Senses of Cinema - Rotten Tomatoes

Senses of Cinema

Tomatometer-approved publication
Rating
Title/Year
Author
1
Nights of Cabiria (Le Notti di Cabiria) (1957)

Pedro Blas Gonzalez

Nights of Cabiria is very much a study of the strength of will and resilience in light of the resistance that life and the world place in Cabiria's path.
Posted Feb 28, 2021
2
Merrily We Go to Hell (1932)

Wheeler Winston Dixon

Sold as a comedy, the film is anything but; Arzner views café society as a snake pit, in which people use and discard each other without a backward glance.
Posted Sep 7, 2020
3
Olivia (The Pit of Loneliness) (2019)

Eloise Ross

Audry's film manages to explore complexities and subtleties in how women act in their relationships and in their professional spaces, precisely by allowing them an unresolvable ambiguity.
Posted Aug 27, 2019
4
A Wild Stream (Una corriente salvaje) (2018)

Jordan M. Smith

...A Wild Stream felt like a rejuvenating reprieve from the madness of the world, where cowboy bromances can enigmatically flourish on the glimmering seashores of Mexico before a looming camera held by a strong willed, visionary woman.
Posted Jul 10, 2019
5
Atman (1997)

Jordan M. Smith

...Atman maintains a tone of positive transformation, tenuous as it may be, through Pirjo's rigorous and patient observation of Jamana Lal's world weary face as he discovers love in the throes of grief.
Posted Jul 10, 2019
6
Mysterion (1991)

Jordan M. Smith

Wholly observational outside the occasional employment of Külliki Rannu as poetic narrator and 12 chapter cards that read as more mysterious than contextual, Mysterion is a staggeringly beautiful bit of filmmaking.
Posted Jul 10, 2019
7
Lucifer Rising (1972)

James Magrini

The film perfects Anger's use of myth, ceremony, and ritual.
Posted Jun 4, 2019
8
The Beast (La bête) (1975)

Cerise Howard

A satirical, Buñuelian comedy of manners brimming over with pre-nuptial intrigue.
Posted Feb 6, 2019
9
América (2018)

Jordan M. Smith

América reverberates with deep emotion as it explores the power and limits of caring for ailing loved ones on the homefront...
Posted Dec 5, 2018
10
Bisbee '17 (2018)

Jordan M. Smith

The play between past and present political predicaments of immigration, unionisation and corporate corruption piercingly resonate thanks to Greene's ingenious sense of staging...
Posted Dec 5, 2018
11
Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018)

Jordan M. Smith

Neville's film proves that despite an aesthetic approach that mimics its subject's vintage gentility, if one is keen to read between the lines, politically profound ideas ... might be at play in even the most wholesome of places.
Posted Dec 5, 2018
12
Kinshasa Makambo (2018)

Jordan M. Smith

Kinshasa Makambo daringly depicts the resistance as a fractured assemblage of discordant voices - including the filmmaker himself - at once forlorn and unfaltering.
Posted Dec 5, 2018
13
The Portrait of a Lady (1996)

David Kelly

The point of this imagery is not that Isabel has relapsed into the figure of the Gothic heroine, but that that figure in part informs her sense of self.
Posted Oct 26, 2018
14
Feathers in My Head (Des plumes dans la tête) (2003)

Dan Sallitt

The subject matter... could have been unbearable to watch, but [director Thomas] de Thier finds in the woman's solution the springboard of an artistic approach built around emotional counterpoint.
Posted Oct 18, 2018
15
Zhou Yu's Train (2004)

Dan Sallitt

One can quibble with the film here and there, and it takes a turn toward conventional sentiment at the end, but it's a pleasure to be able to describe a film as Hollywoodish and mean it as a compliment.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
16
Identity Kills (2003)

Dan Sallitt

Despite its modest presentation, Identity Kills eventually impresses with its undeniable intelligence and its knack for hiding its story in plain sight.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
17
The Brown Bunny (2004)

Dan Sallitt

I couldn't appreciate Gallo the director's Cassavetes-like taste for the realism... But Gallo films locations with a stranger's lucidity and an impressive commitment to natural sound and undoctored images.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
18
20h17 rue Darling (8:17 p.m. Darling Street) (2003)

Dan Sallitt

[Director Bernard] Émond's account of the fall and rise of a fragile man covers little new territory as a story, but his intelligent script immerses us in the literate sensibility of his protagonist.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
19
Stormy Weather, (Stormviðri) (2003)

Dan Sallitt

The overt realism of [director Solveig] Anspach's camera style is a cover for a dreamlike, melodramatic narrative where will and emotional connection transcend practical considerations.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
20
Sharasojyu (Shara) (2003)

Dan Sallitt

Connection is entirely what [director Naomi] Kawase is about, and the film's narrative strands come together in... a scene that does just about everything that cinema can do.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
21
The Magic Gloves (2006)

Dan Sallitt

[Director Martin] Rejtman depicts every crisis and solution in the film in the same unflappable, static style, generating humor from the characters' and the camera's persistent lack of reaction.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
22
Chokher Bali (2003)

Dan Sallitt

Serene and pictorial, Chokher Bali becomes convincing as a social critique by taking a genuine interest in the minutiae of family life and the interaction between erotics and politics.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
23
Toutes ces belles promesses (All the Fine Promises) (2003)

Dan Sallitt

Certainly it's been a while since any filmmaker saw fit to express the joys and sorrows of the human condition through the very serious business of women trying on hats.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
24
Ana Y Los Otros (2003)

Dan Sallitt

[Director Celina] Murga's sympathy for Rohmer's aesthetic is so natural that she is able to create with freedom and inspiration within the parameters of his conventions.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
25
Raja (2004)

Dan Sallitt

Depicting both French and Moroccan culture with sympathy and wit, Raja uses the language barrier between the would-be lovers as an excuse to throw up a network of perpendicular commentary.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
26
Gaz Bar Blues (2003)

Dan Sallitt

A nostalgic story of a family-owned gas station... [director Louis] Bélanger's film plays just a little cute, but is perceptive and light-footed in sketching the anxiety of the benevolent paterfamilias.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
27
Memories of Murder (2003)

Dan Sallitt

A perplexing film in many ways - and one that must play quite differently to South Korean audiences, who are familiar with the unsolved murder case - Memories is almost too much of a good thing in the variety and complexity of its director's sensibility.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
28
Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)

Dan Sallitt

Ultimately, Los Angeles Plays Itself plays out as a document of the conflict between Anderson's love of movies and his distrust of mass media.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
29
November (2003)

Dan Sallitt

Achero Mañas's November (2003) a mock-documentary account of the history of a street theatre troupe, is more ambitious than the director's earlier El Bolo (2000) but somewhat less satisfying.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
30
In the City (2003)

Dan Sallitt

As in his earlier Krampack (Nico and Dani, 2000), [director Cesc] Gay seems a little tidy and schematic at first, but gradually arrives at a plausible level of entropy and openness, creating appealing complexities.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
31
Nathalie (2003)

Dan Sallitt

One fears at this point that [director Anne] Fontaine's considerable talent has been submerged for the sake of Euro-prestige.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
32
Errance (2003)

Dan Sallitt

And yet Errance is ultimately a film about true love - a love helpless in the face of human weakness and doomed from shot one, but nonetheless enduring and inevitably moving.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
33
Happiness (Haeng-bok) (2007)

Dan Sallitt

Beneath the emotive surface of Happiness, its melodrama is inflected with stoical detachment, right up to the beautiful desolation of the final crane shot.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
34
The Story of Marie and Julien (2003)

Dan Sallitt

I can't always see what [director Jacquees] Rivette gains by stripping his presentation down to such bare patterns of encryption, but his cerebrality paradoxically heightens the sensual impact of his imagery.
Posted Oct 16, 2018
35
Far Side of the Moon (2005)

Dan Sallitt

Unflagging in visual and verbal wit, and yet emotionally true to its protagonist's weltschmerz, [director Robert] Lapage's meditation on reconciling the banal and the essential calls to mind the work of Sacha Guitry.
Posted Oct 16, 2018
36
Douches froides (Cold Showers) (2006)

Dan Sallitt

The script by Cordier and Julie Peyr is full of characterizations and incidents that are too neat or too cute, all of which Cordier the director hypes enthusiastically.
Posted Oct 16, 2018
37
Sulanga Enu Pinisa (The Forsaken Land) (2005)

Dan Sallitt

Only 27 when the film was shot, [director Vimukthi] Jayasundara already displays a complete command of the medium.
Posted Oct 16, 2018
38
Dreaming of Space (2005)

Dan Sallitt

Confusing and confused though it may be, Kosmos Kak Predchuvstvie has surprising emotional range, and [director Alexei] Uchitel displays a Hollywood-like fluency in mixing a variety of disparate camera styles.
Posted Oct 16, 2018
39
Un couple parfait (A Perfect Couple) (2005)

Dan Sallitt

The shapeless quarrels express no progression and give the marital crisis no specific profile.
Posted Oct 16, 2018
40
A Perfect Day (2005)

Dan Sallitt

Directors Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige seem quite confident about their strategy: they have a strong sense of location and sound.
Posted Oct 16, 2018
41
La Neuvaine (2005)

Dan Sallitt

Though the intertwining of these story lines is disorienting at first, each story fragment is quiet and direct, and the tension of the film eventually empties out into the still landscapes of rural Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré.
Posted Oct 16, 2018
42
Perpetual Motion (2005)

Dan Sallitt

The project never unifies, but ultimately [director Ning Ning's] dramatic skills outweigh her lapses in judgment.
Posted Oct 16, 2018
43
C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005)

Dan Sallitt

Playing the charismatic, androgyne hero in his older incarnation, Marc-André Grondin is surprisingly able to hold his own in his lifelong power struggle with veteran Michel Côté's ultracool patriarch.
Posted Oct 16, 2018
44
Backstage (2006)

Dan Sallitt

Feet of clay notwithstanding, [Emmanuelle] Seigner's larger-than-life idol never completely loses her magical quality... and ultimately Backstage's considerable pleasure comes from the breathless feeling of making a map of sacred ground.
Posted Oct 16, 2018
45
Benares (2006)

Dan Sallitt

First-time director Barlen Pyamootoo, working from his own novel, uses a simple camera style, paying too little attention to ambient sound, and troubling the film with an odd light-jazz score.
Posted Oct 16, 2018
46
Time Off (Parentesis) (2006)

Dan Sallitt

Like François Truffaut, [directors Francisca Schweitzer and Pablo Solís] deploy conspicuous technique in order to obscure psychology, introducing an element of poetry into the simple task of making story connections.
Posted Oct 16, 2018
47
You Bet Your Life (Spiele Leben) (2005)

Dan Sallitt

The film is a showcase for the oily charisma of Georg Friedrich, playing Kurt, a ne'er-do-well and gambling addict who threatens to take the film down with him to the depths of sociopathic self-destruction.
Posted Oct 16, 2018
48
Entre ses mains (In His Hands) (2005)

Dan Sallitt

Practically a remake of Claude Chabrol's Le Boucher (1969), Entre ses mains makes a certain number of irritating commercial concessions.
Posted Oct 16, 2018
49
Through the Forest (À travers la forêt) (2005)

Dan Sallitt

Varying its level of artifice according to a plan that is revealed only gradually, Forêt benefits from a second viewing, so that the viewer can try on different interpretations of Arielle's strange journey into the afterlife.
Posted Oct 16, 2018
50
April Snow (2005)

Dan Sallitt

[Director Hur Jin-ho] defers the melodrama as long as possible in his quiet, stoical way, but the characters never become more than pawns, moved from place to place to suit the needs of the purely sentimental story.
Posted Oct 16, 2018