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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2008) |
"...a sharp political commentary about free-market forces in a socialist bureaucracy where nearly everything is regulated by the government." |
Jim Emerson |
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4/4 |
51 Birch Street (2006) |
"In some ways, an antidote to the sugarcoated myths and lies the movies have taught us about love and marriage." |
Jim Emerson |
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Atonement (2007) |
"Atonement is an intelligently, evocatively directed movie in every aspect..." |
Jim Emerson |
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Babel (2006) |
"Babel has the very best of intentions, and tries very hard, but cannot bring them to life. What I mean is, it left me cold." |
Jim Emerson |
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4/4 |
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) |
"Very nice! I like Borat very much." |
Jim Emerson |
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2.5/4 |
The Boynton Beach Club (2006) |
"The script, co-written by Seidelman, based on her mother Florence's adventures in a butterfly-balloted suburban retirement community, feels like it was written by Neil Simon on a bad comb-over day." |
Jim Emerson |
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2/4 |
Breaking and Entering (2007) |
"What are the meaningful connections between these people's lives? Are they real and significant, or are they just plot contrivances, the manipulation of pawns in an onscreen board game?" |
Roger Ebert |
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4/4 |
The Bridge (2006) |
"The Bridge is brave and unflinching, unshakably haunting and deeply mysterious. I doubt I'll forget it until the day I die." |
Jim Emerson |
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Brokeback Mountain (2005) |
"Ang Lee's film is not only a fine and gorgeous Western (in the first act), but an intimate epic love story in the classic Hollywood tradition." |
Jim Emerson |
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Caché (2005) |
"This is my favorite kind of movie -- one that allows you to watch it. Indeed, insists that you watch it, that you meet it at least half-way." |
Jim Emerson |
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Chop Shop (2007) |
"Within the first 30 seconds or so of Ramin Bahrani's Chop Shop, you know you're in good hands." |
Jim Emerson |
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3.5/4 |
Climates (2006) |
"A stunning film to look at, and to listen to." |
Jim Emerson |
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2.5/4 |
Color Me Kubrick (2007) |
"A little bit like a coloring book -- flip the pages and each is pretty much like the one before, escalating variations on the same scam, with Malkovich filling in the cartoonish shadings, and occasionally going way outside the lines." |
Jim Emerson |
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3.5/4 |
Conversation(s) with Other Women (2006) |
"The observations about love and sex and time and memory are uncommonly sharp and true." |
Jim Emerson |
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3.5/4 |
Days of Glory (2006) |
"Days of Glory is a rousing, old-fashioned World War II platoon movie in the gritty tradition of combat pictures like Don Siegel's Hell is for Heroes, Sam Fuller's The Big Red One and Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan." |
Jim Emerson |
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Death of a President (2006) |
"[T]his convincingly staged television "documentary" falls into a tradition of fictionalized British films... that use nonfiction techniques to explore contemporary social and political issues... Most of all, "Death of a President" is electrifying drama." |
Jim Emerson |
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4/4 |
The Descent (2006) |
"Finally, a scary movie with teeth, not just blood and entrails -- a savage and gripping piece of work that jangles your nerves without leaving your brain hanging." |
Jim Emerson |
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Donnie Darko (2001) |
Click here to see the review. |
Jim Emerson |
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Eastern Promises (2007) |
"Eastern Promises is shockingly gorgeous, for all the ugliness it portrays." |
Jim Emerson |
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2.5/4 |
Factotum (2006) |
"Almost 20 years after Barfly, Factotum mostly feels... unnecessary." |
Jim Emerson |
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3.5/4 |
For Your Consideration (2006) |
"Like Guest's other films, For Your Consideration is extremely funny and tinged with sadness and disappointment, the kind that accompanies all of our inevitable adjustments to dreams deferred and downsized." |
Jim Emerson |
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3/4 |
The Fountain (2006) |
"[The Fountain] doesn't make for smooth, comfortable viewing, but I'd much rather watch somebody shoot for the moon when the stakes are sky-high than sit back while they play it safe." |
Jim Emerson |
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4/4 |
Frozen River (2008) |
"Frozen River is one of those rare independent films that knows precisely what it intends, and what the meaning of the story is." |
Roger Ebert |
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2.5/4 |
Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006) |
"Fur is stuck with offering a reductive and unenlightening view of the real Arbus." |
Jim Emerson |
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2/4 |
The Good Shepherd (2006) |
"If you think George Tenet's Central Intelligence Agency was a disaster, wait until you see Robert De Niro's torpid, ineffectual movie about the history of the agency, The Good Shepherd." |
Jim Emerson |
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4/4 |
Half Nelson (2006) |
"This movie... is concerned with an even greater achievement that is generally unacknowledged: how people -- flawed, miserable, frustrated people -- go to work every day and find a way to care about something beyond themselves, despite themselves." |
Jim Emerson |
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A History of Violence (2005) |
"The film, based on a graphic novel, has a crackling sense of visual tension." |
Jim Emerson |
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3.5/4 |
The Host (2007) |
"A horror thriller, a political satire, a dysfunctional family comedy and a touching melodrama, Bong Joon-ho's The Host is also one helluva monster movie." |
Jim Emerson |
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I'm Not There (2007) |
"[It] is not only a kaleidoscopic view of events in the life, music and myth of Bob Dylan, but a critical deconstruction and synthesis of Dylan's various media representations." |
Jim Emerson |
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3.5/4 |
The Illusionist (2006) |
"A coolly entertaining turn-of-the-century fable." |
Jim Emerson |
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2.5/4 |
Infamous (2006) |
"In the end, Infamous turns out to be the third-best movie built around the murders of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kan., in 1959." |
Jim Emerson |
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4/4 |
Inland Empire (2006) |
"Inland Empire opens and contracts in your imagination while you watch it -- and you're still watching it well after it's left the screen. It's a long but thoroughly absorbing three hours." |
Jim Emerson |
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Into the Wild (2007) |
"Penn's empathy with his driven hero is unmistakable and deeply felt." |
Jim Emerson |
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2/4 |
John Tucker Must Die (2006) |
"John Tucker Must Die isn't half bad. It's about two-fifths bad, mostly toward the incoherent ending, but that ratio is... well, not bad." |
Jim Emerson |
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1.5/4 |
Lady in the Water (2006) |
"[Perhaps it's] improvised and protracted, nonsensically and unnecessarily, just for the sake of stringing us along. And, maybe, putting us to sleep." |
Roger Ebert |
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4/4 |
Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) |
"In both his films, Eastwood empathizes with the 'expendable' soldier on the ground, the 'poor bastard' who is only a pawn in a war conceived by generals and politicians, some of whom have never come anywhere near a battlefield or a combat zone." |
Roger Ebert |
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2.5/4 |
Little Children (2006) |
"It's an odd film, with a wryly intrusive, deep-voiced narrator who appears to be standing just behind the screen reading excerpts from the novel." |
Jim Emerson |
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3.5/4 |
Little Miss Sunshine (2006) |
"You just won't see a better acted, and better cast, movie than Little Miss Sunshine." |
Jim Emerson |
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3.5/4 |
The Lives of Others (2006) |
"Watch it, and you may get the feeling it's also watching you." |
Jim Emerson |
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3.5/4 |
Mafioso (1962) |
"Nothing quite prepares you for the unique experience of this film. It's an offer that you ... well, you know. Leave the gun, take the cannolis. Mangiate bene." |
Jim Emerson |
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Margot at the Wedding (2007) |
"Baumbach knows exactly what he's doing, and it works." |
Jim Emerson |
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Michael Clayton (2007) |
"...the kind of smart, crisp, 'serious' mainstream entertainment that gives Hollywood (or the part of it influenced by George Clooney) a good name." |
Jim Emerson |
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Million Dollar Baby (2004) |
Click here to see the review. |
Jim Emerson |
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3/4 |
The Night Listener (2006) |
"It's a film about people with mixed motivations (maybe even compulsions), who don't always behave with full self-awareness or self-control." |
Jim Emerson |
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No Country for Old Men (2007) |
"It could serve as a model of prose-to-film adaptation, choosing exactly the right moments and movements for the picture, and leaving alone others that are better suited to literature." |
Jim Emerson |
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The Notorious Bettie Page (2006) |
"A delightful celebration of the 'Pin-Up Queen of the Universe,' as well as a delicious appreciation of the texture and flavor of images from the 1950s." |
Jim Emerson |
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4/4 |
Old Joy (2006) |
"Like a great jazz musician, Reichart understands that striking a single, well-placed note can resonate more profoundly than playing a splashy cascade of noise just because you can." |
Jim Emerson |
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The Orphanage (2007) |
"I'd venture to say there are more goosepimply moments and well-earned jolts in this picture than in your average year's worth of commercial shockers. And yet, it's also the only horror film in recent memory that brought me to tears." |
Jim Emerson |
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Pan's Labyrinth (2006) |
"Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth is that rarest of cinematic rarities, a fully and flawlessly realized fantasy film." |
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4/4 |
Pan's Labyrinth (2006) |
"Whole worlds open before our eyes and then fold back upon themselves; dimensions of time and space are creased into shape as if the movie was an elaborate origami creation." |
Jim Emerson |
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