For a film to get its own page on the main 2014 links page, it must receive at least 5 link submissions from our members with few exceptions. Here is a list of all films that didn’t quite reach that threshold.
1,000 Times Good Night
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A sensitive drama about the challenges idealists and people of great passion face within the family circle.
- Sarah Ward @ Concrete Playground
- George Zervopoulos @ www.moviesltd.gr [Greek]
14 Blades
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: 14 Blades will most likely only entertain its core audience of martial arts aficionados. But kudos to anyone who can recall the intended purpose for each blade.
- Andy Crump @ Movie Mezzanine
2 Autumns, 3 Winters
21 Years: Richard Linklater
- Carson Lund @ In Review Online
- Excerpt: There’s nothing terribly toxic about the addition of this sort of movie to the cultural surplus; after all, Linklater’s a director who arguably deserves all the good press he can get. But 21 Years fails to apply any critical thought to its subject or the documentary form—the latter being perhaps the cardinal sin.
23 Blast
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: We start to wonder if there’s really anything even slightly worthwhile—let alone Very Important—about [this story].
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: The clunky script and amateurish performances are not unexpected in the faith-based genre, but its dubious “inspiration” gives even diehard-atheist me pause.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: On the one hand, it’s well-meaning and high-minded; on the other, it’s obvious and predictable.
50 to 1
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Earnest but cliche-ridden.
The ABCs of Death
- Jeremy Kibler @ Diabolique Magazine
- Excerpt: If only 4 out of 26 segments was still a worthwhile ratio. “ABCs of Death 2” is certainly a whackadoo package, but it’s never funny or scary, just tiresome, gratuitous, infantile, amateurish, and downright mean-spirited.
About Alex
- Daniel Carlson @ Movie Mezzanine
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: And that it could be a grandchild to that 1983 homecoming classic is neither here nor there because, whether or not it will grow with age, “About Alex” is still a satisfyingly smart and low-key slice-of-life of the moment.
Abuse of Weakness
- Carson Lund @ In Review Online
- Excerpt: If Abuse of Weakness is autobiography, it’s a challenging, uncategorizable use of the form: based on personal events but decidedly resistant to resuscitating the subjective experience of living through them—or, especially, providing any discernible commentary on them.
Addicted
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: let’s face it, films seeking mainstream affirmation, whatever the market it is aimed at, are not comfortable portraying women seeking sexual fulfillment without proving how sick, twisted, or downright whorish they are for attempting to explore sexual inclinations
Adjust Your Tracking
- Francis Rizzo III @ DVDTalk.com
- Excerpt: Adjust Your Tracking is essentially a feature-length collection of VHS-collector profiles tied together with the memories and thoughts of those who populate this anachronistic niche.
Advanced Style
Afflicted
- Marina Antunes @ Quiet Earth
- Rob Hunter @ Film School Rejects
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: While it is never quite the game-changer that “Chronicle” managed to be, “Afflicted” is creatively creepy and more technically resourceful than the sub-genre deserves. It’s also better not knowing anything going in.
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Found footage and vampires are two of the most tired trends in film, so what could possibly go wrong by combining them?
After the Fall
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Excerpt: the film ultimately seems like an archaic example of the dangerous follies of patriarchy
- Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Aftermath
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: The crime melodrama, which its makers have dubbed a ‘black comedy thriller,’ has a few oddball moments but is never funny, and it certainly isn’t thrilling.
Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: An enlightening Danish documentary about one of the world’s most famous and creative human rights activists.
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
Alan Partridge
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: One of the great things Coogan does with his ambitious, self-absorbed, offensive, cowardly and not-as-bright-as-he-thinks-he-is character is make him capable of guilt and regret, always keeping us holding out for his redemption.
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: The film gets [this character], and more importantly, so does Coogan, whose lived-in performance ensures that every tic registers in a tangible way…
Algorithms
- Chris Barsanti @ Film Journal International
- Excerpt: Sight-challenged Indian teenagers push to become championship chess players in this disappointingly slight, surface-dwelling documentary.
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Alien Abduction
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With his first published screenplay, Robert Lewis treads a familiar path, but the devil’s in the details and some well handled subtext on preconceived notions.
- Rob Hunter @ Film School Rejects
All You Need Is Love
Altina
The Amazing Catfish
America
- Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: The biggest problem with America is that one may find it difficult if not impossible to see it without one being blinded by one’s own viewpoints.
- Dan Lybarger @ Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
- Excerpt: D’Souza seems to have a marksman’s gift for shooting himself in the foot.
- Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: What is promised in the film’s title is an issue that is asked but quickly abandoned. Truthfully, America: Imagine the World Without Her should really be called “Should America Be Ashamed of Itself?” That’s actually a more potent question.
- Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: What is promised in the film’s title is an issue that is asked but quickly abandoned. Truthfully, America: Imagine the World Without Her should really be called “Should America Be Ashamed of Itself?” That’s actually a more potent question.
The American Nurse
The Angriest Man in Brooklyn
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Pulling a terrific cast down with it, “The Angriest Man in Brooklyn” tries to waver every which way and strikes as too ineffective in all directions. The one that ends up earning the reason to be angry is the viewer.
Anita
The Anonymous People
App
Art and Craft
- Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Watching Mark create his forgeries, an easier process than you would think, is fun to watch for a while but Art and Craft loses some steam as an equally obsessed and dogged amateur tracks Landis’s cons and the action builds to a less than satisfying climax.
- Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit
- Excerpt: An object lesson in how to make a good documentary
- Francis Rizzo III @ DVDTalk
- Excerpt: A fascinating documentary following a master forger and the expert trying to stop him.
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
The Art of the Steal
Authors Anonymous
Awake: The LIfe of Yogananda
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A rounded portrait of the Father of Yoga in the West that celebrates his practical and uplifting art of spiritual living.
Bad Hair
- Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The film is a marvel of tone, dispensing cruel life lessons while charming us with a child’s point of view.
- Carson Lund @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: Mariana Rondón’s narrative works through the many contradictions brewing inside Junior in the wake of his personal actualization without ever feeling like a dramatic checklist.
- Ron Wilkinson @ Monsters and Critics
- Excerpt: A tight knit and brutally honest essay on familial conflicts and the complications of living a Western dream in an environment of limited possibilities.
Bad Johnson
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Reading the plot synopsis, I knew the movie would either be hilariously brilliant or downright awful. It’s the latter.
Banksy Does New York
- Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: ‘Banksy Does New York’ is a record of how the city reacted to the artist’s 31-day residency that included a variety of multimedia art with a political undertone.
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
La Bare
The Battery
Before I Disappear
- Jason Bailey @ Flavorwire
- Excerpt: It’s an original, intoxicating, giddily alive movie.
- Nicholasb Bell @ Ioncinema
- Excerpt: It’s a tale that requires a strong, emotional component to be successful, and its glaring absence only becomes more and more apparent as it shuttles us off into the vacuum of the hopeful ending.
Believe Me
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Excerpt: ‘Believe Me’ Entertains, Informs, And Enlightens, Without Anyone Realizing It
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Not your typical Christian film: it dares to question the money-making machine that is evangelicalism. But it doesn’t dare question Christianity itself.
Beneath
Beneath the Harvest Sky
- Ron Wilkinson @ MonstersandCritics.com
- Excerpt: A story that unfolds nearly as slowly as the potatoes ripen in the fields, the charismatic performances of the two young leads make all the difference.
Beside Still Waters
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: an honest film that thinks outside of the box for a story that could have easily been a rehash of something I’ve seen many time before
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Excerpt: Beside Still Waters’ Channels ‘The Big Chill’ For The Next Generation
- Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Friends reunite for a forced march down memory lane, whether they like it or not.
- Stacia Kissick Jones @ She Blogged By Night
Bethlehem
- Josh Spiegel @ Sound on Sight
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Might not offer new insights into a terrible conflict, but depicts the human cost on the ground with often startling power.
The Better Angels
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: The effect becomes repetitive, and that ultimately emphasizes the rather slight nature of the story here.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Edwards’s impressionistic approach gives a flavor of backwoods life in the early 19th century, but doesn’t really explore what made Abe tick.
Better Living Through Chemistry
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Featherweight, subtly idosyncratic black comedy, most memorable for its clever, slightly raunchy one-liners.
- Josh Spiegel @ Sound on Sight
Beyond the Edge
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Through gorgeous archival footage and new re-creations, thrillingly places us amidst the first successful summit of Everest in 1953, taking true advantage of 3D to offer us dazzling mountain vistas.
Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain
Bicycling with Molière
- Jamie S. Rich @ DVD Talk
- Excerpt: A smart and insightful human drama, it builds its narrative on two aging actors bickering over a possible production of Moliere’s The Misanthrope. Fabrice Luchini and Lambert Wilson are superb in the main roles, creating complex characters who are always interesting to watch because they have plenty of interesting things to say.
Big Men
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A hard-hitting documentary about oil, money, globalism, international finance, corruption and greed.
- Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: This doc tells the true story, with impressive access and documentation, about a little Texas company that finds oil in Ghana.
Bird People
- Daniel Carlson @ Movie Mezzanine
- Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: The contrast between airplanes and birds makes for an interesting metaphor, but while the film boasts good performances, cinematography, and other scattered points of interest, ‘Bird People’ never really takes off.
A Birder’s Guide to Everything
Black Coal Thin Ice
Black Coal, Thin Ice
Blood Glacier
- Mark Harris @ About.com
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Alguns dos efeitos especiais (estou a pensar na parede de gelo vermelha) revelam a sua fraqueza no grande ecrã, mas a intenção é suficiente para gostar do filme.
Blood Ties
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Blood Ties is one of those skillfully crafted “adult” crime thrillers that would have been made by Sidney Lumet and William Friedkin back in the 1970s/early-1980s. While not everything pays off in the filmmakers’ ambitious eyes, it’s still quite compelling.
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: A total gong show of terrible acting. Even Marion Cotillard doesn’t get off easy in this review…
- Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
Bobby Jasoos
Boys of Abu Ghraib
Breakup Buddies
- James Marsh @ Twitch
- Excerpt: The long, punishing arm of China’s censorship board still hangs heavy over the career of mainland filmmaker Ning Hao. The once-exciting auteur turns in another safe, audience-friendly offering with Breakup Buddies, suggesting his penance for the acerbic No Man’s Land is still far from paid.
A Brony Tale
- Francis Rizzo III @ DVDTalk.com
- Excerpt: A breezy, well-made introduction to adults who love My Little Pony
Burning Blue
Burt’s Buzz
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A documentary about a Maine recluse who at 76 years of age makes public appearances as the icon of the Burt’s Bees brand.
But Always
- James Marsh @ Twitch
- Excerpt: Nicholas Tse proves he is better-suited to tough guy roles than romantic leads, but his inert performance here opposite Gao Yuanyuan is far from the only problem with Snow Zou’s shockingly cliched and unaware tragi-romance.
Buttwhistle
- Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Its fractured aesthetic lacks sharp edges, but remains hard to grasp.
By the Gun
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Cliched, confused and thoroughly unnecessary, “By the Gun” features a meaty role for Boston rapper Slaine (“The Town”) as Nick’s best friend George, but writer Emilio Mauro deep sixes the character’s early promise in a laughable “Mean Streets” ripoff.
Cabin Fever: Patient Zero
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: Some of the scenes aren’t executed as well as they could be, but there’s plenty of moments that will make your skin crawl. Unfortunately, the characters aren’t very well developed, and once the blood washes away, you’ll forget about them soon enough.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
The Calling
- Marina Antunes @ Row Three
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: a lukewarm endeavor a bit warmed over by notable cast members flogging through a ludicrous plot .
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: A somber, supernatural meditation on ritualistic murder
- Glenn Lovell @ CinemaDope.com
- Excerpt: More than ‘Fargo’ meets ‘Se7ven’ … Sarandon’s portrayal of the surly small-town police chief is so nuanced and assured we’d welcome a Hazel Micallef franchise.
Cam2Cam
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: Cam2Cam’s rudimentary grappling with the inherent dangers of online prostitution and the false security of interacting via digital platforms already seems about a decade behind the times.
- Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
The Canal
- Mark Harris @ About.com
- João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
- Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Com um visual forte e um bom elenco principal (a mãe e a criança não estão bem, mas todos os outros têm performances sólidas), “The Canal” consegue ser um filme com todas as vantagens do cinema independente – liberdade, originalidade – mas com uma construção narrativa e execução de fazer inveja a muita gente na indústria.
- Ron Wilkinson @ Monsters and Critics
- Excerpt: Spirits in restrooms, blood from the walls and a hand cranked camera add up to something, but we are not sure what.
The Candidate
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Slovak political dramedy is sharp and incisive.
Cannibal
- Marina Antunes @ Quiet Earth
- Mark Harris @ About.com
- Brent McKnight @ Beyond Hollywood
- Excerpt: More a slow burn thriller than an exploitation horror movie, ‘Cannibal’ may involve eating human flesh, but is about much more.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: In the end its marvelously crafted images don’t give you enough to chew on–intellectually, of course.
Canopy
- Glenn Dunks @ Glenn Dunks
- Excerpt: Canopy is a movie rich of its own world, an 80-minute work of filmmaking that rises above mere war or survival films and becomes something unique.
- Blake Howard @ Graffiti with Punctuation
- Excerpt: Canopy is writer/director Aaron Wilson’s first-person take on the sensory experience of being lost at war.
Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart
- Jason Bailey @ Flavorwire
- Excerpt: ‘Captivated’ is a riveting procedural, telling a fascinating story augmented by extensive archival footage (much of it weathered and fuzzy, as all old video should be), and if director Jeremiah Zagar had left it at that, I’d still recommend it. But this is a film with much more on its mind.
The Captive
- Blake Howard @ Graffiti with Punctuation
- João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: The Captive has a good idea, but a bad execution
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
The Case Against 8
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A poignant documentary on five-year battle of LGBT community to gain marriage equality in California.
- Dustin Jansick @ Way Too Indie
- Excerpt: Feels more like a pat-on-the-back for itself and a history lesson for those who know little about the subject.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- David Upton @ So So Gay
- Excerpt: In the bubble we’re placed in with these heroes, Cotner and White have to be very careful to maintain a sense of perspective and context, simultaneously allowing the audience to identify with this side of the case without losing sight of what it means in the grander scheme of American society.
Le Chef
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Frothy but only mildly amusing aperitif….
Child of God
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A horror film that challenges us to never exclude anyone from our hearts.
- Travis Hopson @ Examiner.com
- Dustin Jansick @ Way Too Indie
- Excerpt: One must credit Franco’s ambitions to adapt these hard-to-film pieces of literature, though this film proves that literal adaptations are not his strongest suit.
Chinese Puzzle
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A delightful French film about a writer, his many female friends and lovers, his adventures in Manhattan, and his yen for being a good father.
The Circle
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An entertaining and edifying portrait of the gay scene in Zurich from the 1950s to 2003.
- Alan Mattli @ Facing the Bitter Truth [German]
- Excerpt: Mixing documentary and feature film is a boldly original, refreshingly un-Swiss move, but while ‘The Circle’ works perfectly fine during its journalistic passages, its scripted scenes are hamstrung by a cast of disappointingly underperforming actors.
- Norm Schrager @ Film Racket
- Excerpt: Director Stefan Haupt has melded narrative and documentary, resulting in more dramatic potential than on-screen power.
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
Citizen Autistic
Citizen Koch
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: The movie didn’t have to be called Citizen Koch. In fact, the title leads us to expect a level of insight into the brothers that it does not begin to deliver.
Clouds of Sils Maria
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Great performances by Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart!
A Coffee in Berlin
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The film’s finale is so strong, it almost convinces you you’ve seen a better film than you actually have.
- Aaron Pinkston @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Anchored by a breakout performance and a witty script, the film is an effortlessly entertaining stroll through the German capital.
Come Back to Me
Comet
Concerning Violence
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A meditation on Frantz Fanon’s plea to oppressed people to use violence against their colonial oppressors.
The Connection
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: It may take Jimenez a tad too long to discover the heart of his own story but he does get there and the journey, while conventional, is at least a good time.
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
Copenhagen
The Crossing
- James Marsh @ Screen Daily
- Excerpt: John Woo’s first directorial offering in four years is a grand scale war-time romance chronicling the plight of three unrelated couples whose lives become entwined during the Chinese Civil War. As was the case with Woo’s 2008 two-parter, Red Cliff, the eponymous event – in this case the tragic 1949 sinking of Chinese steamer the Taiping – is still yet to come, as this first installment delivers two hours of detailed set-up, with its feet firmly on terra firma.
- Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
Cuban Fury
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …like a new sitcom with a great cast that’s so badly conceived and executed it’s yanked after two episodes. Only the genuine sweetness between Frost and Jones and McShane’s wacky casting make this film remotely bearable.
- Donald Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Simon Miraudo @ Quickflix
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Too mild for its own good, a formulaic ‘worm turns’ story that doesn’t take full advantage of its dance milieu.
Cyber-Senoirs
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A touching and humorous Canadian documentary about teenage mentors who teach a group of elders how to use computers and the Internet.
The Damned
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: as smooth as the set-up for many a Jean Rollin title, ridiculous dialogue lazily dubbed with awkward pipelaying
- Carson Lund @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: From its first draw of blood onward, The Damned bolts down a foreseeable slasher-movie trajectory, laying on thick the dramatic irony while constantly inventing new reasons to punish its characters for old iniquities.
Dancing in Jaffa
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: Proof that dancing is a healing force capable of turning an enemy into a friend.
Days and Nights
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: though more often than not, this is simply another tedious glimpse of familial dysfunction, relocated to the heart of a WASP’s nest.
Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: a feeling akin to the difference between joking about an easy target like Christian Scientologists, and then, say, being forced to attend an eight hour seminar that seriously teaches its religious tenets.
- Patrick Bromley @ F This Movie!
- Kristy Puchko @ CinemaBlend.com
- Excerpt: Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead delivers more gore, action, firepower, and laughs than the first film. It’s brilliantly bonkers and will have audiences howling with laughter from its first zombie battle to its fucked up and fun final showdown.
- Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: “Død Snø 2” com o seu orçamento de 4,5 milhões de euros dá uma lição sobre como fazer blockbusters na Europa para todo o mundo ver. Melhor só uma maratona com os dois filmes de uma assentada.
Death Comes to Pemberley
- Frederick and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A devilishly good whodunit by P.D. James that is a sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
The Decent One
- Donald Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Ron Wilkinson @ Monsters and Critics
- Excerpt: Home movies juxtaposed with horrific Nazi footage paints the picture of the sleeping monster in us all.
Decoding Annie Parker
Deepsea Challenge 3D
Default
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Travis Hopson @ Examiner
- Excerpt: Setting itself apart from a crowded field of Somali pirate movies is a goal Default reaches for, but in choosing meaningless action over all else it’s never achieved.
The Den
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Before it falls into a more standard slasher pattern with a ton of camera-shaking and a scintilla of torturous bloodletting akin to a “Saw” movie, “The Den” is a pretty effective cautionary tale.
Dinosaur 13
- Kenji Fujishima @ Slant Magazine
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A bittersweet reminder that while the scientific method may be coolly rational, the people who do science are deeply emotionally caught up in their work.
Diplomacy
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Alan Mattli @ Facing the Bitter Truth [German]
- Excerpt: Diplomacy’ is the consummate composite work of Schlöndorff, Gély, Arestrup, and Dussollier – a minimalist chamber play about the human side of war.
- Ron Wilkinson @ Monsters and Critics
- Excerpt: A friendly discussion of life and death passes the time as the Allies storm the last Nazi defenses of the City of Lights.
Doc of the Dead
The Dog
- Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit
- Excerpt: At its best when Wojtowicz is unleashed
Don Peyote
- Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Stoners who are already salivating over the trippy trailer will likely find ‘Don Peyote’ hits the psychedelic sweet spot… The sober-minded are not as likely to be amused.
Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater
- Carson Lund @ Are the Hills Going to March Off?
- Excerpt: Double Play’s visuals repeatedly stress [a] quest for connection and understanding.
Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods
- Travis Hopson @ Examiner
- Excerpt: This is undoubtedly the weirdest Dragon Ball Z story I’ve ever seen and that’s really saying something.
Drive Hard
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Disappointing potboiler that runs out of gas far too quickly.
Drones
- Travis Hopson @ Examiner
- Excerpt: While Rick Rosenthal’s Drones has the balls to attack the issue head on, the lack of nuance in tackling a complex issue undermines his efforts and that of a game cast.
Dying of the Light
Ek Villain
Elsa & Fred
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Excerpt: Featuring two iconic American stars in this rehashed material gains Radford a lot of leverage in what’s otherwise a rather feeble claptrap of mounting cliché
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- José M. Robado @ CineCrítico [Spanish]
- Tom Santilli @ Examiner.com
- Excerpt: We’ve seen this movie a hundred times, but it is the equivalency of comfort food.
Emoticon
The Empty Hours
Eternity: The Movie
Exhibition
Exists
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: With nary an original flourish in its little brain, despite some fleeting moments of genuine creepiness, the distraction of its mechanics work as resolutely against its effectiveness like a majority of all films in this vein, wherein cameras stay indefatigably in action no matter the dangers faced, and obvious editing and musical cues interfere with the rules of the game.
The Face of Love
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: in the Barbara Bel Geddes role, Robin Williams is more a creepy neighbor than wanna-be-more-than-platonic friend, as if he hasn’t shaken one of his serial killer roles.
- Jamie S. Rich @ Oregon Live
- Excerpt: The Face of Love is a serious look at grief and finding romance after losing the person most important to you.
- Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Annette Bening makes another movie character seem real and true in this suspenseful romantic drama.
- Sarah Ward @ Concrete Playground
Fanny
Farmland
- Tony Dayoub @ Cinema Viewfinder
- Excerpt: FARMLAND is not dissimilar to the kind of “documentary” one used to see before riding some Disney attraction that would extol all of the benefits of our agriculture industry before you realized that it was sponsored by a troubling multinational agri-business conglomerate like Monsanto.
Felony
Fifi Howls from Happiness
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A documentary about an arrogant and weird Iranian artist living in exile in Rome.
- Matthew Lucas @ From the Front Row
- Excerpt: This an extraordinarily singular work about an extraordinary man, both elegiac and rapturous.
- Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Mohassess creates us as he sees us. Bodies obsessed with basic instinctual needs tussling in conflict.
Filth
- José Arce @ LaButaca.net [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Arrolladora adaptación de la novela de Irvine Welsh menos cochina que su referente, sí, pero perfectamente fiel a sí misma en su salvajismo desaforado. No pasará a la historia, pero es recomendable.
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: ultimately a forgettable film
- Dustin Freeley @ Movies About Gladiators
- Excerpt: Irvine Welsh’s further examination of Scottish self hatred.
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Filth is ballsy, fierce, frenetic, gonzo, lunatic, and wildly perverse—and those are all meant as compliments. In short, it’s a dark, diseased blast and James McAvoy is electrifying to watch.
- Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Mas isto são meras referências, insuficientes para abordar um filme inteligente, complexo, louco e divertido, onde o sexo acaba por ser a dimensão principal e o poder acaba por ter uma função afrodisíaca.
The Final Member
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: The world’s only penis museum is no joke, but there’s plenty funny (and enlightening, and poignant) in this sweet portrait of a man dedicated to completing his life’s work.
Finding Fanny
Finding Fela!
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A poignant documentary about the great Nigerian singer and songwriter whose music speak out for justice.
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Finding Fela! the documentary is almost as much a paradox as the man himself, stuffed full of information but leaving nagging questions, making us move to the music before hammering us into submission.
- Simon Miraudo @ Quickflix
Fishing Without Nets
- Ron Wilkinson @ MonstersandCritics.com
- Excerpt: Piracy on the high seas up close and personal.
Flamenco, Flamenco
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a marvel of color, light, music and dance. Let it envelop you in the dark on the big screen.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: If you don’t know flamenco, this will be a baptism of fire, and by the time you leave you’ll know whether you like it or not.
The Fluffy Movie
For a Woman
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A historical drama pieced together when two sisters discover things they didn’t know about their parents’ life in post-World War II France.
For No Good Reason
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: In those occasions wherein Paul shows us Steadman at work, it would be both insulting and apt to compare his process to a magic act. As with an illusionist’s performance, you can watch everything he does with a careful eye and still have no idea how he got to the breathtaking result.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Paul and Depp don’t get us very deep under the skin of Steadman the man, but what this film does to brilliant effect is to take us through the Steadman creative process.
- Sarah Ward @ FilmInk
Forgotten Hero
- Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: A very suspenseful and memorable thriller.
The Foxy Merkins
The French Minister
- Carlos del Río @ El rincón de Carlos del Río [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Crónicas diplomáticas es divertida, y a veces lo es mucho, porque ves cómo funciona un ministerio desde dentro, y Tavernier te lo cuenta con un gran reparto y un ritmo rapidísimo.
- Carlos del Río @ El rincón de Carlos del Río [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Crónicas diplomáticas es divertida, y a veces lo es mucho, porque ves cómo funciona un ministerio desde dentro, y Tavernier te lo cuenta con un gran reparto y un ritmo rapidísimo.
- Kenji Fujishima @ Slant Magazine
Frequencies
Friended to Death
Frontera
- Andy Crump @ Movie Mezzanine
- Excerpt: …for all of its political concerns, Frontera should be seen foremost as a movie that serves its actors.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, there should be a nice straight stretch of highway somewhere near the southern border marked with a sign saying “Adopted by Frontera.”
Gambit
- Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: It’s a treat to watch Colin Firth demonstrate perfect comic timing and a knack for slapstick comedy in this amusing remake of the 1966 film.
The Gambler
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: The Gambler, as it turns out, has a lot in common with a lot of other movies. There’s nothing wrong with Wyatt being influenced by the Coens or Cassavetes or Scorsese but there comes a point where a film’s own power and competence – both things this one has in abundance – are overshadowed by all the better films it calls to mind.
Gebo and the Shadow
- Carson Lund @ In Review Online
- Excerpt: By the time its sudden conclusion hits you with the sort of multivalent power that we’ve come to expect from Oliveira’s seemingly offhand endings, the film’s questions are evident.
- Carson Lund @ In Review Online
- Excerpt: The overwhelming stasis of Gebo and the Shadow is hardly indicative of a creative impasse; on the contrary, the film finds its director, even while indirectly confronting his own mortality, as sharp and crafty as ever.
Get Santa
The Girl and Death
The Girl on the Train
Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A harrowing yet also inspiring portrait of the American pop music icon as he copes with the rapid deterioration of Alzheimer’s.
God Help the Girl
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: dull exercise of endless emotional exposition which desperately wants to infuse the musical sensibilities of Jacques Demy into the drab kitchen sink melodrama of teen angst in Glasgow.
- Matthew Lucas @ From the Front Row
- Excerpt: unlike most things that get slapped with the label “hipster,” the film never comes across as ironic or condescending, it’s incredibly warm and sincere, bathed in a youthful nostalgia that is hard to resist.
- Simon Miraudo @ Quickflix
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Excerpt: A quaint, pretentious film, representative of a quaint, pretentious band.
God’s Not Dead
- Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: I did not hate God’s Not Dead, and while I see its flaws I can also extend a little grace.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Implausible concept makes the film lose credibility immediately…
- Mike McGranaghan @ Film Racket
- Excerpt: While it most certainly has some very good qualities, it is ultimately undone — at least for general audiences — by a completely unsubtle desire to do more than simply tell a meaningful story; it wants to rock the world.
- Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: God’s Not Dead is a movie with its heart in the right place and its head up its butt. It contains a microcosm of an idea, debating God’s place in the natural order, but spends most of the time as a recruitment drive for the Christian faith in which you are recruited with your arm twisted behind your back.
The Golden Era
Good People
Goodbye World
Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia
- Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A hugely entertaining biography of one of the great observers of the American century whose witty, bitter obstinance is essential in highlighting how far the U.S. has gone off the rails since WWII.
- Jonathan Richards Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: There’s a bit of hagiography at work in Nicholas Wrathall’s documentary Gore Vidal The United States of Amnesia, but its subject stands up to the treatment.
The Great Invisible
- Chris Barsanti @ Film Racket
- Excerpt: The Great Invisible occasionally touches on gripping material but leaves too much of the story unsaid.
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Frederick and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A hard-hitting and illuminating documentary about one of the largest man-made environmental disaster in history.
- Bill Clark @ From The Balcony
The Great Museum
- Alan Mattli @ Facing the Bitter Truth [German]
- Excerpt: The only real downside to this otherwise fascinating fly-on-the-wall documentary is that it shamelessly plagiarises Nicolas Philibert’s ‘La ville Louvre’.
- Aaron Pinkston @ Battleship Pretension
Gulaab Gang
Haider
Half of a Yellow Sun
- Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: In the beginning, two beautiful women are dining at a stately dinner in their luxurious family home. In a seeming eyeblink, they are caught in the tightening vise of a desperate civil war.
Hangar 10
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Found footage has come to be an excuse for storytellers to completely bypass drama, character development, and plot in an attempt to be “authentic.”
Hank and Asha
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A very imaginative take on modern romance and the yearning of lonely and isolated twentysomethings for an intimate relationship.
Happy New Year
Happy Valley
- Bill Clark @ From The Balcony
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: Bar-Lev lets his subjects off easy, but that’s partly because they do so much damage to themselves.
Hard Drive
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Audiences could debate the authenticity of a contemporary relationship that doesn’t contain some form of mediation, but Hard Drive is so consciously cleansed of impersonal gizmos that one must see the absence of technology as part of the point.
A Haunted House 2
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: Marlon Wayans on his own has taken his family name lower than ever before… even lower than “White Chicks.”
- Frank Ochieng @ Focus of New York Magazine
- Excerpt: One can immediately detect a desperate sense of regurgitation in the strained chuckles as A Haunted House 2 has all the inspired hilarity of a decaying fang inside a drugged Dracula’s mouth.
Heatstroke
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: While the characters can be irritating and problematic at times, they are not unrealistic.
- Ron Wilkinson @ ItsJustMovies.com
- Excerpt: An uneven but entertaining look at the animal in all of us.
Hellion
- Travis Hopson @ Examiner
- Excerpt: Hellion fits into something I like to call the “festival bubble”
- Aaron Pinkston @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Jacob isn’t committing crimes because he’s bored or necessarily even a bad kid. Teens just acting out is a familiar excuse and film trope, but Hellion gets the character decisively right.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: This troubled teenager drama gets its strength from Kat Candler’s solid writing and steady, unobtrusive direction, and especially from its cast. The standout is young Josh Wiggins.
- Tom Santilli @ Examiner.com
- Excerpt: Hellion doesn’t quite hit a home run, but it stands out.
Her Name Was Torment
- Daniel Lackey @ The Nightmare Gallery
- Excerpt: Dustin Mills combines performance, photography and sound to create a palpable feeling of madness. Insanity wafts from the film like the smell of rot rising from a pile of trash.
Hide Your Smiling Faces
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A meditation on death about two young brothers dealing with the sudden death of a friend and all the other losses around them.
- Dustin Jansick @ Way Too Indie
- Excerpt: Remains too translucent and void of any real substance to prosper on mood and poetic storytelling alone.
- Stacia Kissick Jones @ Spectrum Culture Online
- Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit
- Excerpt: Puberty and death haunt a rural New England summer
Hollidaysburg
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Kind of a mess.
Hollows Grove
- Mike McGranaghan @ Film Racket
- Excerpt: A virtual compendium of found footage clichés, all assembled in an unoriginal, lackluster manner.
The Hornet’s Nest
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: “The Hornet’s Nest” is a powerful movie that shows what really happens on the ground during a conflict like this, and it’s very apropos to view around Memorial Day.
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Ron Wilkinson @ ItsJustMovies.com
- Excerpt: Great live action footage fails to make up for poor narration and organization.
Horses of God
- Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch uses the 2003 terror bombings in Casablanca to build an affecting, persuasive blueprint for the making of a fanatic.
The Houses October Built
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Awful enough to give Halloween a bad name.
Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania
I Am Ali
- Tony Dayoub @ Cinema Viewfinder
- Excerpt: At best, I AM ALI is a primer for the few that a long line of documentaries about this extremely well documented sports and Civil Rights figure has thus far eluded. At worst, I AM ALI is a forgettable CliffsNotes-style profile that hits many of the landmark moments in Ali’s life while avoiding the dissenting points of view concerning his controversial stances on the Vietnam war and the Black Muslim movement.
- Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Clare Lewins unexpectedly unearths new information and new commentary from one of the most famous men on the planet and it is a pleasure to sit back and listen to the living legend.
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
I Am Eleven
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: An entertaining and appealing documentary about the hopes, dreams, and fears of eleven year olds around the world.
If You Build It
- Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit
- Excerpt: Unorthodox shop class says if you build it, it will mean something to you
If You Don’t, I Will
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: What is it that entices filmmakers to make movies about disagreeable couples whose marriage is falling apart?
The Immortalists
In Bloom
- Matthew McKernan @ FilmWhinge
- Excerpt: It is a film of empathy and understanding, but also one that is refreshingly female in its focus, if not genuinely feminist, and a significant contribution to world cinema.
- Sarah Ward @ FilmInk
In Fear
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Building on the primal power of apprehension and leaving much to the imagination, especially in the first half, “In Fear” forces the viewer to not only be scared for the two lead characters, but we become scared ourselves.
- Daniel Lackey @ The Nightmare Gallery
- Glenn Lovell @ CinemaDope.com
- Excerpt: UK helmer Lovering tightens the screws the old-fashioned way, through atmospher and suggestion … (It) possesses a bleakly funny Pinter-esque quality.
- Ross Miller @ Thoughts On Film
- Excerpt: It’s not exactly reinventing the jump-scare but it does everything it can to squeeze every drop of claustrophobic atmosphere and tension out of the situation and on that level it succeeds admirably.
Inner Demons
Innocence
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: in a modern world where ancient covens still exist, one would wish that the supernatural world would be a bit more progressive—this virgin motif seems incredibly dated, even though Brougher is trying to make this an allegory about modern female adolescence, –
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Tiresome, incoherent – don’t bother….
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: An extremely silly attempt at a young adult thriller that winds up laughable rather than scary.
Inside the Mind of Leonardo Da Vinci
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Any chance to spend some time inside one of the greatest minds that ever lived is time well spent, even if this documentary doesn’t take as much advantage of the visit as we might like.
Ironclad: Battle for Blood
Island of Lemurs: Madagascar
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Enchanting and educational, delivering its ecological mesage about conservation in a most delightful way.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Apart from one element it’s a thoroughly likable, though hardly overwhelming, travelogue.
The Island of St. Matthews
- Carson Lund @ In Review Online
- Excerpt: It would be misguided and insensitive to disparage this more-than-noble exercise. It’s equally debatable, however, to suggest that its good-natured ambitions and unconventional form alone constitute a cinematic success.
It Felt Like Love
- Dustin Jansick @ Way Too Indie
- Excerpt: The kind of film that a lot of people try to make, yet few rarely succeed in making.
- Danny King @ Paste Magazine
Ivory Tower
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Here’s a documentary that should be of interest to any kid thinking about his future or the parents socking away money for their children’s college fund.
- Dustin Freeley @ Movies About Gladiators
- Excerpt: A documentary about education and its discontents.
- Frank Ochieng @ Sound on Sight
- Excerpt: Thoroughly thought-provoking, insightful and steeped in revelation concerning the student debt crisis Ivory Tower cleverly investigates the country’s spiraling financial burdens of obtaining a college education
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart
- Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa .5
- Francis Rizzo III @ DVDTalk.com
- Excerpt: The inevitable Jackass follow-up hodgepodge
Jackpot
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: Here is a mean-spirited movie about bad-hearted people in which the central question seems to be which of these characters is the nastiest of the lot.
- Oktay Ege Kozak @ DVD Talk
Jake Squared
- Travis Hopson @ Examiner.com
- Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Like ‘8 1/2’ done as a romantic comedy by a Hollywood phony.
Jamie Marks Is Dead
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: A somber, harshly grim supernatural twist on the coming-of-age tale, “Jamie Marks Is Dead” is never as fully realized as desired, but there is something about it that stirs in the mind.
Jealousy
- Kenji Fujishima @ In Review Online
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Jealousy is not really very much about jealousy. There’s a bit of the green-eyed monster, but more than that it’s about relationships, and how they bloom and fade.
Jersey Shore Massacre
- Mike McGranaghan @ Film Racket
- Excerpt: An irredeemably awful film.
Jesus Town, USA
Jews of Egypt
Jimmy P
- Tom Santilli @ Examiner.com
- Excerpt: Jimmy P. (opening today) is the sort of film that should be important and compelling, but is neither.
Jimmy P.
- Jason Pirodsky @ Expats.cz
- Excerpt: If you can forgive the film it’s slow, methodical nature – which is reflective of its central protagonist – this is a meditative, quietly effective story that might get to you.
Just a Sigh
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: The lovers don’t set off a spark, just a sigh, but they give us a pleasant hour and 45 minutes in Paris, a little sex, a little wine, a little conversation, and how bad can that be?
Keep On Keepin’ On
- Jamie S. Rich @ DVDTalk
- Excerpt: You don’t have to know jazz to enjoy the new music documentary Keep on Keepin’ On, though by the end of this story about trumpet player Clark Terry and one of his protégés, Keep on Keepin’ On will certainly give you a taste for it.
Kelly & Cal
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A simple, honest, deeply satisfying tale of the complex mixed emotions and desires that make up a woman’s life and often exist in secret.
- Mike McGranaghan @ Film Racket
- Excerpt: Feels like a tiny little miracle.
Khoobsurat
The Kill Team
- Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: While “The Kill Team” is well worth watching, the jury’s out.
- Jordan M. Smith @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: The Kill Team starkly asks for us to try to reconcile the shifting gaps between patriotism and imperialism, aiding and oppressing, recreation and self-preservation. Hint: It can’t be done, as long as the innocent continue to be punished for trying to do what is everyone’s moral responsibility. – See more at: http://www.ioncinema.com/reviews/the-kill-team-review#sthash.IADcAQ0e.dpuf
Killing Jimmy Hoffa
- Frank Ochieng @ Sound on Sight
- Excerpt: …[a] straight-shooting and intriguing documentary. Thoroughly captivating and informative, Killing Jimmy Hoffa is a noteworthy documentary not to be silenced as its titular subject matter.
The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness
- Pat Mullen @ Point of View
- Excerpt: Review from the Toronto International Film Festival.
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
Kite
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: While a faithful adaptation would have seemed gratuitous, this end product is unable to elicit any kind of response at all, feeling utterly uninspired in look, tone, or content.
- Mathieu Li-Goyette @ Panorama-cinéma [French]
Kochadaiiyaan
Koyelaanchal
Kundo: Age of the Rampant
The Last of the Unjust
- Ron Wilkinson @ ItsJustMovies.com
- Excerpt: A glimpse into the horrific life of an unlikely statesman chosen to destroy his people.
Last Passenger
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: The deeper engine of Last Passenger is a humanistic impulse, the belief that we can improve ourselves and our lot by working together and even sacrificing for one another when necessary. Though it may, with its runaway train premise, seem like a story of man versus machine, Nooshin never lets us forget that there’s person driving this train to oblivion.
The Last Sentence
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: The struggle of a Swedish theology student turned crusading journalist to speak truth to Hitler’s power while dealing with his own shadow side.
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Jan Troell’s exquisitely-shot film, like its subject, is cold and detached.
- Aaron Pinkston @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: While this is an impressive production from a very competent filmmaker, I was left a bit cold.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: At the heart, if that’s the right word, of this movie is the superb performance by Christensen (perhaps best known here as the villainous Mr. White in recent Bond movies.)
Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return
- Tom Santilli @ Examiner.com
- Excerpt: It’s the Citizen Kane of crap.
- Josh Spiegel @ Sound on Sight
A Letter to Momo
A Life in Dirty Movies
Life Partners
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Excerpt: Life Partners’ Keeps It Light And Familiar, But Still Stays Fun
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: While writer-director Fogel and co-writer Joni Lefkowitz don’t say anything too fresh here, besides incorporating both sides of sexual orientation, the film is often perceptive and even sharply funny about co-dependent relationships and how they are tested when one romantic door opens for one party and not the other.
- Frank Ochieng @ Sound on Sight
- Excerpt: Charming, quirky and breezily spirited, Fogel presents a chippy but honest character study of female empowerment that is certainly infectious and relatable.
Life’s a Breeze
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A terrific Irish dramedy about clutter, family solidarity, and an 80-year-old woman’s response to a major gift she is given.
Lilting
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: An emotionally moving British drama about a young gay man’s compassion.
- Aaron Pinkston @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Opening up questions on how we can relate to each other when we really can’t relate to each other creates a pretty powerful story in the end.
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
The Little Bedroom
The Little Rascals Save the Day
- James Plath Plath @ Family Home Theater
- Excerpt: The most “rascally” this film gets is when the kids crank up their pet-spa, which will bring smiles and remind fans of the original short that spawned it. Too bad the whole film wasn’t more like this.
Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Spain’s official submission for Best Foreign Language Film is a nice little ditty about following your dreams.
- Sarah Ward @ FilmInk
Living Things
- Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: Eric Shapiro’s Living Things is, very likely, the most exhausting movie you’ll ever see. And yet, there are no car chases, no gun battles, no cacophony of sound design. Here is a movie that is constructed almost entirely out of words. It contains only two actors, seated at a dinner table debating each other for just over an hour.
Locker 13
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Nothing here is terribly haunting, but at least someone is trying to make something like a horror movie these days that isn’t about buckets of gore and inventive torture.
Losing LeBron
- Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: “Losing LeBron” is an effective documentary about the devastation the plagued the citizens of Cleveland, Ohio when it’s favorite son decided to abandon The Caveliers and join up with the Miami Heat through free agency. But it’s really about the psychology of a city that really never seemed to have a sense of pride even before LeBron became its hero.
Louder Than Words
- Carson Lund @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: The “Inspired by a True Story” credit slapped over the opening images would suggest that writer Benjamin Chapin and director Anthony Fabian intend this as a respectful account, but the 1995 tragedy that claimed Maria Fareri’s life could do far better than this tepid, confusing, and sometimes downright bizarre retelling.
The Love Punch
- Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog VI [Croatian]
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Adventurously sweet ‘n’ silly, it’s light-hearted, feel-good fun that’s geared to amuse middle-aged audiences.
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: The jokes are as creaky as the aching bunions and bad backs onscreen, but Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan are incandescent together.
- Josh Spiegel @ Sound on Sight
Low Down
Lucky Them
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: A beautiful performance by Toni Collette
- Jonathan Richards Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: This slight, modestly entertaining movie owes everything to the talents of its actors, starting with the redoubtable Toni Collette.
- Sarah Ward @ Trespass Magazine
Lullaby
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: “Lullaby” gives a heartbreakingly realistic portrayal of the disease and not just what it does to the body, but to the family as well.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Grim and grief-filled – with little that’s uplifting to redeem the prevailing mood of despair.
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles
- Stacia Kissick Jones @ Next Projection
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: The test of Workman’s collection of clips and stories will be not so much in whether it breaks new ground, but in its success in bringing a new audience to its subject, and in reminding Welles’s fans of what amazing things he accomplished, and what a tantalizing lot he left undone.
Maidan
The Maid’s Room
Majstori
- Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog VI [Croatian]
Making the Rules
Maladies
Manakamana
- Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: ‘Manakamana’ is an ethnographic documentary composed of 11 long takes chronicling the cable car pilgrimage to worship at Nepal’s Manakamana temple.
- Oktay Ege Kozak @ DVD Talk
- Donald Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Manuscripts Don’t Burn
Marius
A Master Builder
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A soul-stirring screen adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s brilliant novel about pride, ruthlessness, erotic power, and loss.
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: It’s a remarkable adaptation, Henrik Ibsen by way of Bob Fosse, a little “All That Jazz” influence in this permutation featuring modern dress and period manners and language, fitted out by a note perfect ensemble.
- Stacia Kissick Jones @ Spectrum Culture Online
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: The title choice that most truly captures the spirit of the project would have been the one they started with: Wally and André Shoot Ibsen.
May in the Summer
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: It quickly slips into an overly familiar melodrama, throwing us into a sort of foreign born It’s Complicated scenario -.
McCanick
- Jamie S. Rich @ DVD Talk
- Excerpt: A solid premise gives way to wobbly psychology in McCanick, a police story that ends up being carried on the shoulders of its considerable lead performer.
Me and You
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A coming-of-age drama about a boy whose dream of being alone is shattered when his older half-sister brings him back to messy reality.
Meet the Mormons
Memphis
- Chris Barsanti @ Film Journal International
- Excerpt: Tim Sutton’s gorgeously shot nomadic mood piece about a temperamental musician searching Memphis for God, inspiration, or both will bore most audiences but hypnotize a few looking for that magical symbiosis of Jim Jarmusch’s blank poetry and David Gordon Green’s early Southern Gothic.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
A Merry Friggin’ Christmas
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: If you ever had the intense desire to see what Robin Williams would be like if he played a character that channeled Archie Bunker, then you might have your wish granted by the comedy A Merry Friggin’ Christmas. Yet, this is a dull, mean-spirited comedy about a family that gets together at Christmas, they fight, they scream, they hate each other, and their basic demeanor is about as warm as a jar full of hornets.
Mirage Men
- Brent McKnight @ Giant Freakin’ Robot
- Excerpt: ‘Mirage Men’ tells a story about paranoid UFO conspiracy theorists and the various ways the US government made them that way.
Miss Julie
Miss Meadows
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Largely tone-deaf and just strange to be strange, “Miss Meadows” would be more startling if weren’t so complacent with its own off-kilter cuteness, which becomes irritating in ten minutes. You can say toodle-oo to this odd bird.
Missionary
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Little more than a pallid gender-reversal version of ‘Fatal Attraction’ with an unseemly religious twist…at best cable-TV fodder.
Moebius
Moms’ Night Out
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: “Moms’ Night Out” is the kind of movie you can take your mother to without worrying that she’ll get offended, and you can still have a good time with it.
- Frank Ochieng @ Focus of New York Magazine
- Excerpt: …tedious and unimaginative. Moms’ Night Out is meant to be innocuous and filled with breezy moralistic zip but the flat shenanigans feel outrageously strained in this toothless suburban working-mommy romp.
- Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: here are no laughs in Moms’ Night Out. None. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Bupkis. Maybe there’s a smile, but that’s not exactly high praise. When you can say that about a comedy, it pretty much empties out the entire picture. Here’s a movie in which the only comic highpoint is a shout-out to Pinterest – it does them no favors.
Monk With a Camera
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: The life and work of a Western abbot in a Tibetan monastery in India who serves as a bridge-builder.
Monster High: Freaky Fusion
Mr. X
- Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
- Carson Lund @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: For a life beyond mere DVD supplementary material, Mr. X could use a dose of rigor to balance out its steady stream of congratulatory pit stops.
My Little Pony Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks
- Francis Rizzo III @ DVDTalk.com
- Excerpt: Teen ponies play music to save the world
Next Goal Wins
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: I could not possibly care less about football, and I fell hopelessly in love with this movie, and with the can-do amateur team it introduces us to.
- Ross Miller @ Thoughts On Film
- Excerpt: It paints the beautiful game, well, beautifully and tells an inspiring story about human perseverance, determination and unbreakable spirit in the face of adversity.
- Norm Schrager @ Meet In the Lobby
Next Year Jerusalem
A Night in Old Mexico
- Carlos del Río @ El rincón de Carlos del Río [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Increíble y aburrida.
Night Will Fall
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Excerpt: Though undoubtedly an underwhelming documentary, this remains an important piece of cinema, as it documents a barbaric brutality we have a duty to explore and study.
- Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
The Ninth Cloud
No God No Master
- Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
- Excerpt: Great history and plenty of bombs and explosions but lacking the glitz to be a great crime thriller.
No Good Deed
- William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: No Good Deed clearly tries to capitalize on Elba’s towering sex appeal to justify why Terri endangers her family to a dangerous stranger, but it refuses to exploit him enough to either make its point or at least provide the audience with enough prurient thrills to warrant our time and money.
- Michael Dequina @ No Good Deed
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Not bad enough to be the topic of conversation at parties, and it’s too dumb to be that riveting or make you sleep with a knife under your pillow.
No No: A Dockumentary
- Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Sarah D Bunting @ Tomato Nation
- Stacia Kissick Jones @ Next Projection
- Don Lewis @ Film Threat
The Notebook
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: A foreboding buzz promises an ever threatening violence, and danger seems to lurk in the corners of the frame at nearly every turn. –
- Samuel Castro @ Ochoymedio.info [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Un drama de la Segunda Guerra que intenta darnos lecciones sobre las heridas que causa el conflicto en los no combatientes, pero que termina siendo una sucesión antipática de elementos demasiado escabrosos para ser creíbles.
- Tony Dayoub @ Cinema Viewfinder
- Excerpt: The freedom from a conventional, unified plot allows us to focus on the essential darkness of THE NOTEBOOK’s individual episodes.
Nothing Bad Can Happen
On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter
On My Way
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This offbeat gem of a road trip film…is a love letter to France’s reigning queen of cinema and a more satisfying experience than Spain’s highly touted “Gloria.”
- Kent Turner @ Film-Forward.com
Out to Kill
- Wesley Lovell @ Cinema Sight
- Excerpt: “Out to Kill” is one of many films of modern Queer Cinema that can’t quite seem to put all the pieces together to break out from its narrow demographic attachment.
The Pact II
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: Somewhere wrapped up in its inconsistencies is a strange little movie that might have had some potential
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Excerpt: ‘The Pact II’ Is Just Another Mediocre Horror Sequel
- Mark Harris @ About.com
Particle Fever
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A funny, exhilarating, suspenseful documentary about the Large Hadron Collider, and how physics is more akin to philosophy and art than you may have imagined.
- Sarah Ward @ FilmInk
- Ron Wilkinson @ ItsJustMovies.com
- Excerpt: Trouble in Boson City but the spunky brainiacs of the Hadron Collider right the ship and identify the illusive link to the beginning of the universe.
Patrick
- Mark Harris @ About.com
- Jeremy Kibler @ Diabolique Magazine
- Excerpt: If Patrick won’t have you recoiling in fright, it will surely slap an ear-to-ear grin on one’s face as a giddily old-school treat in Grand Guignol style.
Penance
Persecuted
- Danny Baldwin @ Critic Speak
- Excerpt: A truly vile piece of reactionary propaganda, “Persecuted” gives Christian conservatives a bad name.
- Stacia Kissick Jones @ Spectrum Culture Online
Phobia
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Excerpt: Phobia’ – A Freaky But Flawed Little Fright Film
Pioneer
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Skjoldbjærg’s style pastiche coheres to create something larger than the sum of its parts. Petter’s harrowing descent wraps us up viscerally in real-world deceptions and their devastating collateral damage.
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Carson Lund @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: Pioneer’s greatest asset, and another trait it shares with Mann and Fincher’s work, is a careful attention toward the particulars of its milieu in a way that doesn’t call attention to those period touches. The film matches the quotient of moustaches, thick-rimmed glasses, and earth-toned blazers from Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy without ever getting Argo-level ostentatious about it.
The Pleasures of Being Out of Step
Point and Shoot
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: As Curry jumps between his interview, Vandyke’s footage, and eventually news broadcasts, you may find your impression of his subject in flux. It’s a great psychological portrait, even as we’re always aware of image modeling.
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: Point and Shoot is a study of overcompensation.
- Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Selfies
- Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit
- Excerpt: An OCD American’s bold quest for manhood — but why does it have to be filmed to count?
- Andrew Wyatt @ St. Louis Magazine
- Excerpt: Point and Shoot provides valuable context for VanDyke’s personal evolution and his choices, turning an American footnote to the Arab Spring into a deeply human story.
The Possession of Michael King
- João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Premature
The Prey
- Sean Axmaker @ Turner Classic Movies
- Excerpt: Eric Valette tries to keep it grounded in action scenes built on a physicality that is more authentic than the overkill of CGI spectacle.
Private Number
Private Peaceful
Private Violence
- Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Tthe lid is just beginning to lift from the black hole of domestic violence and its pervasive infiltration into American society – at all socio-economic levels.
- Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: In this film, the lid is just beginning to lift from the black hole of domestic violence and its pervasive infiltration into American society – at all socio-economic levels.
A Promise
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: This dreary, drippy period romance is sorely lacking in juicy melodrama and some sizzle among supposed stifled lovebirds.
- George Zervopoulos @ Movies Ltd. [Greek]
The Protector 2
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: This isn’t a perfect movie, and it’s not as strong as the original. However, as a follow-up, it’s still a fun ride.
- M. Enois Duarte @ High-Def Digest.com
Pump
- Chris Barsanti @ Film Journal International
- Excerpt: Thought-provoking documentary about the lunacy of only fueling cars with gasoline loses credibility the more it turns into a single-minded broadside.
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A snappy, creative, and optimistic social issue documentary on the end of the oil era and the start of a new era of alternative fuel.
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: You will be shocked, I am sure, to discover that Big Oil has put its profits before all else (including you).
The Pyramid
- José Arce @ LaButaca.net [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Alexandre Aja eleva desde la producción el interés industrial de la típica castaña pseudo slasher de siempre. Un punto de partida simpático y una criatura majeta pero cutrísima no justifican este plomo. Fatal en general.
- Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Since a genre movie of this type solely relies on who lives and who dies, it’s hard to care when there is such nondescript character development and little to no tension to be found.
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
R100
Rabindranath Tagore – The Poet of Eternity
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A uplifting tribute to the polymath Rabindranath Tagore, a truly extraordinary Indian poet and philosopher.
Radio Free Albemuth
- Marina Antunes @ Quiet Earth
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: “Radio Free Albemuth” explores some interesting issues. Unfortunately, it is saddled with many low-budget constraints that take away its level of theatrical experience that a film like this should have.
- Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Writer/director/producer John Alan Simon consciously channeled the mind of prolific science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick to re-create this masterpiece novel as a suspenseful movie. The result is a film about what I’ll call the power or catalyst for inner drive, the essence of our inspiration and motivation. Dick called this source VALIS, an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System.
- Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: A tale of pink, pro-rock n’ roll aliens beaming hallucinatory political advice to subversives from a satellite orbiting earth, “Radio Free Albemuth” is totally baffling if you don’t know the backstory behind it. It may be even stranger if you do.
Ragnarok
Reasonable Doubt
- João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Red Hollywood
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: Never before has there been such a cogent examination of the filmic thematic social commentary (of films made by socially responsible filmmakers in the ‘40s and ‘’50s) that the House Committee on Un-American Activities seized upon for its falsely posed premise for ramming a fascistic form of capitalism down the throats of Americans.
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: Indispensable.
The Retrieval
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Sam Turner @ Film Intel
- Excerpt: ‘a film as confident as it is occasionally empty of narrative movement’
Revenge of the Green Dragons
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: hysterically rendered cohorts are even more irksome, a barrage of squeals, snarls, and gunshots that are more repulsive in their exaggerated acting than any of their heinous crimes.
- Candice Frederick @ Reel Talk
Revenge of the Mekons
Rhymes for Young Ghouls
- Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: If you are a film critic, ethnic studies type, or a Native American starved for cinematic role models, you’ll probably fall over yourself praising ‘Ghouls,’ and I’ll be hard pressed to muster much of a will to argue against you.
Rich Hill
- Marina Antunes @ Row Three
- Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A portrait of small-town American poverty in which compassion for its subjects is matched only by a caustic undercurrent of rage at the utter collapse of the American dream.
Rigor Mortis
- Brent McKnight @ Beyond Hollywood
- Ron Wilkinson @ ItsJustMovies.com
- Excerpt: What is probably an acceptable horror flick for Eastern audiences offers subtleties that are lost on us poor Westerners. Glutinous rice?
River of Fundament
- Anton Bitel @ FilmLand Empire
- Excerpt: ambitious, uncompromising art of the highest ordure.
Rob the Mob
- Tony Dayoub @ Cinema Viewfinder
- Excerpt: Director Raymond De Felitta clearly loves this kind of film, long on New York iconography and staffed by a panoply of Italian-American actors who directors like Sidney Lumet and spiritual descendant Spike Lee kept working for years but have fallen out of fashion with the retirement of THE SOPRANOS.
- Matthew McKernan @ FilmWhinge
- Excerpt: The cast is very good and the writing is generally pretty good and it takes the time to make you care about these outsiders. Thoroughly entertaining though hardly flawless, Rob the Mob is a pleasant surprise.
Rocks in My Pockets
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A wild and weird animated feature about a Latvian grandmother who passes on her depression to others in the family circle.
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Latvia’s submission for Best Foreign Language Film is a wry, funny, and insightful stroke of genius.
- Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Bauman identifies her film as one of mystery and redemption. There is no stigmatizing or shaming – and no sense that the condition is pre-determined to end badly. We understand and we see pathways to light.
Rudderless
Rude Dude
Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary
- Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: “Legend of Sanctuary” não foi um bom filme para começar a maior propagação da saga. Em vez de ser “inspirado em” ou a tão popular “prequela/sequela de”, é uma reapresentação muito rápida das quinta e sexta parte do arco do Santuário.
Saturday Night
- Edwin Davies @ A Mighty Fine Blog
- Excerpt: Yet the unremarkable nature of the episode itself is what makes Saturday Night so compelling. It feels like we are getting a real look at the process of putting on a weekly variety show, and because the episode feels so typical, it can stand in for the making of the show as a whole.
- Stephen Saito @ The Moveable Fest
- Excerpt: After long being in limbo, James Franco’s unvarnished look at the week leading up to an “SNL” taping sees the light of day & it was worth the wait.
The Scarecrow Club
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: The enthusiasm is there in this Ottawa-made political thriller, but the thrills and political stuff, less so.
The Scribbler
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Gloriously bonkers!
See No Evil 2
- William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: a dark, spooky litany of brutal slayings and well-timed jump scares, making it just as good as (almost) any of the Friday the 13th sequels that actually made it to theaters. Take THAT, prestige.
- Patrick Bromley @ F This Movie!
- Billy Donnelly @ This Is Infamous
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: See No Evil 2 surely does what it sets out to do as a straight-up stalk-and-slash affair within a horror sub-genre not exactly famous for inspired plotting and fully written characters. This is a passable Friday night, but it would be nice to care more.
Sex Ed
She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry
Siddharth
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director/editor Richie Mehta (“Amal”) has created a modern day “Bicycle Thieves” with this devastating tale of an illiterate man trying to find his son with next to nothing to go on amidst the teaming masses of India.
- Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
- Sarah Ward @ FilmInk
Singham Returns
Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Excerpt: sweet and surprisingly charming, even though it never transcends its choppy staginess
Small Time
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Filled with humor and heart, it’s an insightful, endearing father/son coming-of-age comedic drama, destined for well-deserved popularity on the DVD shelf.
Son of Batman
The Song
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Press materials for The Song describe it as “the sexiest faith-based movie ever.” While that’s technically true, it’s also an incredibly low bar to clear.
Sophia Grace & Rosie’s Royal Adventure
- James Plath @ Family Home Theater
- Excerpt: They’re great in small doses, but the girls make this 75-minute feature feel a lot longer.
Space Station 76
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: it’s a space set soap opera made as if it were in the 1970’s and meant as an homage to those classic films from the time period that inventively attempted to visually prophesize the space age. – S
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: This retro-futuristic ‘ melodrama is a ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch that goes on far too long.
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: If a blackly comic Todd Solondz drama copulated with the ’70s television series “Space: 1999,” “Space Station 76” would be the bundle of joy.
Stay
Step Up: All In
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Without Channing Tatum,, this franchise falters, except for the dance sequences.
Stephen King’s A Good Marriage
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: King has (or had) a unique flair for creating intriguing and sometimes empowered female protagonists, but the suburban housewife anchoring the lukewarm scenario here isn’t nearly as well-honed as the film necessitates.
- Mark Harris @ About.com
- Kristin Dreyer Kramer @ NightsAndWeekends.com
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: A major disappointment – a dull, lifeless chiller that botches a rather brilliant premise.
Stop the Pounding Heart
- Carson Lund @ In Review Online
- Excerpt: Like a significant portion of low-budget, serious-minded independent work taking place today, Stop the Pounding Heart falls squarely in the trend of on-location, non-actor-employing, process-oriented hybrid filmmaking. Thankfully, though, it bares no disingenuous traces of bandwagon-hopping.
The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears
- Matthew Lucas @ From the Front Row
- Excerpt: This feels ponderous; an aimless doodle where film school affectations are mistaken for actual depth, a modern day piece of avant-garde standing in the shadow of masters.
- Aaron Pinkston @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: This is an ultimate case of style over substance, and the style is absolutely worthy. Though Cattet and Forzani’s style may be indefensibly pretentious at times, they throw so much at your eyes and ears that it becomes an exhaustive marvel.
Stretch
Summer of Blood
The Supreme Price
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Inspiring.
Swelter
- Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: puny modern day western propped up against the influence of Tarantino’s Django Unchained and Robert Rodriquez’s Once Upon a Time in Mexico, yet it can’t approach either of those films, it comes off more as a showcase of violence in slow-motion than developing any kind of character.
The Taking of Deborah Logan
- Daniel Lackey @ The Nightmare Gallery
- Excerpt: The found-footage fad needs to die already, and here’s my first piece of evidence.
- Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
Tales of the Grim Sleeper
- Chris Barsanti @ Film Racket
- Donald Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Cole Smithey @ colesmithey.com
- Excerpt: “Tales of the Grim Sleeper” throws another damning chapter of accusations at America’s openly racist authoritarian system that surreptitiously condones the murder of its black citizens. Call it what it is, genocide-by-degree.
Tasting Menu
That Demon Within
- James Marsh @ Twitch
- Excerpt: Hong Kong’s reigning champion of pyrotechnic mayhem continues to move outside of his comfort zone with the psychological crime drama That Demon Within, but the results fail to hit the mark as poor plotting, loose direction and an increasingly preposterous script do their best to undermine a spirited central performance from Daniel Wu.
That’s Not Funny
- Aaron Pinkston @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Fans of any form of comedy will be able to relate with That’s Not Funny and the personal story at its center. More importantly, the film has a great historical research base without sacrificing entertainment.
The Canal
- Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: Barging on in…
Through a Lens Darkly
The Tightrope
- Jonathan Richards @ jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: It’s an intriguing glimpse behind the curtain for those interested in acting, but it’s a narrow, esoteric slice, and it’s hard to see the film holding much interest for muggles outside of the theater’s magic circle.
Time Is Illmatic
Tip Top
Total Siyapaa
The Town That Dreaded Sundown
- Patrick Bromley @ F This Movie!
- Rob Hunter @ Film School Rejects
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Against all trepidation that inevitably comes with a horror film named after a classic—or in this case, a minor classic—”The Town That Dreaded Sundown” feels like both a throwback and a revitalization, and above all else, it’s actually scary.
True Son
Trust Me
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A grim portrait of an agent for young actors who takes his best shot at success in the nasty and venal Hollywood film community.
- Travis Hopson @ Punch Drunk Critics
- Josh Spiegel @ Movie Mezzanine
U Want Me 2 Kill Him?
- Jeremy Kibler @ Diabolique Magazine
- Excerpt: It’s a ripped-from-the-headlines cyber-nightmare that should resonate even as it predates social media networks. However, a true story doesn’t automatically translate to a plausible story on screen.
- Stacia Kissick Jones @ Spectrum Culture Online
- Frank Ochieng @ Focus of New York Magazine
- Excerpt: Director Andrew Douglas’s cyberspace teen crime caper Uwantme2KILLhim? is refreshingly imaginative and quite compelling in its suspenseful skin…a twisted treat of teen torment and acceptance.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: A slick, taut, reality-based little cyber-thriller that may be a mite dated in technological terms but still fascinates because of its sheer luridness.
United We Fall
Uzumasa Limelight
Very Good Girls
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A difficult yet rewarding summer for a teenager getting ready to leave for college.
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: [E]very conflict here arises from situations that could be easily resolved if the characters sat down to talk for a few minutes…
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Overall, “Very Good Girls” is pleasant but tough to get overly excited about when it doesn’t add up to very much in the end. Fanning and Olsen are very good, though.
- Oktay Ege Kozak @ DVD Talk
Video Games: The Movie
- Beth Accomando @ KPBS Cinema Junkie
- Excerpt: Despite the cheerleading, Snead does manage to deliver a genuinely comprehensive and sometimes insightful portrait of gaming. The film celebrates the innovation, creativity and artistry that goes into games.
- Marina Antunes @ Quiet Earth
- Daniel Carlson @ Movie Mezzanine
Viktor
Violette
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A triumphant biopicture about an immensely creative bisexual woman who has been called France’s greatest unknown writer.
- Samuel Castro @ Ochoymedio.info [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Una biopic interesante y muy bien actuada, que nos muestra a uno de esos personajes secundarios de la historia sobre los que debiéramos saber más.
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Excerpt: Martin Provost ambitiously expands his tale across decades to give us a substantial look into a changing society through the eyes of one, influential protagonist.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: For the first two hours or so of this absorbing examination of the life and career of Violette Leduc, the mood is as dark and grim as the leaden skies of a Parisian winter. But there are occasional shafts of brightness that break through the clouds as the story goes along; and then, toward the end, the sun comes out.
Virunga
- Kenji Fujishima @ Slant Magazine
- Stephen Saito @ The Moveable Fest
- Excerpt: What director Orlando Von Einsiedel and crew have created here will stand the test of time.
Viva la Liberta
Walk of Shame
- Vadym Grygoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: If you don’t think it’s hilarious that a woman dressed for a night out would “naturally” be mistaken for a prostitute, there is nothing here for you.
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Without ever being actively bad, this is an infrequently amusing 95 minutes stretched thin. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, as its intentions are so harmless, but you can forget about it.
- Oktay Ege Kozak @ Oregon Herald
Walking with the Enemy
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: the license taken by director Mark Schmidt and screenwriter Kenny Golde in repackaging the life story of Pinchas Tibor Rosenbaum…goes so far out on a limb that it snaps
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Stirring but heavy-handed depiction of W.W. II heroism in Hungary
War of the Worlds: Goliath
Warrior King 2
Warsaw Uprising
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: What we have is a film that – well-intentioned though it may be – is so profoundly misguided from the very start that it’s difficult to imagine what, if anything, could be done to improve it. At times, it’s so off-kilter that it’s funny, probably the last thing the filmmakers would want this story to be.
Watermark
The Way He Looks
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Ribeiro and his cast keep the touch light, poignant, and honest.
- David William Upton @ So So Gay
- Excerpt: Daniel Ribiero’s deft expansion of his exquisite short film allows the simple narrative more time to feel through its characters. It helps greatly that the young performers are so natural, not just in Lobo’s astonishing believability at playing blind, but in their rhythms and ability to place delicate reactions inside scenes that might otherwise contain very little.
- George Zervopoulos @ Movies Ltd. [Greek]
We Are the Giant
- Stacia Kissick Jones @ She Blogged By Night
- Kristen Lopez @ Awards Circuit
- Excerpt: …strip away the package and you have a tribute to those unafraid to rattle the cages of government.
West
- Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Christian Schwochow, who was born and grew up in East Germany, has begun to examine this past. His 2012 miniseries The Tower, dealt with the crumbling of communist rule in East Germany, observing life in the former Soviet bloc country near the final approach of reunification. West takes a step back to the 1970s for a look at life for East Germans who were granted permission to emigrate to the west.
- Aaron Pinkston @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: The small-set character study about a woman acclimating herself to life on the other side of the wall may not be as ambitious as an epic historical drama, but its use of the timeframe is smart and simple. It is a wonderfully rendered depiction of the lasting legacy of East Germany without being a history lesson.
Wetlands
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Memorably gross but pert and highly personal, “Wetlands” tells you more than you probably ever wanted to know about anal fissures, but it would be a lie to say the film is without any honesty or heart, and there isn’t a small amount of cinematic panache.
- Matthew Lucas @ From the Front Row
- Excerpt: You’ll never see anything like it again, and you probably won’t want to, but one thing is for sure – Wetlands is one of a kind.
- Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: …the world’s first art-house gross-out romantic comedy.
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: Challenging and provocative, co-writer/director David Wnendt’s nervy adaptation of Charlotte Roche’s presumably unfilmable popular novel, breaks new cinematic ground.
What Now? Remind Me
- Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Latest film by Portuguese director Joaquim Pinto What Now? Remind Me
- Tiago Ramos @ Split Screen [Portuguese]
When the Game Stands Tall
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: Every personal setback, medical emergency, or tragedy is just what happens in between one season, game, or practice and the next.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: This insipid, formulaic sports drama fumbles, even though it’s filled with earnest intentions.
- Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Imagine an entire season of side plots from Friday Night Lights shoved into two hours and you will have a good feel for this movie.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Workmanlike rather than inspired…well-intentioned but heavy-handed.
Whitewash
Whitey: The United States of America v. James J. Bulger
- Frank Ochieng @ Sound on Sight
- Excerpt: …[a] revealing, absorbing and troubling documentary. Berlinger brings Bulger’s wicked and warped world to the forefront enough so that we witness a breakdown of trust and a taste of tragedy to try and comprehend with disbelieving eyes.
Whitey: United States of America vs. James J. Bulger
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Berlinger’s work has revealed the warped wheels of the American justice system before, garnering a groundswell of support for the West Memphis Three. With “Whitey,” he’s casting an ever wider net.
Who Is Dayani Cristal?
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A heart-wrenching documentary that reenacts the journey of a Honduras migrant who died in the Arizona desert and the compassionate actions of those who identified his body and provided closure for his family.
- Candice Frederick @ Reel Talk
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Back in 1941, during the Great Depression, Preston Sturges made a classic satirical film called Sullivan’s Travels, in which a successful Hollywood director of light comedies (Joel McCrea) decides to make a hard-hitting movie about the lot of the downtrodden by hitting the road as a hobo and experiencing the life first hand. Bernal’s obviously heartfelt presence here smacks a little of Sullivan’s noble delusion.
Why Don’t You Play in Hell?
- Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: ‘Why Don’t You Play in Hell?’ is Sion Sono’s blood-soaked, comedic send-up to guerilla filmmaking and 35 mm film that concludes with a sword fight to glory.
Why Don’t You Play in Hell?
- William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: It’s easy to imagine that watching Why Don’t You Play in Hell? is the next best thing to actually making a movie with Shion Sono. It’s nothing but smiles and blood and pure, unadulterated affection for everything that cinema is capable of.
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
A Will for the Woods
- Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: An enlightening look at the Green Burial Movement and its ecological and spiritual dimensions.
Winter in the Blood
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: As the name suggests, winter represents something just under the surface. There’s something in the blood, in the animals, in the dirt, in the town and in the liquor.
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: As a work of Native American cinema, a field that’s not overly crowded, ‘Winter in the Blood’ ranks as a minor standout.
Wolves
- Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: ‘Wolves’ is a coming-of-age story about an uninformed werewolf accepting his true nature, meticulously constructed by a first-time director.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: A bloody, brutal bore…
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Carson Lund @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: At its best, the film is a whirring, eclectic oddity without a clear target audience, which is why its eventual turn toward muddled father-son hokum and strained commentary on the duality of human psychology (good and evil impulses exist in us all, but we must learn to tame the evil!) registers as a disappointment.
Women Who Flirt
- James Marsh @ Twitch
- Excerpt: After dipping his toe into China with his 2012 sequel Love In The Buff, Hong Kong auteur Pang Ho Cheung embraces the inevitable and presents his first full-blown mainland production, Women Who Flirt. Zhou Xun and Huang Xiaoming play the longtime friends and colleagues whose til-now platonic relationship is jeopardised by Taiwanese dolly bird Sui Tang, forcing Zhou to step up and show she’s got what it takes to win the guy she’s always loved.
Words and Pictures
Young Ones
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: methodically churning into a stagnant trench of recycled Greek tragedy themes, a familial saga of vengeance, murder, and inheritance never coalescing into a comfortable stride.
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Ainda que “Young Ones” seja um pouco lento e deixe a impressão que teria sido melhor noutra década – uma em que o cinema não fosse um bem de consumo imediato – o seu toque tecnológico avivará muitos dos espectadores ensonados. Não ficará na memória, mas o visionamento não será tempo perdido.
You’re Not You
- Nicholas Bell @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: A much more interesting focal point would have been the character played by the lovely Loretta Devine, but we’ll have settle with at least getting to see her on the sidelines. –
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Yves Saint Laurent
- Dragan Antulov @ FAK [Croatian]
- Excerpt: Cak i oni gledatelji naviknuti na rutinske nedostatke suvremenih biografskih filmova osjetit ce se zakinutima.
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a shallow, cliched biopic treatment from…Jalil Lespert. Niney is incredibly well matched physically to Saint Laurent but it is Gallienne who creates the more memorable character here
- Tony Dayoub @ Cinema Viewfinder
- Excerpt: If YVES SAINT LAURENT is frustrating as a barely fleshed out biography, it is equally exciting as a sumptuous visual feast.
- Vadym Grygoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]