Fresh
| Fresh 79%
| The Windmill Movie (2009) | "
Ultimately, one gets swept up in the first soapy, then tragic melodrama of the life matter that overwhelmed Rogers' desire/compulsion/ability to make art... while still longing for a discreet "Where I'm From" statement of equal precision and beauty to Rog" — SpoutBlog Posted Jun 21, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Winnebago Man (2009) | "
The filmmaker never makes it about him %u2014 it's clear throughout that he's onscreen because that's the most direct way to tell this story, and he wants nothing more than to serve as a conduit between what he sees and what he wants us to see. You don't" — SpoutBlog Posted Jun 17, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 50%
| The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009) | "
Our continued national faith in this myth, even in the face of all evidence to the contrary, is making the rest of the world hate us more than they already do. If this is true, then Scott's Pelham remake %u2014 a love letter to the notion that an unregula" — SpoutBlog Posted Jun 17, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 19%
| Downloading Nancy (2008) | "
Director Johan Renck essentially builds Nancy and Albert's reality out of an aggregation of overwrought kitsch... and so what seem like occasional lapses into deadpan moments of fantasy aren't always productive in contrast. Heavily art directed for unplea" — SpoutBlog Posted Jun 9, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 60%
| Tetro (2009) | "
...as [a] densely layered, intensely visual work of creative autobiography, Tetro claims a key place in the Coppola filmography. At least, for the first time in the last few decades worth of filmography, it feels like it's got somewhere to take you." — SpoutBlog Posted Jun 9, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 81%
| Sex Positive (2009) | "
Sex Positive too often looks like something hastily thrown together, which belies the built trust evident between the filmmaker and his subject. Over the course of the film, Berkowitz moves from refusing to discuss certain specifics to spilling in great d" — SpoutBlog Posted Jun 9, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 78%
| The Hangover (2009) | "
The Hangover, Todd Phillips' return to fratastic form after the disappointing School for Scoundrels, marks itself as an aesthetic step up for the Old School director right from the get go." — SpoutBlog Posted Jun 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 63%
| The Brothers Bloom (2009) | "
If Johnson doesn’t reinvent the con man wheel, he pulls off a magic act in the romance department, reinvigorating the fiction that first love can be the last/best/only love ever needed." — SpoutBlog Posted May 22, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 60%
| Inglourious Basterds (2009) | "
So far so good, right? But the talking is notably lacking in the spark and rhythm that we've come to expect from Tarantino, and with a fair four-fifths of the film given over to character exposition and dull chatter, the violent setpieces feel rushed alon" — SpoutBlog Posted May 22, 2009 |
Rotten 1/6
| Rotten 20%
| Ghosts of the Heartland (2009) | "
The ambience may be right, but the film lacks what makes actual midcentury middle-American noir so effective: subtext." — Time Out New York Posted May 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 45%
| Antichrist (2009) | "
My main misgiving is that its second "chapter", the first after they enter the woods, is kind of plodding and boring, which is a problem for a film that rides a very thin line between legitimate horror and total ridiculousness. Still, I can't imagine it w" — SpoutBlog Posted May 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 58%
| The Girlfriend Experience (2009) | "
The Girlfriend Experience is not exactly the meticulous document of process that Che was. Starring porn star Sasha Grey as a high-end escort who alternately goes by the names Chelsea and Christine, Soderbergh's quick and cheap digital feature is not the g" — SpoutBlog Posted May 13, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 80%
| Audience Of One (2009) | "
Real-life mockumentary." — SpoutBlog Posted May 11, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 68%
| Julia (2009) | "
Thrillingly far off the rails." — SpoutBlog Posted May 6, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 33%
| The Limits of Control (2009) | "
The magic of Limits is that Jarmusch has used rigorous formalism to construct what feels like a loose, dreamy continuum of ideas." — SpoutBlog Posted Apr 30, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 87%
| Throw Down Your Heart (2009) | "
A beautiful illustration of powerlessness in the face of art." — SpoutBlog Posted Apr 29, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | The Exploding Girl (2009) | "
Beautifully restrained." — SpoutBlog Posted Apr 29, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 76%
| Outrage (2009) | "
Thoughtfully persuades, but never shocks." — SpoutBlog Posted Apr 28, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Every Little Step (2009) | "
Uber crowd-pleasing...both candy for confirmed theater nerds, and functioning propaganda for the uninitiated." — SpoutBlog Posted Apr 14, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 28%
| Fast & Furious (2009) | "
I can count on half a hand the things I found appealing about the middle fifty minutes of this movie, but I'll be damned if I don't want to know what happens next..." — SpoutBlog Posted Apr 13, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 80%
| Valentino: the Last Emperor (2009) | "
On one level, Valentino: The Last Emperor offers a rare glimpse at the bond between two men who have truly been partners for life. But it’s also a bittersweet portrait of the end of fashion as art and of supreme luxury as an aspirational construct." — Time Out New York Posted Mar 18, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 84%
| Two Lovers (2009) | "
Two Lovers is a testament to the childish madness of infatuation, and maybe even true love's impossibility." — SpoutBlog Posted Feb 12, 2009 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 25%
| The Caller (2009) | "
There’s a vaguely appealing elegance to the way the film moves -- that is, when the actors stop spouting laughably portentous dialogue long enough for one to appreciate the film’s pacing." — Time Out New York Posted Feb 11, 2009 |
Fresh 6/10
| Rotten 43%
| He's Just Not That Into You (2009) | "
He's Just Not That Into You is smart for what it is, but it refuses to be condescendingly smarter than the people it exists to please. And that makes it even smarter." — SpoutBlog Posted Feb 5, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 10%
| Memorial Day (2009) | "
Memorial Day sets up the party zone as a moral equivalent to the war zone, hammers that connection home and then stops-content with offering an equation in lieu of an argument" — SpoutBlog Posted Feb 4, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 43%
| Spring Breakdown (2008) | "
Spring Breakdown rides a very fine line between total trash and intelligent provocation, mall multiplex dreck and Troma-esque satire via the grotesque." — SpoutBlog Posted Jan 30, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 80%
| An Education (2009) | "
An Education is an extremely classy film %u2013%u2013 classy as in modish, classy as in overtly concerned with class, and both ultimately at the expense of digging as deep as it could" — SpoutBlog Posted Jan 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Humpday (2009) | "
Humpday is whip-smart, uproariously funny comedy which uses a "bros will be bros" dare as the in point to talk about the inevitable loss of self in long term relationships." — SpoutBlog Posted Jan 16, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 88%
| Moon (2009) | "
Moon manages to be both derivative and deliberately rebellious in its treatment of sci-fi tropes. Moon is a story that digs deep into the traumas of people being people." — SpoutBlog Posted Jan 16, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 76%
| Cargo 200 (2008) | "
Balabanov has crafted horror setpieces as vile (and strangely aesthetically pleasing) as anything you might see in contemporary torture porn, but Cargo's slow-burn build give each act of rape, murder, torture and necrophilia that much more weight." — SpoutBlog Posted Jan 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 69%
| Revolutionary Road (2008) | "
Certainly the best work Mendes has ever produced for the screen, Revolutionary Road works as a showcase for performances: DiCaprio and Winslet are at the top of their game." — SpoutBlog Posted Dec 23, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 72%
| The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) | "
Benjamin Button is a film about the feat of its own whiz-bang, Frankensteinian digital imagery, drunk on its own accomplishment to an extent that feels quasi-ethical." — SpoutBlog Posted Dec 22, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 80%
| Gran Torino (2008) | "
Gran Torino is most fun when it's working on the level of performance art, and much of the time, it resembles an art school take on an insult comic's one-man show." — SpoutBlog Posted Dec 18, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 98%
| The Wrestler (2008) | "
Rourke delivers a performance that seems to start and end in the cardiovascular system, making everything Rourke actually does seem effortless. As if he's just breathing it." — SpoutBlog Posted Dec 16, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 62%
| The Reader (2008) | "
This is a film which asks us to contemplate the deeply complicated relationship between rational thought and instinctual feeling via a perverse intermingling of global horror and very, very local pain." — SpoutBlog Posted Dec 12, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 94%
| Milk (2008) | "
Milk is a film about the politics of sex, in which the political process itself not only takes precedence over but seems to stand in for the complexities of real life sexuality." — SpoutBlog Posted Nov 26, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 87%
| A Christmas Tale (2008) | "
A Christmas Tale (Un Conte de Noel) is a darkly comic dysfunctional family fairy tale, more Meet Me In Saint Louis than The Royal Tenenbaums, with a healthy dose of A Midsummer Night's Dream thrown in." — SpoutBlog Posted Nov 11, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 94%
| Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008) | "
He documents an undeniably affecting personal story, and patches it together like a short attention span scrapbook with his fingerprints intact, but there's something about it which feels false enough to undercut some of its potential power." — SpoutBlog Posted Oct 31, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 67%
| Synecdoche, New York (2008) | "
Synecdoche is impeccably acted, inventively designed, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, and often devastatingly sad." — SpoutBlog Posted Oct 23, 2008 |
Fresh
| N/A | 5-25-77 (2005) | "
Under the miasma of autobiography...it seems like within '77 there's an earnest love letter...the moment when sci-fi nerds in small towns around the world found the franchises that would make their obsessions seem more normal." — SpoutBlog Posted Oct 20, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 60%
| W. (2008) | "
If history remembers W. at all, it'll be as a monument to the erosion of Oliver Stone's balls." — SpoutBlog Posted Oct 16, 2008 |
Fresh
| Rotten 28%
| Filth and Wisdom (2008) | "
Madonna's feature directorial debut Filth and Wisdom seems of a piece with her previous work, in that it's in some way about Madonna herself hiding behind borrowed aesthetics." — SpoutBlog Posted Oct 13, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 72%
| Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008) | "
Nick and Norah, and their assorted pals drift fluidly between irony-as-defense and taking both themselves, and the idea of love, very seriously. The result is a film that's much more of a traditional teen romance, but also a more honest one." — SpoutBlog Posted Oct 6, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 61%
| Changeling (2008) | "
We drink every time Angelina hysterically proclaims, "He's not my son!" We get very drunk, and this may be why we can't figure out why Clint Eastwood made a cheap-looking Lifetime movie that eventually turns into an "And justice for all!" episode of SVU." — SpoutBlog Posted Oct 6, 2008 |
Fresh
| N/A | Voy a Explotar (2009) | "
Voy a Explotar- it's the rare love letter to influence that's infused with enough personal style and sentiment to transform the stolen into something thrilling and moving." — SpoutBlog Posted Sep 30, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 63%
| Che (2008) | "
Che may be an extremely accurate portrait of Guevara's life, but truly epic works of cinema have more on the agenda than the literal translation of life. Can this be said of Che? No." — SpoutBlog Posted Sep 30, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 98%
| Let the Right One In (2008) | "
Let the Right One In is certainly well-made and miles more thoughtful than you might expect a teenage vampire film to be." — SpoutBlog Posted Sep 25, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 67%
| I Think We're Alone Now (2008) | "
I Think We're Alone Now never artificially humanizes its characters, but it makes it a little easier to understand how a life almost totally devoid of affection or compassion could help treatable psychological issues mutate into unnavigable madness." — SpoutBlog Posted Sep 24, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 67%
| The Burrowers (2009) | "
Beautifully shot and tightly scripted, it's the rare Hollywood genre film that's more concerned with human relationships and behavior than the mysterious supernatural forces that sets the action in motion." — SpoutBlog Posted Sep 22, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 65%
| Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) | "
Believe the hype at least, to a certain extent. Zach and Miri Make a Porno is Kevin Smith's all-around high score for the current decade." — SpoutBlog Posted Sep 19, 2008 |
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