instantwatcher.com

Ronnie Scheib, Variety

1. 30 Beats 2012 The jazz-scored pic relies heavily on quirkiness to round out shaky characterizations and inject interest into otherwise forgettable pairings. full review
2. After Fall, Winter 2012 full review
3. Ballplayer: Pelotero 2012 What gives Pelotero its edge is a nexus of corruption, exploitation and betrayal that transforms this well-shot, cannily edited item into an engrossing expose. full review
4. Barfi! 2012 Hopping nimbly among three distinct timeframes, helmer Basu deconstructs the film's sentimental thrust to stress his hero's in-the-moment ingenuity. full review
5. Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story 2012 [A] fascinating, must-see docu. full review
6. Crooked Arrows 2012 A millennial brace of lacrosse action propels Crooked Arrows through a thicket of cliches liberally planted in its path. full review
7. Detachment 2012 Brody is brilliant, but can't save the Book of Job proceedings from tilting over into the ludicrous. full review
8. Ek Tha Tiger 2012 Result boasts some excellent action sequences, most performed by megastar Salman Khan, and indeed is generally more effective in fight scenes than in hearts-and-flowers mode. full review
9. The Good Doctor 2012 Daly deftly creates a disturbing, Chabrol-like tension that plays on immediate identification with the handsome medico's lonely, shy vulnerability and slow-building horror at the depths to which his self-delusion can sink. full review
10. Grassroots 2012 full review
11. A Little Bit Of Heaven 2012 full review
12. Meet the Fokkens 2012 A racy, thoroughly enjoyable docu about a pair of 69-year-old identical-twin hookers in Amsterdam, Meet the Fokkens bounces along with defiant joie de vivre. full review
13. The Perfect Family 2012 A dynamite Kathleen Turner desperately strives to be named "Catholic Woman of the Year" in tyro helmer Anne Renton's feel-good religious laffer The Perfect Family. full review
14. Private Romeo 2012 A dynamite ensemble cast of young actors invests the Bard's poetry with energetic immediacy. full review
15. Scalene 2012 The resolution of its conflicting truths proves so bizarre and idiotically off-the-wall that it mitigates all that precedes it. full review
16. Angels Crest 2011 While there is a great deal of weeping and wailing going on in the town of Angels Crest, little of it is connected to a comprehensible or cohesive plot. full review
17. The Chaperone 2011 Presumably there's an audience out there for old-fashioned, poorly written, unevenly thesped, family-friendly tales of redemption starring beefy wrestlers and a bunch of kids, but it's difficult to imagine who. full review
18. Don 2 2011 full review
19. Farmageddon 2011 Racks up damning anecdotal evidence without substantially altering the discussion. full review
20. Ladies vs Ricky Bahl 2011 full review
21. Mere Brother Ki Dulhan 2011 full review
22. One Fall 2011 full review
23. The Pill 2011 Deftly avoiding both the haphazardness of mumblecore and the fakery of studio romantic comedies, Khoury deploys a light directorial touch marked by assured thesping and a genuine appreciation for neurotic angst. full review
24. Revenge of the Electric Car 2011 Without true tension, the docu feels as slickly manufactured as its va-va-voom subject. full review
25. Singham 2011 full review
26. Snowmen 2011 full review
27. Surrogate Valentine 2011 Dave Boyle's pic is fueled by no overriding visual style, relying completely on its actors' chemistry for momentum. Unfortunately, the two strike no sparks. full review
28. The Swell Season 2011 Swell never really gathers momentum, remaining a collection of moments, some more privileged than others. full review
29. True Legend 2011 Pic's many satisfyingly kinetic action sequences and strong thesping (particularly by femme lead Zhou Xun) outweigh its uneven scripting and occasional ill-advised forays into CGI. full review
30. You've Been Trumped 2011 Collectivist in spirit, this mostly entertaining film lacks an official host or voiceover narration, which first works swimmingly but eventually becomes too diffuse full review
31. Bill Cunningham New York 2010 Whatever this Times-produced, TV-ready tribute lacks in tension is amply compensated by the pleasure of watching an enthusiast ply the craft he loves. full review
32. Blood Done Sign My Name 2010 Comes off as a painfully old-fashioned, flatly directed exercise in passionless historical reenactment. full review
33. Burzynski 2010 Despite its infotainment look, Burzynski ultimately proves convincing. full review
34. El Infierno 2010 full review
35. Inhale 2010 Walter Doty III and John Clafin's hackneyed script depicts Mexico as one vast, interconnected conspiracy engaged in the underground organ trade, whose highest-ranked traffickers are -- gasp! -- Americans. full review
36. The Parking Lot Movie 2010 Unfortunately, pic's concept doesn't stretch to 74 minutes. full review
37. Breaking Upwards 2009 The duo's longtime partnership imparts a palpable, lived-in intimacy, but lack of careful story construction sometimes hobbles the narrative's comic flow. full review
38. Great Directors 2009 Her eclectic pantheon weighs in with entertaining anecdotes and illuminating comments, illustrated with well-chosen samplings of the artists' work. full review
39. Harmony and Me 2009 Harmony and Me eschews the fits and starts, tensions and complexities of present-tense immediacy in favor of sly, absurdist one-liners, paring everything down to comic essentials. full review
40. Objectified 2009 Witty, engaging and exquisitely crafted. full review
41. Tenure 2009 full review
42. The Beautiful Truth 2008 While docu's claims and criticism yield nothing especially new, the form of their exposition seems singularly ingenious, stylistically falling somewhere between a 1950s educational film and some sort of Norman Rockwellian infomercial. full review
43. Constantine's Sword 2008 Oren Jacoby's magnificent, thought-provoking essay film Constantine's Sword examines the unholy alliance between organized religion and military power. full review
44. Finding Bliss 2008 Davis sustains a steady level of soft humor throughout, thanks to her heroine's inexhaustible shockability and the palpable charm of the other thesps. full review
45. Theater of War 2008 [A] must-see docu for theater lovers could reach wider auds. full review
46. Arranged 2007 Precise lensing, a strong sense of locale and vibrant, eminently likeable perfs enliven Arranged. full review
47. Liberty Kid 2007 Evident throughout is Chaiken's ability to patiently build a scene without fanfare or artifice. full review
48. Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project 2007 A hilarious movie about a surprisingly funny man. full review
49. Phoebe in Wonderland 2007 Barnz arbitrarily posits a nonsensical series of school "rules" to embody conformity, while imagination is repped by Tourette syndrome. full review
50. The Rape of Europa 2007 Mesmerizing morality play, rich in rare archival footage and complete with heroic Allied saviors. full review
51. I'm Reed Fish 2006 Pic's power lies not in postmodernism but in its take on how rural youths relate to the contemporary scene. full review
52. A Man Named Pearl 2006 Pic looks very much like a protracted man-of-the-week spot on a local newscast. full review
53. One to Another 2006 Uneven thesping...assorted inanities...and a narrow focus turn the potentially fascinating tale into a bland, perverse round-robin of teen angst. full review
54. Trailer Park Boys: The Movie 2006 Boys functions swimmingly as both a bigscreen inflation of smallscreen icons and a fairly hilarious stand-alone. full review
55. The Treatment 2006 This offbeat charmer succumbs to the same airless artificiality that has claimed many recent efforts in the genre. full review
56. Unknown 2006 Tyro video helmer Simon Brand doesn't give his actors sufficient breathing room, ruthlessly chopping their scenes into monotonous hash. full review
57. Sweet Land 2005 Intelligently written, brilliantly cast and thesped story of a German mail order bride in a Norwegian-American community in Minnesota just after WWI never hits a wrong note. full review
58. Eat This New York 2004 full review
59. Following Sean 2004 As fascinating as it is frustrating, docu raises a raft of nicely unresolved questions about parenting and parentage. full review
60. The Trials of Henry Kissinger 2002 full review