RatingT-MeterTitle | YearReviewA 98% Inside Out (2015)"I don't think I've ever seen a that more powerfully portrays the fierce intelligence, but also the fragility, of a child's mind for moviegoing audiences. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Jun 19, 2015
A- 97% Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)"It's bursting with imagination, wit, enough real-world stunts to create a sense of high stakes, and performances that register with real emotion in the midst of absurdity. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Jun 15, 2015
B+ 90% Something, Anything"Harrill has made something quiet, observant, and quite contrary to the popular narrative of American love stories. ... It's poetic, profound, and often very beautiful. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Feb 21, 2015
A 99% Selma (2015)"It is artful, inspiring, perfectly cast and powerfully acted, beautifully shot, scored with sensitivity rather than sentimentality, efficiently edited, profoundly dignified. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Feb 7, 2015
B+ 83% As It Is In Heaven (2014)"This suspenseful was shot without any special effects over the course of 17 days. This is powerfulmaking, admirable for the resourcefulness of the artists. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Feb 6, 2015
C+ 27% Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)"It bears little resemblance to the [source material]. But in its fictions, technical execution, and visual artistry, it has some admirable qualities. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Dec 12, 2014
B+ 28% Deliver Us from Evil (2014)"A police procedural cake pan [filled] with horror-genre cake batter. It [delivers] troubling questions about evils committed by humankind and ... evils done by something else. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Oct 24, 2014
B+ 98% Boyhood (2014)"Isn't this what good therapists do -- help people understand trouble, hurt, hopes, and dreams by digging deep into memory and experience? " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Jul 25, 2014
B+ 99% Gloria (2014)"You will probably warm to this odd and unglamorous character. You'll come to appreciate her expressions, her wit, her imagination, and her courage. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Jul 5, 2014
B+ 96% Ida (2014)"Anna's journey will leave her deeply conflicted about what she has seen, just as I feel conflicted about this. It's been three weeks, and I can't stop thinking about her. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Jun 17, 2014
A- 86% Only Lovers Left Alive (2014)"This is Jim Jarmusch's dark and mournful version of Wim Wenders Wings of Desire ... immortals watching over a decaying city ... burdened by disappointment. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted May 9, 2014
B- 85% Under the Skin (2014)"Avoids the adrenalin-junkie tactics of most sci-fi ... [but it] could have taken us to more interesting places. Glazer's too preoccupied with his bait-and-devour scenario. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Apr 23, 2014
B+ 77% Noah (2014)"There is so much here that is wonderful and strange, my problems with the are not much more than quibbles. ... I think Noah is Darren Aronofsky's Take Shelter. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Apr 11, 2014
A- 92% The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)"I was so busy delighting in its breathtaking aesthetic complexity that I suspect the story will work magic on me in later viewings. That's what happened with The Life Aquatic. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Mar 14, 2014
B 91% The Great Beauty (2013)"I don't know that I've ever seen a in which the visual glory on the screen was so at odds with the philosophy evident in the screenplay. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Feb 22, 2014
A 96% The LEGO Movie (2014)"A movie with more laughs-per-minute than any recent comedy I can remember ... and a thrilling summons to unleash our own creativity. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Feb 8, 2014
A- 94% Her (2013)"Jonze's sci-fi scenario glorifies relationships that are based on love, fidelity, honesty, close listening, and, above all, in-person intimacy. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Dec 25, 2013
B+ 94% Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)"The Coens ... rein in their wilder, wackier impulses here. Inside Llewyn Davis mopes its way through bogs of bitter irony and murky misfortune, " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Dec 21, 2013
B+ 96% 12 Years a Slave (2013)"The lingering effect is, 'Yeah, these nightmares really happened. People can be horrible. God have mercy.' I just don't find that the movie has given me much to think about. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Nov 3, 2013
B+ 35% The Counselor (2013)"Like David Fincher's Se7en, one of this movie's closest spiritual cousins, The Counselor ultimately delivers a diagnosis that tells the awful truth. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Oct 26, 2013
C+ 97% Gravity (2013)"... a Worst-Space Scenario, in which everything that can go wrong does. It's basically 'Sandra Bullock and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Space Walk.' " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Oct 4, 2013
A 93% This Is Martin Bonner (2013)"... exquisite character development, observantmaking, and storytelling that just might change the way people live. " ‐ Christianity TodayPosted Oct 2, 2013
A 94% Museum Hours (2013)"As we learn how to look at the Kunsthistorisches' masterpieces, we're also learning how to watch this movie. ... And better: we're learning how to look at our lives. " ‐ Christianity TodayPosted Oct 2, 2013
A- 89% The World's End (2013)"The most grown-up of the trilogy. ... Instead of giving us characters who find happiness by rediscovering their youth, they show us the folly of resisting adulthood. " ‐ ResponsePosted Aug 30, 2013
B 93% The Spectacular Now (2013)"Above all, I recommend it for Shailene Woodley, who fulfills here the promise she showed in The Descendants. ... But alas, the fumbles its turning-point crisis. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Aug 16, 2013
B 91% Blue Jasmine (2013)"Blanchett is a scene-chewing velociraptor. ... By contrast, Sally Hawkins steals the movie with her endearingly casual turn as Ginger. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Aug 9, 2013
B 85% The Way Way Back (2013)"One of those summer juice pops designed to make Vitamin C appealing. ... [But] worth seeing because its first-rate cast makes a decent script way, way better. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Jul 12, 2013
B+ 98% Mud (2013)"Mud has a rare big-screen beauty, and its old-fashioned storytelling recalls A River Runs Through It, Night of the Hunter, and Stand By Me. " ‐ ResponsePosted Jun 28, 2013
B+ 84% Much Ado About Nothing (2013)"The's biggest problem is that its Beatrice, played with spunk and spark by Amy Acker, is far more engaging and enchanting than its Benedick. " ‐ ResponsePosted Jun 28, 2013
A- 94% Stories We Tell (2013)"Polley approaches every character with compassion, intent upon blessing them, and serving the audience with useful questions about how we seek the truth. " ‐ ResponsePosted Jun 28, 2013
B 78% Monsters University (2013)"Very, very late in these 106 minutes, we get a startling blast of meaningful Pixar storytelling that reminds us of what this team can do when they bring their A game. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Jun 22, 2013
A 98% Before Midnight (2013)"Whatever wins Best Picture for 2013 ... long after that's glory fades, actors, writers, cinephiles, and lovers will still lavish Before Midnight with praise. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Jun 15, 2013
B- 79% Iron Man 3 (2013)"As much fun as I had while I watched it, it's falling apart like Tony Stark's armor now that I'm putting it to the test of ... you know ... making sense. Or meaning anything. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted May 3, 2013
B 46% To The Wonder (2013)"You can climb [Mont St. Michel] through tradition and religion ... and almost touch the heavens. Or walk the other way, into the the gray, where everything loses definition... " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Apr 13, 2013
A 100% Before Sunrise (1995)"Linklater captures romance at the sunset of gadget-free existence ... holy moments when no gadget or lens comes between us and our immediate company and surroundings. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Apr 8, 2013
A 82% Like Someone in Love (2013)"This is a movie about love - how much we need it, how we go wrong in the way we pursue it, and how one world's ideas about it are passing while another's are taking over. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Mar 15, 2013
A- 93% Amour (2012)"Amour will now rate highly on a list of my favorite horror movies. It's certainly upsetting. But that is its strength. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Feb 23, 2013
C+ 83% Side Effects (2013)"The surprises aren't much to get excited about. They come from the Magic 8 Ball of Hollywood Plot Twists, as arbitrary as they are implausible. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Feb 8, 2013
B 88% Django Unchained (2012)"When a culture tells stories that excuse its own evils long enough, the pendulum is sure to swing the other direction to reveal, even exaggerate, what has been left out. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Dec 26, 2012
C+ 70% Les Misérables (2012)"A perfect for a Pez dispenser set: A gallery of big famous faces that deliver fleeting bursts of energy ... but these moments dissolve, giving us nothing much to chew on. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Dec 22, 2012
B- 64% The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)"As fun as it is to watch, this isn't Tolkien's Hobbit. The story of a peaceable traveler who knew the virtue of restraint is lost to the vision ofmakers who have none. " ‐ ImagePosted Dec 13, 2012
A- 91% Holy Motors (2012)"Despite the millions of dollars fueling 2012's special-effects extravaganzas, I doubt I'll experience anything as exhilarating or memorable this year. " ‐ ImagePosted Nov 23, 2012
A- 74% Margaret (2011)"This is an America in which nobody listens, the end always justifies the means, and it's always the other guy's fault. Blame is tricky when everyone is failing everyone. " ‐ ResponsePosted Nov 14, 2012
A- 90% Lincoln (2012)"I never anticipated that I'd come out of this, which I expected would be heavy-handed and ponderous, saying, 'Wow, that may be the funniest movie of Spielberg's career.' " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Nov 10, 2012
B+ 92% Skyfall (2012)"... the best-looking Bond movie ever made. Roger Deakins' cinematography is full of striking silhouettes, some stark and simple as woodcuts, others multi-layered and illusory. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Nov 10, 2012
A 70% The Loneliest Planet (2012)"I wouldn't say that I find the movie satisfying, but I do find it powerfully haunting. That's a compliment. To be haunted by art is a better thing than to be satisfied by it. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Nov 2, 2012
C 77% Flight (2012)"Adrenalin-rush thrills, appeal, a drug-rush zoom on retina dilation, courtroom sermonizing ... Oscar buzz, children, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Nov 2, 2012
B 96% Argo (2012)"The closer the gets to its big finale, the more we can hear the hum of typical suspense-thriller machinery. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Oct 12, 2012
B+ 62% Sinister (2012)"Sinister is not only director Scott Derrickson's most fully realized vision but also his most personal. And as haunted houses go, this one is beautifully noisy. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Oct 12, 2012
B+ 85% The Master (2012)"Anderson does not judge his monstrous characters. He finds sympathy for them even at the heights of their delusion. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Sep 21, 2012
A- 97% Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)"It's bursting with imagination, wit, enough real-world stunts to create a sense of high stakes, and performances that register with real emotion in the midst of absurdity. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Jun 15, 2015
B+ 90% Something, Anything"Harrill has made something quiet, observant, and quite contrary to the popular narrative of American love stories. ... It's poetic, profound, and often very beautiful. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Feb 21, 2015
A 99% Selma (2015)"It is artful, inspiring, perfectly cast and powerfully acted, beautifully shot, scored with sensitivity rather than sentimentality, efficiently edited, profoundly dignified. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Feb 7, 2015
B+ 83% As It Is In Heaven (2014)"This suspenseful was shot without any special effects over the course of 17 days. This is powerfulmaking, admirable for the resourcefulness of the artists. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Feb 6, 2015
C+ 27% Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)"It bears little resemblance to the [source material]. But in its fictions, technical execution, and visual artistry, it has some admirable qualities. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Dec 12, 2014
B+ 28% Deliver Us from Evil (2014)"A police procedural cake pan [filled] with horror-genre cake batter. It [delivers] troubling questions about evils committed by humankind and ... evils done by something else. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Oct 24, 2014
B+ 98% Boyhood (2014)"Isn't this what good therapists do -- help people understand trouble, hurt, hopes, and dreams by digging deep into memory and experience? " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Jul 25, 2014
B+ 99% Gloria (2014)"You will probably warm to this odd and unglamorous character. You'll come to appreciate her expressions, her wit, her imagination, and her courage. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Jul 5, 2014
B+ 96% Ida (2014)"Anna's journey will leave her deeply conflicted about what she has seen, just as I feel conflicted about this. It's been three weeks, and I can't stop thinking about her. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Jun 17, 2014
A- 86% Only Lovers Left Alive (2014)"This is Jim Jarmusch's dark and mournful version of Wim Wenders Wings of Desire ... immortals watching over a decaying city ... burdened by disappointment. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted May 9, 2014
B- 85% Under the Skin (2014)"Avoids the adrenalin-junkie tactics of most sci-fi ... [but it] could have taken us to more interesting places. Glazer's too preoccupied with his bait-and-devour scenario. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Apr 23, 2014
B+ 77% Noah (2014)"There is so much here that is wonderful and strange, my problems with the are not much more than quibbles. ... I think Noah is Darren Aronofsky's Take Shelter. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Apr 11, 2014
A- 92% The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)"I was so busy delighting in its breathtaking aesthetic complexity that I suspect the story will work magic on me in later viewings. That's what happened with The Life Aquatic. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Mar 14, 2014
B 91% The Great Beauty (2013)"I don't know that I've ever seen a in which the visual glory on the screen was so at odds with the philosophy evident in the screenplay. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Feb 22, 2014
A 96% The LEGO Movie (2014)"A movie with more laughs-per-minute than any recent comedy I can remember ... and a thrilling summons to unleash our own creativity. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Feb 8, 2014
A- 94% Her (2013)"Jonze's sci-fi scenario glorifies relationships that are based on love, fidelity, honesty, close listening, and, above all, in-person intimacy. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Dec 25, 2013
B+ 94% Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)"The Coens ... rein in their wilder, wackier impulses here. Inside Llewyn Davis mopes its way through bogs of bitter irony and murky misfortune, " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Dec 21, 2013
B+ 96% 12 Years a Slave (2013)"The lingering effect is, 'Yeah, these nightmares really happened. People can be horrible. God have mercy.' I just don't find that the movie has given me much to think about. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Nov 3, 2013
B+ 35% The Counselor (2013)"Like David Fincher's Se7en, one of this movie's closest spiritual cousins, The Counselor ultimately delivers a diagnosis that tells the awful truth. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Oct 26, 2013
C+ 97% Gravity (2013)"... a Worst-Space Scenario, in which everything that can go wrong does. It's basically 'Sandra Bullock and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Space Walk.' " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Oct 4, 2013
A 93% This Is Martin Bonner (2013)"... exquisite character development, observantmaking, and storytelling that just might change the way people live. " ‐ Christianity TodayPosted Oct 2, 2013
A 94% Museum Hours (2013)"As we learn how to look at the Kunsthistorisches' masterpieces, we're also learning how to watch this movie. ... And better: we're learning how to look at our lives. " ‐ Christianity TodayPosted Oct 2, 2013
A- 89% The World's End (2013)"The most grown-up of the trilogy. ... Instead of giving us characters who find happiness by rediscovering their youth, they show us the folly of resisting adulthood. " ‐ ResponsePosted Aug 30, 2013
B 93% The Spectacular Now (2013)"Above all, I recommend it for Shailene Woodley, who fulfills here the promise she showed in The Descendants. ... But alas, the fumbles its turning-point crisis. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Aug 16, 2013
B 91% Blue Jasmine (2013)"Blanchett is a scene-chewing velociraptor. ... By contrast, Sally Hawkins steals the movie with her endearingly casual turn as Ginger. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Aug 9, 2013
B 85% The Way Way Back (2013)"One of those summer juice pops designed to make Vitamin C appealing. ... [But] worth seeing because its first-rate cast makes a decent script way, way better. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Jul 12, 2013
B+ 98% Mud (2013)"Mud has a rare big-screen beauty, and its old-fashioned storytelling recalls A River Runs Through It, Night of the Hunter, and Stand By Me. " ‐ ResponsePosted Jun 28, 2013
B+ 84% Much Ado About Nothing (2013)"The's biggest problem is that its Beatrice, played with spunk and spark by Amy Acker, is far more engaging and enchanting than its Benedick. " ‐ ResponsePosted Jun 28, 2013
A- 94% Stories We Tell (2013)"Polley approaches every character with compassion, intent upon blessing them, and serving the audience with useful questions about how we seek the truth. " ‐ ResponsePosted Jun 28, 2013
B 78% Monsters University (2013)"Very, very late in these 106 minutes, we get a startling blast of meaningful Pixar storytelling that reminds us of what this team can do when they bring their A game. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Jun 22, 2013
A 98% Before Midnight (2013)"Whatever wins Best Picture for 2013 ... long after that's glory fades, actors, writers, cinephiles, and lovers will still lavish Before Midnight with praise. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Jun 15, 2013
B- 79% Iron Man 3 (2013)"As much fun as I had while I watched it, it's falling apart like Tony Stark's armor now that I'm putting it to the test of ... you know ... making sense. Or meaning anything. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted May 3, 2013
B 46% To The Wonder (2013)"You can climb [Mont St. Michel] through tradition and religion ... and almost touch the heavens. Or walk the other way, into the the gray, where everything loses definition... " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Apr 13, 2013
A 100% Before Sunrise (1995)"Linklater captures romance at the sunset of gadget-free existence ... holy moments when no gadget or lens comes between us and our immediate company and surroundings. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Apr 8, 2013
A 82% Like Someone in Love (2013)"This is a movie about love - how much we need it, how we go wrong in the way we pursue it, and how one world's ideas about it are passing while another's are taking over. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Mar 15, 2013
A- 93% Amour (2012)"Amour will now rate highly on a list of my favorite horror movies. It's certainly upsetting. But that is its strength. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Feb 23, 2013
C+ 83% Side Effects (2013)"The surprises aren't much to get excited about. They come from the Magic 8 Ball of Hollywood Plot Twists, as arbitrary as they are implausible. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Feb 8, 2013
B 88% Django Unchained (2012)"When a culture tells stories that excuse its own evils long enough, the pendulum is sure to swing the other direction to reveal, even exaggerate, what has been left out. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Dec 26, 2012
C+ 70% Les Misérables (2012)"A perfect for a Pez dispenser set: A gallery of big famous faces that deliver fleeting bursts of energy ... but these moments dissolve, giving us nothing much to chew on. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Dec 22, 2012
B- 64% The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)"As fun as it is to watch, this isn't Tolkien's Hobbit. The story of a peaceable traveler who knew the virtue of restraint is lost to the vision ofmakers who have none. " ‐ ImagePosted Dec 13, 2012
A- 91% Holy Motors (2012)"Despite the millions of dollars fueling 2012's special-effects extravaganzas, I doubt I'll experience anything as exhilarating or memorable this year. " ‐ ImagePosted Nov 23, 2012
A- 74% Margaret (2011)"This is an America in which nobody listens, the end always justifies the means, and it's always the other guy's fault. Blame is tricky when everyone is failing everyone. " ‐ ResponsePosted Nov 14, 2012
A- 90% Lincoln (2012)"I never anticipated that I'd come out of this, which I expected would be heavy-handed and ponderous, saying, 'Wow, that may be the funniest movie of Spielberg's career.' " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Nov 10, 2012
B+ 92% Skyfall (2012)"... the best-looking Bond movie ever made. Roger Deakins' cinematography is full of striking silhouettes, some stark and simple as woodcuts, others multi-layered and illusory. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Nov 10, 2012
A 70% The Loneliest Planet (2012)"I wouldn't say that I find the movie satisfying, but I do find it powerfully haunting. That's a compliment. To be haunted by art is a better thing than to be satisfied by it. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Nov 2, 2012
C 77% Flight (2012)"Adrenalin-rush thrills, appeal, a drug-rush zoom on retina dilation, courtroom sermonizing ... Oscar buzz, children, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Nov 2, 2012
B 96% Argo (2012)"The closer the gets to its big finale, the more we can hear the hum of typical suspense-thriller machinery. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Oct 12, 2012
B+ 62% Sinister (2012)"Sinister is not only director Scott Derrickson's most fully realized vision but also his most personal. And as haunted houses go, this one is beautifully noisy. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Oct 12, 2012
B+ 85% The Master (2012)"Anderson does not judge his monstrous characters. He finds sympathy for them even at the heights of their delusion. " ‐ Looking CloserPosted Sep 21, 2012
