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Review: Sundance Shorts (2012)

The Sundance mission
As Robert Redford's Sundance Institute turns 35, these 10 short films make good on its mission to "champion the risk-takers and pioneers whose stories reflect and shape our world."

By: BRETT MICHEL | January 15, 2013

Review: Bad Boys/Furyo Shonen (1961)

One of the fathers of the Japanese New Wave, Susumu Hani followed up a series of documentary shorts with this, his improvisational first feature depicting life in a reform school.

By: BRETT MICHEL | January 15, 2013

Review: A Haunted House

This latest Marlon Wayans vehicle is a send-up of the "found footage" genre, from Paranormal Activity to The Devil Inside, and if the name of its director — Michael Tiddes — makes you chuckle, then is this the movie for you!

By: BRETT MICHEL | January 15, 2013

Review: Indelible Lalita

Over time, the vicissitudes of the human body can wreak havoc with one's sense of identity.

By: PETER KEOUGH | January 08, 2013

Review: Texas Chainsaw 3D

Forget the various sequels, remakes, and prequels of Tobe Hooper's seminal horror movie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre .

By: BRETT MICHEL | January 08, 2013

Review: Gangster Squad

Not-so-mod Squad
In the history of Hollywood violence, Gangster Squad scored a footnote when it was pulled from a September release, after the Aurora shooting for a scene in which gangsters machine-gunned their way through the Grauman's Chinese Theatre screen.

By: ANN LEWINSON | January 10, 2013

Review: Nothing But A Man (1964)

Civil rites
Michael Roemer's modest, eloquent, New Wave-y micro-movie — made independently in 1964 — is essential viewing for its matter-of-fact look at an average black man's struggle for dignity in the Deep South in the early '60s.

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | January 08, 2013

Review: Bestiaire

Although there is no narration or manipulative music track, Denis Côté's long-take documentary look at Parc Safari in Hemmingford, Quebec, screams out (quietly) on the side of animal rights.

By: GERALD PEARY | December 31, 2012

Review: Parental Guidance

Billy Crystal and Bette Midler star in what could have been a decent comedy, if director Andy Fickman hadn't made it such a tearjerker.

By: BETSY SHERMAN | January 02, 2013

Review: The Impossible

In J.A. Bayona's neo-disaster-film, everything but the carnage is cheap.

By: JAKE MULLIGAN | December 31, 2012

Review: Zero Dark Thirty

Dark passage
Densely detailed, superbly shot and acted, illuminating and thrilling, it is the best film of 2012.

By: PETER KEOUGH | January 09, 2013

Review: Promised Land

In the tradition of Arbitrage and Thank You for Smoking , where the people who contribute to making life miserable are seen as just regular guys, Gus Van Sant, along with screenwriters Matt Damon and John Krasinski, collaborate in this ambiguous homily about the energy crisis and environmental pollution.

By: PETER KEOUGH | December 27, 2012

Review: Jack Reacher

"Who is Jack Reacher?"

By: PETER KEOUGH | December 27, 2012

Review: Not Fade Away

Fade to Black
Can a movie be intimate and rock-and-roll at the same time?

By: JAKE MULLIGAN | January 02, 2013

Review: Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away

A pixie-haired girl (Erica Linz) catches the eye of a strapping young aerialist (Igor Zaripov) in a traveling circus, and the two are transported to a dimension that's made up of set pieces from every Cirque du Soleil show under the, well, soleil.

By: BRETT MICHEL | December 21, 2012

Review: Hitler's Children

Israeli filmmaker Chanoch Ze'evi is the probing interviewer behind this chilling, unsettling documentary.

By: GERALD PEARY | December 21, 2012

Review: Django Unchained

Spaghetti southern style
Tarantino reconfigures that classic American genre, the Western, setting his new film in the Deep South, creating what he terms a "Southern," while infusing it with the spaghetti sensibilities of Sergio Leone (director of Tarantino's favorite film, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly ) and, more so, the genre grit of that other Sergio, Corbucci (director of 1966's Django , naturally).

By: BRETT MICHEL | December 28, 2012