural comic rhythms and efficiency with actors in Diggers, is here unable to surmount the sitcom dreariness of her first original screenplay, apparently a "write-what-you-know" misjudgment." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 20, 2009 |
Fresh 3/4
| Fresh 100%
| Visual Acoustics: The Modernisms of Julius Shulman (2009) | "
Gives a convincing, contagious taste of its protagonist's playful optimism." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 5, 2009 |
Fresh 3/4
| Fresh 100%
| Marlene (1987) | "
The bilingual parrying between the withholding diva and her frustrated chronicler often seems like Sunset Boulevard re-imagined as a radio play, with sex removed from the equation but marlenus interruptus aplenty." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 5, 2009 |
Rotten 2.5/4
| Fresh 80%
| Yes Men Fix the World (2009) | "
Even more so than in the previous film, The Yes Men Fix the World indulges in faux-naïve disappointment." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 5, 2009 |
Rotten 2.5/4
| Rotten 50%
| An American Journey (2009) | "
American Journey works only sporadically as a supplement to the cultural moment it chronicles, and the passionate, serendipitously intimate breadth of Frank's lens." — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 28, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/4
| Fresh 95%
| 35 Shots of Rum (2009) | "
Perhaps as a result of channeling Ozu, Denis's incipient humanism comes through more directly than in her existentially forbidding The Intruder or even her acclaimed, baroque Herman Melville remix Beau Travail." — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 16, 2009 |
Fresh 3/4
| Fresh 100%
| Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (2009) | "
Chooses not to follow the money but one man's evolution in the pursuit of principle." — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 14, 2009 |
Fresh 3/4
| Fresh 89%
| No Impact Man (2009) | "
An enviro-doc that doesn't soft-pedal the fact that the calculated, consciousness-raising media event it chronicles is a conceptual stunt, No Impact Man manages to present its New York do-gooder couple as both likably idealistic and inevitably conf" — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| That Hamilton Woman (1941) | "
The wartime flag-waving beloved by Churchill seizes That Hamilton Woman from the rightful ownership of Vivien Leigh." — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 8, 2009 |
Fresh 2.5/4
| Fresh 100%
| That Hamilton Woman (1941) | "
That Hamilton Woman gains much from Leigh's playfulness and placid beauty." — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 8, 2009 |
Rotten 2/4
| Fresh 80%
| Taxidermia (2009) | "
Taxidermia is merely slimy biological vaudeville." — Slant Magazine Posted Aug 11, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967) | "
"If you can't afford LSD, buy a color TV," or perhaps use both to dive into this heady Godardian brew." — Slant Magazine Posted Jul 20, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/4
| Fresh 93%
| Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967) | "
The dualities that abound in Jean-Luc Godard's 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her are ubiquitous at whatever starting point one chooses." — Slant Magazine Posted Jul 20, 2009 |
Rotten 2/4
| Fresh 75%
| Humpday (2009) | "
The problem is not the farfetched contrivance of Humpday, but how unmoored it seems from anything but self-satisfied cuteness." — Slant Magazine Posted Jul 6, 2009 |
Fresh 2.5/4
| Fresh 75%
| The Vanished Empire (2009) | "
The lost-world aura of the film's clumsy youths provides an inexorable dig into Brezhnev-era diffidence." — Slant Magazine Posted Jul 3, 2009 |
Rotten .5/4
| Rotten 36%
| Local Color (2009) | "
Local Color is a sappy brick to the audience's forehead." — Slant Magazine Posted Jun 30, 2009 |
Rotten 1.5/4
| N/A | Original (2009) | "
A twee Danish comedy that alternates trite New Age psychological moves with outbursts of cartoonish violence." — Slant Magazine Posted Jun 10, 2009 |
Rotten 1.5/4
| N/A | Eclipse (2009) | "
A much duller tale than its Irish literary festival setting would suggest." — Slant Magazine Posted Jun 10, 2009 |
Fresh 2.5/4
| N/A | Burning Down the House: The Story of CBGB (2009) | "
A largely sentimental documentary of the final months of the Valhalla of New York punk clubs and the failed attempts to save it." — Slant Magazine Posted Jun 10, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/4
| Fresh 81%
| Sex Positive (2009) | "
Sex Positive uses the dual activist/sexual outlaw persona of "safer sex" pioneer Richard Berkowitz as a prism through which to view the life-and-death struggles of an era." — Slant Magazine Posted Jun 9, 2009 |
Rotten 1/4
| Rotten 38%
| The Art of Being Straight (2009) | "
Structured like a comedy, but outfitted with only the most tedious sexual-identity riffs, generic characterizations, and no singular point of view." — Slant Magazine Posted Jun 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 83%
| Nenette and Boni (1996) | "
Perhaps Denis's most approachable mix of humanism and erotic meditation." — Slant Magazine Posted May 25, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/4
| Fresh 83%
| Nenette and Boni (1996) | "
A sibling drama of unsentimental urban grit and swooning lyricism." — Slant Magazine Posted May 25, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) | "
Downbeat '70s crime with Beantown vowels, and a Hollywood icon's masterful melancholy." — Slant Magazine Posted May 18, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/4
| Fresh 100%
| Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) | "
It's a slug's-eye view of autumnal Greater Boston, remote when not sleazy; even when Mitchum and Boyle attend a Bruins hockey game, it's in the nosebleed seats." — Slant Magazine Posted May 18, 2009 |
Rotten 1.5/4
| Rotten 51%
| Easy Virtue (2009) | "
Stephan Elliott is determined to contemporize a playwright whose rhythms, concerns, and craft are all permanently bonded to the '20s art of British sophisticated escapism, art being short for "artifice."" — Slant Magazine Posted May 17, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 89%
| Wise Blood (1979) | "
A low-budget success in capturing the flesh, and some of the soul, of O'Connor's twisted salvation fable." — Slant Magazine Posted May 13, 2009 |
Fresh 3/4
| Fresh 89%
| Wise Blood (1979) | "
Huston's Wise Blood is a sharp, busy canvas that, like a man with a good car, doesn't need to be justified." — Slant Magazine Posted May 13, 2009 |
Rotten 1/4
| Rotten 45%
| Management (2009) | "
To the annals of romantic stalker comedies, the appallingly creepy Management adds pretension and may blaze new, jaw-dropping territory: the predatory Beast totally rehabilitates Beauty." — Slant Magazine Posted May 11, 2009 |
Fresh 3/4
| Fresh 100%
| Revue (2009) | "
Sergei Loznitsa's choice to intersperse footage of smiling farmers and dogma-spouting steelworkers with folk dancers and village choirs throughout Revue doesn't feel flippant, or even discordant." — Slant Magazine Posted May 11, 2009 |
Fresh 2.5/4
| Fresh 95%
| Star Trek (2009) | "
This Star Trek essentially turns out to be a war film, with the occasional philosophical timeout to discuss love, friendship, and duty until the next bone-crunching fistfight or multi-weapon rumble with the Romulans." — Slant Magazine Posted May 9, 2009 |
Fresh 3/4
| Fresh 73%
| Objectified (2009) | "
moothly compelling with its sleek, mass-produced shapes and beautiful minds that fetishize ergonomics and the ideal of perfectability." — Slant Magazine Posted May 8, 2009 |
Rotten 1/4
| Fresh 73%
| Rudo and Cursi (2009) | "
Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna reunite in Rudo y Cursi to denigrate rubes from Jalisco as slow-witted provincial brothers and banana plantation workers whose unlikely rise to soccer stardom supplies the purported comedy." — Slant Magazine Posted May 3, 2009 |
Rotten 2/4
| Fresh 76%
| Outrage (2009) | "
One can at least partly embrace the concept that outing pols who torpedo gay rights is defensible and still find Dick's film too frequently a would-be sensationalistic bit of tut-tutting for queer Dems and their politically-connected friends." — Slant Magazine Posted May 3, 2009 |
Fresh 2.5/4
| N/A | El Niño Pez (2009) | "
With a plot recalling the fevered fictions of Jim Thompson, late Polanski, and Isabel Allende, The Fish Child banks on the sizzle of its pair of young female stars and their enactment of class and erotic tensions to flavor its Sapphic noir melodram" — Slant Magazine Posted May 3, 2009 |
Rotten 1.5/4
| N/A | The Exploding Girl (2009) | "
Exasperating for its mundane narrative of youthful non-courtship camouflaged by Manhattan street-video naturalism, The Exploding Girl occasionally suggests mumblecore with less improvisation and heaps of undergrad preciousness in place of snarky ir" — Slant Magazine Posted May 3, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/4
| Fresh 70%
| American Casino (2009) | "
A revelatory howl against the still-gestating, $8 trillion-and-counting financial-services industry bailout, American Casino follows the money that changed hands, or account columns, at every step of the subprime home-loan scam." — Slant Magazine Posted May 3, 2009 |
IGN RSS Feeds