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J. Hoberman, Village Voice

1. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 2011 Black nationalism lives and breathes in this remarkably fresh documentary assembled by Goran Hugo Olsson. full review
2. House of Pleasures 2011 Glamorously louche. full review
3. Magic Trip 2011 Gibney and Ellwood have a sense of historical evanescence and inevitability. full review
4. Mysteries of Lisbon 2011 Say what you will about 19th-century literature -- they had stories in those days (and stories within stories). full review
5. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia 2011 157-minute police procedural at once sensuous and cerebral, profane and metaphysical, "empty" and abundant, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is closer to the Antonioni of L'Avventura, and it elevates the 52-year-old director to a new level of achievement. full review
6. Tales from the Golden Age 2011 Bracketed by the Ceausescu anthem, the movie recalls a social disaster in painstaking detail and with a measure of ambivalent love. full review
7. City of Life and Death 2010 Lu's distinction lies in the cinematic virtuosity he brings to orchestrating carnage, the calculated attention he pays to human interest, and the globalist, universalizing attitude inherent in both. full review
8. Cold Weather 2010 Not a riff on mystery stories so much as it is a riff, pure and simple, on the mystery of stories. full review
9. Howl 2010 Splendid as Franco's literal characterization and overheated line readings can be, art director Eric Drooker's literal-minded animated interpretation of "Howl" are as sodden as a cold latke -- as well as a distraction. full review
10. If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle 2010 It's a measure of the movie's success that one oscillates between two despairs -- noting the abject failure of the system and the utter futility of revolt. full review
11. The Woodmans 2010 A haunting study in family dynamics. full review
12. Beeswax 2009 Bujalski has always been good at making closeness feel exotic, and awkwardness seem natural. full review
13. Hunger 2009 I've seen Hunger three times, and with each screening, the spectacle of violence, suffering, and pain becomes more awful and more awe-inspiring. full review
14. Inspector Bellamy 2009 It's an ostensive crime film at once symmetrical, surprising, and knowingly cinephilic. full review
15. Last Train Home 2009 Last Train Home is an intimate portrait of an unfathomable immensity, focusing on a single family caught up in the world's largest mass migration. full review
16. When You're Strange 2009 For a couple of years, Morrison was the best act in American show business. And the best thing about it: It wasn't an act. full review
17. White Material 2009 [Claire Denis's] tense, convulsive White Material is a portrait of change and a thing of terrible beauty. full review
18. Afterschool 2008 Afterschool, the almost frighteningly accomplished first feature made by Antonio Campos when he was 24, is high school as horror show. full review
19. Examined Life 2008 The viewer basks in the intelligence on-screen and, occasionally, soaks up the rays. full review
20. Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 2008 Rafferty's no-frills annotated replay is the best football movie I've ever seen: A particular day in history becomes a moment out of time. full review
21. Momma's Man 2008 Much comic pathos arises from the realization that Mikey has no perspective on his parents. They are as mysterious in their idiosyncrasies as anyone's. full review
22. Religulous 2008 Religulous doesn't really go anywhere. It's ultimately a celebration of the old-time religion we call entertainment. full review
23. Unmistaken Child 2008 The movie is a drama of faith, a Tibetan monk's search for the reincarnation of his beloved master Lama Konchog. full review
24. The Yes Men Fix the World 2008 The anti-globalist performance guys who call themselves the Yes Men are masters of forging corporate rhetoric and media protocols. full review
25. Boarding Gate 2007 There's basically only one reason to see Olivier Assayas's self-consciously hypermodern, meta-sleazy, English-French-Chinese-language globo-thriller Boarding Gate, and her name is Asia Argento. full review
26. Encounters at the End of the World 2007 Perhaps because Herzog is approaching old-master status, Encounters at the End of the World skews toward the observational. full review
27. Sangre De Mi Sangre 2007 The result is contrived, but compelling -- as is the movie's high-powered humanism. full review
28. Heading South 2006 An intelligent movie, not so much salacious as affecting but ultimately less analytical than overwrought... full review
29. The Treatment 2006 Short, sweet, and hardly ever cloying, The Treatment is largely dependent for its success on the quality of its performances. full review
30. Anger Management 2003 The free-associational lurch of the enigmatic Nicholson 12-step program is set to a familiar backbeat of juvenile gross-out and homosexual panic; what's truly illogical is the blithe conflation of anger management and assertiveness training. full review
31. CSA: Confederate States of America 2003 Willmott, who has written numerous documentaries and is a professor of film studies at the University of Kansas, maps an initially plausible trajectory. full review
32. Hollywood Homicide 2003 The surplus of character humor seems all the more desperate in view of the essentially humorless stars. full review
33. The Hebrew Hammer 2002 The result is explicit, if less than hilarious. full review
34. The Rules of Attraction 2002 Avary's crisp adaptation imbues the copious bad sex and general befuddlement of Bret Easton Ellis's solemn, echt '80s Bennington novel with a playfully obnoxious energy that is often funny and ... almost fun. full review
35. Secret Things 2002 Brisseau effortlessly stages the sort of ooh-la-la orgy that so clearly eluded Stanley Kubrick in Eyes Wide Shut. full review
36. Sex Is Comedy 2002 The director is an irrepressible fount of complaints, theories, and lofty pronouncements. full review
37. The Trials of Henry Kissinger 2002 We still live under the Kissinger doctrine that, as one British observer puts it, 'international law applies to everyone except Americans.' full review
38. America's Sweethearts 2001 A lackluster screwball comedy and dubious Julia Roberts vehicle. full review
39. Merci Pour le Chocolat 2000 A light confection with a tasty Isabelle Huppert performance at its center. full review
40. Mission: Impossible 2 2000 A vaguely absurd epidemiological thriller filled with elaborately superfluous setups and shamelessly stale James Bond riffs. full review
41. Shaft 2000 full review
42. For Love of the Game 1999 For Love of the Gameis designed to put a baseball-sized lump in your throat. Well before that, however, you may feel like putting a lump on Kevin Costner's head. full review
43. Man on the Moon 1999 The filmmakers don't even attempt to give Kaufman an inner life. full review
44. Ride with the Devil 1999 Given the flat performances and Schamus's overexplanatory script, Ride With the Devil has the feel of undergraduate costume drama. full review
45. Topsy-Turvy 1999 The year's least likely, most infectious tour de force. full review
46. Another Day In Paradise 1998 Slackly directed and badly acted. full review
47. Godzilla 1998 full review
48. Psycho 1998 The movie lacks the chutzpah to even be a travesty. full review
49. Velvet Goldmine 1998 full review
50. Very Bad Things 1998 The gross-out humor lacks edge, the guilt never kicks in, and the outrages are predictable. It's one flat brewski. full review
51. As Tears Go By 1988 Ostensibly a conventional tale of triad loyalty, As Tears Go By announced the presence of a genuine Hong Kong new wave -- as well as an ambitious cineaste. full review
52. Manhattan 1979 Manhattan is not just Woody Allen's dream movie. Wistful as it is witty, it's his dream of the movies. full review
53. The Panic in Needle Park 1971 full review
54. Sometimes a Great Notion (Never Give an Inch) 1971 A New Hollywood movie suffused in Old Hollywood values. full review
55. 8 1/2 1963 The ensuing decades have brought forth a deluge of bogus masterpieces, and Fellini's, by comparison, holds up rather well. full review
56. Gojira 1954 As crass as it is visionary, Godzilla belongs with -- and might well trump -- the art films Hiroshima Mon Amour and Dr. Strangelove as a daring attempt to fashion a terrible poetry from the mind-melting horror of atomic warfare. full review