instantwatcher.com

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail

1. 388 Arletta Avenue 2012 388 Arletta Avenue manages to use the terrorized-couple genre to provide a timely commentary on supposedly safe homes and distant wars. full review
2. 5 Broken Cameras 2012 Both a moving first-person essay and an artful exercise in political advocacy, 5 Broken Cameras is about the experience of West Bank protests from the inside. full review
3. All Together 2012 As middling comedies go, the French approach has certain virtues. If good wine and long talks with friends can't prevent the inevitable, at least they make the waiting more tolerable. full review
4. Alps 2012 Lanthimos' film, with its emphasis on death deferred, holds the chilly fascination of a gaping skull. full review
5. Bestiaire 2012 The question the camera seems to ask is: What are animals to us and what are we to them? full review
6. The Cabin in the Woods 2012 Cabin is a meta-horror-comedy mash-up that, at least for two-thirds of its running time, holds together smartly. full review
7. China Heavyweight 2012 Chang nurses a compelling drama from a multilayered cultural reality, at once intimate and unfathomably large in implications. full review
8. Citizen Gangster 2012 Inspired by Boyd's story, rather than literally retelling it, the movie is less a gangster film than an existential allegory of choices and limitations. full review
9. Friends With Kids 2012 Whom is this movie for, really? It's too tame for the whooping crowds of women who made hits of the Sex and the City movies and Bridesmaids. And for sure it isn't for parents with kids. full review
10. The Grey 2012 The film sustains some suspense and brooding atmosphere for its first half, but eventually the cliches of character and dialogue drag it struggling to ground. full review
11. Haywire 2012 Hand it to a wily indie veteran like Soderbergh to find a fresh twist to an old genre: The fighting isn't faked, but the acting is. full review
12. Headhunters 2012 Headhunters is slick and spritely, a mixture of corporate skullduggery and low-life slapstick that plays like The Firm meets Blood Simple. full review
13. Jiro Dreams of Sushi 2012 A profile of a celebrity chef, a quick cultural immersion and many mouth-watering montages of food preparation in one package. full review
14. Keyhole 2012 Like Maddin's melancholic and relatively more conventional My Winnipeg, Keyhole is about a memory house, but one that is even more fragmented, mythical and elusive. full review
15. Nobody Walks 2012 Has the fragranced whiff of a missed opportunity. full review
16. One for the Money 2012 One for the Money is tepidly glib throughout. Even violent murders are followed by wisecracks or another prurient opportunity to ogle Heigl's behind and cleavage. full review
17. Pink Ribbons, Inc. 2012 Pool's documentary provides some cold clarity on a well-advertised if misunderstood disease. full review
18. The Raven 2012 The pervasive gore overpowers the few clumsy attempts at wit here... full review
19. A Royal Affair 2012 For all its incident, A Royal Affair is slow and picturesquely framed - more of a languorously animated coffee-table book than a gripping drama. full review
20. Take This Waltz 2012 The premise is undermined by casual pacing and a protagonist who seems not 28, but 18, or younger. full review
21. Abduction 2011 Whether the fault was haste or cynicism, Abduction feels like a movie designed to ride on the back of Twilight's phenomenal success, with held noses and paycheques all around. full review
22. Conan O'Brien Can't Stop 2011 While a lot of geography is covered, as a concert film, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop is decidedly thin entertainment. full review
23. Coriolanus 2011 It's a film of vigorous performances and provocative modern resonances, though it sometimes struggles to grapple with a grim, politically ambiguous, 400-year-old play. full review
24. The Flowers of War 2011 An unsettling mixture of spectacular brutality and sentimentality that might make even Steven Spielberg blush. full review
25. Gerhard Richter Painting 2011 A documentary about the 80-year-old German artist putting paint on canvas that offers a look at the mighty mountain of creative achievement. full review
26. Hobo With a Shotgun 2011 If, on the other hand, you appreciate a droll and savvy satire of the melodramatic excesses of seventies vigilante thrillers from a filmmaker who clearly knows his stuff, then get in the ticket line. full review
27. Hugo 2011 Scorsese's film is a richly illustrated lesson in cinema history and the best argument for 3-D since James Cameron's Avatar. full review
28. Keep the Lights On 2011 A heart-breaking love story and call for emotional transparency in relationships. full review
29. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia 2011 A gorgeously shot crime story with emotionally layered characters and an indelible atmosphere of unease. full review
30. Rango 2011 With his first animated feature, Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski shows ambitions considerably beyond producing the usual standard of most children's fare. To put it plainly, Rango is one weird movie. full review
31. Tales from the Golden Age 2011 Though much lighter than the country's art-house fare of the past few years, the collection serves as a sampler of the much-heralded Romanian cinema. full review
32. True Legend 2011 Somewhere between masterful and messy, Yuen Woo-ping offers lots of kinetic kicks, but his CGI work deserves a kick in the pants. full review
33. Undefeated 2011 This film is distinctly minor league. But it does provide the thumbs-up emotional lift of a bumper-sticker message on game day. full review
34. Young Adult 2011 A low-key, indie-style comedy that plays precariously close to an unfunny sociopathic case study. full review
35. Bill Cunningham New York 2010 Bill Cunningham New York is as winning as its subject, the affable chronicler of New York style from the sidewalk to the runway. full review
36. Cherry Tree Lane 2010 full review
37. The Conspirator 2010 Once the ideological cat is out of the bag, the drama is degraded to the level of a historical pageant. full review
38. Fubar: Balls to the Wall 2010 Though the energy flags a little in the film's second half, overall the comedy feels nervy and original. full review
39. Heartbeats 2010 Quebec director Xavier Dolan's follow-up to his precocious art-house hit, I Killed My Mother, is a sweet and creamy, puffed-up dessert of a film. full review
40. Howl 2010 The best thing about the film Howl is the poem Howl. full review
41. I Saw the Devil 2010 After a while, the sheer length and repetitiousness of the film begins to feel pornographic in the dullest sense. full review
42. I'm Still Here 2010 No doubt what we witness is a performance for the camera, but with what motivation? Or is the hoax a hoax? full review
43. Marwencol 2010 A must-see. full review
44. Rubber 2010 More a deadpan art provocation than a real movie, Rubber is spun out like a musical theme through a series of variations. full review
45. True Grit 2010 Though handsomely made and well acted, the film never completely escapes the sense that it's an exercise in genre excavation. full review
46. The Proposal 2009 Onscreen chemistry is an elusive notion but you know it when you see it, and Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds definitely have it in The Proposal. full review
47. Amreeka 2009 A feel-good comedy about a Palestinian mother who moves to rural Illinois with her teenaged son, Amreeka is a kind of stealth political film that confronts issues of ethnic tension and American xenophobia. full review
48. The Boys Are Back 2009 On the tougher side are Allan Cubitt's script, which is good-natured but doesn't idealize any character, and the prickly honesty of Owen's performance. full review
49. Crude 2009 A legal thriller, it's a three-year investigation into the disaster environmentalists call the "Amazonian Chernobyl" that offers both sides of the story and leaves the viewer in the position of jury. full review
50. Extract 2009 Mocking an officious middle-manager is always fair game; ridiculing blue-collar workers who resent their mindless jobs just feels mean. full review
51. Hunger 2009 Hunger -- the disturbing, provocative, brilliant feature debut from British director Steve McQueen -- does for modern film what Caravaggio did to Renaissance painting. full review
52. The Limits of Control 2009 What a drag it is to descend from coolly blank to boringly meaningful. full review
53. Mary and Max 2009 The mixture of artistic sophistication and emotional crudeness cancel each other out. full review
54. A Shine of Rainbows 2009 A family film that risks drowning in its own syrup.
55. Defiance 2008 What is puzzling is how Edward Zwick has taken an extraordinary real-life story about a handful of people who defied huge odds, and turned it into an utterly conventional war movie. full review
56. Happy-Go-Lucky 2008 As refreshing as it is to find a movie that leaves you smiling, it's something much rarer to discover a film that makes you think about what a commitment to happiness really means. full review
57. I Think We're Alone Now 2008 Donnelly's film offers no insights, just a string of reality-TV moments. full review
58. I.O.U.S.A. 2008 A documentary about the U.S. addiction to debt, I.O.U.S.A. could have easily taken the title of another movie released this week, What Just Happened? full review
59. One Week 2008 full review
60. The Square 2008 There isn't a character in The Square you can care about, beyond pity for their foolishness and exasperation with their greed. full review
61. The Tale of Despereaux 2008 Like the old adage about too many cooks, The Tale of Despereaux is full of ideas, but the combination is more perturbing than satisfying. full review
62. Black Snake Moan 2007 This is one of those ludicrous, semi-offensive, semi-entertaining potboilers that feels as if the script were dragged out from someone's naughty-book stash. full review
63. Day Watch 2007 It's exhausting just trying to imagine what 46-year-old director Timur Bekmambetov would do with Hollywood money. Yet, as puffed up as it is, Day Watch is redeemed by its sardonic, Slavic take on the end of the world. full review
64. Eagle vs. Shark 2007 If you just can't get enough of watching a waif being mistreated for comic effect, by all means go see Eagle vs. Shark. full review
65. Evening 2007 Designers will drool, but the problem is that Evening should have more going for it than Architectural Digest allure. full review
66. Mr. Bean's Holiday 2007 The humour in Mr. Bean's Holiday, more chucklesome than uproarious, doesn't feel particularly contemporary. It has the kind of simplicity that's most likely to appeal to either the old or young. full review
67. Outsourced 2007 A frothy romantic comedy that makes a serious point about the arrogance of treating human beings from around the world as interchangeable economic units. full review
68. You Kill Me 2007 Given a choice between a dark film with comic elements and a comedy that purports to be edgy, the filmmakers took the easy way out. full review
69. Dreamland 2006 The gossamer spell is undone when the script topples into melodrama and then a too-tidy resolution. full review
70. Golden Door 2006 Unfolding like a gorgeous coffee-table book of photographs, Emanuele Crialese's film Golden Door is as lovely to look at as it is dramatically inert. full review
71. An Inconvenient Truth 2006 Much of this material is familiar, but presented in total, over the course of 100 minutes, the impact is frightening. full review
72. Last Holiday 2006 The pace drags, the stunt double work is obvious and the slapstick, especially a ski-hill scene, is contrived and extended. full review
73. Mission: Impossible III 2006 What summer movies aspire to -- a slick demonstration of hot buttered entertainment that will probably slide you right out of the theatre before you even stop to ask a logical question or two. full review
74. Nacho Libre 2006 Disappointment, my fellow gringos, presumes positive expectations, so perhaps it is best to report, with some sorrow but no deep surprise, that the new comedy starring Jack Black and directed by Jared Hess, is not illustrious. full review
75. Grizzly Man 2005 Compelling, disturbing documentary. full review
76. Lonesome Jim 2005 It all feels very slight. full review
77. The Lost City 2005 Unfortunately, Garcia is inept as a director. His scenes are shapeless and bloated with self-important speeches. full review
78. A Simple Curve 2005 Yes, there's craft in Nealon's writing, but it seems more suited to the riffing non-sequiturs of episodic television than the narrative arc of a film. full review
79. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days 2005 Highly personal and wrenching story. full review
80. A Good Woman 2004 ... willfully odd movie ... full review
81. Hotel Rwanda 2004 There is much to respect in Hotel Rwanda, not least Cheadle's subtly crafted performance, which allows the audience a direct connection to his ethical growth. full review
82. 21 Grams 2003 Though not depressing, because nothing this good is, the film is haunting -- a walk on the razor's edge between life and death. full review
83. Gigli 2003 Rarely has a movie that doesn't star Madonna achieved such a skin-crawling mixture of deluded preening and bungled humour. full review
84. In the Cut 2003 A muddle of thriller and art-house phantasmagoria. full review
85. The Missing 2003 A movie that is, by turns, needlessly unpleasant for cheap effect and misguidedly heart-warming when it should remain stringent. The Missing lives down to its title. full review
86. Touching the Void 2003 Nail-biting. full review
87. Bloody Sunday 2002 It's an extraordinary adrenaline-pumping immersion into historical events, and goes along way to explain the bitterness that has resounded from that day. full review
88. The Rules of Attraction 2002 An almost entirely worthless and pretentious adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's 1987 sophomore novel. full review
89. Star Trek - Nemesis 2002 Familiarity breeds content with Star Trek fans, and the 10th movie in the series does nothing to mess with the series' comfortably monotonous fantasy formula. full review
90. Along Came a Spider 2001 There are popcorn movies, and then there are movies like this one, which, by its conclusion, make you want to toss your empty popcorn bag at the screen. full review
91. Apocalypse Now Redux 2001 The movie has aged well.
92. Atlantis - The Lost Empire 2001 The movie loses sight of those old nuisances, character and story, behind a chain of spectacles. full review
93. Baran 2001 Though the pathos of this fable-like love story feels overcalculated, Majidi succeeds in playing the classical Dickensian balance, with the sentimental hook justified by the social sweep of the narrative. full review
94. Bully 2001 Neither killers nor victim are drawn from life, just from lurid teen-exploitation pictures past. full review
95. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back 2001 Not clever enough for Smith fans, not gross enough to compete on the Farrelly brothers' ground, the movie feels like a kind of self-congratulatory fake. full review
96. Rat Race 2001 Take a couple of laughs here, a couple of smirks there, and the conclusion is obvious: If ever there was a movie designed with the fast-forward button in mind, Rat Race is the one. full review
97. Session 9 2001 For a while there, the film has us going. full review
98. Tape 2001 For the most part, Tape is smart and deftly executed, with Hawke, in particular, as the resentful Vince, making a vivid impression. full review
99. Bread and Tulips 2000 As for star Licia Maglietta, the appeal of the film is nearly all in her presence. full review
100. Scary Movie 2000 There's energy and glee in the movie, as if the Wayans brothers were still little boys, desperately working to out-gross each other. Naughty little boys and girls everywhere, even those who have officially grown up, will appreciate their commitment. full review
101. Scream 3 2000 The result is the usual fragmentary mixture of jolts and jokes, knife-wielding maniacs and red herrings. full review
102. The Tigger Movie 2000 When it comes to Pooh stories, a shortage of ambition and reluctance to improve on success should be counted as assets. full review
103. South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut 1999 Rude, but inspired. full review
104. Pi 1998 Audacious and bursting with ideas. full review
105. The Rugrats Movie 1998 full review
106. The House of Yes 1997 This is a definitive Posey performance: wide-eyed, smiling and ultrafeminine, but plastic and cold as a store mannequin. full review
107. Scream 1996 Turns slasher flicks into slapstick. full review
108. Trainspotting 1996 THE experience of watching Trainspotting -- the electric, nasty and slick descent into the milieu of young Scottish junkies -- is a little like speeding through the digestive tract of some voracious beast. full review
109. Vampire in Brooklyn 1995 Neither as good as it might be nor as bad as you might expect. full review
110. Swimming with Sharks 1994 This excessively talky, incoherently plotted, would-be film noir is not very good. full review
111. True Grit 1969 full review