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Aaron Hillis, Village Voice

1. Kai Po Che! 2013 The dramatic stakes are so puny that every obstacle can be overcome with a simple work-it-out montage, a cheap device prevalent enough in this movie to start a drinking game. full review
2. After Fall, Winter 2012 Another sanctimonious dose of talk-therapy cinema. full review
3. Gayby 2012 A hilariously bitchy but sweet comedy that serves as Gotham's answer to Portlandia. full review
4. The Loneliest Planet 2012 Julia Loktev's marvelous, slow-burning follow-up to her minimalist thriller Day Night Day Night somehow manages to be both audacious and subtle. full review
5. Private Romeo 2012 A pandering coming-of-ager about sexual identity and equality. full review
6. Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie 2012 In every swelling musical cue, Billion Dollar Movie displays open contempt for friendship, family, love, sex, heroism, and everything lofty and beautiful that multiplex movies have reduced to cant. full review
7. Gerhard Richter Painting 2011 Gerhard Richter Painting artfully and convincingly immerses us into the world of one of the greatest, painting. full review
8. I Melt with You 2011 Stylish cinematography and an awesome punk-and-new-wave soundtrack make the early, music-video-like montages of debauchery at least trashy entertainment, but the film's second half couldn't be more contemptible... full review
9. Bearcity 2010 Eventually buckles under the weight of affable but unfunny camp. full review
10. The Best and the Brightest 2010 [A] Manhattan-set comedy of errors that's seriously more error than comedy. full review
11. Happiness Runs 2010 The film builds on a fascinating cautionary tale, but doesn't develop its characters past whatever movie-of-the-week crisis each suffers from. full review
12. A Little Help 2010 The film's title needs a question mark, as our drowning heroine must grab her own bootstraps, but for all its sincerity, the film is as average and forgettable as most CBS comedies. full review
13. Punching the Clown 2010 A partly biographical, drolly fabricated comedy. full review
14. Waiting for Forever 2010 [Waiting for Forever is] strangely unaware of its overt creepiness. full review
15. Blood: The Last Vampire 2009 Unexciting, incoherent, lamely acted, and carelessly written. full review
16. Mine 2009 Underreported and over-emotional, Geralyn Pezanoski's 81-minute doc expose about dogs displaced during Hurricane Katrina moves slower than a basset hound to get to these and other thorny questions. full review
17. Objectified 2009 A slickly entertaining and thorough enough curiosity about the form, function, context, inspiration, and evolution of industrial design. full review
18. TiMER 2009 A romcom is a romcom, however, and at least this one's more charming than most of Jennifer Aniston's career. full review
19. Valhalla Rising 2009 Mesmerizing ... A trippy nightmare of savage poetry burning slow across bleak and otherworldly landscapes. full review
20. Beautiful Losers 2008 Regardless of Rose's intentions, his underachieving airiness is both entertaining and perfectly fitting for the slacker ennui of his clique's rising years. full review
21. Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever 2008 full review
22. Dog Eat Dog 2008 With a background in television and music videos, director Carlos Moreno's feature debut is mighty shallow. Its bloodshed carries little weight; the sporadic humor is cheap and casually racist. full review
23. Play The Game 2008 This Lifetime-ready comedy is hardly provocative -- let alone perceptive, funny, or fresh. full review
24. The Yellow Handkerchief 2008 All three leads are solidly convincing in their candor. And Oscar-winning cinematographer Chris Menges (The Mission) shoots the hell out of the swampy South to make for a nontoxic diversion. full review
25. The Go-Getter 2007 If you can look past writer-director Martin Hynes's familiar fest formula, his film modestly rewards with gorgeous sun-spotted cinematography, tender digressions in rather brave quantities, and believably charming dialogue. full review
26. Postal 2007 This movie's about as dangerous (or as funny) as a mouthy, caffeinated teen punk from the suburbs who just saw his first s***-flinging GG Allin performance on YouTube. full review
27. 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama 2006 The 11th question would be: Does a TV-grade travelogue followed by a halfway-decent Q&A warrant a theatrical release? full review
28. One to Another 2006 Only the French seem to get away with passing off sensational sex romps as high art, but One to Another is pretty much just trashy -- its murder-mystery conceit a sideshow to the film's primary offering: nubile nudity. full review
29. Special 2005 Rappaport's befuddled sincerity has never registered so poignantly, but given its singular premise, for the film to waste an easy opportunity to satirize vigilante do-goodery and pharmaceutical dependence is, well, villainous. full review
30. You're Gonna Miss Me 2005 With battered archival footage and celebrity worship, [director] McAlester skimps on perspective and complexity. full review