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Dennis Lim
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Denise Calls Up (1995) |
About as cinematic as, well, an 80-minute conference call. There's a cute short somewhere in here, but across a full-length feature, the gimmicky premise is spread very thinly indeed. - Independent on Sunday
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| Posted Jul 12, 2024
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Rainbow (1996) |
Short on ingenuity and verve but oozing undisguised preachiness, this well-meaning fable is unlikely to connect with its target audience. - Independent on Sunday
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| Posted Jul 12, 2024
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Twister (1996) |
While Speed was a lean, self-contained piece, Twister is a lurching succession of awesome set-pieces barely held together by limp characterisation... It's a procession of thrills, but it doesn't add up to any kind of suspense. - Independent on Sunday
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| Posted Jul 12, 2024
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The Matrix (1999) |
The visual effects are impressive, but the movie’s overall style is wearing... The cumulative effect is perversely deflationary: long before it’s over, the film has flushed the paranoia from its system. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jul 12, 2023
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Love's Labour's Lost (2000) |
The result is good-natured enough to withstand both an uneven cast (Alessandro Nivola and Adrian Lester are standouts, while Alicia Silverstone and Matthew Lillard struggle gamely) and its own limited novelty value. - Out Magazine
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| Posted May 24, 2022
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Set Me Free (1999) |
Vanasse gives a performance of unaffected grace, and Pool reveals a keen eye for the formative moments of adolescence. - Out Magazine
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| Posted May 24, 2022
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Not One Less (1999) |
Wei sets off on a rescue odyssey that derives humor from the young heroine's alarmingly steely determination and pathos from the film's stark depiction of life on the street. - Out Magazine
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| Posted May 24, 2022
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Beau travail (1999) |
Ardent and unflinching, Beau Travail looks beyond homoeroticism to the subtle, savage power games of an all-male world. - Out Magazine
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| Posted May 24, 2022
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Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood (2019) |
Its unending California dream is the expression of a palpable, deeply poignant yearning. - Artforum
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| Posted Jun 03, 2019
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Freedom (2019) |
Liberté more than lived up to its title, suggesting that a truly free cinema is one that still believes in the possibility of subversion. - Artforum
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| Posted Jun 03, 2019
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Pain and Glory (2019) |
... an autumnal memory piece that arrives at a state of hard-won grace and serenity. - Artforum
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| Posted Jun 03, 2019
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Zombi Child (2019) |
...functioning equally as a delirious teen-horror reverie, a serious study of the zombie myth, and an open-ended riff on the persistence of the colonial past. - Artforum
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| Posted Jun 03, 2019
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Parasite (2019) |
Parasite puts a wickedly literal spin on the notion that there is always someone lower on the socioeconomic ladder. - Artforum
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| Posted Jun 03, 2019
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Atlantics (2019) |
The potent, hallucinatory moods of Diop's previous work are beautifully assimilated here into an oneiric fable of migration and transmigration-suspended between realism and fantasy, the living and the dead, here and elsewhere. - Artforum
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| Posted Jun 03, 2019
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Bacurau (2019) |
Far from a one-to-one political allegory, Bacurau is a work of powerfully inchoate despair and rage. - Artforum
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| Posted Jun 03, 2019
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Viola (2012) |
If many recent art films have made prominent use of nonactors, typically cast as some version of themselves, Pineiro's beguiling, hyperverbal movies revel in the transportive potential -- and sheer pleasure -- of actors acting. - Artforum
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| Posted Jun 08, 2017
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The Devil, Probably (1977) |
Thirty-five years on, The Devil, Probably can still trigger a shock of recognition. - Artforum
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| Posted May 22, 2014
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Story of My Death (2013) |
Against a backdrop of candlelit conversation and barnyard carnality, Serra sets in motion contrasting ideas about pleasure and desire, alternating between winding philosophical dialogue and wordless passages of savage beauty. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Sep 15, 2013
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Nosferatu (1922) |
Less frightening than haunting, Murnau's film conjures a persistent atmosphere of dread and decay, thanks in part to Max Schreck's immortal performance as Orlok. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Aug 21, 2013
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No (2012) |
No concludes Larrain's trilogy on the Pinochet years, a series of films that suggest the usefulness of oblique angles when braving the minefields of fictionalizing recent history. The filmmaker comes by this sidelong view naturally. - Artforum
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| Posted Jul 01, 2013
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Frozen River (2008) |
Courtney Huntâ(TM)s somber film Frozen River ventures deep into the trenches where hard-working Americans struggle to put food on the table. - New York Times
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| Posted Aug 01, 2008
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The Exiles (1961) |
Despite its compact time frame the film conjures a powerful sensation of purgatory: a night like many others. - New York Times
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| Posted Jul 07, 2008
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The Amateurs (The Moguls) (Dirty Movie) (2005) |
There are no laughs to be found in writer-director Michael Traeger's would-be comedy The Amateurs, but there is one big mystery: how actors of this caliber could have been convinced to take part. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Dec 07, 2007
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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) |
Never surrendering its grip on the viewer, 4 Months is the rare film with gravity and speed -- a moral tale in the form of a suspense thriller. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Nov 02, 2007
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No End in Sight (2007) |
No End in Sight, the latest Iraq documentary, is the first to attempt a detailed historical overview and probably the only one with the potential to reach across partisan lines, a true rarity in the sphere of political filmmaking. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Aug 02, 2007
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Memories of Tomorrow (2006) |
The script's subtler nuances are too often drowned out by awkward histrionics. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jun 08, 2007
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Disturbia (2007) |
Has nowhere near the conceptual sophistication of Rear Window, where the protagonist's absorption in what he's watching mirrors the viewer's. The problem with Disturbia is that for most of the film you'll wish you weren't watching at all. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Apr 12, 2007
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Grindhouse (2007) |
Setting aside the dubious coherence and suspect nostalgia of the enterprise, Grindhouse is a fascinating exercise in genre reinvention, a showcase for two radically different approaches to homage. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Apr 05, 2007
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Meet the Robinsons (2007) |
Zippy if forgettable. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Mar 29, 2007
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The Namesake (2006) |
An intimate, melancholy look at the isolation and disorientation common to the immigrant experience. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Mar 08, 2007
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Turistas (2006) |
A wholly predictable bit of slasher unpleasantness and a muddled cautionary tale on the American propensity for foreign misadventures. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Nov 30, 2006
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The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros (2005) |
The film is alarming, endearing, and utterly unflappable. - Village Voice
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| Posted Sep 19, 2006
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(undefined) |
Finn's deadpan is immaculately bone-dry, and his antiquarian fastidiousness is worthy of Guy Maddin. - Village Voice
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| Posted Aug 03, 2006
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Brothers of the Head (2005) |
The golden-hued footage is lovingly faked by ace cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, and the straight-faced result is as improbably touching as the Farrelly brothers' underrated Stuck on You. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jul 25, 2006
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Shadowboxer (2005) |
It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment when it becomes clear that this lurid, steroidal neo-noir is certifiably insane (or at least a lot funnier than it means to be), but it's pretty early on. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jul 18, 2006
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Gabrielle (2005) |
At once robust and ethereal, this is an existential ghost story, with fresh blood pulsing through its veins. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jul 11, 2006
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Time to Leave (2005) |
Time to Leave winds up a tiresome affirmation of man's biological duty to procreate; the position is simplistic verging on obnoxious, especially after 5x2's attack on the hetero family model. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jul 11, 2006
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Urbanscapes (2005) |
Urbanscapes analyzes urban blight as a recurring phenomenon, with economic, social, and moral dimensions. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jul 07, 2006
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Agnes and His Brothers (2004) |
Painfully literal/ironic soundtrack choices add to the general unpleasantness, and the nods to Fassbinder's great In a Year of 13 Moons only emphasize what this scattershot satire most decidedly is not. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jun 06, 2006
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Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (2005) |
Fatih Akin's rich documentary follow-up, Crossing the Bridge, digs deeper into Istanbul's musical and social history. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jun 06, 2006
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Cavite (2005) |
A paragon of guerrilla resourcefulness and a model citizen of the global village, Cavite is a more anxious and vivid experience than most movies with budgets literally a thousand times bigger. - Village Voice
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| Posted May 24, 2006
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X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) |
... thanks to lowered expectations ... and in a season of economically disastrous disaster movies, the mere fact that this Memorial Day juggernaut is not a catastrophe should spell good news for a depressed industry. - Village Voice
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| Posted May 23, 2006
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Twelve and Holding (2005) |
In Cuesta's cynical formulation, the pretense of empathy is simply license to mock, gawk, and vulgarize. - Village Voice
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| Posted May 17, 2006
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United 93 (2006) |
Like most memorials, it is respectful, premised on competing obligations to the dead and the living, and eager to stress that the deaths were not in vain. It not only tells us we should never forget but also illustrates how we should remember. - Village Voice
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| Posted Apr 18, 2006
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Basic Instinct 2 (2006) |
The plot, already mired in nonsensical backstory, collapses with the late-inning introduction of a tired metafictional device (not to mention a wildly lunging Usual Suspects twist). - Village Voice
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| Posted Apr 04, 2006
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Half Nelson (2006) |
Sardonic yet moving, Half Nelson deftly outlines the perils of youthful idealism without lapsing into knee-jerk cynicism. - Village Voice
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| Posted Mar 22, 2006
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In Between Days (2006) |
Painful, funny, unsentimental, perfectly measured in its ambiguities, it's exemplary low-budget filmmaking, the rare DV movie with an assured visual style and a strong sense of place. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jan 31, 2006
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Man Push Cart (2005) |
Bahrani and his DP Michael Simmonds illuminate the murky beauty -- and hardscrabble economics -- of New York's all-night shadowland. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jan 31, 2006
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Old Joy (2006) |
A film of microscopic mood shifts, at once open-ended and precise. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jan 31, 2006
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Little Miss Sunshine (2006) |
The destination is a pageant that will demonstrate, in grotesque, stomach-churning detail, that beauty is skin-deep and that you don't have to win to be a winner. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jan 31, 2006
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