African Chelsea (Roske, 2011)
I don't normally say a lot about short films in these pages, but I thought I would give a shout-out to African Chelsea for a couple of reasons.
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50/50 (Levine, 2011)
Does it really fall on me to be the dissenting voice on this film? Grimace. I don't want to be. I want to respect it (in fact I do respect it) for its earnestness and good intentions. But...
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4th & Goal (Seavey, 2010)
One of the abiding mysteries of film criticism is why there are so few good football movies.
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Tyrannosaur (Considine, 2011)
Hannah is in an abusive relationship (and that's the understatement of the year), and the way Considine lets this play out without Hannah verbalizing the way her relationship with God affects and is affected by her attempts to negotiate her husband's treatment of her allows the film to be achingly real without ever preaching.
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Habemus Papam (Moretti, 2011)
Ultimately Habemus Papam felt less like a blasphemy and more like a failure of imagination.
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The Kid With a Bike (Dardenne & Dardenne, 2011)
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have been so consistent and so dependable for the last fifteen years, turning out high quality films every two to three years, that a new film from them doesn't seem to generate the buzz or excitement of a fresh, new talent.
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A Separation (Farhadi, 2011)
Asghar Farhadi's A Separation is a riveting domestic drama that works equally well as a character study and a social critique.
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Dear Uncle Adolf: The Germans and Their Fuhrer (Kloft, 2010)
One of the academically interesting consequences of the end of the cold war has been access to historical material that would not necessarily been available to Western historians while the Soviet Union was still in existence.
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Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Wyatt, 2011)
But rise they must, and rise they will, and when when the film remembers that fact (about twenty-five minutes from the end), Will Rodman (James Franco) does an abrupt 180 from gung-ho risk taker to cautionary Cassandra figure.
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The Mummy Returns (Sommers, 2001)
Ten years ago, Ken called The Mummy Returns the worst movie of 2001. A decade later, he went looking for someone to stand up for the Stephen Sommers franchise. Carmen Andres answers the bell.