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Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

1. Assassin's Bullet 2012 The cockeyed C-quality B movie, shot on location with a Balkan supporting cast and crew, mixes a precarious pileup of visual cliches with over-staged action sequences. full review
2. The Awakening 2012 Dominic West personifies the melancholia of a country overwhelmed by death. full review
3. Brooklyn Castle 2012 A great subject goes a long way in this standard but effective entry in the amazing-kids documentary category. full review
4. Crazy Eyes 2012 An appreciation that the pain is personal doesn't compensate for the picture's self-absorbed need to alienate. full review
5. The Details 2012 [A] provocatively acrid adult comedy of lies, deceits, and a touch of murder. full review
6. The Dictator 2012 Baron Cohen's demonstrations of political ''outrageousness'' feel all too canned, planned, and defanged. full review
7. The Do-Deca-Pentathlon 2012 These movie guys specialize in snapping vignettes of human inconsistency - no fancy lighting required. full review
8. The Flat 2012 I will salute the deftness and intelligence with which Goldfinger observes the reactions of the living to the revelations of the dead. full review
9. The Forgiveness of Blood 2012 Joshua Marston once again distinguishes himself as a filmmaker serious about understanding lives a world away from his own. full review
10. The Front Line 2012 This strong, assured Band of Brothers-style drama from director Jang Hun makes universal points about bonding, misery, loyalty, and the senselessness of war through a portfolio of soldiers. full review
11. Girl In Progress 2012 This inauthentic teen tale, with its cosmetically softened edges, serves neither the young people nor the Mendes fans for whom it might be intended. full review
12. Goats 2012 Loses the flavor of the journey. full review
13. Holy Motors 2012 [A] crazy-beautiful reverie about movies, love, the love of movies, and the inevitability of human melancholy by the perpetually mysterious French filmmaker Leos Carax. full review
14. Intruders 2012 Plays with classic horror elements of rain, bony monster fingers, vertiginous camera angles, and assorted shout-outs to Pan's Labyrinth. full review
15. The Invisible War 2012 The intense interviews and damning statistics (20 percent of all female personnel have experienced sexual assault) do the work of whipping up outrage. full review
16. Jesus Henry Christ 2012 Lee scratches the skin of family bonds until it bleeds. full review
17. A Little Bit Of Heaven 2012 As embodied with clueless good humor by Kate Hudson, fatal sickness looks more like a lifestyle and wardrobe choice than a tragedy. full review
18. The Loneliest Planet 2012 Every scene shift contributes vital information about what it means to guide or be guided over foreign territory, both emotional and physical. full review
19. The Magic of Belle Isle 2012 A pastel-colored, embroidered wall-hanging of a drama directed by Rob Reiner. full review
20. Mirror Mirror 2012 Mirror Mirror is a film that's all picture and no propulsion, each scene static in a basic set-decoration color scheme of teabag and banana. full review
21. Monsieur Lazhar 2012 The movie's tonic lack of sentimentality binds the various griefs together into something moving. full review
22. The Moth Diaries 2012 Defeats Harron's talent for exploring darkness on the edge of kinkiness. full review
23. Nobody Else But You 2012 Writer-director Gerald Hustache-Mathieu sustains a fresh voice influenced by the Coen brothers and the infernal snow of Fargo. full review
24. Nobody Walks 2012 Russo-Young studies the strange species of affluent Angelenus erectus under a microscope that distorts every character into unbelievability. full review
25. Oslo, August 31st 2012 Trier's compassion for what it takes to survive, mixed with the love he bestows on Oslo, is rewardingly profound. full review
26. A Royal Affair 2012 The storytelling ... is kind of amazing. full review
27. Silent House 2012 A denouement more textbook than thrilling stalls some of the movie's power. But the early chills are potent, intense. full review
28. Struck by Lightning 2012 Some charming, buzzy talents pitch in on this short little lark ... full review
29. Unforgivable 2012 [An] elliptical and somewhat loopy drama about the slipperiness of love at any age... full review
30. The Woman in the Fifth 2012 [Pawlikowski] creates a nice sense of paranoia and multicultural bewilderment that's the welcome tonal opposite of Woody Allen's romanticized Midnight in Paris fripperies. full review
31. Another Happy Day 2011 Ellen Barkin - playing the estranged mother of the groom - does a big heap of acting as one of the more histrionic members of the clan. full review
32. Buck 2011 full review
33. Coriolanus 2011 Shakespeare on a trip wire. full review
34. The Devil's Double 2011 full review
35. Goodbye First Love 2011 [A] acute drama of young romance and passionate sex, as well as what you learn when you lose both. full review
36. Hobo With a Shotgun 2011 A hobo hops off a freight train in a nameless North American Gomorrah run by a sadistic crime king. Then said hobo cleans up the place by shooting buckets full of guts. full review
37. The Kid with a Bike 2011 No one charts the wilds of childhood more precisely than the Dardennes. full review
38. Mysteries of Lisbon 2011 A boy in a Lisbon orphanage wonders about his origins, and in response a river of stories flows from the mouths of noblemen, ladies, low-born scoundrels, priests, and sinners. full review
39. The Other Woman 2011 Portman spends most of her time crying or pouting. full review
40. Pina 2011 So this is what 3-D is capable of when used for art rather than the commerce of hiking ticket prices and repurposing cartoons! full review
41. There Be Dragons 2011 [A] florid, convoluted historical drama from writer-director Roland Joffe... full review
42. Bill Cunningham New York 2010 [A] marvelous documentary. full review
43. Casino Jack 2010 Tonally scattershot and more than a little heavy-footed. But then, so were the real cons from which Abramoff profited while the flimflam worked. full review
44. The Extra Man 2010 What feels enjoyably outré in the 1998 coming-of-age novel by Jonathan Ames feels oppressively outré in this deadened, literal adaptation. full review
45. Four Lions 2010 These guys are not charming; they're horrifying in their ignorance, and they cause real damage. But there's a weird relief to be found in the opportunity to laugh ourselves sick at their expense, if only for an instant. full review
46. Heartbeats 2010 [A] madly stylish Montreal-made delight... full review
47. Henry's Crime 2010 It's a 
 grab bag of comic cliches about bank robberies and regional theater. full review
48. Howl 2010 Allen Ginsberg's revolutionary 1956 poem ''Howl'' -- a literary manifesto for the Beat Generation -- gets a great reading from modern-day beatnik-star James Franco, playing the poet with bebop passion. full review
49. I Saw the Devil 2010 Somewhere in all the blood (sickening realism is a selling point), a question is posed: When does the one fighting a monster become a monster himself? full review
50. The King's Speech 2010 The King's Speech is simultaneously cozy and majestic. full review
51. Last Night 2010 full review
52. Marwencol 2010 This tender documentary considers the mysteries of both art and coping. full review
53. The Romantics 2010 Clumsy camera work adds to the pre-wedding jitters in writer-director Galt Niederhoffer's pashmina-thin drama about attractive self-congratulatory Yale alumni gathering for the nuptials of two of their own. full review
54. Amreeka 2009 The good humor, generosity, and love Dabis bestows on her characters in this assured first feature are uniquely hers -- the mark of a talent to watch full review
55. Down Terrace 2009 A dark and hilarious thwomping of the whole miserablist British gangster genre. full review
56. Five Minutes of Heaven 2009 It's an original movie idea that feels written for the stage, all the more so since so much of our attention is diverted to admiring how the actors act, in roles with a high degree of technical
 difficulty. full review
57. The Good Heart 2009 Iceland-bred writer-director Dagur Kári shot most of the picture in his homeland, loading a lot of distinctly Nordic seriocomic melancholy onto a study of two characters in a city that never sleeps. full review
58. Great Directors 2009 French bad-girl director Catherine Breillat says some interesting stuff, but what would be even more interesting is footage revealing how the novice filmmaker got to hang with the artists she calls her ''heroes.'' full review
59. The House of the Devil 2009 Writer-director Ti West's crisp, economical, satisfying little horror pic reclaims the pleasures of the kind of old-school formula that the jokey Scream franchise deconstructed into satire. full review
60. Hunger 2009 For your art-house pleasure and discomfort, here's one of the most talked-about film-festival triumphs of 2008, a disturbingly avid re-creation of the last six weeks in the life and slow, self-imposed wasting of Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands. full review
61. I Hate Valentine's Day 2009 A charmless rom-com about an exhaustingly vivacious florist. full review
62. Kings of Pastry 2009 It's a good bet any cocky contestant on Top Chef would keel over from the rigors of the challenge, the rituals of which are treated with fervent concentration by these meticulous artistes with their piping bags and spun-sugar sculptures. full review
63. Last Train Home 2009 This is essential viewing for understanding our world. full review
64. The Missing Person 2009 Buschel makes striking use of the Mike Hammer/Philip Marlowe tradition to tell a story of disorientation and loss in a post-9/11 world where the Twin Towers can go missing too. full review
65. Objectified 2009 You'll never look at your next toothbrush (or your next any product) in quite the same way after watching this astute, elegant inquiry into the purpose and process of industrial 
design, Objectified. full review
66. Ondine 2009 Women tend to hide secrets in the original scripts of filmmaker Neil Jordan. full review
67. Paper Man 2009 Ignore the story of Paper Heart ... Concentrate instead on the delightful performances. full review
68. Serious Moonlight 2009 There's a lot of yelling, cracking wise, and cooing in this creepy rom-com. full review
69. Valhalla Rising 2009 When it comes to crazy, violent, semidelirious, testosterone-laden, proto-Viking tales about a mute visionary one-eyed warrior who breaks skulls, Valhalla Rising is pretty great. full review
70. Vincere 2009 Mezzogiorno plays Dalser with the kind of fervent intensity once seen in silent films... full review
71. White Material 2009 An intense, mysterious drama exploring revolution and loss. full review
72. Wild Target 2009 A very French 1993 farce gets a less comfortable British redo in Wild Target, a hectic, charm-challenged comedy about a fussy bachelor hitman who can't bring himself to off a winsome thief. full review
73. Afterschool 2008 Anthony Campos (who was 24 when he made this jolting pic) captures the numbing psychic scramble that just might cause the YouTube generation to go morally haywire. Or become filmmakers. full review
74. American Violet 2008 An artlessly powerful performance by newcomer Nicole Behaire anchors American Violet, an instructive, sturdily built drama based on a true story worth teaching. full review
75. Disgrace 2008 Newcomer Jessica Haines is transparent and heartbreaking as the prof's unorthodox daughter, a victim of violence as the old ways crumble. full review
76. The Other Man 2008 The Other Man is self-conscious, overproduced, overacted Euro-marital hoo-ha. full review
77. The Yellow Handkerchief 2008 Here the fascination is Hurt, so deft at steering his character away from booby-trap cliches that he guides his young costars safely out of sap's way and brightens an otherwise very yellowed tale. full review
78. Beaufort 2007 Adapting his spare, intense, award-winning film from the novel by Israeli TV programmer Ron Leshem, Joseph Cedar has created a movie of tremendous power -- nerve-racking, astute, and neutral enough to apply to all soldiers, in all wars, everywhere. full review
79. Chop Shop 2007 As he did in his striking 2005 first feature film, Man Push Cart, about a Pakistani street vendor in New York, perceptive indie filmmaker Ramin Bahrani looks at what others overlook and finds drama in everyday details. full review
80. Chris & Don: A Love Story 2007 The work is a reflective hodgepodge of unnervingly 'cute' animation, reenactments, archival footage, and Bachardy's own reminiscences, spoken in the singular British accent he invented just as he invented his own unorthodox life. full review
81. Descent 2007 full review
82. Evening 2007 full review
83. Flawless 2007 It's left to Caine to wink and nod at his own contribution to real caper classics of the 1960s and '70s, produced with more emphasis on fun and less on instructive fact-finding. full review
84. Freedom Writers 2007 Square, sincere, and proud of it. full review
85. Helvetica 2007 Even viewers who've never given a serif a second thought are in for an exclamation point of joy from such a well-designed doc. full review
86. Steal a Pencil for Me 2007 Filmmaker Michele Ohayon shapes her portrait of two vibrant old people with a fine hand (especially when it comes to interspersing historical footage), creating a valuable addition to the Cinema of Never Forget. full review
87. Copying Beethoven, (Klang der Stille) 2006 As LvB, Harris is intense, and intensely bewigged. full review
88. Heading South 2006 What is surprising is the delicacy with which Rampling and Cantet -- himself better known as a chronicler of men -- create a character of such potent feminine hunger. full review
89. Lady Chatterley 2006 [A] startling, womanly adaptation of a lesser-known, more direct version of D.H. Lawrence's famous novel, one of three he wrote. full review
90. A Man Named Pearl 2006 full review
91. The Treatment 2006 The filmmaking is rudimentary in The Treatment, Oren Rudavsky's adaptation of Daniel Menaker's novel, but the feeling for the patient-and-shrink dynamic is authentic. And Holm makes a colorful Freudian who may be more fantasy than real. full review
92. Unknown 2006 full review
93. Casanova 2005 The great discovery of this Casanova is Hallstrom's recovered capacity for play. full review
94. The Devil's Miner 2005 This beautiful, terrible story is not easily forgotten. full review
95. Dead Man's Shoes 2004 In the end, the picture's more pulp than juice. full review
96. Somersault 2004 Cornish is a marvel... full review
97. I Like Killing Flies 2003 ... an unabashedly home-cooked homage to New York eccentricity. full review
98. Ned Kelly 2003 Manages to shrink the grandness of the myth without clarifying our understanding of the man. full review
99. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress 2002 Dai Sijie has created a dreamy memory of hardship -- part familiar Chinese parable, part familiar French romance. full review
100. Bowling for Columbine 2002 We need [Moore's] noisy, cocky energy, his passion and class consciousness; we need his shticks, we need his stones. full review
101. Equilibrium 2002 Matrixian, Orwellian, and boneheadian. full review
102. The Master of Disguise 2002 An awful, stillborn comedy assembled out of rusty spare parts from secret agent movies and run-of-the-mill Saturday Night Live skits. full review
103. Nicholas Nickleby 2002 Trust and deceit, generosity and meanness are fleshed out by a deft cast. full review
104. The Pianist 2002 A movie of riveting power and sadness. full review
105. Sex Is Comedy 2002 Shows a beguiling aptitude for self-mockery in the pursuit of polemic. full review
106. Super Troopers 2002 [A] hit-and- often-miss comedy. full review
107. Baran 2001 The film is saved from aren't-kids-cute sentimentality by a warmth that isn't faked and a stately sense of composition. full review
108. Love the Hard Way 2001 I figure Brody chose his own hip-jutting, fashion-runway postures, little realizing at the time that he was about to punch a big-time ticket out of this indie palookaville. full review
109. Manic 2001 I'm guessing the art photography is meant to signify a fragile state; instead, it suggests an attention disorder to which camcorder-wielding filmmakers are dismayingly susceptible. full review
110. Beautiful Creatures 2000 Overstyled. full review
111. Blow Dry 2000 Apparently [the town inhabitants] haven't heard of the healing properties of chocolate or male stripping. full review
112. Hamlet 2000 In OUR time, the sinister turn of events at the Denmark Corporation couldn't be more apt. full review
113. Scary Movie 2000 full review
114. The Tigger Movie 2000 A conflicted entertainment, compromised by trying too hard to impress the restless, self-referential adults in the audience. full review
115. Double Jeopardy 1999 full review
116. eXistenZ 1999 full review
117. For Love of the Game 1999 Depressingly, for a plot propelled by a love story, For Love of the Game sure strikes out when it comes to Billy and Jane's romance. full review
118. A Midsummer Night's Dream 1999 full review
119. My Life so Far 1999 full review
120. Mystery Men 1999 Call Mystery Men a sketchbook in search of a movie; it's still a super idea in a summer of flackery. full review
121. October Sky 1999 full review
122. Ride with the Devil 1999 Unengaging! full review
123. South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut 1999 South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut turns out to be the funniest, most risk-taking, most incisive movie of the summer! full review
124. Topsy-Turvy 1999 You're likely to be moved to tears. full review
125. Waking the Dead 1999 full review
126. Disturbing Behavior 1998 full review
127. The Impostors 1998 full review
128. The Mask of Zorro 1998 full review
129. Next Stop Wonderland 1998 full review
130. A Night at the Roxbury 1998 full review
131. Primary Colors 1998 Adapting Joe Klein's roman a clef of the same name, ferociously witty screenwriter Elaine May and her smooth old compatriot in comedy, director Mike Nichols, have made a zingy drama and have staffed it well. full review
132. The Red Violin (Le violon rouge) 1998 full review
133. The Rugrats Movie 1998 full review
134. Slums of Beverly Hills 1998 full review
135. Anaconda 1997 Anaconda, directed by Luis Llosa with all of the subtlety of a snake-oil salesman, is in the great tradition of cinematic cheese, as processed as Kraft Singles slices. full review
136. The Apostle 1997 full review
137. As Good As It Gets 1997 It's fun to watch Jack Nicholson draw on great reservoirs of bile to play a mean SOB with an obsessive-compulsive disorder. full review
138. Breakdown 1997 full review
139. Eve's Bayou 1997 full review
140. Face/Off 1997 full review
141. Private Parts 1997 full review
142. The Rainmaker 1997 full review
143. She's So Lovely 1997 full review
144. Beautiful Girls 1996 There is absolutely nothing going on in Beautiful Girls that you haven't seen... [in] any other artistic endeavor in which untethered young men and women, bound by geography and fortified by beer, shamble their way toward overdue maturity. full review
145. Big Night 1996 full review
146. Brassed Off 1996 full review
147. Daylight 1996 full review
148. Flirting With Disaster 1996 full review
149. Eye For An Eye 1995 full review
150. Picture Bride 1995 full review
151. Smoke 1995 full review
152. Unzipped 1995 full review
153. The House of the Spirits 1993 full review
154. Supercop (Police Story 3) (Ging chaat goo si 3: Chiu kap ging chaat) 1992 The most powerful starring role for a woman this summer? My vote goes to Michelle Khan in this garish, frenetic, and funny chopper from Rumble in the Bronx director Stanley Tong. full review
155. The Last Emperor 1987 The expanse of time is saturated with an expanse of visual beauty that feels absolutely right for the story. full review