instantwatcher.com

David Edelstein, Slate

1. Aeon Flux 2005 Folks, I'll never understand studios. Aeon Flux is not that terrible. It's certainly more fun than a lot of films that get lovingly showcased. full review
2. Broken Flowers 2005 Broken Flowers is Jarmusch's most conventionally entertaining film, but it's still visually rigorous, swimming in pregnant silences, and un-filled-in in a way that's tantalizing. full review
3. Grizzly Man 2005 Amazing documentary. full review
4. The Longest Yard 2005 What was already a raucous put-on, a goof on Aldrich's brutal action movies, is now a hyperbolic, gross-out cartoon, with a cast of enormous ex-football stars only adding to the air of facetiousness. full review
5. The Producers 2005 The stage performances haven't been scaled down: Everything is pitched to the second balcony. And Mel Brooks' material -- especially the retro queeny stereotypes -- is excruciatingly dated. full review
6. Serenity 2005 I mean Serenity no disrespect when I say it's enjoyably junky. full review
7. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind 2004 This is the best movie I've seen in a decade. For once it's no hyperbole to say, 'Unforgettable!' full review
8. Vanity Fair 2004 We're left with an increasingly weak-willed protagonist and a narrative with no driving force -- no motor. full review
9. 21 Grams 2003 Is the strategy to make you work so hard to determine where you are in the timeline that you overlook what a dreary and conventional little soap opera this is? full review
10. Anger Management 2003 Strenuous, spottily amusing. full review
11. Gigli 2003 The movie is bafflingly boring and ridiculous. full review
12. The Good Thief 2003 This is a movie for which you want to give an award to the casting director, Susie Figgis. full review
13. Hollywood Homicide 2003 It's a great piece of mindful escapism. full review
14. The Hunted 2003 full review
15. S.W.A.T. 2003 The director, a TV guy named Clark Johnson, doesn't shoot action very well, which is sort of a handicap. full review
16. Something's Gotta Give 2003 The movie itself reveals nothing, but it's entertaining. full review
17. Swimming Pool 2003 Swimming Pool seduces and annoys. full review
18. Tears of the Sun 2003 full review
19. Irreversible 2002 There is nothing moral about Irreversible -- only sneeringly superior and nihilistic, like Johnny Rotten at his most fatuous. full review
20. Lost in La Mancha 2002 A fascinating glimpse at the fragile ecosystem of a movie shoot, but I'm bound to say that I don't share its view of Gilliam. full review
21. Star Trek - Nemesis 2002 This tenth feature is a big deal, indeed -- at least the third-best, and maybe even a notch above the previous runner-up, Nicholas Meyer's Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. full review
22. We Were Soldiers 2002 Makes you cry for the hundreds of thousands of men and women who died so pointlessly with Geoghegan. And their orphans. full review
23. America's Sweethearts 2001 The movie is a polished muddle, fitfully amusing but with no spine. full review
24. The Animal 2001 Next to Joe Dirt, The Animal is tolerably amusing. full review
25. Gosford Park 2001 full review
26. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back 2001 I admit to enjoying -- in a drunken, half-asleep kind of way -- parts of this ramshackle road movie with its running Miramax guest stars and its endless homo jokes. full review
27. Session 9 2001 The final illuminations ... are a poor return on nearly two hours of ear-buckling, eye-stabbing incoherence. full review
28. Sexy Beast 2001 Riotously entertaining, and with a big heart, too. full review
29. Shaolin Soccer 2001 It's the sort of movie that leaves you smiling like an idiot. full review
30. Lara Croft - Tomb Raider 2001 [Jolie's] glittering, libidinous impudence gives this packaged piece of corporate schlock a strange integrity -- perhaps even a soul. full review
31. Primary Colors 1998 It's hard for me fully to express how deeply rotten I think Primary Colors is. Adjectives like 'glib,' 'coarse,' and 'sour' don't fully do it. full review
32. Cop Land 1997 Cop Land shares its leading man's slow-wittedness, but also his likability. full review
33. Jackie Brown 1997 The film is more Jarmusch than Peckinpah -- its soul is in the minutiae. full review
34. Gojira 1954 The most emotionally authentic fake monster movie ever made. full review