Tomato |
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) |
"The film's centerpiece battle runs only eight minutes, yet its hellfire feels twice as long as Saving Private Ryan's D-Day onslaught." |
Rob Humanick |
Tomato |
The American Soldier (1970) |
"As Billy Wilder turned a crumbling Berlin into a slapstick, satirical playground in One, Two, Three, so Fassbinder offers up The American Soldier's Munich as a monochrome city of sadness." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
The Beaches of Agnes (2009) |
"Varda turns the camera on herself and her own life, even though she convincingly posits that she's much more interested in other people." |
Dan Callahan |
Tomato |
Before I Forget (2008) |
"[Jacques] Nolot writes, directs, and stars as Pierre Pruez, an HIV-positive bottom boy-no-longer who navigates his ruined life and beauty with aplomb." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Berlin Alexanderplatz (1983) |
"If greatness is determined less by perfection than by sheer forward thrust, I can think of few better examples than Berlin Alexanderplatz." |
Rob Humanick |
Tomato |
Berlin Alexanderplatz (1983) |
"This Criterion release could have been entirely without features and it would still rank among the finest DVDs of the year." |
Rob Humanick |
Tomato |
Black Sheep (2007) |
"Black Sheep takes one of nature's most decidedly non-threatening creatures and arms 'em, deliriously and deliciously, with ravenous, razor-edged teeth." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) |
"Borat's cultural learning is revealing, even if it doesn't adequately convey how it benefits glorious nation of Kazakhstan." |
Ed Gonzalez |
Tomato |
California Dreamin' (2009) |
"What surprises and delights is how complete the work feels, finished in every way aesthetically and thematically, any longueurs or asides entirely part of Nemescu's indelible emotional tapestry." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Chris & Don: A Love Story (2007) |
"A love unique in every respect -- nothing to sniff at and forever to be treasured." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
The Darjeeling Limited (2007) |
"A highly flawed personal vision, containing what the Screenwriter 101's among us would deem various and sundry "third act problems."" |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Doubt (2008) |
"[The play is] a shallow work easily interpreted, and Shanley's own film version is no different in the low bar it aims for and ultimately attains." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Eat, For This Is My Body (2008) |
"A true, unadulterated trip into a most unique subconscious." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Exterminating Angels (2007) |
"The beauties of Brisseau's movies lie in their defiantly messy imperfections: pretty poison all the way." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Face to Face (1976) |
"Cries out for Madeline Kahn to step in, cigarette in hand, and inquire, "Phallic-un zymbol?"" |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Faithless (2001) |
"This could be a regretful remembrance of things past on the part of "Bergman" or it could be a pure fiction torn from the ether." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
The First Films of Samuel Fuller (1949) |
"Tempting as it is to describe Samuel Fuller as the cinema's brute poet, the three films included on "The First Films of Samuel Fuller" encourage a more multifaceted reading." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead (2008) |
"The most labyrinthine and multifaceted of Romero's Dead films." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
I Shot Jesse James (1949) |
"Fuller goes deeper into his protagonist's tortured psyche, uncovering a sublimated sense of love that only finds expression as climax to his death rattle." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) |
"Whichever way we go, we have to always, always be looking." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) |
"Now only twilight and sunset. Illumination fades; the self annihilates in silhouette. And all (father, son, and spirit) is one." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Inland Empire (2006) |
"The film is a detailed analysis of Nikki's creative process, of her struggle towards that transcendent point where her art... only connects." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Jones (2007) |
"He'll always be coming and going." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) |
"In Letters, the glossy romanticism of history crumbles before our very eyes." |
Rob Humanick |
Tomato |
Made in U.S.A. (1966) |
"The foreground drama ends on a query, while the Gallic hills and highways stretch to eternity. FIN." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
The Man from London (2008) |
"Moral rot captured with religious fervor." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Married Life (2008) |
"Screens within screens, frames within frames -- that's the simplest way of approaching Married Life's allusive/elusive roundelay." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato 4/4 |
Miami Vice (2006) |
"In retrospect it is clear that the rapturous Miami Vice is the work Mann has been building to." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Mother of Tears (2008) |
"Both the body and the body politic are under attack in Mother of Tears." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Un Mundo Maravilloso (2008) |
"Estrada's most incendiary proposition: that God is, at heart, a hoi polloi construct, a buffer and security blanket that damagingly keeps the world's many harsh realities at bay." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
The New World (2005) |
"If I think I'm mostly going to keep coming back to [the 172-minute] cut (and I do hope, someday soon, for a Mr. Arkadin-like 3-cuts comparative DVD set) it's because it feels most fully realized." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Quei Loro Incontri (2006) |
"Standing on the outside looking in, I discern something quite meaningful in the visual/structural rigor of this adaptation of mock-classical dialogues by Cesare Pavese." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Redacted (2007) |
"So much blood spilled over so little." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Revolutionary Road (2008) |
"Revolutionary Road is not a great film, per se; a great film needs the stamp of a great director. But it is a great film of this great book." |
Dan Callahan |
Tomato |
Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) |
"Robinson Crusoe practically bursts at the seams with its glorious Technicolor, while sound is crisp and booming throughout." |
Rob Humanick |
Tomato |
Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) |
"In creating a work of spiritual, rather than physical, focus, Robinson Crusoe on Mars becomes more than just another post-50's sci-fi flick." |
Rob Humanick |
Tomato |
Savage Grace (2008) |
"When [Moore] embarrasses her son by forcing him to read a passage from de Sade's Justine (introduction by Georges Bataille!), ... it's a potent familial cruelty to place alongside the best of Davis and Crawford." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Schindler's Houses (2007) |
"Emigholz's rigorous aural/visual cataloging of Schindler's efforts uncover the souls of these structures, and it's a sight to see." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Shame (1968) |
""What a wonder is a gun," opined one-time Bergman adapter Stephen Sondheim." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Special (2008) |
"Take[s] a page from the cartoonist Bill Watterson, who noted of the tiger protagonist in his great Calvin & Hobbes, 'The nature of [the character's] reality doesn't interest me, and each story goes out of its way to avoid resolving the issue.'" |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) |
"So astounding in its lack of anything that could be considered reasonably watchable that it achieves something of an unintended, surrealist nightmare vision." |
Rob Humanick |
Tomato |
The Steel Helmet (1951) |
"The Steel Helmet (1951) is a fever dream of the Korean War, entirely possessed of its own unique, inimitable rhythms." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Taste of Cherry (1997) |
"Taste of Cherry might be Kiarostami's most difficult film." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
The Adventure (2008) |
"Less a film about existential crisis than its decided lack, about how easy it is to ignore the world's disastrous and horrific elements at the slightest twinge of uncertainty or trespass into our personal space." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
They Turned Our Desert into Fire (2008) |
"Talking heads revolve and the verité stylings are undistinguished, but this is the kind of important subject matter that tempers one's desire to quibble with aesthetics." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Le Vent de la Nuit (1999) |
"'That' Garrel film at last." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Viva (2008) |
"Beneath all the hippies and hair, makeup and music lies a film bubbling with ridiculous humor and serious heart." |
Lauren Wissot |
Splat |
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2008) |
"Strange to long for the humorous undercurrents of the no less despondent Lazarescu and Bucharest, but perhaps making sense of the red specter requires just such a penetrating mix of solemnity and absurdity." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
The Air I Breathe (2007) |
"Godliness, so The Air I Breathe finally tells us, is all about the Benjamins." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) |
"The mechanics of it are so aggravating that by the time you get to an actual throw-down, it's all but impossible to care about how poorly lit the rumble is." |
Rob Humanick |
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