DavidKahane

Shot on the cheap and in the spare time of the collected cast and crew, the film is jubilantly amateurish as it simultaneously spoofs and pays loving homage to the science fiction genre. It's not exactly something that can be called good, but it's surely enthusiastic, coming across as a scrappy precursor to any number of YouTube mini-epics made by people who love movies so much that they too want to point a camera and yell, "Action!"

96 _95%

Jules and Jim (1962) - Rated 08 Aug 2011

Another sterling example of the Truffaut's almost unmatched feel for the intricacies of human emotion. The film is also packed with his playful approach to the mechanics of filmmaking. He tinkers with the image, the frame, the soundtrack, the lighting in ways that open up all the possibilities of film, which in turn expand the potential of the narrative itself. Rules aren't made to be broken with Truffaut; they're made to be adored and repurposed, rambunctiously applied in inventive new ways.

80 _65%

A Single Man (2009) - Rated 08 Aug 2011

This film suffers somewhat for a pronounced case of First Time Director's Disease. Ford seems determined to build so much style and technique into the crafting of the film that he often loses sight of the important task of telling his story in a meaningful, penetrating way. That improves as the film progresses as Ford starts showing up less and simply ceding the heavy lifting to Firth. The actor conveys the restrained, roiling agony of his character with devastating empathy.

64 _42%

Spider (2002) - Rated 08 Aug 2011

There's certainly plenty of psychological meatiness for Cronenberg to sink his sharp teeth into, but there's a general lack of zest to the work. It's solid, but it also feels a little like the director marking time, waiting for real inspiration to strike. Fiennes is the master of internalized emotion, but he takes that skill perhaps too far. His character becomes a shambling cipher. Richardson, however, is blazingly sensational in a performance that essentially encompasses multiple roles.

42 _23%

Hanna (2011) - Rated 08 Aug 2011

The film is balanced awkwardly between stylish action and moody artiness, rarely finding its true footing. It lacks enough insight and cleverness to be wholly satisfying. Attempts to add characters shaped by satiric instincts around the fringes of the story only serve to make it more of a muddle. Blanchett delivers a shockingly bad, overplayed performance that's shocking coming from an actress who once seemed capable of accomplishing absolutely anything onscreen.

89 _81%

Targets (1968) - Rated 08 Aug 2011

Targets has a quirky charm all its own. Karloff is mordantly marvelous as the movie actor and Bogdanovich has some nice scenes with him as the burgeoning director who boozily tries to convince him to stick around for one more picture. Bogdanovich is especially strong as he alternates between sequences that exhibit very different tones. It would be easy for the film to feel problematically off-balance, but Bogdanovich turns it into a virtue, charging the film with grand unpredictability.

98 _97%

High and Low (1963) - Rated 08 Aug 2011

Purely phenomenal, demonstrating every bit of Kurosawa's vaunted mastery of the filmmaking form. The potency of the film--the intensity of the emotions, the shifts of the plot that never feel manipulative, the quietly inspired accumulation of details--is completely disarming. Kurosawa is so well known for his samurai epics that it sometimes gets lost that he had the capability to tell any story dazzling well with a camera.

93 _87%

Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (1979) - Rated 08 Aug 2011

Pryor is in peak form, playing language, facial expressions and physical movement like notes in a thrilling hard bop jam session. In fact, he slips so effortlessly in and out of characters--each one markedly different, each one sharply drawn in mere moments--that the film becomes evidence that Pryor could have become one of the greatest character actors of his generation.

90 _83%

Stroszek (1977) - Rated 08 Aug 2011

There's no reason to expect anything less than inspired lunacy from a Herzog movie, especially one made back in the 1970s when the rules of cinema were falling away like paint from a waterlogged wall. Herzog's examination of the travails of the downtrodden trying to forge better lives adds condemnation of the false promise of the American dream. He films it with an amused detachment; his affection for the off-kilter drives the film ever forward, growing more beautifully absurd at every turn.

67 _45%

11 Harrowhouse (1974) - Rated 08 Aug 2011

In many respects, this film is like any number of British caper films from around the same era in that it's clever, aridly serious and a bit dull. What makes it distinctive is the writing credit earned by star Charles Grodin. His voice is unmistakable, especially in the narration, which comments on the action with Grodin's trademark deadpan hostility. Grodin's perpetual state of unease gives the film a flinty tension it would otherwise lack.