instantwatcher.com

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine

1. 360 2012 Like the fork that usually comes with your airplane meal, 360 is plastic. full review
2. Act of Valor 2012 Fighting is a learned skill; so is acting. And the SEAL stars are plausible only when on maneuvers - performing as their own stunt doubles. full review
3. Alps 2012 It simply demands to be stared at, in awe or incomprehension. full review
4. Deadfall 2012 [It has] enough plot contrivances and twisted, twinned destinies for any old movie, though not necessarily a good one. full review
5. The Grey 2012 True to its grim prospectus, The Grey dwells in haunted machismo to the very end. full review
6. The Hunger Games 2012 Can The Hunger Games, in the movie version directed by Gary Ross, successfully navigate the crossing from page to screen? Our answer: Eh. full review
7. The Invisible War 2012 Dick's films often strut with a lilting impudence, but his new work is dead-serious, as suits the subject. full review
8. Mirror Mirror 2012 Even if you're as annoyed by the movie as I was, you'll come out laughing the costumes. full review
9. Nobody Walks 2012 The acting ensemble is crucial. Everyone's really fine. full review
10. The Raven 2012 Until The Raven almost literally loses itself during a chase in the city sewers, it nicely balances its literary gamesmanship with a R-rated thriller's mandatory gross-out tableaux. full review
11. Red Hook Summer 2012 Peters brings a magical energy to the movie's most laggard moments, infusing a so-what drama with a must-see performance. full review
12. Sleepwalk With Me 2012 Sleepwalk is oddly soothing, like a cup of camomile tea before bedtime. full review
13. Tonight You're Mine 2012 If the film is to work at all - and it eventually does - the two 27-year-old leads must radiate enough star quality to obviate the ramshackle plot. They just about do. full review
14. The Woman in the Fifth 2012 This pensive, seductive drama is full of devious strategies, which begin with its protagonist's name: T. Ricks. Tricks. full review
15. The Adventures of Tintin 2011 Motion capture, which transforms actors into cartoon characters in a vividly animated landscape, is the technique Spielberg has been waiting for - the Christmas gift ... that he's dreamed of since his movie childhood. full review
16. Footloose 2011 Maybe there is something timeless in anachronism. Maybe Brewer has located the heart beneath the hoke. full review
17. Into The Abyss 2011 It provides intimate glimpses of people usually seen, and then only briefly, as faces on a post-office wall or numbers in a cemetery. full review
18. No Strings Attached 2011 The picture is no great shakes as cinema, and a shade too cute for its own good. Still, it's a mild shock to see a competent film released in the January trough. full review
19. The Other Woman 2011 It's a kind of unofficial sequel or sibling, three decades later, to Robert Benton's Oscar-winning Kramer vs. Kramer. full review
20. Paranormal Activity 3 2011 The filmmakers throw in a few cheesy scares: mom in a monster mask, a baby sitter jumping in front of a camera. But the rest is pretty freaking cool. full review
21. Pina 2011 Pina is, in every way, a moving experience. full review
22. Rango 2011 A CGI western comedy populated by desert critters, Rango gives the film year a belated jump start with a passel of movie-wise fun and a knockout animation style. full review
23. Scream 4 2011 On its own terms, Scre4m is pretty good. full review
24. Transformers: Dark of the Moon 2011 For good or ill, Bay is the soul of a new machine, the poet of post-human cinema, the CEO of Hollywood's military-entertainment complex. full review
25. Four Lions 2010 Brilliantly incendiary. full review
26. Freakonomics 2010 When this freakumentary hooks up with Urail King, it gets an A. full review
27. Morning Glory 2010 [McAdams's] Adorability Quotient is off the charts. If being ingratiating is a crime, she'd be shot at sunrise. But this good nature doesn't seem forced. full review
28. Nowhere Boy 2010 The reason to see Nowhere Boy is the charismatic Johnson, who effortlessly nails Lennon's strut, anger and sensitivity. Anybody seeing the movie could surely spot a star in the making. full review
29. True Grit 2010 The tense verbal comedy of Mattie's early negotiation with a Fort Smith merchant should win you over to this movie's high linguistic wit. full review
30. The Fourth Kind 2009 You'd do better downloading an old Art Bell show -- say, the one about the guy who put an alien in his freezer -- than investigating this evidence of subnormal activity. full review
31. The Joneses 2009 In its amiable, ambling way, The Joneses is a zeitgeist film: it says as much as a Michael Moore screed about the American way of debt. full review
32. Shooter 2007 Shooter is an honorable rather than exceptional addition to the canon. full review
33. This Film is Not Yet Rated 2005 ... a jazzy jeremiad that dances around the whole dilemma of ratings. full review
34. Anger Management 2003 Even a longtime Adamophobe has to admit that Sandler is an agreeable presence here, and that the film has some funny filigree work to offset the oppressive schematics. full review
35. For Love of the Game 1999 A perfect game in Yankee Stadium is no big deal these days; two have been pitched in the past 16 months. But a good baseball movie, that's hard. full review
36. South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut 1999 A happy surprise!
37. Pi 1998 Aronofsky, who has parlayed this movie's Sundance success into two Hollywood deals, is that rare indie filmmaker who doesn't want to make hip romantic sitcoms. He's a genuine experimenter with a spooky visual style. full review
38. Shakespeare in Love 1998 Let the kids toy with their Rugrats and hold their Sandler high. Shakespeare in Love is a movie to please the rest of us.
39. The House of Yes 1997 Bujold has the frazzled hauteur of an aging, neglected star, and Spelling is nicely glazed, studiously artless. But the film is keyed to Posey's performance: perfectly brittle, faultlessly false. full review
40. James and the Giant Peach 1996 We fully anticipate the wrath of several generations of possessive children when we declare that the new Disney film of James and the Giant Peach is an improvement on Roald Dahl's 1961 backyard fantasy. full review
41. Pocahontas 1996 [A] handsome, deeply felt, even more deeply reverent animated musical. full review
42. The Doom Generation 1995 Not every kid may be as mad and morose as Araki's lost boys... But a lot are, and in this fevered fantasy of Armageddon, he's got their number.
43. Clerks 1994 The film looks no more expensive than it was; some of the acting (by local nonprofessionals) is spectacularly amateurish; the story is a series of anecdotes about hockey, shopping and loving the one you're with. But it's worth loitering in this shop.
44. Hoop Dreams 1994 It's about three hours long. But it moves like Isiah, fast and smooth, and it's over in a heartbreak. full review
45. Pulp Fiction 1994 Tarantino's guilty secret, which the international critics should have noticed, is that his films are cultural hybrids. full review
46. In the Name of the Father 1993 By the end of the movie, whether or not you're a member of Sinn Fein, the Brits' brutality toward the Conlons will get your Irish up. full review
47. The Nightmare Before Christmas 1993 A fun house of funereal glamour. full review
48. What's Eating Gilbert Grape 1993 Suggests that the true heroes are those people who day by day must tend to misfits, and do so with love, tenacity and a determination not to go terminally sour in the process. full review
49. Enchanted April 1992 In a raucous movie summer, this is a film for those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine, and a recollection of a time when women and movies could be purveyors of enchantment. full review
50. Terminator 2: Judgment Day 1991 A humongous, visionary parable that intermittently enthralls and ultimately disappoints. T2 is half of a terrific movie -- the wrong half. full review
51. The Grifters 1990 Best to savor The Grifters for its handsome design -- the picture looks as clean as a Hockney landscape -- and its juicy performances. full review
52. Fatal Attraction 1987 [The film brings] horror home to a place where the grownup moviegoer actually lives. full review
53. Raising Arizona 1987 To their old fascination with Sunbelt pathology, to their side-winding Steadicam and pristine command of screen space, the Coens have added a robust humor, a plot that keeps outwitting expectations and a...dollop of sympathy for their forlorn kidnapers. full review
54. Mona Lisa 1986 No wonder audiences have taken to this gritty romance as to a mongrel puppy; for at heart Mona Lisa is an old-fashioned poor-soul weepie, and George is less a Cagney rakehell than a Chaplin tramp. full review
55. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension 1984 A state-of-the-art spaceship flying at the speed of light without narrative coordinates, Buckaroo Banzai is the very oddest good movie in many a full moon. full review
56. The Secret of NIMH 1982 It is something gorgeous to look at. full review
57. True Confessions 1981 Two exciting, dangerous actors have little to do: Duvall spends too much time pacing and waiting; De Niro's big scene has him hanging up his vestments. full review