instantwatcher.com

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader

1. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry 2012 Ai admits that he's become "a brand for liberal thinking and individualism," though that's nothing to be ashamed of -- at this point, his Warholian talent for self-promotion may be the only thing keeping him alive. full review
2. Alps 2012 The movie contains some of the same elements that made [Dogtooth] so startling but they tend to float around rather than coalesce into a singular perspective. full review
3. The Ambassador 2012 [Brugger] returns with a jaw-dropping expose of postcolonial corruption; he's lucky he returned with his head. full review
4. The Beat Hotel 2012 Never amounts to more than a flabby piece of counterculture nostalgia. full review
5. Bernie 2012 Some of the best performances come from real-life residents of Carthage as they share their recollections on camera. full review
6. Bully 2012 Hirsch seldom gets face time with any bullies or their parents, and he tends to ignore the complicated social and psychological patterns that feed the problem. full review
7. The Cabin in the Woods 2012 The climactic one-two punch of special-effects chaos and meta-movie chin stroking should have the fanboys trembling with delight. full review
8. Compliance 2012 Like a John Hughes movie hijacked by Roman Polanski, this troubling indie effort lays bare the sadomasochism of the American workplace. full review
9. Cosmopolis 2012 The story seems to cleave into cerebral disquisition and primal sex. full review
10. The Deep Blue Sea 2012 In scene after scene, painful pauses in conversation seem to amplify the incessant ticking of the clock in the room, a subtle reminder that time rolls onward and our brief lives are not to be frittered away. full review
11. Detropia 2012 The movie is heavy on statistics (all of them grim), yet what lingers is an operatic sense of tragedy. full review
12. Elena 2012 A quiet, subtle mystery whose long, penetrating takes have drawn comparisons to Andrei Tarkovsky and whose mordantly ironic conclusion may remind you of Claude Chabrol. full review
13. Elles 2012 Writer-director Malgorzata Szumowska breaks past the facile moralizing only once. full review
14. For Ellen 2012 his quiet indie drama distinguishes itself most when writer-director So Yong Kim gets the rocker alone with his daughter for a brief visit that will probably be their last. full review
15. God Bless America 2012 [It] turns in on its own morality like a Mobius strip, endorsing kindness by practicing slaughter, and pulls us along for the ride. full review
16. Haywire 2012 There's a good deal of pleasure to be had in the clockwork precision of her hand-to-hand combat, which Soderbergh often shoots in profile to showcase her wall-climbing backflips. full review
17. Head Games 2012 Director Steve James centers this documentary on Nowinski, but there are affecting profiles of various NFL and NHL veterans who are living with the damage -- or may have died from it. full review
18. How to Survive a Plague 2012 France, drawing on a wealth of video footage from inside the organization, turns that decade of rage, despair, and tenacity into an inspiring tale of effective political action. full review
19. The Imposter 2012 You may begin to wonder if you aren't being conned by the movie yourself. full review
20. The Innkeepers 2012 The place offers West plenty of odd, creaky spaces to inspect as the innkeepers' project of capturing ghostly events on video (a joking reference to the Paranormal Activity franchise) begins to bear fruit. full review
21. Keyhole 2012 Funny enough to be disarming even when it's spinning its wheels thematically. full review
22. The Loneliest Planet 2012 I can't deny that her scheme is dramatically effective, though I left the movie more conscious of the scheme than the drama. full review
23. Mirror Mirror 2012 Singh is much more skilled as a visual artist than a storyteller, and his artistic fortunes seem to rise and fall with the inspiration of his screenwriters. In this case he's lucked out. full review
24. Monsieur Lazhar 2012 A standard liberal tale about an inspirational teacher gradually deepens into a quiet study of how grief works its way through a community. full review
25. Oslo, August 31st 2012 The movie transpires mostly in quiet, engrossing dialogue scenes, and its austere style shares a good deal in common with the protagonist, who seems both opaque and completely exposed. full review
26. The Paperboy 2012 The movie curls back and forth as sinuously as a snake through the bayou, tracing the fine line between desire and degradation. full review
27. ParaNorman 2012 This swell stop-motion animation operates on a wavelength similar to that of Laika's debut feature, Coraline, with assured character comedy counterbalanced by a solemn sense of macabre wonder. full review
28. The Raven 2012 Edgar Allan Poe invented the detective story, so turning him into the heroic sleuth of a mystery thriller makes perfect sense. full review
29. Sleepless Night 2012 The story is loaded with implausibilities, but it moves so quickly you won't have long to dwell on them, and there are a number of neatly executed reversals. full review
30. Sleepwalk With Me 2012 This sharp romantic comedy began as a one-man show, and you can tell: the hero's voice-over narration wraps around the entire movie, and the scenes are mainly verbal. full review
31. Take This Waltz 2012 Unfortunately for Polley, Take This Waltz is a good film serving mainly to remind us that Away From Her is a great one. full review
32. Tales of the Night 2012 The movie never comes close to replicating the spell that Reiniger was able to cast using much more primitive techniques, which underlines a chronic problem of computer animation: its very precision squeezes all the magic from the magic lantern. full review
33. Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie 2012 The laughs dry up even as the gross-out material grows more, uh, fluid. full review
34. What to Expect When You're Expecting 2012 Technically the genre isn't beneath contempt. But this movie is. full review
35. Albert Nobbs 2011 Rodrigo Garcia [is] known for his female ensemble dramas but demonstrates no particular affinity for this material. full review
36. The Artist 2011 This effort often manages to duplicate the magical pantomime of the era; a lovely scene in which Bejo drapes herself in the arms of a hung jacket as if it were a human lover could have come straight out of a Marion Davies picture. full review
37. Conan O'Brien Can't Stop 2011 Everyone laughs at the boss's jokes, which are incessant to the point of irritation, but actual levity is in short supply. full review
38. Coriolanus 2011 Visually and dramatically it works well-it's Shakespeare by way of Black Hawk Down-but as an allegory of modern-day geopolitics it doesn't really go anywhere. full review
39. A Good Old Fashioned Orgy 2011 By accident or design, the resolution here is morally ambiguous and vaguely distasteful, which may be the reason I liked it. full review
40. Hugo 2011 Scorsese transforms this innocent tale into an ardent love letter to the cinema and a moving plea for film preservation. full review
41. Into The Abyss 2011 The title of this Werner Herzog documentary may suggest another expedition to the ends of the earth, but what concerns him here is the moral abyss of capital punishment and the metaphysical abyss of death itself. full review
42. Keep the Lights On 2011 A complex and mysterious tale of a love affair, one that lacks the tidy story arc of a movie but feels real. full review
43. Like Crazy 2011 This indie drama starts off as a sexy little date movie, but once the lovers have been separated it grows steadily more complicated and mature. full review
44. Machine Gun Preacher 2011 There's more machine gunning than preaching, but what did you expect? full review
45. Margin Call 2011 The real strength of '[Chandor's] debut feature is how persuasively it depicts the fishbowl world of high finance, whose executives seem incapable of seeing past their towering salaries and privileged lives. full review
46. The Names of Love 2011 The movie never really decides what it's about, and its odd-couple romance is stale and unpersuasive. full review
47. Page One: Inside the New York Times 2011 As an avid media watcher, I didn't come away from this with any new insights, but the movie is a pretty good snapshot of the daily newspaper business in transition and turmoil. full review
48. Revenge of the Electric Car 2011 Once a muckraker, Paine now acts mostly as a cheerleader, and his slick new movie trades heavily in the sort of flattering CEO profiles that grace the covers of business magazines. full review
49. Surviving Progress 2011 Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks, adapting a book by Ronald Wright, argue so persuasively that the human race is spinning out of control. full review
50. Trishna 2011 The new setting revivifies the harsh forces of class and gender at work in the story. full review
51. Undefeated 2011 Courtney really does believe all that stuff about adversity and character, and the film is moving for its modest tale of boys learning to act like men. full review
52. You've Been Trumped 2011 If you still have any questions about the personal character of Donald Trump, check out this muckraking British documentary. full review
53. All Good Things 2010 The unsolved crime turns out to be less mysterious than the mind of the killer, nervily portrayed by Gosling as not evil but unaccountably empty. full review
54. Blood Done Sign My Name 2010 Along the way there are many fine, precisely observed moments showing what race relations were like in this little tobacco town at the turn of the decade. full review
55. Blue Valentine 2010 Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling tear up the screen. full review
56. Casino Jack 2010 Kevin Spacey contributes a wonderfully flamboyant performance as Abramoff. full review
57. Casino Jack And The United States Of Money 2010 The crimes of conservative superlobbyist Jack Abramoff are already receding into the hopeless murk of congressional history, so this epic documentary by Alex Gibney is even more welcome for its reach. full review
58. The Company Men 2010 Wells may strain one's sympathy by giving his narrative over to wealthy, white-collar men, but he also acutely renders the shame and frustration of capable, hardworking people suddenly forced to reassess their earning potential and aspirations in life. full review
59. Exit Through The Gift Shop 2010 Some have suggested that the whole story, including the emergence of Mr. Brainwash, is an elaborate hoax engineered by Banksy to satirize the commodification of art. If so, it's a brilliant one. full review
60. Four Lions 2010 The comedy divides cleanly into dark, violent slapstick (much of it hilarious) and more routine gags highlighting the fanatical characters' foolishness and incompetence. full review
61. Howl 2010 The result, though clearly flawed, is passionate and ambitious, celebrating that long-gone era when a book of verse could spark a revolution in consciousness. full review
62. I Am Love 2010 The grand architecture of Milan and the icy rhythms of composer John Adams set the tone for this elegant Italian drama about the suffocating power of family, wealth, and tradition. full review
63. Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work 2010 Rivers comes across as a consummate professional but also a genuine person, ruthlessly honest about her life decisions and utterly devoid of self-pity. full review
64. The King's Speech 2010 No holiday season would be complete without a starchy British historical drama, and the Weinstein Company obliges us this year with this pleasant story the Duke of York, who had to overcome a serious stammer. full review
65. Morning Glory 2010 McAdams is typically effervescent here, but she can't rescue this weak comedy. full review
66. Nowhere Boy 2010 The events chronicled are all longstanding Beatles legends, though director Sam Taylor-Wood manages to stage even the most portentous moments without making you feel a celestial choir is in order. full review
67. Rabbit Hole 2010 John Cameron Mitchell directed, making an impressive detour in style and subject matter after his flamboyant Shortbus and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. full review
68. Restrepo 2010 It's an essential record not only of the Afghanistan conflict but of men in battle full review
69. The Tempest 2010 Primarily an exercise in eccentric (and, I would argue, empty) spectacle. full review
70. Tiny Furniture 2010 Dunham definitely has a knack for shaping a comic scene, but Aura is so culturally and financially privileged that her woes begin to seem as trivial as the miniatures her mother uses in her artwork. full review
71. True Grit 2010 This remake by Joel and Ethan Coen is being positioned as a truer True Grit, and though they take their own liberties with the plot and tone, they preserve Portis's impeccably authentic dialogue. full review
72. Beeswax 2009 Makes up in depth for what it sacrifices in breadth. full review
73. Antichrist 2009 I can't deny this is filled with powerfully primal images. full review
74. The Boys Are Back 2009 A substantial performance from Clive Owen rescues what might otherwise have been a fairly gooey fatherhood drama. full review
75. Bruno 2009 Inevitably, this follow-up to Cohen's guerrilla mockumentary hit is a substantial letdown, lacking the novelty of its predecessor. full review
76. Coffin Rock 2009 The only thing scarier than a crazy lover carrying your child is carrying the child of your crazy lover. full review
77. Crossing Over 2009 [Crossing Over] has a paint-by-numbers quality. full review
78. The Eclipse 2009 The whole thing would probably have flown apart if not for Hinds, whose character, like a dark star imploding, pulls everything toward him. full review
79. Fish Tank 2009 Unfolds as a conventional coming-of-age story, yet Andrea Arnold hasn't altered her persuasively jaundiced view of men, who seem as pitifully helpless against their horndog urges as the women foolish enough to care for them. full review
80. The Good Heart 2009 Cox has some wonderfully funny moments, but both actors are playing heavily to type-Cox the irascible bull, Dano the soulful dormouse - and there's a lot of shouting and hurling stuff into the street. full review
81. Great Directors 2009 Though her choice of interview subjects is so random and the discourse so broad that this 2009 documentary never really arrives anywhere... it delights from start to finish and then evaporates. full review
82. The House of the Devil 2009 In keeping with his models, West is concerned with not suspense exactly but the ritual withholding and ultimate lavishing of bloody chaos. full review
83. Hunger 2009 Midway through the movie there's an epic 24-minute scene...in the claustrophobic cell block the protesters have already internalized their cause so deeply that the world of words seems distant and inconsequential. full review
84. The Joneses 2009 The premise of this social satire is so enjoyable you keep trying to believe it even though it makes no sense full review
85. The Limits of Control 2009 The movie's main pleasure lies in the early scenes, which mix the filmmaker's familiar deadpan humor with an Antonioni-like sense of arid emptiness and conundrum. full review
86. Ondine 2009 The characters' needs are so simple they're almost mysterious, and the story traces an elusive line between fond fantasy and harsh reality. full review
87. The Perfect Game 2009 Well-meaning but thick with cliches. full review
88. The Secret of Kells 2009 This Irish feature won't impress anyone with its character drawings, but the backgrounds remind us what stunning imagery once resulted from nothing more than a pen and all the time in the world. full review
89. Soul Kitchen 2009 Akin perfectly captures the antic pace, eccentric personalities, and fickle fortunes of the restaurant game, and his vision of the Soul Kitchen as an all-night bacchanal is irresistible. full review
90. When You're Strange 2009 Never gets past the standard mythology of the band codified by Oliver Stone's 1991 biopic full review
91. White Material 2009 This haunting drama by Claire Denis burns with a mute fear and rage at the ongoing atrocities in central Africa. full review
92. American Violet 2008 This flaw in the justice system might affect anyone, but American Violet shows how easily it can be racialized in a place where hardened social attitudes combine with drugs and poverty to create a permanent black underclass. full review
93. Bulletproof Salesman 2008 Tucker and Epperlein seem pretty close to exhausting their cache of footage, though the resulting story isn't without interest. full review
94. Constantine's Sword 2008 The breadth of Carroll's scholarship and the depth of his religious understanding strengthen his assertion that our misadventure in Iraq is the beginning of a new holy war. full review
95. Diminished Capacity 2008 Sherwood Kiraly's slight script only makes this embarrassment of riches seem more embarrassing. full review
96. Disgrace 2008 The movie eventually begins to wilt under the sober, plodding direction of Steve Jacobs, but the thoughtful screenplay gives Malkovich a complex, increasingly reflective character arc that he plays with great feeling. full review
97. Examined Life 2008 There's plenty of food for thought here, though the movie is more a buffet than a meal. full review
98. Happy-Go-Lucky 2008 Leigh pushes the story in a more interesting direction, asking whether people find happiness or simply will it on themselves. full review
99. I.O.U.S.A. 2008 Forceful and lucid. full review
100. Let the Right One In 2008 The Scandinavian moodiness of the first half gives way to a series of jolting set pieces in the second. full review
101. Man on Wire 2008 In archival photos Petit seems to float between the towers, a tiny black figure against a vivid blue sky; the images are all the more poignant for the unstated fact that Petit is still around when the buildings aren't. full review
102. Momma's Man 2008 This simple but assured indie drama about the safety of childhood and the necessity of leaving it is particularly affecting because writer-director Azazel Jacobs draws so heavily on his own life. full review
103. Religulous 2008 Maher's first film project, Religulous, is a major disappointment because here, unlike on Real Time, he aims for laughs instead of insight -- and aims low. full review
104. The Square 2008 Some have called this neo-noir, but aside from the setting there's nothing "neo" about it; as in classic noir, the characters are slowly but surely ensnared by their own baser impulses. full review
105. What Just Happened? 2008 The industry gags are pretty familiar, but De Niro carries this with the sighing, shambling-bear persona that's defined him in middle age. full review
106. Before the Rains 2007 Producer Ismail Merchant died in 2005, but Merchant Ivory's stuffy tradition of quality lives on. full review
107. Chop Shop 2007 Tells the kind of New York story too often overlooked. full review
108. Chris & Don: A Love Story 2007 Surprisingly, this 2007 documentary about their 34-year relationship becomes more engrossing as its focus shifts from Isherwood to Bachardy... full review
109. Civic Duty 2007 Echoes of Rear Window abound, but any audience sympathy for the self-appointed detective is thwarted by Krause's typically sulky performance. full review
110. Eagle vs. Shark 2007 The movie's idea of funny is giving the two lovers identical moles bordering their upper lips. full review
111. Flawless 2007 Screenwriter Edward Anderson drops the South African angle in favor of more conventional developments and has a hard time bringing this across the finish line without a number of implausibilities. full review
112. Helvetica 2007 The computer revolution may have democratized graphic design, letting anyone decorate his own desktop or MySpace page, but a certain amount of conformity is necessary for society to function. full review
113. Hot Rod 2007 Samberg can't carry this, though director Akiva Schaffer supplies some hilarious, Jackass-style wipeouts. full review
114. The Hunting Party 2007 The action plot is lousy with cliched suspense scenes of back-road executions halted at the last possible instant. full review
115. Lars and the Real Girl 2007 Both hilarious and poignant, with a Capraesque humanity that caught me completely off guard. full review
116. No End in Sight 2007 Ferguson is admirably tenacious in assigning blame for the boneheaded mistakes that have doomed Iraqi reconstruction. full review
117. Sangre De Mi Sangre 2007 Christopher Zalla, a graduate of the film program at Columbia University, makes an impressive debut with this suspense feature about illegal immigrants and stolen identity. full review
118. The Signal 2007 [A] cagey low-budget horror flick. full review
119. Cashback 2006 [Director] Ellis has rounded up all the actors for this feature adaptation but doesn't add much to the 18-minute original besides a tedious boy-meets-girl. full review
120. Failure to Launch 2006 The movie's notion of humor is exemplified by Bradshaw's extended nude scene. full review
121. Golden Door 2006 The folkloric tone that seemed so pretentious in [Respiro] is powerfully effective here. full review
122. Maxed Out 2006 This muckraking documentary on America's personal-debt crisis lays bare the predatory practices of credit card companies and the Bush administration's cozy relationship with the financial services industry. full review
123. Severance 2006 For decades horny teens have been the slasher movie's victims of choice, but this darkly funny British import finds more deserving targets: the sales team of an international weapons manufacturer. full review
124. Brick 2005 There's no denying that Brick is weirdly expressive, often when it seems most artificial. What begins as the most gimmicky sort of genre retread somehow evolves into that most elusive of films: a personal statement. full review
125. Coach Carter 2005 This is supposed to be about setting high standards, yet it's full of fudged ultimatums; in the end I couldn't be sure whether its morality was complex or just confused. full review
126. Elizabethtown 2005 The hero's nuclear family and kooky rural relatives are so sketchily conceived that none of the intended comedy works, and the balance of the movie is given over to one of Crowe's sugary romances. full review
127. Factotum 2005 In cherry-picking the more filmable episodes from the novel, Hamer and Stark have constructed a sort of poor man's Barfly, with an emphasis on drunken mischief. full review
128. Into Great Silence 2005 This 2005 feature is demanding to say the least, but its pulse-slowing rhythms leave a real sense of peace. full review
129. Inside Deep Throat 2004 The free-speech agenda is so entrenched that the concept of pornography exploiting women seems to catch the directors flat-footed. full review
130. Bad Boys II 2003 This sequel is as sour and jaded as they come. full review
131. Darkness Falls 2003 It begins with not one but two prologues; one character turns up out of nowhere, his introduction no doubt left on the cutting-room floor; and the paltry 85-minute running time includes 15 minutes of end credits. full review
132. Primer 2003 Scary, puzzling, and different. full review
133. S.W.A.T. 2003 As summer shoot-'em-ups go, this is pretty well executed, with plenty of macho posing and gunfire. full review
134. The Rules of Attraction 2002 Actually I quite enjoyed the movie--but how do I get rid of this awful discharge? full review
135. Star Trek - Nemesis 2002 Reasonably entertaining if utterly familiar. full review
136. Shaolin Soccer 2001 A spirited crowd-pleaser. full review
137. Waking Up in Reno 2001 Like Pabst Blue Ribbon, which the characters drink by the case, this bubba comedy about cheating spouses is good for a cheap buzz. full review
138. Planes, Trains and Automobiles 1987 Pretty dispensable. full review