instantwatcher.com

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post

1. Bernie 2012 Bernie has chuckles, but it's hardly riotous. And this is a good thing. full review
2. Bully 2012 Bully" is smart and compassionate about the pain of its wounded subjects and the frustration felt by their parents, seemingly abandoned by the system. What the powerful film lacks is insight into bullying. full review
3. The Cabin in the Woods 2012 And you thought you were just headed for a weekend getaway. full review
4. The Forgiveness of Blood 2012 The leads -- both non-actors -- hit sharp, natural notes. full review
5. Friends With Kids 2012 Sitcom-amusing, in that middle-of-the-road way. full review
6. Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters 2012 Shapiro's film is fascinating even if it can't possibly answer all the mysteries propelling the work of a photographer whose interest in secrets was rooted in wondering what tales were being uncovered in his psychologist father's basement office. full review
7. The Hunger Games 2012 Ross moves between action and human drama with nimble awareness of the weight of the issues coursing through the story of fascism, propaganda, and, yes, adolescence under the weight of the world. full review
8. The Paperboy 2012 Yes, it's a dizzying stew set to boil. full review
9. A Royal Affair 2012 What a piece of work is this historical drama. full review
10. Silent House 2012 It's Olsen's performance that makes Sarah's plight matter. And the actress proves that her mesmerizing turn in last fall's Martha Marcy May Marlene -- about a woman on the lam from a cult -- wasn't a fluke. full review
11. The Artist 2011 A silent movie shot in sumptuous black-and-white, no less. A silent flick made with not a jot of distancing winking, but instead born of a heady affection for a bygone, very bygone, era of filmmaking. full review
12. Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey 2011 The film also provides an inspiring reminder for the young and the rest of us that there is a vital relationship between the best kind of work and passionate play. full review
13. Bellflower 2011 Bellflower is weirdly gorgeous. Its intentional post-romanticism is mirrored in evocative chapter headings and ace cinematographer Joel Hodge's images (using a camera of the director's tweaking). full review
14. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 2011 Broken into nine chapters -- one for each year -- the documentary isn't a rigorous work but a felt piece of vital, if flawed, art. full review
15. Conan O'Brien Can't Stop 2011 Meta-irony can get a guy who's still grinding an ax only so far. full review
16. Friends With Benefits 2011 Directed with quick-witted ease by Will Gluck, the [film is a] frank, frisky, even touching romantic comedy. full review
17. Gun Hill Road 2011 Gun Hill Road is shot through with performances at once intense and relaxed. full review
18. Margin Call 2011 Writer-director J.C. Chandor then plunges us into a dark night of quietly nasty reckoning as it becomes clear to the firm's honchos that the calamitous risk assessments one of their own was working on might well be true. full review
19. No Strings Attached 2011 It's not that the leads aren't affable. They are. It's not that they aren't nice to look at. They are. (Although the cinematography makes them look sort of blotchy.) It's just hard to care if they hook up after they, well, hook up. full review
20. Pina 2011 Pina is a tribute of an artist by an artist, a friend to a friend. But its great genius comes from the mournful, as well as celebratory, reckoning of the performers Bausch pushed, collaborated with and inspired. full review
21. Rango 2011 Yes, [there are] enough nods to other sources to make Rango a bobblehead. But the movie, and much of John Logan's writing, is still pretty durn clever. full review
22. Scream 4 2011 Compared with so many of the rebooted slasher flicks, Scream 4 remains a cut above. No, that is not an intended pun. full review
23. Super 8 2011 There's much to like in this story of a group of young movie-makers who stumble upon an event right out of, well, the movies. full review
24. The Swell Season 2011 For Once lovers who needed a "what happened next?" epilogue, this one moves even as it chastises. full review
25. Transformers: Dark of the Moon 2011 One can argue that summer is built for spectacle. Now if only it could be truly spectacular, too. full review
26. Trishna 2011 Trishna engages the potent collisions of the rural and the urban, the poor and the rich, and considers how these interactions unfold in a romance and how they might also destroy it. full review
27. Undefeated 2011 [A] winning documentary. full review
28. Young Adult 2011 There's little about Mavis that makes for feel-good revelry. That's an understatement, perhaps. Yet, Theron's work feels true to Mavis' malaise -- and often, just as sad. full review
29. And Everything Is Going Fine 2010 Think of the film as Gray's final monologue. full review
30. Biutiful 2010 Inarritu has a delicate yet searing sense of intimacy, which cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto captures with hand-held determination. full review
31. Blue Valentine 2010 Blue Valentine comes on like a bittersweet cautionary tale. full review
32. Casino Jack 2010 Spacey has fun doing Abramoff doing Al Pacino, President Ronald Reagan and Sylvester Stallone. But the typically strong Spacey isn't the only actor doing commanding work here. full review
33. The Company Men 2010 "The Company Men" is a worthwhile outing that takes despair - but also resilience - seriously. full review
34. The Conspirator 2010 The Conspirator is a quality drama with a capital Q. We should expect no less from Robert Redford, who takes seriously (at times, earnestly) the duties of director. full review
35. Countdown to Zero 2010 The news is ugly. The film is often gorgeous and wields a cumulative power to humanize potential devastation. full review
36. The Extra Man 2010 Dano and Kline are very fine performers. So why is this comedy such a chore? The answer appears to be whimsy overload. full review
37. Four Lions 2010 Four Lions is more interesting than riotous. Consider it an example - a well-paced, clever and understated compassionate example - of a filmmaker wrestling with fear. full review
38. I Am Love 2010 Cinematographer Yorick Le Saux's elegant images of buildings -- stony exteriors, lux interiors -- and weather-worn statuary suggest centuries-old tradition but also invite a meditative or appreciative silence. full review
39. Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work 2010 Were James Brown still with us, he'd have to at least share his "hardest working man in showbiz" honors with Rivers. full review
40. The King's Speech 2010 It is an intelligent, winning drama fit for a king -- and the rest of us. And this year, there were far too few of those coming from Hollywood. full review
41. Monsters 2010 Monsters is part immigration parable, part war allegory with a dose of It Happened One Night and The African Queen tossed in. full review
42. Rabbit Hole 2010 Rabbit Hole, directed with grace and surprising humor by John Cameron Mitchell, is a delicate tale that shares a great deal of the hurt of Robert Redford's Ordinary People. full review
43. Restrepo 2010 In hewing closely to the rhythms of war, Junger and Hetherington forgo different considerations about war. full review
44. Senna 2010 A psychologically intriguing if at times too hagiographic portrait of a man who often held pole position in his profession and felt nearer to God because of it. full review
45. The Switch 2010 The comedy itself suffers from awkward scheduling. Though this isn't its only wrinkle. full review
46. Tiny Furniture 2010 It's one of the loveliest lowest-budget features to come down the pike. full review
47. True Grit 2010 This True Grit makes the original almost unwatchable except as a curio. full review
48. Vanishing On 7th Street 2010 Brad Anderson's supernatural thriller is stacked to keep us guessing. Initially, this makes it watchably atmospheric. But the inconclusive hints lead to the sense that he's withholding too much. full review
49. Beeswax 2009 Beeswax reminds viewers that in talkative films much can go unspoken. For writer-director Andrew Bujalski these betwixt-between, hem-haw spaces are the places to be. full review
50. The Proposal 2009 The script encases Margaret in rusted defenses from which it can't free her without awkward leaps and cheats. full review
51. Antichrist 2009 Von Trier and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle use sumptuous black-and-white photography and saturated color. Few movies are as beautifully wrought as this. full review
52. The Boys Are Back 2009 Clive Owen was spared the role of James Bond. And The Boys are Back is an example of why we are all the better for it. full review
53. Bruno 2009 For all his idiocy, Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev was a more likable jester than Bruno, who is the sum of his nether parts. One is a naif in a strange land. One is a jerk no matter where he travels. full review
54. Crossing Over 2009 You see, it's all a bit too interlocking, a cable series jammed into a couple of hours. full review
55. Extract 2009 These days, it appears to be a rare gift to do comedy in a way that comes across as smart, but never superior or willfully crass. Bateman has that talent to spare. full review
56. Fish Tank 2009 The film swims in an anguish not solely the result of Mia's coming of age -- and yet, it surfaces for air in ways compelling and uncompromising. full review
57. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest 2009 The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is too akin to the tidying up of a television-series finale - albeit a very classy franchise with fine characters and able performances. full review
58. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 2009 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo grapples with far more than "whodunit." And it does a handy job of answering that question, too. full review
59. Great Directors 2009 The number of interviewees makes the film a signpost survey, more meaningful to film- study newbies than veterans. full review
60. The Joneses 2009 [Demi Moore is] She's one reason to see writer-director's Derrick Borte's zeitgeist fable The Joneses. Though she's not the only one. full review
61. The Limits of Control 2009 Let its craft wash over you. Go with its flow. full review
62. Making the Boys 2009 Clayton Robey's documentary starts off wobbly before becoming a bracing cocktail of cultural, creative and personal histories. full review
63. Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen 2009 Vision is shot through with issues of power - personal, political, spiritual. Which makes it a terrifically resonant work. full review
64. Examined Life 2008 Illuminating, even moving. full review
65. Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 2008 Rafferty uses interviews with the former players, most now in their 60s and nearly all of them touchingly philosophical, to reveal the cultural issues buffeting their campuses, but not necessarily their locker rooms. full review
66. Let the Right One In 2008 Like the best vampire sagas, the film is rife with aching melancholy and existential crises. Its haunting beauty isn't marred, but complemented by strong, disquieting images. full review
67. Man on Wire 2008 A gift of a documentary. full review
68. Religulous 2008 Funny as it is, Religulous is too much an exercise in preaching to the happily nonconverted. You others be damned. Sound familiar? full review
69. Shrink 2008 Directed by Jonas Pate and written with a nice ear for self-delusion by Thomas Moffet, Shrink mixes cliches with some pleasant surprises. full review
70. The Square 2008 The Square is a morality noir in which there's very little onscreen morality. full review
71. What Just Happened? 2008 In some ways, What Just Happened feels like an attempt to, if not make amends for moviemaking myopia, at least show how easily the contagion takes hold. full review
72. Black Snake Moan 2007 Black Snake Moan is a myth-and-reconciliation story with outlandish scenes meant to make you laugh, make you uncomfortable. Both. full review
73. Charlie Bartlett 2007 It's risky business championing an adolescent protagonist who thrives on the illicit. But the appointments Charlie holds in the men's room make an argument most can get behind. full review
74. Chop Shop 2007 Bahrani deftly walks a tightrope toward insight, never falling into safety nets of judgment or unearned sentiment. full review
75. No End in Sight 2007 No End in Sight makes one thing clear: Were it not so bloody, the war in Iraq would be destined to become a case study in the nation's business schools. full review
76. Sangre De Mi Sangre 2007 [Director Christopher] Zalla may have provided his characters with a overly constructed tragedy, but his eye for city life and his seeming gift with actors promises astute, generous work to come. full review
77. Failure to Launch 2006 Like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Wedding Crashers, Failure to Launch reminds us that Hollywood is set on making romantic-comedy counterparts to the chick flick. full review
78. Last Holiday 2006 For a movie about overcoming fear and living out loud, Last Holiday's too-tidy conclusion isn't a sign of hope so much as a lack of nerve. full review
79. United 93 2006 ... in telling the story of the one terrorist-commandeered jet that did not hit its target on Sept. 11, 2001, United 93 does so much right. full review
80. World Trade Center 2006 World Trade Center approaches drama's potent promise, finding in the story of two individuals and their families uncommon valor and common ground at ground zero. full review
81. Brick 2005 Yet in being so unlike the typical high school flick, it captures anew the alienation, the ridiculously earnest intensity of feeling, the insularity of experience that are part and parcel of those blunder years. full review
82. Brokeback Mountain 2005 Like these indelible cowboys, you, too, may find it impossible not to succumb to the powerful, quiet greatness that is Brokeback Mountain. full review
83. Broken Flowers 2005 Don's is a journey more bittersweet than riotously funny. But then, Murray is becoming a relentless minimalist. full review
84. Grizzly Man 2005 Grizzly Man approaches greatness for all the things it touches on and the one thing it resists. full review
85. How The Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer 2005 Like Blanca and her friends, walking languidly down the street, then spontaneousy grabbing a shopping cart for a ride, Reidel plays with the rhythm of her enjoyably unhurried tale. full review
86. Jarhead 2005 Jarhead does an impressive job of articulating the weird, often volatile convergence of the antisocial with the utterly loyal that seems to be the M.O. of a lot of men not yet grown. full review
87. My Summer of Love 2005 My Summer of Love is willfully romantic -- and just as smart about the dangers in that. full review
88. Neil Young: Heart of Gold 2005 Like its troubadour, Heart of Gold is smart and generous with its seeming simplicity. full review
89. Old Joy 2005 Subdued, artistic, with beautifully nuanced performances that are as true as they are often elusive of commercial triumph. full review
90. The Producers 2005 It may not be great, but it is a movie. full review
91. Sahara 2005 McConaughey and his co-stars make the case that fun, however fleeting, is still fun. full review
92. Big Fish 2004 A bountiful pleasure. full review
93. Dead Man's Shoes 2004 In a swift 86 minutes, director Meadows and co-writer/star Considine give us a methodical, handsome, emotionally intelligent version of the revenge flick. full review
94. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind 2004 A loving, often rigorous look at love gone awry. full review
95. Inside Deep Throat 2004 The movie will set off a slew of new questions. full review
96. Little Black Book 2004 Raises the question: When does a movie go from being an homage to being a parasite? full review
97. Me and You and Everyone We Know 2004 First-time feature director July's success has a great deal to do with her bold embrace of childhood and its gnarly truths. full review
98. The Passion of the Christ 2004 A film of artistic ambition and devotion. full review
99. The Puffy Chair 2004 The Duplass brothers have stuffed their first feature with fine details. Not all of them are comfy. But they're well-crafted and hint at funny, ouchy films to come. full review
100. Vera Drake 2004 [The movie] can break your heart. full review
101. Hollywood Homicide 2003 It's Get Shorty, but not as agile. full review
102. In the Cut 2003 Stunning and unrelenting. full review
103. Radio 2003 The result is just as the filmmakers hoped. You'd have to hold a stubborn defensive line not to be moved by this film's heart. full review
104. S.W.A.T. 2003 Strictly standard issue. full review
105. Something's Gotta Give 2003 As dazzlingly enjoyable as it is deeply intelligent. full review
106. Swimming Pool 2003 In taking one sort of movie and seemingly teasing it into another, the director and his leading ladies have made a lovely argument about where the real mysteries lie in our lives. full review
107. Bukowski: Born into This 2002 The filmmaker knows when to shift the rhythm of his investigation. The authenticity of art is woven with the artifice of life. full review
108. Sex Is Comedy 2002 Reminds us what a vulnerable undertaking acting can be, and what an intimate, manipulative, caring and torturous act directing is. full review
109. Manic 2001 Melamed and his cast provide more than a few truth-divining moments. full review
110. Gojira 1954 The rampaging reptile is back to remind us that monsters have meaning. full review