instantwatcher.com

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com

1. John Dies at the End 2013 What may be the most freewheeling and imaginative film of Coscarelli's checkered career, loaded with tripped-out mood and nicely balanced between humor, horror and an underlay of genuine sweetness. full review
2. 360 2012 A mistake from beginning to end. full review
3. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry 2012 Ai Weiwei is a crucial figure of East-West cultural communication and contemporary history, whose middle finger extended at the centers of power stands for a rising tide of global discontent. full review
4. The Ambassador 2012 You'll be fascinated, frustrated and enraged by "The Ambassador," which is something like a bastard reworking of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" staged by Don DeLillo and Sacha Baron Cohen. full review
5. Ballplayer: Pelotero 2012 A gripping documentary that takes us inside the largely closed world of youth baseball training and recruitment in the Dominican Republic. full review
6. Brooklyn Castle 2012 What may well be the most optimistic, inspiring and downright thrilling movie released all year ... full review
7. The Cabin in the Woods 2012 Quite a bit of it is great, and most of it works, and the stuff that clicks is outrageously entertaining and funny, sometimes with surprising depth. full review
8. Casa de mi padre 2012 Is "Casa de Mi Padre" brilliant or pointless? Indubitably it's both, as Ron Burgundy might put it. full review
9. Deadfall 2012 [An] atmospheric, suspenseful, snowbound crime thriller with a creepy, sexy undertow ... full review
10. Detachment 2012 Despite many nameable flaws, [it] is a wrenching and powerful achievement... full review
11. The Dictator 2012 Although the character of Aladeen seems awfully predictable by Baron Cohen standards, the movie itself veers from one hilarious, absurd and patently offensive setup to the next... full review
12. Elena 2012 The truly terrible question asked by this quiet, haunting and magnificent film is: Dear God, isn't there some better way to live? full review
13. Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai 2012 With this sober, mournful, gorgeously mounted and marvelously acted drama, Miike connects himself to the greatest traditions of Japanese film and to the period of historical self-examination that followed the debacle of World War II. full review
14. Haywire 2012 "Haywire" is a lean, clean production, shot and edited by Soderbergh himself and utterly free of the incoherent action sequences and overcooked special effects that plague similarly scaled Hollywood pictures. full review
15. Holy Motors 2012 It's the coolest and strangest movie of the year, and once it gets its druglike hooks in your brain, you'll never get them out again. full review
16. How to Survive a Plague 2012 One of the most important documentaries in years or decades ... full review
17. I Wish 2012 "I Wish" is a wonderful adventure film that's no less thrilling for its modest scale, and a film whose emotional power and intelligence sneak up on you. full review
18. The Imposter 2012 Rarely has the con game, and the human capacity to believe in improbable outcomes, been taken to such extremes as we see in "The Imposter"... full review
19. Kill List 2012 This movie is yet another testament to the thriving creativity of the British indie-film scene. full review
20. Lay the Favorite 2012 Those of us who still venerate Frears as a pioneer of British indie cinema in the '80s pine for him to have higher goals than a ditzy true-crime romp, but maybe that's our problem rather than his. full review
21. Mansome 2012 It's more first-person journal and travelogue than it is cultural archaeology, and as such it's basically OK. full review
22. October Baby 2012 The odds that this has happened in the real world approach those of being struck by lightning and eaten by a shark at the same time. With a winning lottery ticket tucked in your swimsuit. full review
23. Oslo, August 31st 2012 It's a marvelously constructed personal journey, both wrenching and bittersweet, whose emotional ripple effects stay with you for days and weeks afterward. full review
24. Red Lights 2012 This movie boasts a few lurid, gothic shocks and culminates in a startling outburst of violence, but it's got nothing to say (beyond the repeated insistence that it's got many dark and troubling things to say). full review
25. Safe 2012 From its implacable hero and thoroughgoing cynicism to its electrified pace and fairytale conclusion, "Safe" is both a slavish imitation of cinema gone by and a movie for our time. full review
26. The Snowtown Murders 2012 An impressive but exceptionally disturbing feature debut from Australian director Justin Kurzel that pushes the new wave of Aussie crime films up a notch. full review
27. The Turin Horse 2012 Watching them is something like visiting the world's most fantastic art museum and taking an ice-cold shower, both at the same time. full review
28. Whores' Glory 2012 A daring, novelistic and unforgettable account of the real lives of female prostitutes in three very different countries and social contexts. full review
29. Abduction 2011 Sadly, it's impossible to fake the faintest enthusiasm for this picture, which is a fourth-rate Hollywood thriller that bungles a lot of thievery from better movies. full review
30. The Adventures of Tintin 2011 Although I personally still find the rubber-faced, pseudo-human figures produced by this technique unsettling, the work done by Spielberg and Jackson's animation teams here is exquisite. full review
31. Another Happy Day 2011 Levinson's movie is highly enjoyable, if cast in a conventional mold, but I'm fully going on the warpath for Barkin, who has soldiered on through a long period of post-stardom and deserves an Oscar nomination for this role, right now. full review
32. Bellflower 2011 Sometimes that works well and sometimes it works poorly, but Bellflower is a genuine breakthrough, and after its own profoundly flawed fashion, a work of genius. full review
33. Buck 2011 A haunting, beautifully told tale about a genuine American original, who survived a childhood of violent abuse to become a leading figure in new-school horse training. full review
34. Farmageddon 2011 "Farmageddon" isn't memorable cinema... full review
35. Friends With Benefits 2011 "Friends With Benefits" is often uproariously and profanely funny, and anchored in high-spirited performances from its central duo, who are well matched as comic foils if oddly lacking in erotic electricity. full review
36. Girlfriend 2011 A modest, uneven example of regional American independent film. But it has tremendous heart and integrity... full review
37. Goodbye First Love 2011 This is a rigorously crafted film steeped in the French tradition, but it's meant to be a sensual and emotional experience, not a verbal or analytical one. full review
38. Hugo 2011 I have seen the future of 3-D moviemaking, and it belongs to Martin Scorsese, unlikely as that may sound. full review
39. Mysteries of Lisbon 2011 Once you start to ride with the rapturous, gorgeous, digressive symphony of images and words and music in this film it's completely absorbing and unlike anything you've ever seen. full review
40. The Names of Love 2011 In its joyful and high-spirited fashion "The Names of Love" suggests that we must learn from the past but live for the future, and that definitely doesn't just apply to French people. full review
41. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia 2011 A subtle, gorgeous and mysterious allegory that may be Ceylan's masterwork to date. full review
42. The Other Woman 2011 "The Other Woman" feels like it's directed at an infernally narrow upper-middle-class urbanite demographic, without being even halfway distinctive enough to attract that particular audience. full review
43. Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow 2011 Shot in widescreen CinemaScope, Fiennes' film is a mesmerizing spectacle that asserts its own pace... full review
44. Revenge of the Electric Car 2011 Fascinating and highly entertaining... full review
45. Septien 2011 There's an unkillable something at the heart of "Septien," an artistic ambition that's not calculated or cynical, that feels homegrown American but is thoroughly resistant to totalitarian spectacle and the manufactured tides of mass opinion. full review
46. Transformers: Dark of the Moon 2011 It's a momentous achievement and it will make untold amounts of money and you should see it even though it's hateful and empty and preaches the worst kind of reactionary violence without even really meaning it. full review
47. Trishna 2011 This is one of the best and bravest of recent adaptations of classic literature; if you're even a little bit intrigued, ignore what others say and don't let it pass you by. full review
48. The Ward 2011 Feels an awful lot like a low-budget knockoff of Zack Snyder's "Sucker Punch." full review
49. Centurion 2010 It offers riveting storytelling, gorgeous cinematography and scenery, loads of gore, and a politically complicated history lesson. full review
50. Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer 2010 As irresistible as the Ashley and Angelina material may be, that stuff is really the icing on Gibney's cake, which is an elegantly told New York fable about a smart, arrogant guy who made a whole lot of the wrong kinds of enemies. full review
51. The Company Men 2010 As ham-fisted as Wells' dialogue is through much of "The Company Men," the phenomenon he describes is real. full review
52. The Extra Man 2010 It's relentlessly unwacky and even quietly subversive. full review
53. Ip Man 2010 Wilson Yip has crafted a gripping, rousing, beautifully structured yarn, built around a calm but charismatic star performance by Donnie Yen and magnificent action sequences choreographed by the legendary Sammo Hung. full review
54. Monsters 2010 I want to convince you to see it but I don't want to hype it so much that the surprise is ruined. full review
55. Night Catches Us 2010 Hamilton will no doubt make more polished movies, but this one has unusual atmosphere and emotional depth, and tackles subject matter no mainstream American film would touch without Hazmat equipment. full review
56. Restrepo 2010 A riveting, you-are-there, deployment to a godforsaken place where United States troops are pinned down by enemy fire almost every day... full review
57. The Romantics 2010 A middling little movie that tries to trespass on Bergman-Renoir territory and simply isn't adroit enough to pull it off... full review
58. The Switch 2010 Taken on its own terms, it's a light, sweet, curiously enjoyable misfit romance, whose real star is not Aniston but her magnificently awkward Lothario, Jason Bateman. full review
59. Tiny Furniture 2010 This is a quirky little comedy, not a film that will change your view of reality or anything, but it's funny, wrenching and sharply observed, with a dispassion that suggests a real artist is at work. full review
60. True Grit 2010 Some people are expressing amazement that Joel and Ethan Coen would set out to make a classic western in the first place, and then that they'd accomplish it. All I can say is that those folks haven't been paying attention. full review
61. Beeswax 2009 This warm, graceful and fundamentally optimistic movie snuck up on me, in the best possible way. full review
62. Breaking Upwards 2009 While Alex Bergman's photography is often impressive, Wein's editing has the short attention span of a Hollywood movie, without the accompanying cocaine rush. full review
63. Down Terrace 2009 Its litany of outrageous abuses and horrible crimes, as it careens from delicately phrased dinner-table insults to old ladies murdered in the street, is often gaspingly, ridiculously funny. full review
64. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest 2009 A rousing, grueling, almost operatically scaled finale to the series. full review
65. Hunger 2009 A mesmerizing 96 minutes of cinema, one of the truly extraordinary filmmaking debuts of recent years. full review
66. The Time That Remains 2009 Both a musical construction and a work more concerned with form, light, sound and music than with what its characters say or do. full review
67. Valhalla Rising 2009 Lots of movies about the Middle Ages can do the mud and blood -- though we sure see a lot of both here -- but in this movie it's like Refn has ripped you out of time and dropped you there. full review
68. When You're Strange 2009 When You're Strange offers a mesmerizing, behind-the-music glimpse at a crucial and bizarre moment in rock history, and maybe in American cultural history, period. full review
69. White Material 2009 It's a disorientingly beautiful movie at times, which promises -- as Denis always does, I think -- that human madness and human love will balance each other out, in the fullness of time. full review
70. Afterschool 2008 It's both a supremely controlled exercise in form and tone and an intriguing exploration of the ways new technology intersects with age-old questions of dominance, control and individuality, particularly in the school setting. full review
71. At the Edge of the World 2008 The summer season's most surprising and thought-provoking documentary. full review
72. Beautiful Losers 2008 [An] alternately winsome and irritating documentary about the art scene that grew out of the Alleged Gallery on Manhattan's Lower East Side in the 1990s. full review
73. The Business of Being Born 2008 No one, male or female, pregnant or childless, who sees The Business of Being Born will ever see the hospital maternity ward as a normal environment again. full review
74. Deadgirl 2008 Much of the allegorical force Harel and Sarmiento's film has built up is undone by its utterly conventional, lameass-switcheroo ending, which may be an indication that more than enough virtual ink has been spilled on this subject. full review
75. Elegy 2008 It's beautiful, but nobody involved was ever sure what the movie was actually about, or why they were making it. full review
76. Examined Life 2008 Taylor introduces a degree of playfulness and unpredictability that becomes the movie's M.O. full review
77. Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 2008 A ripping good yarn, like a Fitzgerald short story rewritten by John Updike, with an uproarious, impossible Hollywood ending. full review
78. Let the Right One In 2008 A terrific Halloween surprise. full review
79. Nerdcore Rising 2008 Hilarious and delightful. full review
80. Religulous 2008 [Maher's] scattershot and ad hominem attacks against many different forms of religious hypocrisy don't add up to a coherent critique, and he's not qualified to provide one. full review
81. Unmistaken Child 2008 Unmistaken Child stands above most others in offering us an intimate look at Tibetan Buddhism in action, with no external commentary or narration. full review
82. American Zombie 2007 The mere fact that [director Grace] Lee can make both a media satire and, in the end, a creepy horror flick, while at least alluding to bigger social issues, suggests the breadth of her wit and intelligence. full review
83. Before the Rains 2007 So pretty and so utterly lifeless you can almost smell the embalming fluid coming off the screen. full review
84. Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe 2007 Black White & Gray raises provocative questions but can't answer them, or even frame them with total clarity. full review
85. Chop Shop 2007 It's a near-masterwork of low-budget precision and improvisation, constructed and rehearsed over many months in collaboration with the actors and the entire Willets Point community. full review
86. Chris & Don: A Love Story 2007 [A] much-celebrated documentary from the festival circuit. full review
87. Civic Duty 2007 It's a gloomy, intense and effective little picture, without being the least bit original. full review
88. Confessions of a Superhero 2007 In its own inimitably strange way, Confessions of a Superhero is an inspirational tale. full review
89. Descent 2007 It's a lot like a '70s exploitation movie, with its determination to seduce and shock the viewer with alternating currents of electrical stimulus, and its weird combination of arty arch-decadence and neo-Victorian moralizing. full review
90. The Devil Came on Horseback 2007 But The Devil Came on Horseback has galvanized audiences at film festivals around the world precisely because it presents, in its calm, measured fashion and without much ceremony, pictures that nobody really wants to see. full review
91. King Corn 2007 A deceptively intelligent new entry in the regular-Joe documentary genre. full review
92. Liberty Kid 2007 Another good, no-budget work from New York indie kingpin Larry Fessenden and his production company, Glass Eye Pix. full review
93. Munyurangabo 2007 It's raw and rough, but beautifully photographed and classically constructed, with an undercurrent of awful tension and a lyrical sensibility. full review
94. Never Forever 2007 What holds together the pulp of this torn-between-two-lovers fantasy is a restrained and elegant cinematic aesthetic. full review
95. The Order of Myths 2007 On both sides of the Mobile Mardi Gras divide, people seem to be edging toward a desire for reconciliation, but there remain significant differences about what that might entail. full review
96. Outsourced 2007 I guess Outsourced is simply too bright and pleasant to become a huge hit, but it's a confident little genre film with near-classic charm. full review
97. The Rape of Europa 2007 All in all, an exciting and terrifying new perspective on an era you probably thought you understood. full review
98. Steal a Pencil for Me 2007 Michele Ohayon's Steal a Pencil for Me offers a simple human story of dignity, levity and romance -- both unlikely qualities in the chaos and terror of Nazi-era Europe -- and exerts its own special charm. full review
99. Copying Beethoven, (Klang der Stille) 2006 So many of the films I see lack any obvious passion, or sense of theatrical flair, and whatever its flaws, Copying Beethoven does not stint on those. full review
100. Lady Chatterley 2006 It's a profoundly thought-out picture about a love affair that blooms organically and spontaneously. full review
101. Maxed Out 2006 Given that James D. Scurlock's documentary Maxed Out is a resolutely uncinematic progression of talking heads -- and they're talking about a subject most of us would rather not even think about -- it's a remarkably entertaining film. full review
102. Saint of 9/11 2006 Tears and emotions flow freely through the film, which successfully captures a little of the original horror and raw, unpoliticized emotion of that beautiful late summer day. full review
103. Sherrybaby 2006 The wonder of Sherrybaby is that we can admire Sherry's exuberance and evident love of life -- and the extraordinary actress who portrays her -- without really being sure where she's going. full review
104. This Is England 2006 It's one of the simplest and best re-creations of downscale urban England during the gritty post-punk years ever put on screen, and it's both upsetting and very funny. full review
105. Unknown 2006 Once the paranoid surrealism of the opening scenes begins to fade, so does the film's inherent interest level. full review
106. The Wind That Shakes the Barley 2006 This is a classic example of [director Ken] Loach's work with his longtime screenwriting partner Paul Laverty, meaning that it blends colorful scenery with meticulously rendered sociology, straightforward family drama and tendentious political debate. full review
107. Brick 2005 full review
108. Color Me Kubrick 2005 A mean-spirited, trashy and intermittently funny film. full review
109. Into Great Silence 2005 A rapturous, absorbing experience -- it has no voice-over, no back story or history, no archival footage and no talking heads -- but only if you can surrender yourself to it. full review
110. The Longest Yard 2005 People will go see The Longest Yard for all sorts of reasons -- its lively humor, the current of violence that's just under the surface, its message of underdog racial reconciliation, or the fact that there's no actual football to watch on TV. full review
111. Old Joy 2005 Old Joy (adapted by writer Jonathan Raymond from his own short story) is only 76 minutes long, but it has the contemplative power of Buddhist meditation. full review
112. Sweet Land 2005 If its drama of German and Norwegian newcomers on the plains of southern Minnesota is modest enough, it's also clearly a labor of love. full review
113. Inside Deep Throat 2004 To me, at least, Inside Deep Throat felt drearily long (it's only about 90 minutes), and anyone who survived the anti-porn crusades of the '80s or the 'sex positive' porn of the '90s will find the arguments on all sides depressingly familiar. full review
114. Darkness Falls 2003 As far as semi-abandoned midwinter Hollywood compost goes, though, Darkness Falls basically brings home the bacon for horror fans. full review
115. Identity 2003 A wicked scorpion with a double sting in its tail. full review
116. Once Upon a Time in Mexico 2003 Make no mistake, this movie is a mess. But, wow, what a mess! full review
117. Bully 2001 If you stick with Bully through its seemingly endless repetition of themes and its hurl-inducing hand-held camerawork, it does build a crude, indefinable power. full review
118. Gossip 2000 Its charms, such as they are, are all on the surface -- beautiful faces, beautiful clothes, deluxe interiors and lots of breaking glass -- while its story makes no sense whatsoever. full review
119. The Original Kings of Comedy 2000 Seeing the film in a crowded theater is a lot more fun than watching it on TV would be, and the crappy, grainy look does create a sort of you-are-there immediacy. full review
120. Scream 3 2000 Holds up the honor of the franchise nicely. full review
121. Being John Malkovich 1999 A hellacious ride. full review
122. Double Jeopardy 1999 This movie should be exhumed and executed again! full review
123. For Love of the Game 1999 OK, Sam, maybe you believed you had to sell your soul to Hollywood. But did you have to sell it this cheap? full review
124. The General's Daughter 1999 Its vision of reality seems so stylized, so fake, that I came out of it wondering whether it has the slightest idea what it's talking about. full review
125. Ride with the Devil 1999 Even if this isn't the best Civil War film ever made, it's one of the most interesting and least dogmatic. full review
126. Teaching Mrs. Tingle 1999 A wildly uneven and sloppily directed movie, full of clashing tones and undigested bits of superior films. full review
127. Clay Pigeons 1998 Clay Pigeons may not actually be a good movie, but it has many of the ingredients of one. full review
128. The Red Violin (Le violon rouge) 1998 full review
129. As Good As It Gets 1997 An almost-convincing imaginary universe. full review
130. Good Will Hunting 1997 Almost any viewer will enjoy Good Will Hunting moment by moment, but many will wake the next morning wondering why, with all that talent on hand, it amounts to so little in the end. full review
131. Red Corner 1997 full review