The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 4,815 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 49% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 59
Highest review score:
Knocked Up
Critic Score 100
Lowest review score:
Fireproof
Critic Score 0
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,343 out of 4815
  2. Mixed: 1,781 out of 4815
  3. Negative: 691 out of 4815
4,815 movie reviews
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per page
  1. Tyrannosaur
    Considine directs with the confidence of a veteran, giving his actors room to work while letting an ominous, overcast mood hang over almost every scene.
  2. Hugo
    It's a complex fusion of film history and personal history, filled with dazzling embellishments and unabashed sentiment about the glories of cinema.
  3. House of Pleasures
    Without soft-pedaling it in the least, Bonello nonetheless mourns the passing of a time where prostitutes didn't control their destinies, but at least had each other.
  4. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    After establishing an atmosphere of nearly unbearable dread, Alfredson keeps thickening and chilling it.
  5. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
    As Cruise clings to the side of the building using malfunctioning equipment, and a sandstorm looms in the distance, the question shifts from whether Bird can direct an action film to whether there's anyone out there who can top him.
  6. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
    The body means different things for each of them, and Ceylan's mesmerizing existential drama takes its time establishing the players and bringing their inner lives into focus. It's cinema as autopsy.
  7. Haywire
    In truth, Haywire is simply a delivery system for ass-kickings, calibrated to the specific talents of Gina Carano, a former mixed-martial-arts star and American Gladiator whose fists (and feet) of fury can rattle skulls and cave in chests.
  8. Coriolanus
    As played by Ralph Fiennes in his own cinematic adaptation of the play, Coriolanus' military genius makes him a figure of awe, but it's his near-absence of empathy that makes him terrifying.
    • Metascore: 73
    • Critic Score 91
    Declaration of War
    Sprinting through hospital rooms, parties, sterile corridors, and grayish courtyards, Declaration Of War salutes its characters' capacity to step up and meet life's harshest unexpected demands.
  10. Miss Bala
    Miss Bala toes a delicate line between exploitation movie and movie about exploitation, but that's part of what gives the film its charge - this isn't some flaccid docudrama about how the cartels are poisoning the country, it's a lively, white-knuckle thriller where any such proselytizing is reduced to implication.
  11. The Miners' Hymns
    In keeping with Jóhann Jóhannsson's score - alternately ominous, triumphant, and elegiac - The Miners' Hymns plays on the broader emotions of the subject. The film is all about the mysterious world down below, how camaraderie turned to conflict, and the nagging feeling of loss.
  12. Chico & Rita
    The characters are simply rendered, but when it comes to capturing cities and scenes, the cinematography takes on the color and detail of a Mexican street mural.
  13. Bullhead
    Bullhead is well-plotted, with a powerful ending, but its most brutal scene comes early, explaining why for Schoenaerts, life has been one long wince.
  14. The Secret World of Arrietty
    Even when making movies for small children, Studio Ghibli produces stories that are more emotionally sophisticated, and less philosophically polarized, than most adult fare.
  15. Sound of Noise
    What binds the entertaining crime movie to its YouTube-ready musical interludes is the unspoken yearning of its two leads: he for the world of silence in which he'd rather live, and she for all the sounds that slip by every second, uncontrolled and unappreciated.
  16. The Kid with a Bike
    The second half of The Kid With A Bike diverges so much from the first that they seem like two different movies - the first a drama about an orphan's search for home, the second a moral thriller about the terrible things all people, no matter their social station, are willing to do in the interest of self-preservation. Both sections are riveting in their own way, and punctuated by startling shocks and bursts of emotion.
    • Metascore: 64
    • Critic Score 91
    Goon
    Where George Roy Hill's "Slap Shot," the former reigning champ of the narrow hockey-film canon, descends into anticlimactic late-game zaniness, Goon fully commits to its theme of violence for violence's sake. It's "Paper Lion" by way of Sam Peckinpah.
  18. Damsels in Distress
    Even though I'm not sure I understand what Stillman was going for minute-to-minute, I was swept away by how original Damsels is, and how funny.
  19. The Cabin in the Woods
    It's an exercise in metafiction that, while providing grisly fun, never distances viewers. And it's entertaining, while asking the same question of viewers and characters alike: Why come to a place you knew all along was going to be so dark and dangerous?
    • Metascore: 83
    • Critic Score 91
    Monsieur Lazhar
    More than a class full of convincing child actors and a genuinely affecting performance by Fellag, Falardeau offers a film as believably wrenching, and finally cathartic, as the grieving process itself.
  21. Goodbye First Love
    The result is a movie that's poignant, bittersweet, and true.
  22. The Avengers
    Tasked with meeting the many requirements necessary for any Avengers movie to work, Whedon checks off all the boxes, then sets about creating new expectations for what a big superhero movie ought to be.
  23. I Wish
    I Wish is still amply Kore-eda-esque, full of life, heart, and funny little details about daily existence, as it meanders its way toward moments of real profundity.
  24. Where Do We Go Now?
    What the film lacks in specificity and interest in taking sides, it makes up for in style, authentic emotion, and terrific performances.
  25. Elena
    It's an austere Russian drama with shades of Hitchcock.
  26. The Invisible War
    Though Dick focuses heavily on just a few women, The Invisible War builds to a stunning montage of victim after victim telling their story to the camera without pseudonyms or silhouettes.
  27. Beasts of the Southern Wild
    It's undoubtedly something extraordinary: like a live-action Miyazaki film, with Days Of Heaven narration, set in a dirt-poor community at an unspecified time of crisis.
  28. Neil Young Journeys
    The heart of any concert movie is the concert itself, and in the case of Neil Young Journeys, it's a great one.
  29. The Queen of Versailles
    To an extent, Greenfield tries to have it both ways with her film: she allows us to enjoy the fantasy of being rich, while also letting us see the bastards suffer a little.
  30. The Dark Knight Rises
    The miracle of Nolan's Batman trilogy is the way it imprints those myths with the dread-soaked tenor of the times.
  31. Searching for Sugar Man
    Though unabashedly manipulative in its storytelling and structure, Searching For Sugar Man ultimately earns its happy ending and buzzy, crowd-pleasing populist appeal by alchemizing trembling inner-city pain into transcendent international beauty.
  32. Keep the Lights On
    Keep The Lights On feels less like a memoir than a collage made from diary scraps, evocative but not prescriptive.
    • Metascore: 68
    • Critic Score 91
    Step Up To The Plate
    Step Up To The Plate is as much about the passing along of a legacy as it is about cooking.
    • Metascore: 67
    • Critic Score 91
    The Perks of Being a Wallflower
    The film is also an earnest, big-hearted ode to friends as support and salvation, and to the talismanic quality a favorite song, treasured hang-out, or shared tradition can take on for a teenager.
  35. Looper
    Looper is a remarkable feat of imagination and execution, entertaining from start to finish, even as it asks the audience to contemplate how and why humanity keeps making the same rotten mistakes.
  36. The Waiting Room
    Director Peter Nicks puts faces, names, and heartbreakingly relatable stories to a social problem that can all too often feel abstract and academic.
  37. Wuthering Heights
    It's an intense, uncompromising take that restores some of the shock that made Wuthering Heights so notable when it first appeared.
  38. Middle of Nowhere
    The power of Middle Of Nowhere is cumulative, conveyed in sustained tone and deepening character rather than bravura sequences or explosive confrontations.
  39. Photographic Memory
    Photographic Memory is less wry and more melancholy than McElwee's earlier documentaries; it's a lot like his superb 2003 film "Bright Leaves," which was also concerned with family history and the shifting meaning of images.
  40. The Sessions
    It might just be the most poignant, moving film ever made about one man's surprisingly noble efforts to get laid.
  41. Flight
    Directing his first live-action film since 2000's "Cast Away," Robert Zemeckis paces it brilliantly, slowly ramping up the energy from hungover lethargy to coke-fueled confidence, while creating undercurrents of dread as Washington hits his stride.
  42. Skyfall
    Skyfall doesn't forget it has to be an exciting spy film above all, but from its first scene, it ratchets up the drama in ways that have little to do with action.
  43. The Comedy
    There's genuine pain at the core of Heidecker's character - or at least a numbness where the pain used to reside - but the film is keen on obscuring it.
  44. Life of Pi
    The larger messages about spirituality often seem forced, and it's more compelling to focus on Lee's visceral cinematic experience than on the larger, fuzzier messages Martel's story conveys about humanity's connection with God.
  45. Django Unchained
    Tarantino simply isn't a good enough performer for his presence to be anything but a distraction in a rip-roaring crowd-pleaser this consistently great.
  46. The Gatekeepers
    The six men have different personalities that suggest varying styles of leadership, but what's remarkable about The Gatekeepers is how they speak in one voice about the moral complexities of their former jobs and their extreme pessimism about the future.
  47. Koch
    Neil Barsky's Koch doesn't try to do anything radical as a piece of filmmaking, but Barsky - a former newspaper reporter - covers Koch's story magnificently as a journalist.
  48. Leviathan
    Anyone who enjoys overpowering cinematic sensation and watching people do a job will be predisposed to like Leviathan, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s avant-garde documentary about life aboard a commercial fishing vessel. Leviathan is an immersive experience, plunging viewers into darkness and chaos, amid a rush of vivid color and rapid movement.
  49. War Witch
    War Witch is a remarkably mature portrait that trusts its audience to have their own reactions to its material; it doesn’t yank at the heartstrings so much as expertly strum them.
  50. Beyond the Hills
    Beyond The Hills has a rich understanding of the appeals and perils of religious values that provide structure and meaning to some while seeming cruel and irrational to outsiders. It’s a world within a world, and Mungiu peers from a clear window.
  51. Gimme the Loot
    It’s a bright, lively movie, with a vision of New York as a multicultural free-for-all, where everybody’s always looking to see what they can take from everybody else.
  52. Room 237
    The effect of Room 237 is intense. It’s a deep dive into the rabbit hole of semiotics, designed to train viewers to become alert to what they’re really seeing.
  53. In the House
    All the way up to the stunning final shot, Ozon urgently asks whether, for storytellers, it’s better to be on the outside looking in, or the inside looking out.
  54. Stories We Tell
    Polley’s fledgling foray into documentary filmmaking is also an investigative mystery, a real-life soap opera, and — most compellingly, perhaps — a searching “interrogation” (the director’s word) of the hows and whys of storytelling itself.
  55. Frances Ha
    Above all, Frances Ha is a wry and moving portrait of friendship, highlighting the way that two people who know everything about each other can nevertheless grow apart as their needs change.
  56. Fill the Void
    Burshtein shoots in extreme shallow focus, framing her actors against a sometimes-blinding blanket of white fuzz. It’s a decision that, coupled with Yitzhak Azulay’s stirring, chant-driven score, lends each conversation a near religious aura.
  57. You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
    Resnais’ new film, You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet, is ostensibly an adaptation of two unrelated plays by Jean Anouilh: "Eurydice" (1941) and "Dear Antoine": Or, "The Love That Failed" (1971). However, Resnais’ methods of adaptation — placing one play within the other, and then refracting its dialogue across multiple characters and layers of reality — quickly eclipse the source material.
  58. ABC Africa
    Beyond giving a human face to Uganda's crises, Kiarostami attempts to capture the actual place, a swirl of contradictions as vibrant and beautiful as it is troubled.
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  59. Fighter
    Far from the solemn earnestness of most Holocaust documentaries, Fighter addresses the war and its oft-toxic reverberations with refreshing impudence and candor.
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  60. Derrida
    As the film takes shape, the form and the subject develop a fascinating symbiosis, with Derrida cast as an active participant in the deconstruction of his own documentary.
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  61. The Last Days of Disco
    Stillman's arch, clever dialogue is as strong as ever, and he conveys in every frame a genuine affection for his characters, however insipid their actions may be at times. These gifts make it easy to forgive Stillman's tendency to let his story meander, especially in Disco's second half.
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  62. Esther Kahn
    Summer Phoenix has a screen presence that's simultaneously distancing and transfixing, an inscrutability that makes her seem either mysterious or a complete blank.
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  63. Lovely & Amazing
    Emerges as something rare, an issue movie that's so honest and keenly observed that it doesn't feel like one. It earns its thesis statement through minute details and a unique grasp of a commonplace problem.
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  64. Facing the Music
    Uncompromising in her art, her teaching, and her professional relations, Boyd makes for a classic tough old bird of a character.
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  65. The Son's Room
    In the end, it's that reserve that makes it work. Keeping his distance, the director lets viewers see in full the moments in which grief turns the world into a narrow, never-ending tunnel.
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  66. Devils on the Doorstep
    Though shorn of 20 minutes for its U.S. debut, the film's wry comic portrait of the Japanese Occupation during WWII hasn't lost any of its incendiary brilliance, both as a political provocation and as a brusquely humane take on the horrors and absurdity of war.
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  67. Ulee's Gold
    Though it occasionally wears its metaphors on its sleeve, Ulee's Gold should, if there's any justice, find the same thoughtful-drama-hungry audience that made "Sling Blade" a hit.
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  68. Grosse Pointe Blank
    Smart in a rare way that matters greatly to good contemporary comedy: Like last year's "Flirting With Disaster," its script and direction underplay absurd situations, letting its characters amuse without showing the strains of forced wackiness.
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  69. Breaking the Waves
    What Von Trier arrives at is a complex, contemporary, and deeply moving exploration of faith.
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  70. Manhunter
    Mann takes all the instincts he learned as a Miami Vice producer and trims them of their excesses, and the result is an unsettling thriller whose detached style perfectly complements its psychological intensity.
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  71. Friday Night
    Seasoned with amusing bits of fantasy, like a pizza topping that briefly curls into a smile, Friday Night captures the city at its most inviting, alive with the feeling that wonderful things can happen to ordinary people.
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  72. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
    An inspired, original, and gracefully integrated collaboration of theater and cinema that complements not only both forms, but also the seductive, dreamlike qualities of the source material.
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    • Metascore: 93
    • Critic Score 90
    Amadeus
    The superbly edited original version of Amadeus used overlapping sound cues for a lively flow between scenes, and the new version breaks up some of that flow with lengthy, talky interludes. Still, Ondrícek's breathtaking images and Forman's essential craft are best appreciated on the big screen, and another theatrical run for Amadeus is a welcome gift, no matter how much this edition unnecessarily gilds what's already a near-perfect lily
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  74. Stevie
    Neither condemning nor forgiving, the film is a model of documentary evenhandedness, even though James makes no claims of objectivity.
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    • Metascore: 69
    • Critic Score 90
    There's Something About Mary
    One of the funniest movies of the year, but you may need to shower afterwards.
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  76. The Piano Teacher
    A viscerally punishing study of repression and masochism, carried out with the utmost discretion and chilling reserve.
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  77. Dogtown and Z-Boys
    So much fun that its considerable worth as history and sociology seems almost incidental.
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  78. Secrets & Lies
    There's not a weak performance in Secrets And Lies, a fact made more notable by the seeming ease with which the cast performs as an ensemble.
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  79. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
    A Trojan horse of a teen comedy that balanced lowbrow gags with subtle humor, genuine insight—Crowe spent a year undercover as a high-school student—and pathos.
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  80. The Thin Red Line
    Malick's powerful intermingling of brutality and beauty, his signature cutaways to indigenous flora and fauna, and the gentle lyricism of his disjunctive narration and painterly images are too rich to fully register in a single viewing.
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    • Metascore: 78
    • Critic Score 90
    Hilary and Jackie
    An astoundingly moving and elegiac meditation on life, love, music, and the bonds of blood.
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  82. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
    A superb portrait of a band and an industry in flux.
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  83. Chain Camera
    By turns playful, harrowing, intensely moving, and uproariously funny, Chain Camera cuts away all documentary artifice and goes straight to the source, allowing these kids to reveal themselves with the utmost directness and candor.
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  84. Sweet Sixteen
    With startling clarity and dreadful logic, Loach and Laverty make sense of every bad choice Compston makes until he runs out of options, locked into a destiny that he can't escape, mainly because his good intentions are clouded by tragic naivete.
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  85. About Schmidt
    Payne, the great satirist behind "Citizen Ruth" and "Election," loves to populate his films with throwaway details, which in About Schmidt accumulate into a portrait of Midwestern life that's almost chilling in its exactitude.
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    • Metascore: 74
    • Critic Score 90
    Titanic
    That the familiar story of the Titanic disaster is told with suspense is not as surprising as Cameron's clear-headed balance of truth and fiction, spectacle and tragedy.
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  87. Happiness
    Thoroughly realized characters and relationships and Solondz's masterful ability to switch the tone from comic to tragic within the same scene help make Happiness a better film than it might have been otherwise. Much better, in fact.
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  88. Narc
    Carnahan alternates gritty neo-realism with bursts of extreme stylization -- most notably in a breathless opening chase filmed with handheld cameras -- but thankfully, his stylistic flourishes are in the service of the film's story, not the other way around.
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  89. Ten
    Nobody handles unvarnished interactions quite the way Kiarostami does, and for much of Ten, it's a kind of austere thrill to watch him focus so intently on one aspect of his craft.
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  90. Summer of Sam
    Lee at his best, a virtuoso piece of filmmaking that's stylish, substantial, and rich in detail.
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  91. 8 Mile
    The film's absolute conviction keeps it from feeling formulaic.
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  92. Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony
    In Amandla!, history doesn't just come alive--it sings, dances, and issues a passionate plea for justice and equality. The film joyously celebrates music as both a means to an end and an end unto itself.
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  93. Capturing the Friedmans
    First-time director Jarecki, better known as the co-founder of MovieFone, skillfully integrates the home-movie footage with his own thorough inquiry, weaving past and present into a patient, deeply engrossing piece of storytelling that's rich in ambiguities.
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  94. Minority Report
    Few directors are capable of marrying ideas and entertainment—one is often sacrificed for the other—but Spielberg peppers one gripping action setpiece after another with trenchant details about a near-future robbed of the most basic freedoms and privacy.
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  95. Talk to Her
    The marvelous new Talk To Her has elements that wouldn't have seemed out of place in an Almodóvar film of 20 years ago
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    • Metascore: 72
    • Critic Score 90
    Pi
    Aronofsky's ability to capture the rush and confusion of racing down a timeline toward infinity, only to suddenly slam into a dead end, makes for impressive and occasionally disturbing stuff.
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  97. Panic Room
    An old-house thriller retrofitted for the 21st century without any touch of unneeded flash, Panic Room is scary enough to do for downtown living what Jaws did for beaches.
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  98. Rushmore
    Fast, exhilarating new comedy.
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  99. The Son
    The Dardennes sustain that tension through a masterful closing drive that resembles the final third of "In The Bedroom," only without the same dreadful inevitability.
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  100. Scream
    Finely crafted, tense, scary thriller from start to finish.
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  101. Solaris
    Though glazed in chilly surfaces -- the Kubrickian spaces, Cliff Martinez's gorgeous ambient score, the elliptical editing rhythms of Soderbergh's recent work, particularly "The Limey" -- the film contains a surprising depth of feeling within its egg-shaped head.
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    • Metascore: 73
    • Critic Score 90
    Spider-Man
    Spider-Man brings the beloved comic-book character to the screen with both angst and action undamaged by the move.
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  103. Spirited Away
    A wonderful encore, marked by the painstaking attention to detail and artful balance between terror and joy that make Miyazak's work unique.
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  104. The Winslow Boy
    If The Winslow Boy has a flaw, it's that Mamet's style is impeccable to a fault, too cool and remote to have much of an emotional payoff. But since few directors can even approach his level of precision, that's a very minor complaint.
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  105. 25th Hour
    The film at its simplest serves as a cautionary tale, but it also functions as a meditation on how little it takes to redirect a life by choice or by chance.
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  106. The Matrix
    The Wachowskis do it so playfully well, keeping The Matrix's potentially confusing plot intelligible, intelligent, and suspenseful, that it doesn't matter.
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  107. Gangs of New York
    A grand achievement in history and anthropology, supporting its ambition and scope with a sumptuous re-creation of the period and an immediacy that allows a forgotten past to barrel into the present.
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    • Metascore: 66
    • Critic Score 90
    Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
    The acting, mostly by a bunch of unknowns, is equally fresh and funny, and Ritchie keeps the movie moving faster than you can say, "bludgeoned to death by a 15-inch black rubber dildo."
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  109. Far from Heaven
    Haynes makes it possible to forget all the layers at work and simply be swept up in the story's emotions. As in Sirk's films, these characters live and breathe within the film's exaggerated reality, thanks to rich performances by Haysbert, Quaid, and especially Moore.
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  110. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
    Verbinski knows when to break out the stunning action sequences and when to let his characters dominate the film, and he handles both modes expertly.
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  111. Northfork
    With their third film, the Polish brothers find their authorial voice, resulting in a lyrical work whose free-floating Lynchian weirdness coalesces into an unexpectedly touching movie.
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  112. Lost in Translation
    Gorgeously shot by Lance Acord, who makes Toyko a gaudy dreamscape that's both seductive and frightening, Lost In Translation washes away memories of "Godfather III," establishing Coppola as a major filmmaker in her own right, and reconfirming Johansson and Murray as actors of startling depth and power.
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  113. Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion
    Riveting, eye-opening issue film.
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  114. Mystic River
    In his best film since "Unforgiven," Eastwood ultimately lets observations on character, community, and the tidal patterns of tragedy shoulder a burden an ordinary murder mystery never could.
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  115. Bus 174
    Edited with an impeccable sense of timing and rhythm, with each new revelation and insight planted at just the right moment, Bus 174 examines an already gripping story from a moving and untold perspective.
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  116. Jackie Brown
    The most exciting thing about Jackie Brown is the director's seamless transition to a less flashy, revealing style; it's well-suited to the more character-oriented focus of the film... an assured, accomplished, and very good film.
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  117. Alien
    Despite years of imitators, sequels (some great, some not so), and edited-for-television broadcasts, Alien has lost none of its power, and the big screen only intensifies its impact.
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  118. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
    On a production of this magnitude, few actors have the presence to assert themselves above the cacophony, but Crowe carries the film with the rare combination of charisma and brute masculinity that has made him a star.
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  119. The Triplets of Belleville
    The film is best treated as a one-of-a-kind wonder: an ingenious contraption that dazzles, teases, attracts, and repels with all the mystery and sublimity of a miniature world.
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  120. Bad Santa
    Much like "School Of Rock," Bad Santa salvages a tired, paint-by-numbers formula by resisting it every step of the way, stubbornly refusing to stop its juvenile fun until the last possible moment.
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  121. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
    All in all, it's a fitting conclusion to the series, and yet there are disappointments built in. For one, Jackson has opted not to film Tolkien's downbeat "Scouring Of The Shire" epilogue.
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  122. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
    Revisits the past with an eye on the present and future, hoping as McNamara does that his "lessons" are instructive and might keep history from repeating itself.
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  123. Crimson Gold
    Provides one of the rare glimpses of the upper class to come out of recent Iranian cinema--the last one in memory was 1996's exquisite, Ibsen-esque melodrama "Leila"--and director Jafar Panahi (The Circle) captures it vividly through his hero's wounded obsession.
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  124. A Bug's Life
    Smashing family entertainment: The whole thing is quick-witted, fast-paced, and loaded with clever sight gags and colorful, engaging supporting characters.
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  125. Groundhog Day
    A hilarious and unexpectedly profound comedy.
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    • Metascore: 76
    • Critic Score 90
    Smoke Signals
    What's truly remarkable about Smoke Signals is the depth of the narrative, a touching tale of self-discovery.
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    • Metascore: 65
    • Critic Score 90
    The Horse Whisperer
    With solid, stately acting, and landscapes that could convert atheists, The Horse Whisperer tugs heartstrings without seeming self-conscious.
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  128. Love and Death on Long Island
    An unpredictable, often funny, always winning film, Love And Death On Long Island is filled with low-key humor and sharp observations about the state of art at the close of the millennium.
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  129. Raiders of the Lost Ark
    Finds the right balance between reverence and wit.
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  130. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
    A surprisingly bittersweet love story at heart, Eternal Sunshine values the sum of experience, which in this case means a thorns-and-all openness to romantic possibilities.
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  131. Velvet Goldmine
    There are moments when Velvet Goldmine threatens to collapse under the weight of writer/director Todd Haynes' (Poison, Safe) ambition. But, sometimes amazingly, it doesn't, becoming in the process one of the year's freshest, most exciting films.
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  132. The Agronomist
    Driven by Dominique's personal magnetism, The Agronomist is a haunting, inspirational valentine to free speech and human resilience.
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  133. Glengarry Glen Ross
    Gets most of its legs from the acting and the dialogue, which has such a rhythmic grace that scenes from the movie can be played and replayed with no loss of thump.
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  134. The Mother
    Harsh, unsparing, unsentimental, and uniformly well-acted, The Mother bravely and intelligently tackles subject matter widely ignored in cinema--the sexuality of a plain-looking woman edging toward the twilight of a life of quiet desperation.
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  135. Before Sunset
    In the spirit of the original, Linklater closes with one of the best endings of its kind since George Romero's "Martin."
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    • Metascore: 78
    • Critic Score 90
    Lone Star
    A strange and thoughtful story, told in unhurried conversations and artful flashbacks. The things people keep from themselves are just as important to this mystery as the things they keep from each other, and that transforms Lone Star from a mere mystery into something much richer.
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  137. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
    It's a measure of the film's brilliance that it strips away the trappings of superstardom and allows audiences to see these men as flawed human beings first, musicians second, and rock gods a distant third.
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  138. Los Angeles Plays Itself
    Dazzling cinema-essay.
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  139. The Manchurian Candidate
    Shockingly, he's (Jonathan Demme) pulled it off, replicating the original's tricky feat of investing a paranoid plot with timeliness, psychological complexity, sociopolitical acumen, and almost frightening conviction.
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  140. Festival Express
    The sociological angle of Festival Express is a narrow one--perhaps too narrow--and doesn't overwhelm the film's real selling point, which is some of the best-looking and best-sounding footage of counterculture icons ever screened.
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  141. The Boxer
    Through quietly fiery performances by Day-Lewis and Watson, as well as novel-like depth and complexity, The Boxer not only avoids these pitfalls but emerges as a thoroughly engrossing movie.
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  142. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
    As an imaginative visual experience, there's nothing like it. Today, at least.
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  143. The Ice Storm
    A harsh (though slightly toned down from Moody's book), deeply moving, emotionally rich and intelligent film about the difficulty of rebelling against social restrictions--and the inescapable consequences of such attempts when they do succeed--The Ice Storm should not be missed.
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  144. Sideways
    Good comedies are rare, but rarer still are those that conflate laughter with intimacy.
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    • Metascore: 73
    • Critic Score 90
    The Execution of Wanda Jean
    Minimizes music and effects, relying on artful, informative screen titles to explain the action and letting the action explain the rest.
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  146. What Time Is It Over There?
    Tsai's latest, What Time Is It There?, runs his usual themes and obsessions through a whimsical premise worthy of Wong Kar-Wai, striking such an exquisite balance between humor and despair that the moods comfortably coexist, just as they do in real life.
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  147. Out of Sight
    Works both as a great romance and a great, unconventional crime thriller. But step back from such distinctions, and it just looks like a great movie.
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    • Metascore: 55
    • Critic Score 90
    Volcano
    Deft filmmaking that allows the special effects to help, not be, the story combines with an actual script to make Volcano a smart, self-aware, and most of all fun disaster movie.
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  149. March of the Penguins
    The glacially beautiful new documentary March Of The Penguins confirms that no computer-animated or hand-drawn penguin could ever match the curious majesty of the genuine article.
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  150. Memories of Murder
    It takes enormous skill to pull off such a high-wire act without diminishing the gravity of the situation, but Bong and his first-rate cast are up to the task.
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  151. Tony Takitani
    Movies can't exactly replicate the feeling of reading a book, but Jun Ichikawa's adaptation of Haruki Murakami's short story Tony Takitani comes remarkably close.
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  152. Broken Flowers
    Murray and Jarmusch, two modern masters of minimalism, triumphantly join forces in Broken Flowers, a bittersweet tour de force about a wealthy, deeply depressed lothario.
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    • Metascore: 73
    • Critic Score 90
    Breakdown
    Breakdown is just a skillfully constructed, smartly conceived, escapist thriller that does just about everything right.
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  154. Cube
    For his first feature, Canadian director Vincenzo Natali has, like the setting of his film, created a complex piece of work around an essentially simple foundation.
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  155. Corpse Bride
    Like all Burton's best work, it takes place in a distorted, vividly colored, meticulously crafted world where whimsy and gleeful ghoulishness mix freely.
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  156. Separate Lies
    This material could easily have devolved into soap opera or romantic melodrama, but Wilkinson and Watson's superb, subtle performances lend it tremendous depth and gravity.
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  157. Rosewood
    Deliberately paced at the outset, the film slowly establishes a sense of hatred that makes the violent explosion of the film's second half as plausible and inevitable as the laws of physics.
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  158. Nine Lives
    As a film composed entirely of nine continuous long takes, Nine Lives certainly qualifies as unique. But what makes it rarer and more auspicious is that it offers such a rich bounty of great roles for middle-aged women.
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  159. King Kong
    After a start heavy on exposition, the film strings one action setpiece after another, each realized with the breathless excitement of an adventure pulp cover. It's as if Jackson set out to bring to life every fantasy of the last moment before earth gave way to space as the site of the final frontier.
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  160. Munich
    Breaking from the Spielberg oeuvre, Munich isn't a particularly hopeful movie, but it's a fair and morally dignified one.
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    • Metascore: 60
    • Critic Score 90
    Michael Collins
    Liam Neeson's performance as Collins is at once stirring and blood-curdling, as befits the role of a man who murdered for a cause he believed was just, but was willing to stop when he believed his objective was reached.
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  162. Marvin's Room
    Nonetheless, Marvin's Room is not only sharply written and well-acted, but it's also the rare sort of film that takes an honest and uncompromising look at death and dying.
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  163. 4 Little Girls
    An important act of historical preservation, a focused and effective film that brings back a dark, important moment in history with startling clarity.
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  164. The President's Last Bang
    Though The President's Last Bang is undeniably dense-with more than a dozen significant characters-the particulars aren't too tough to understand.
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  165. The Descent
    The Descent sustains a level of intensity that most horror films can barely muster for five minutes.
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  166. Who Gets to Call It Art?
    Comes closer than most to seeing the whole picture.
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  167. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
    While the film doesn't dig deep, or hit particularly hard, it neatly achieves its modest goals: presenting a real-life heroine in real-life terms. A film this fictionalized rarely feels this much like fact.
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  168. Workingman's Death
    Workingman's Death's primary pleasures are aesthetic. Glawogger is an extraordinarily elegant filmmaker with a photographer's eye for striking compositions.
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  169. Block Party
    Block Party is largely a giant love-fest, which is fitting given the staggering amount of simpatico musical and comic talent on display, though some conflict surfaces nevertheless.
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  170. Duck Season
    Mexican writer-director Fernando Eimbcke got his start in short films and documentaries, and his first feature reveals a gift for concision: It doesn't overexert itself trying to come to big conclusions about these characters, and even the comedic scenes settle for gentle quirks over broad guffaws.
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  171. Thank You for Smoking
    Much like his father Ivan (Ghostbusters), first-time director Jason Reitman has a broad, anything-goes comedic sensibility that allows silly gags and incidental humor to sneak in alongside the satirical barbs.
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  172. The Devil's Miner
    So polished that it might pass for a scripted narrative feature, but that's not a bad thing. They found a remarkable spokesman in Bolivian teenager Basilio Vargas, and while his cogent, organized descriptions of his life, beliefs, history, and ambitions sometimes seem too calculated, at least they're calculated to communicate efficiently and appealingly.
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  173. Inside Man
    With juicy supporting roles for Chiwetel Ejiofor and Willem Dafoe as Washington's fellow officers, the film works best when the characters are just sitting back and shooting the breeze, which is what they're doing much of the time. Here, puzzling out a robbery is more fun than stopping it.
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  174. The Beauty Academy of Kabul
    Mermin presents all this without editorial comment, and her film would be worth watching if only for its look at a profound culture-clash. But it goes one better, and delves into one of those clashing cultures, capturing it in a moment of change that goes far beyond one beauty academy's superficial concerns.
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  175. Slither
    Though it occasionally dips too deep into a well of redneck humor, Slither cleverly exploits the nervous laughter that fills a theater whenever a horror movie gets too frightening to bear.
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  176. I Am a Sex Addict
    Zahedi isn't afraid to put himself out there, even when his thoughts and actions are profoundly unflattering; his self-effacement makes the film a reflection on narcissism and misogyny rather than an exercise in both.
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  177. Mission: Impossible III
    Yes, it's fundamentally business as usual, but it's the best kind of business as usual, and it finds everyone working in top form. Abrams imports and enlarges "Alias'" smooth, stylish, yet remarkably visceral approach to action, and the actors pack a satisfying amount of drama into the moments between action scenes.
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  178. Dead Man's Shoes
    For all Dead Man's Shoes' well-paced, well-observed boondocks melodrama, its premise seems simultaneously slender and overheated.
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  179. Cars
    Cars is a fine example of the formula, with pleasant chemistry, the patented Pixar cleverness, and the usual sweetly melancholy nostalgia courtesy of songwriter Randy Newman.
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  180. A Prairie Home Companion
    Altman and Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion is fittingly both a celebration and a winning example of the joys of collaboration.
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  181. The War Tapes
    The War Tapes falls just short of greatness, because its scope is too limited.
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  182. The Motel
    Like the best independent films, The Motel realizes that life is made up of minor pleasures and tiny epiphanies, not sweeping character arcs or big dramatic moments.
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  183. Edmond
    Edmond would probably be completely unapproachable were it not spiked with so much dark wit, much of it coming from Macy's painful naïveté and cheapness, which comes through in negotiations with various women of the night.
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  184. Little Miss Sunshine
    The film accomplishes a remarkable feat of creative alchemy by breathing life and depth into characters that, in lesser hands, could easily have come across as grating caricatures.
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  185. Miami Vice
    While it never approaches the richness and gravity of a great Mann film like "Heat," Miami Vice blurs the thin blue line to similar effect, and he features a couple of bravura setpieces, including a tense raid on an enemy hideout and a shootout with chaotic, you-are-there immediacy. If only all summer movies were this majestically slight.
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  186. The Bridesmaid
    The Bridesmaid goes slack at times, as it follows multiple Magimel family subplots, but as always, Chabrol stages everything with an elegant economy, moving the camera in short bursts that direct the eye but don't distract. Still, the movie would fail completely if not for the dynamic between the two leads.
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  187. Lunacy
    Svankmajer's nihilistic story isn't for everyone, but he skillfully manages its disturbing execution in ways no one else could, and he brings it across in a darkly comedic way that encourages simultaneous laughter, horror, and thought. If that isn't art, what is?
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  188. I'm the Angel of Death: Pusher III
    Like everybody else in the Pusher films, Buric contemplates what it would take to leave the mob life behind. And like everybody else, he decides he wants to get better without getting well.
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  189. Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
    Zhang Yimou is a master of intimate character pieces.
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  190. This Film Is Not Yet Rated
    It thoroughly eviscerates the MPAA and makes a solid case that the culture has paid the price for its censorious practices. His (Dick's) attacks are the equivalent of shooting ducks in a barrel, but these ducks had it coming.
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  191. Confetti
    Anyone who's been closely involved with a wedding knows exactly how these beleaguered schmucks feel. Those who haven't may just take Confetti as a lighthearted but convincing argument for elopement.
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  192. Shortbus
    Developed by Mitchell and the actors, the characters don't always seem consistent from moment to moment, but a sharp sense of humor and comfortable performances by a committed and--it must be said--remarkably limber cast help smooth over the rough edges.
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  193. 49 Up
    While all the "Up" films hold a fascination akin to a Christmas letter from an almost-forgotten friend, 42 Up didn't show much progress from "35 Up." Even fans of the series had to wonder whether the faces of England were going to remain permanently frozen.
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  194. Running with Scissors
    The surreality is distancing, but authentic, believable performances and a low-key affect keep Running From Scissors from turning shrill.
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  195. Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
    While Jonestown lacks the power of revelation, it's a first-rate piece of journalism, as fascinating and thorough as any magazine article.
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  196. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
    In choosing cheap gags over incisive cultural commentary, Borat scores more as scatology than satire, but it's easy to overlook its ramshackle nature in light of the explosive laughter.
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  197. Climates
    Though Climates lacks "Distant's" haunted, poetic melancholy, it has a vivid, sensual texture that's unmistakably Ceylan's. He's one of those rare directors who doesn't need a credit for identification.
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  198. Cocaine Cowboys
    Ultimately, Cocaine Cowboys' lesson isn't that crime doesn't pay, but that it maybe pays too well.
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  199. Flushed Away
    As with the Wallace & Gromit films, most of the fun is in the deft characterizations, the zippy banter, and the joyous sight gags.
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  200. The Fountain
    Viewers not attuned to his (Aronofsky's) heartfelt, bombastic Richard Wagner-by-way-of-"2001: A Space Odyssey" lyricism might be better off looking elsewhere. But they'll never see anything else quite like it.
    Read full review
  201. Apocalypto
    The whole film is too reliant on action-movie cuts and zooms, plus James Horner's insistent score, but it's beautifully rendered and convincingly exciting.
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  202. The Good German
    With a few self-conscious exceptions, Soderbergh makes an earnest attempt to return to that place and time in both history and American filmmaking, and his risk-taking pays fascinating dividends.
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  203. Letters from Iwo Jima
    It's hard to explain exactly why Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima is so much better than its companion World War II film "Flags Of Our Fathers," except to say that Flags tries too hard to emphasize the ironies of selling a war, while Letters deals with the ins and outs of the war itself.
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  204. Venus
    O'Toole is frail and probably won't make many more movies. So Venus is pitched partly as a fond farewell to a beloved artist, and his whole beautiful generation.
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  205. Bridge to Terabithia
    This is Csupo's feature directorial debut, but as creator, producer, and writer of "Rugrats" and "The Wild Thornberrys," among several other series, he's had a long career in animation, and he handles the CGI setpieces masterfully.
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  206. Starter for 10
    A beautifully observed coming-of-age story.
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  207. The Host
    Most of all, The Host functions as a popcorn movie par excellence, loaded with the most familiar conventions, but shot through with such conviction and visual panache that even its clichés seem invigorating.
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  208. American Cannibal: The Road to Reality
    Still, no matter how Grebin and Nigro are selling it, American Cannibal isn't about the horrors of reality TV. It's about guys like Roberts and Ripley, who convince themselves that ANY job in show business would be preferable to waiting tables.
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  209. The Page Turner
    A little too neat, and self-consciously vague at the end. But it's fascinating to observe and try to interpret François' mysterious smile as she eyes her boss.
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  210. The Lookout
    The Lookout's thriller elements could stand to be more surprising, but they're ultimately in service of a better understanding of the characters. Usually, it's the other way around.
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