instantwatcher.com

Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

1. John Dies at the End 2013 John lives in a frisky otherworld of willful incoherence all its own. full review
2. Kai Po Che! 2013 Its performances are enjoyably boisterous, and director Abhishek Kapoor refuses to linger on cliches for too long ... full review
3. Assassin's Bullet 2012 [A] dippy hodgepodge of hitman action, illogical romance and geopolitical commentary. full review
4. Cellmates 2012 A near complete exercise in mirthlessness and atonal satire, "Cellmates" is a sentence, all right. full review
5. Crazy Eyes 2012 One of those exercises in masculine self-pity and glib misogyny that frustrates because of its shortsightedness. full review
6. Dangerous Liaisons 2012 Zhang, expertly conveying someone closed off yet silently sensual, even rolls out a tear during a moment of impending intimacy as exquisitely timed as a dancer's move. full review
7. Dark Tide 2012 The only palpable emotion from "Dark Tide" is sadness for Berry, treading water in dreary efforts like this. full review
8. Detachment 2012 There's something weirdly effective about the artistic desperation, which includes inserts of chalkboard animation and to-the-camera testimonials. full review
9. For Greater Glory 2012 Ultimately a stodgy, overblown and repetitive slog. full review
10. The FP 2012 "The FP" so desperately wants to be cultishly admired for its bad-taste rollout of wacko characters, ugly costumes and vulgar slang that it forgets to be genuinely offbeat or funny. full review
11. Gayby 2012 What lifts Gayby above its sitcom trappings is its emotional generosity and easy warmth, the sense that characters are defined by -- and made funny through -- their aspirations, not their way with a one-liner. full review
12. The Girl from the Naked Eye 2012 In its moments of sometimes comically violent antagonism, the movie shows some flashes of genre pizazz. full review
13. Goats 2012 Nibbles on a lot of stuff it never gets around to digesting. full review
14. The Innkeepers 2012 There's a skillful appreciation here for the kind of subjective dislocation behind the best ghost stories, and in this era of bloody-disgusting, that kind of smart ambiguity is welcome indeed. full review
15. My Way 2012 "My Way" is combative to a thematic and stylistic extreme. full review
16. North Sea Texas 2012 "North Sea Texas" explores emergent sexuality and first love with a refreshing optimism. full review
17. Safe 2012 Yakin gives his star plenty of room to look mean, think fast, drive faster, punch, quip, mow down and charismatically bond with the most imperiled child character in screen memory. full review
18. Seeking Justice 2012 [Cage] acquits himself well enough in this otherwise rudimentary thriller from deliriously unsubtle director Roger Donaldson. full review
19. Special Forces 2012 It's not only Americans who can make leaden, video game-style exercises in dumb war action. full review
20. Tai Chi Zero 2012 "Tai Chi Zero" is often more distracting than diverting with its everything-goes aesthetic - there are strains of steampunk, manga and silent film comedy, with video-game touches. full review
21. Tonight You're Mine 2012 If only the falling-in-love machinations and character details weren't so wispy, "Tonight You're Mine" might have had more resonance. full review
22. Ultrasonic 2012 The kind of grimly serious low-budget indie that wants to shake up perceptions about our engagement with the world, but mistakes repetition for resonance. full review
23. The Viral Factor 2012 It takes a special kind of action director to use chaotic, human-filled public spaces for high-energy foot chases, auto stunts and gun battles yet never once get under the skin with a sense of genuine danger. full review
24. Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale 2012 At 2 1/2 hours, "Warriors" is a bruising, relentless experience, one more tiring than inspiring. full review
25. The Woman Who Wasn't There 2012 A fascinating story of fakery ... even when it occasionally overreaches ... full review
26. The Zen Of Bennett 2012 We see an art form bridge generations with a strange mixture of grace, joy and melancholy. full review
27. Angel of Evil 2011 Gangster cliches fly like submachine gun bullets in the Italian crime biopic "Angel of Evil," a restless and hollow rundown of '70s criminal Renato Vallanzasca. full review
28. Bellflower 2011 This frequently dazzling, eccentric portrait of mutually assured destruction is that most delirious of combos: charmingly funny and emotionally terrifying. full review
29. The Chaperone 2011 Like last year's "Legendary" and "Knucklehead," which didn't exactly slam moviegoers to the mat with their entertainment chops, this haphazardly clichéd comedy-drama about redemption similarly suffers. full review
30. Dirty Girl 2011 [Sylvia's] attempts at situational humor on the road - including a stripping scene for Dozier as coming-out metaphor - fall embarrassingly flat. full review
31. Going Down In La-la Land 2011 It's...familiar plotting and by-the-numbers characterization that sinks this earnest, gay-contoured take on the evergreen making-it-big melodrama. full review
32. Gun Hill Road 2011 Before some predictable, freedom-threatening recidivism on Enrique's part, the film exhibits a simultaneously anthropological and sensitive interest in Michael's day-to-day life... full review
33. I Melt with You 2011 A fanfare for the common jerk that taints every '80s-era alt-rock soundtrack tune it touches, "I Melt With You" assuredly marks itself as one of 2011's most ludicrous releases. full review
34. Ironclad 2011 The loud, closely photographed limb-hacking becomes as monotonous as the movie's unrelentingly gray palette. full review
35. Ladies vs Ricky Bahl 2011 One's diminishing interest in the nuts and bolts of cheating a cheat can be forgiven when the sheer star wattage of the peppy cast is in close-up overdrive. full review
36. The Perfect Host 2011 What aims for Hitchcockian slyness ends up an inconsequential jumble in the comedy thriller "The Perfect Host." full review
37. Stake Land 2011 Shows that a savvy mixture of characterization, atmosphere and gore-eographed suspense can make even the most familiar fright tropes feel vaguely organic again. full review
38. Stay Cool 2011 Attempts to pay homage to the '80s oeuvre of filmmaker John Hughes, but its singular lack of emotional logic, charm and humor bring to mind a couple of hours in detention instead. full review
39. The Ward 2011 "The Ward" is bland shock therapy from the guy who reinvented bloody peek-a-boo with the classic "Halloween." full review
40. A Bag of Hammers 2010 It's too little, too late for Crano's Wes Anderson-inflected innocence-disrupted project... full review
41. Black Death 2010 Early on "Black Death" falls victim to its own sluggish sickness, its narrative drive proving no match for the aggressively rotted pallor, dour acting and tiresomely handheld you-are-there aesthetics. full review
42. The Killing Jar 2010 What dribbles out is a series of repetitive, dull, cliched showdowns until most of the cast is gruesomely dispatched and the twist-that-isn't-a-twist is revealed. full review
43. Monsters 2010 Although the vérité aesthetics of Monsters will invite comparisons to Cloverfield and District 9, what galls most is the infuriating lack of purpose beyond its backdrop. full review
44. Ong Bak 3 2010 Beware bone-crushing action stars bearing messages of peace and enlightenment. full review
45. Rubber 2010 "Rubber" has anthropomorphic, head-scratching fun with its gory B-movie trappings, silly music cues, self-referential comedy and deliberately off-kilter acting. full review
46. Waiting for Forever 2010 With "Waiting for Forever," an insipid contemporary fairy tale about a lovestruck young vagabond shadowing a childhood sweetheart he can't bring himself to approach, we get stalking, juggling and cancer. Happy Valentine's Day! full review
47. White Irish Drinkers 2010 The cliches are what make "White Irish Drinkers" a drearily predictable bout... full review
48. Collapse 2009 Collapse" is a grueling peek at a doomsday prophet's rigorous mind but in a sly way also a compassionate look at the strain Ruppert endures from knowing he has only ever been right. full review
49. The Eclipse 2009 The Eclipse finds plenty of heartfelt gravity in its tale of love lost and found on a gothic coast. full review
50. The Fourth Kind 2009 Writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi attempts an Orson Welles-like confluence of "real" and imagined that might have worked had he gotten out of the way more, literally and figuratively. full review
51. The House of the Devil 2009 West's assured way with widescreen framing, long takes and silences followed by sharp if explainable noise are almost cruelly funny in their heart-stopping pleasures. full review
52. The Infidel 2009 An admirably cagey effort to mine humor from the thorny cultural and racial divide that is Muslim-Jewish relations. full review
53. The Lodger 2009 This strained, empty effort doesn't work as homage or update, and in its darkly violent sensibility has neither the glamour of Brian De Palma's referential nightmares or even the narrative fuel of the serial-killer-obsessed procedurals that dominate tv. full review
54. Paper Man 2009 The quirk-laden indie Paper Man brings together a novelist who won't grow up with a sullen teenage girl for mutual wallowing, eccentric high jinks and life lessons but, unfortunately, little reason to care. full review
55. Valhalla Rising 2009 You sometimes wish Refn's gift for Ridley Scott-level mayhem had won the battle over his much iffier Werner Herzog leanings.
56. Barry Munday 2008 D'Arienzo's love of trite indie-movie signposts of comic quirkiness -- deadpan delivery, overly formal camerawork, characters delivering dialogue into the camera, stunt casting -- is ultimately regrettable. full review
57. Bustin' Down the Door 2008 Bustin' Down the Door entertainingly captures surfing's last great hoorah of no-holds-barred radicalism. full review
58. Constantine's Sword 2008 The movie covers an immense amount of shameful historical ground, but the soft-spoken Carroll's mission is less about winning an argument than prodding true believers full review
59. Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema 2008 rags-to-riches tale cut from the same cloth as City of God, Goodfellas and Scarface. full review
60. The Yes Men Fix the World 2008 Fleet and amusing. full review
61. Angels in the Dust 2007 Writer-director Louise Hogarth shrinks an enormous issue down to human terms... full review
62. Descent 2007 It's indie provocation trapped between shock and blah. full review
63. The Order of Myths 2007 An invaluable portrait of us-and-them America, a smart, generous, poignant, quietly disturbing movie about secrecy and hospitality. full review
64. End of the Spear 2005 The slickly produced Christian docudrama End of the Spear recounts with spiritual breathlessness the circumstances surrounding the real-life killings of five missionaries at the hands of a violent indigenous Amazon tribe in Ecuador in 1956. full review
65. The Long Weekend 2004 full review