Fresh B-
| Fresh 71%
| Bruno (2009) | "
Not all of the jokes are complex, or smug. Some follow the pure, simple slapstick route to the belly laugh, and there are enough of those to please many Cohen fans." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Jul 10, 2009 |
Rotten D
| Rotten 11%
| I Love You, Beth Cooper (2009) | "
Almost diabolically unfunny." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Jul 10, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Fresh 97%
| The Hurt Locker (2009) | "
The Hurt Locker shows there's more than one kind of solder fighting the war, more than one kind of story to tell." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Jul 10, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 89%
| Moon (2009) | "
It invites us to think about the logical extension of industrial policies that turn human life into a commodity, and it has a narrative inventiveness that makes sly commentary on its place in the sci-fi movie continuum." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Jul 2, 2009 |
Rotten C
| Rotten 44%
| Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) | "
I never thought I'd get tired of watching Scrat, but Ice Age 3 proved me wrong." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Jun 30, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 66%
| Public Enemies (2009) | "
Director Michael Mann is a stylish, brooding perfectionist who makes movies about men who are stylish, brooding perfectionists." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Jun 30, 2009 |
Rotten C
| Rotten 19%
| Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) | "
It's the movie to see if the most important person in your life is Optimus Prime. If, like me, you think Optimus Prime is a Roman steakhouse, move on." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Jun 23, 2009 |
Rotten C
| Rotten 46%
| The Proposal (2009) | "
The leads are appealing, the material familiar -- it adds a Front Page romantic angle to The Devil Wears Prada, and reworks ideas from Green Card." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Jun 18, 2009 |
Rotten C+
| Fresh 66%
| Away We Go (2009) | "
Away We Go is a cute, likeable movie. For about 10 minutes." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Jun 11, 2009 |
Rotten C
| Rotten 50%
| The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009) | "
The only surprise in the new Pelham is that there's nothing to replace the narrative ingenuity of the original. In fact, there's almost no ending at all." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Jun 11, 2009 |
Rotten C
| Rotten 11%
| My Life in Ruins (2009) | "
The best thing I can say about My Life in Ruins, a forced comedy about a woman finding love in the Greek isles, is that there's no ABBA." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Jun 4, 2009 |
Fresh B-
| Rotten 35%
| Tennessee (2009) | "
Tennessee is occasionally a chore to sit through, but it does yield some third-act rewards for patient viewers, as the characters' willingness to sacrifice for the other is suddenly brought into sharp focus." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Jun 4, 2009 |
Rotten C
| Rotten 50%
| Easy Virtue (2009) | "
I know it's a period piece, but the attitudes are dated to the point of being nonsensical. The actors seem to sense this, and ramp up their performances to fill the void." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Jun 4, 2009 |
Rotten C+
| Rotten 28%
| Land of the Lost (2009) | "
Preteen boys and Ferrell followers will like it fine. Wider audiences might be harder to impress." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Jun 4, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Fresh 78%
| The Hangover (2009) | "
I'm going to say, at the risk of doing time in the blurbitentiary, that The Hangover is the Citizen Kane of bachelor party movies." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Jun 4, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 93%
| Drag Me To Hell (2009) | "
An unconscionably fun chiller that re-discovers the genre's missing secret sauce." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 28, 2009 |
Fresh A-
| Fresh 97%
| Up (2009) | "
Pixar will one day make a stinker, but I'm happy to report that Up is not it." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 28, 2009 |
Rotten c+
| Fresh 62%
| The Brothers Bloom (2009) | "
The tension between the brothers, so often played for teasing laughs, begins to take on the weight of tragedy, and the movie simply can't support it." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 21, 2009 |
Rotten C+
| Rotten 32%
| Terminator Salvation (2009) | "
In the end, the resistance discovers that machines have the same potentially deadly flaw as so many summer movies: Expository dialogue." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 20, 2009 |
Rotten C-
| Rotten 46%
| Management (2009) | "
This is one motel comedy that does not warrant an extended stay." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 14, 2009 |
Rotten C-
| Rotten 33%
| The Limits of Control (2009) | "
If you force-fed horse tranquilizers to The Bourne Identity, you'd end up with something like Limits of Control." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 14, 2009 |
Fresh B-
| Fresh 92%
| Every Little Step (2009) | "
The grindingly familiar metrics of reality-TV elimination shows clash with an interesting retrospective documentary in Every Little Step." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 14, 2009 |
Rotten C
| Rotten 37%
| Angels & Demons (2009) | "
What happened to reliable old Tom, perennial Oscar nominee? It's like he left the actor part of him on that island in Castaway." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 14, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Rotten 18%
| Next Day Air (2009) | "
It's hard to make a movie that ends with blazing guns and dead bodies and still send the audience away laughing, but Next Day Air finds the right drive-in movie tone." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 7, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 86%
| Tyson (2009) | "
The movie is a useful portrait of a mentally tortured man, but I'm not sure it documents anything definitively biographical about Tyson." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 7, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 76%
| Outrage (2009) | "
These polemics have a kind of natural charge to them, but there are glimpses in the movie of something more complex and in a way more interesting - the way closet psychology mixes with political ambition to create a fascinating hybrid of warring desires." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 7, 2009 |
Fresh A-
| Fresh 95%
| Star Trek (2009) | "
Trek almost never stops being good, kinetic fun." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 6, 2009 |
Rotten C-
| Rotten 28%
| Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009) | "
Made me unexpectedly homesick for Fool's Gold." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 1, 2009 |
Fresh B-
| Rotten 36%
| X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) | "
It's so-so stuff." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 1, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 67%
| Is Anybody There? (2009) | "
It's good stuff from Caine, an actor who often pretends that his craft is a simple application of practiced technique." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 1, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Rotten 55%
| Lymelife (2009) | "
Funnier than most movies of its kind, and its nimble cast manages to find humor and a little humanity in a story that's fascinated by the downside of upward mobility." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 1, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 71%
| American Violet (2009) | "
American Violet is an earnest muckraker about the justice system that won't win points for style, but wins plenty for substance." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 1, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Rotten 46%
| Battle for Terra (2009) | "
The movie is divertingly different, distinctive - somewhere between Pacific Rim animation and cuddly creature Disney, with a niche for itself somewhere in the middle." Philadelphia Daily News Posted May 1, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 74%
| Earth (1999) |
Click here to read article Philadelphia Daily News Posted Apr 24, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Rotten 55%
| The Soloist (2009) | "
It's not A Beautiful Mind, and there are some missteps here. But it's an unusually honest movie about homelessness and about newspapers." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Apr 23, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 93%
| Sugar (2009) | "
Sugar has its own knuckle curve - it takes familiar images of the U.S. and flips them, giving us an idea of how strange our country can look to an outsider." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Apr 23, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Fresh 98%
| Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2009) | "
The movie is a small wonder, because it's not the work of a practiced filmmaker - Sacha Gervasi is a writer and Anvil fan who shot the movie on a whim, but he has a great eye, and is evidently an editing whiz." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Apr 23, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 85%
| Earth (2009) | "
It's very instructive and hey, where else can you see footage like this? On Animal Planet, the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel, etc., just about every night." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Apr 23, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 85%
| State of Play (2009) | "
State of Play works better as this week's elegy for newspapers -- it's pulpy, it's reasonably well-written (punched up by Tony Gilroy), and briskly directed." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Apr 16, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 90%
| Hunger (2008) | "
It's by Irish video artist Steve McQueen (yes, that's his name), and it's his visually arresting take on the 1981 hunger strike by IRA leader Bobby Sands, ultimately leading to his death, and the deaths of nine other inmates at Belfast's Maze Prison." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Apr 16, 2009 |
Fresh B-
| Rotten 56%
| 17 Again (2009) | "
17 Again puts Disney commodity Zac Efron into a recycled Freaky Friday plot and ends up with a surprisingly un-awful 'tween comedy." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Apr 16, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 89%
| Sin Nombre (2009) | "
The compositions (even in grimy cities) and use of color are wonderful, the kind of thing that can only arise with the assistance of a wonderful art director." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Apr 10, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Rotten 51%
| Observe and Report (2009) | "
Director Jody Hill presents all of this as a comedy, somewhere between absurdist and black -- like Napoleon Dynamite meets Martin Scorsese." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Apr 10, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 88%
| Adventureland (2009) | "
Adventureland is not as uproarious as Superbad, but has a little more heart, and is a cut above most one-crazy-summer teen movies." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Apr 2, 2009 |
Rotten C
| Rotten 28%
| Fast & Furious (2009) | "
Fast and Furious milks the cars/chicks/hip-hop vibe for all it's worth, which is roughly $8, if you're male, 18 and under." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Apr 2, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 72%
| Monsters vs. Aliens (2009) | "
It's a predictable updating of the 50-foot-woman idea, but it doesn't go very deep. DreamWorks go for jokes first, action second, resonance third or not at all." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Mar 26, 2009 |
Rotten C-
| Rotten 32%
| Knowing (2009) | "
It's meant to be creepy, but the movie's gloomy atmospherics are consistently undone by Cage's strange, disinterested (and possibly Botoxed) performance." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Mar 19, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Fresh 82%
| I Love You, Man (2009) | "
While some are pigeonholing I Love You, Man as just another bromantic comedy set in the smelly recesses of the man-cave, it has a fresh spin." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Mar 19, 2009 |
Fresh B-
| Fresh 73%
| The Great Buck Howard (2009) | "
Audiences crave the mental comfort food of an accessible good time, and Buck Howard is an affectionate ode to the kind of performer who provides just that." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Mar 19, 2009 |
Fresh B-
| Fresh 73%
| Sunshine Cleaning (2009) | "
It's every overhyped indie you've seen, and maybe didn't like, and yet it's often quite likable." Philadelphia Daily News Posted Mar 19, 2009 |