Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 78%
| Humpday (2009) | "
The questions are piquant, the answers droll and surprising." — Financial Times Posted Dec 18, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 88%
| Nowhere Boy (2009) | "
The late teenage years of John Lennon, put through the biopic wringer by screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh, come out as flat and lifeless as yesterday’s “We Love the Beatles” T-shirt." — Financial Times Posted Dec 18, 2009 |
Rotten 1/5
| Fresh 70%
| Sherlock Holmes (2009) | "
The script here is a pretext for fatuous action pyrotechnics, misfiring comedy, the inevitable star from Central Crumpet Casting and CG jiggery-pokery evoking Ye Olde London. In short: Doc, Sh’lock and Every Scraped Barrel." — Financial Times Posted Dec 18, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Rotten 37%
| Nine (2009) | "
Bitty and frequently batty, Nine doesn’t have the sultry cogency or louche mellifluousness of Chicago. But it will do for Christmas ’09." — Financial Times Posted Dec 18, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 83%
| Avatar (2009) | "
The villains are mostly out of pantomime; much of the dialogue needs a stretcher; and the save-the-rainforest plot is a pain. Just take your eyes to the film. Leave all other faculties at home." — Financial Times Posted Dec 18, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 63%
| The Girlfriend Experience (2009) | "
Human feeling dares to outstare, for a mini-moment, the world of accounting, commodification, ecstasy-management." — Financial Times Posted Dec 11, 2009 |
Rotten 1/5
| Fresh 73%
| Where the Wild Things Are (2009) | "
Shouldn’t therapy, at least in art for or about childhood, be fun? The book was entrancing. The book deserved better. Happily there is still time, before the world ends, for someone else to film it. For now: return to Sendak." — Financial Times Posted Dec 11, 2009 |
Fresh 5/5
| Rotten 39%
| The Limits of Control (2009) | "
You have to take sides. Go see the film, go judge. Either this is plotless rubbish designed to inflame tabloid newspapers. Or it is the future of cinema, and Jarmusch has got there before the rest of us." — Financial Times Posted Dec 11, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Rotten 23%
| Planet 51 (2009) | "
Good fun if you can put up with the pastel colours and plasticky textures, which show that in modern fantasy animation all that pixellates isn’t Pixar." — Financial Times Posted Dec 4, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 64%
| The Merry Gentleman (2009) | "
Keaton is good, McDonald with her spooky equanimity and still-waters profundity even better. Sartre’s Huis Clos? Forget that. This is hell, as moodily atmospheric as low-budget screen infernos get." — Financial Times Posted Dec 4, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 84%
| Disgrace (2009) | "
This is tragic inevitability at one mile per hour, extending into a slow, sunbaked danse macabre the drama’s heartbreak and the guilt, anguish and wrath." — Financial Times Posted Dec 4, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 44%
| The Box (2009) | "
A lot of stuff about Nasa, Mars exploration and amateur theatre – Sartre’s Huis Clos and its glowing chestnut adages (“Hell is other people”) – add to the film’s richness or, depending on opinion, its overcooked confusion." — Financial Times Posted Dec 4, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 83%
| Me and Orson Welles (2009) | "
Look at Mackay. Look at the handsome-pudgy features, listen to the rolling bass voice, appraise the twinkling eye, marvel at the offhand flourishes of the titanic frame. This is Welles." — Financial Times Posted Dec 4, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 46%
| Nativity! () | "
An overzealous, sentimental kidcom." — Financial Times Posted Nov 27, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 15%
| Mr. Right (2009) | "
Agay romantic comedy that earns 10 points for PC outreach work and one for wit." — Financial Times Posted Nov 27, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 56%
| Bunny & The Bull (2009) | "
A buddy-based road movie with fetching cut-out sets foregrounded by non-fetching cardboard characters." — Financial Times Posted Nov 27, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 89%
| Séraphine (2008) | "
Moreau’s stellar performance and the astral intensity of the paintings keep taking us where this story belongs, up into the skies." — Financial Times Posted Nov 27, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 24%
| Law Abiding Citizen (2009) | "
When reality melts and major US cities become porous, we need some of the mad panache recently demonstrated by Roland Emmerich in 2012." — Financial Times Posted Nov 27, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 82%
| Paranormal Activity (2009) | "
Paranormal Activity shows how little it takes for inventive filmmakers to do a lot." — Financial Times Posted Nov 27, 2009 |
Rotten 1/5
| Rotten 21%
| Amelia (2009) | "
Woodenly acted and grinningly bland, this Amelia Earhart life story turns Hilary Swank and Richard Gere, playing the aviatrix’s publisher husband, into virtual Thunderbirds puppets." — Financial Times Posted Nov 13, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 49%
| Taking Woodstock (2009) | "
A damp squib, thrown fizzling into the memory arena of the world’s pioneer rock festival." — Financial Times Posted Nov 13, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 83%
| We Live in Public (2009) | "
Another bizarre, bewitching tale from those that make up life in, on and around the worldwide web." — Financial Times Posted Nov 13, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 97%
| Tulpan (2008) | "
The film is irresistibly human and funny, and properly momentous when calamity strikes." — Financial Times Posted Nov 13, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 77%
| Harry Brown (2009) | "
The youthful villain demographic, plus the prompts to our indignation, come straight from the UK tabloids. But before it spins into terminal hokum, Barber’s feature debut has moments of power and menace." — Financial Times Posted Nov 13, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Rotten 39%
| 2012 (2009) | "
Roland Emmerich is an apocalypse chef. In 2012 he cooks America till it boils, adding live meat to the process at judicious intervals." — Financial Times Posted Nov 13, 2009 |
Fresh 5/5
| Fresh 88%
| The White Ribbon (2009) | "
A film of subtle savagery and mordantly encompassing vision." — Financial Times Posted Nov 13, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 50%
| 1 Day () | "
A gangsta farrago, convincing neither as street-tough crime drama nor soul-motorised rap show. The performers go through the motions, and emotions, as if reading cue cards." — Financial Times Posted Nov 6, 2009 |
Rotten 1/5
| Rotten 54%
| The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) | "
The film starts hopefully, drifts into the desert, ends up starved of point, pith and pattern." — Financial Times Posted Nov 6, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Rotten 55%
| Disney's A Christmas Carol (2009) | "
Dickens purists can stay away. Others can feel free to sample the rollicking aerial views of Victorian London, the droll and scary elasticity of Carrey." — Financial Times Posted Nov 6, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 100%
| Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno () | "
Shocking, enthralling, educative. It proves that falling in love with cinema can be, for some who pick it as a career, the most health-endangering thing of all." — Financial Times Posted Nov 6, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 60%
| Paper Heart (2009) | "
The film becomes more bewitching the more it loses direction. Yi stops questioning strangers and starts questioning herself. She also interrogates the ability, or inability, of cinema to follow love into its deepest mazes." — Financial Times Posted Nov 6, 2009 |
Fresh 5/5
| Fresh 84%
| Bright Star (2009) | "
Steadfastness, truth and a simple, blazing, incandescent humanity. This is a literary life story in which life, for once, is the meaningful word." — Financial Times Posted Nov 6, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 100%
| Tales from the Golden Age (2009) | "
There are no sharp instruments, just gentle barbs and pokes. Mungiu suggests that Romania under dictatorship was at worst a comically fearful bureaucracy." — Financial Times Posted Oct 30, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 73%
| Starsuckers (2009) | "
The tone elsewhere is too often hectoring and self-righteous: a team of salesmen exhorting us not to listen to salesmen." — Financial Times Posted Oct 30, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 94%
| An Education (2009) | "
Mulligan has a sit-up-and-watch talent." — Financial Times Posted Oct 30, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 82%
| Pontypool (2009) | "
Bruce McDonald directs a tiptop cast. Tony Burgess, scripting from his own novel, clearly saw the grand guignol potential in the computer virus, in the way great plagues can be planted in tiny units of understanding." — Financial Times Posted Oct 16, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 81%
| Triangle (2009) | "
Rackingly involving and, as corpses multiply, fearless of appearing penny-dreadful. Smith also made the loopy shocker Severance. This is becoming a body of work to watch." — Financial Times Posted Oct 16, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 94%
| Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee (2009) | "
The film has about as much sense of structure as – well, as Thirst, but I laughed a fair bit." — Financial Times Posted Oct 16, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 82%
| Thirst (2009) | "
Once on course, he is uncontrollable. I don’t mean the hero, I mean the director. Park’s gallows wit and visual inventiveness keep us alert for an hour amid the ramshackle story structuring." — Financial Times Posted Oct 16, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 64%
| The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) | "
An overdone blow-out of a modern fairy tale." — Financial Times Posted Oct 16, 2009 |
Rotten 1/5
| Rotten 10%
| My Life in Ruins (2009) | "
Think of Shirley Valentine and take away charm, wit, realism and Pauline Collins." — Financial Times Posted Oct 4, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 28%
| Pandorum (2009) | "
Action mayhem full of gibbering hominoids, hanging corpses and a few live stars." — Financial Times Posted Oct 4, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Rotten 57%
| The Invention of Lying (2009) | "
The laughs rain down early on; later – Messiah moment apart – they thin to a drizzle, deprived of variation." — Financial Times Posted Oct 4, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 100%
| The Army of Crime (2009) | "
Grave, heartfelt, medium-engrossing, it still feels like every resistance movie you have ever seen, rolled into a ball of historical revisionism." — Financial Times Posted Oct 4, 2009 |
Fresh 5/5
| Fresh 97%
| The Beaches of Agnes (2009) | "
A loose-leaf diary in which the pages are shuffled by instinct, wit and surreal art." — Financial Times Posted Oct 4, 2009 |
Rotten 1/5
| Rotten 36%
| Je Veux Voir (2009) | "
The idea is misconceived, the execution gets closer and closer to the danger zone of embarrassment." — Financial Times Posted Sep 18, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 85%
| Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009) | "
The film continues in meal-monsoon mode for 90 minutes with scant variation." — Financial Times Posted Sep 18, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 76%
| The Firm (2009) | "
A sleek, if superfluous, remake." — Financial Times Posted Sep 18, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 77%
| Chevolution (2008) | "
Revolution is always with us: this week’s guerrilla documentary, watchable and well-researched, is Chevolution." — Financial Times Posted Sep 18, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 94%
| BirdWatchers (2009) | "
Bechis bequeaths us a landscape scattered with enigmas, jigsaw pieces for us to complete our own picture." — Financial Times Posted Sep 18, 2009 |
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