Rotten D+
| Rotten 29%
| Serious Moonlight (2009) | "
Serious Moonlight is meant to be both funny and painful, but manages only the latter." — AV Club Posted Dec 3, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Fresh 89%
| Up in the Air (2009) | "
Hits the predictable beats of a belated coming-of-age story, but it's exceedingly well accomplished, with a confident visual style light-years beyond Juno's functional setups." — Philadelphia City Paper Posted Dec 3, 2009 |
Fresh B
| N/A | The New Year Parade (2009) | "
A low-key but satisfying blend of melodrama and observant naturalism." — Los Angeles Times Posted Dec 2, 2009 |
Rotten B-
| Fresh 72%
| The Road (2009) | "
Hillcoat certainly provides the requisite seriousness, but what the movie lacks is an underlying sense of innocence, a sense that, however far humanity has sunk, there is at least some chance of rising again." — Los Angeles Times Posted Dec 2, 2009 |
Fresh A
| Fresh 90%
| The Sun (2005) | "
The Sun took four years to reach American theaters, but the long delay hasn’t diminished the force of Sokurov’s experimentation." — AV Club Posted Nov 19, 2009 |
Fresh A-
| Fresh 100%
| Rashomon (1950) | "
Akira Kurosawa's four-way account of a man's murder has become so associated with its central device %u2014 not to mention its myriad offshoots %u2014 that it requires an effort to see it only for itself." — Philadelphia City Paper Posted Nov 19, 2009 |
Rotten C-
| Fresh 60%
| Pirate Radio (2009) | "
Do you like montages, but grow bored with the tedious plot bits in between? Then Pirate Radio is the movie for you." — AV Club Posted Nov 12, 2009 |
Rotten C+
| Rotten 54%
| The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) | "
The juxtaposition of Bridges' tripped-out troops and Iran-Contra-era skullduggery makes for a few easy laughs, but the movie's satire never grows teeth; its depiction of the military as obsessive goofballs makes their excesses seem more trivial than dange" — Philadelphia City Paper Posted Nov 5, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 100%
| La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (2009) | "
At a shade over two and a half hours, La Danse is compact by Wiseman’s standards, and it feels much shorter, gracefully flowing from ballerinas en pointe to construction workers patching cracks in the ceiling." — AV Club Posted Nov 5, 2009 |
— | Rotten 43%
| Song of the South (1946) |
Click here to read article — Philadelphia City Paper Posted Nov 3, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Rotten 50%
| Antichrist (2009) | "
Like most of Trier's movies, Antichrist wavers between inspired and insufferable, but it's too nervy to simply dismiss." — Philadelphia City Paper Posted Oct 29, 2009 |
Rotten D
| Rotten 20%
| Amelia (2009) | "
[Swank is] so constrained by mannerisms that she never gets beyond the character’s surface -- although to be fair, trying to import feeling into the movie’s stilted dialogue is like trying to fly a plane blindfolded." — AV Club Posted Oct 22, 2009 |
Rotten C-
| Rotten 41%
| New York, I Love You (2009) | "
Inconsistency is the curse of the anthology film, but the entries in the omnibus New York, I Love You are united by their near-total lack of interest." — AV Club Posted Oct 15, 2009 |
Fresh B-
| Fresh 61%
| Peter and Vandy (2009) | "
The movie’s saving grace is Weixler, who manages to seem effortlessly natural without resorting to whiny faux naturalism. As she did in Teeth, Weixler grounds an otherwise glib conceptual exercise through the force of her presence." — AV Club Posted Oct 8, 2009 |
Rotten C+
| Fresh 82%
| Whip It (2009) | "
Barrymore's first film as a director is both formless and formulaic, but there's a palpable spirit behind it that makes its many rough patches tolerable." — Philadelphia City Paper Posted Oct 2, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Fresh 76%
| Afterschool (2009) | "
Campos has developed a style of his own, one that owes as much to video installations as it does to cinematic narrative." — Philadelphia City Paper Posted Oct 2, 2009 |
Fresh A-
| Fresh 87%
| A Serious Man (2009) | "
A stylized, slow-speed farce, the movie is frequently absurd and occasionally silly, but it also touches on profound moral and spiritual quandaries, the kinds of things the Coens would never be caught dead addressing directly." — Philadelphia City Paper Posted Oct 2, 2009 |
Fresh B-
| Fresh 70%
| Chelsea on the Rocks (2009) | "
Ferrara himself is no stranger to substance abuse or self-destructive impulses, and he’s perfectly in sync with the Chelsea’s spirit." — AV Club Posted Oct 1, 2009 |
Rotten C+
| Rotten 43%
| Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2009) | "
The movie is never a chore to watch, but its characters feel like microbes under glass: tiny, remote and insignificant." — Philadelphia City Paper Posted Sep 24, 2009 |
Rotten B-
| Fresh 75%
| Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) | "
Moore doesn't want people to ask questions. He just wants them to swallow his answers." — Philadelphia City Paper Posted Sep 24, 2009 |
Fresh A
| Fresh 100%
| Still Walking (2009) | "
Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s home drama Still Walking is a master class in doing much with little." — AV Club Posted Aug 27, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 74%
| Five Minutes of Heaven (2009) | "
Inspired by the sectarian murder of a Catholic dockworker in 1975, Five Minutes Of Heaven belongs, along with Nothing Personal and Breakfast On Pluto, to the rare class of movies that try to encompass both sides of the conflict." — AV Club Posted Aug 20, 2009 |
— | Fresh 80%
| Taxidermia (2009) |
Click here to read article — Philadelphia City Paper Posted Aug 14, 2009 |
Fresh B-
| Fresh 78%
| It Might Get Loud (2009) | "
The resulting jam session ought to be a music geek’s wet dream, but there isn’t enough common ground to produce more than a few flashes of inspiration." — AV Club Posted Aug 13, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Fresh 86%
| Lorna's Silence (2009) | "
Lorna’s Silence feels like a refinement, even a repetition, of earlier themes. But the brothers are repeating themselves at such a high level that the redundancies are more than welcome." — AV Club Posted Jul 30, 2009 |
Rotten 1.5/5
| Rotten 22%
| Next Day Air (2009) | "
An ungainly hybrid of stoner comedy and gangsta drama." — Los Angeles Times Posted May 8, 2009 |
— | Rotten 55%
| Flawless (2007) |
Click here to read article — Philadelphia City Paper Posted Apr 24, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 63%
| Crank High Voltage (2009) | "
Not everyone has a taste for gun-wielding strippers and Godzilla parodies, but for those who do, Crank High Voltage is like a 1,000-volt shot to the heart." — Los Angeles Times Posted Apr 17, 2009 |
Rotten 1.5/5
| Rotten 4%
| Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009) | "
A long slog with little payoff." — Los Angeles Times Posted Mar 5, 2009 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Rotten 28%
| Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail (2009) | "
If the movie is a mess, it's a purposeful mess, cannily, if not artfully, pushing all the right buttons to ensure Perry will be back for another round." — Los Angeles Times Posted Feb 23, 2009 |
Rotten 1/5
| Rotten 0%
| Polanski (2009) | "
It's clear from Polanski's cramped frames that [director] Chapa knows as little about filmmaking as he does his subject." — Los Angeles Times Posted Feb 13, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 32%
| Fanboys (2009) | "
It's not nearly nerdy enough." — Los Angeles Times Posted Feb 6, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 15%
| The Spirit (2008) | "
Denny Colt might have come back from the dead, but The Spirit stays cold on the slab." — Los Angeles Times Posted Dec 29, 2008 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 80%
| Nothing But the Truth (2008) | "
The last-minute switcheroo suggests, perhaps unintentionally, that Rachel is less a martyr to the cause than a schemer looking to cover her tracks." — Los Angeles Times Posted Dec 19, 2008 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Fresh 66%
| What Doesn't Kill You (2008) | "
It feels, if not like real life, at least like a movie you haven't seen before." — Los Angeles Times Posted Dec 12, 2008 |
Rotten 1/5
| Rotten 12%
| Lake City (2008) | "
A convoluted, discombobulated take on a small-town drama, Lake City shifts gears so often it never gets out of the driveway." — Los Angeles Times Posted Dec 5, 2008 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 85%
| JCVD (2008) | "
It might be the most impressive stunt of his career." — Los Angeles Times Posted Nov 14, 2008 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 21%
| Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun (2008) | "
Trumbo's aim was a kind of proletarian poetry, but McKenzie's broad emoting has the deadly earnestness of a school play." — Los Angeles Times Posted Nov 14, 2008 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 67%
| First Basket (2008) | "
It uncovers a fascinating and largely forgotten chapter of the game's history that is well worth revisiting." — Los Angeles Times Posted Nov 14, 2008 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 60%
| Loins of Punjab Presents (2008) | "
An uninspired cultural comedy with a few sharp lines to recommend it." — Los Angeles Times Posted Nov 7, 2008 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Fresh 84%
| Captain Abu Raed (2008) | "
Amin Matalqa's teary drama, Captain Abu Raed, takes its obvious cues from the neorealism of Satyajit Ray and Jean Renoir, but Matalqa doesn't know how to balance melodrama with quiet moments the way the masters did." — Los Angeles Times Posted Nov 7, 2008 |
Rotten 1.5/5
| Rotten 3%
| The Haunting of Molly Hartley (2008) | "
It would take hallucinations of a powerful kind indeed to find anything worthwhile in The Haunting of Molly Hartley, a dead-on-arrival thriller that resolutely fails to come to life." — Los Angeles Times Posted Nov 3, 2008 |
Rotten 0.5/5
| Rotten 15%
| Saw V (2008) | "
It's not a good sign when watching someone stick their hand into a table saw is easier than listening to them recite dialogue." — Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 24, 2008 |
Rotten 1/5
| Rotten 18%
| Max Payne (2008) | "
Miserable, in every sense of the word." — Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 17, 2008 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Rotten 59%
| RocknRolla (2008) | "
Ritchie whisks you along on a whirlwind tour, but he's not averse to putting on the brakes long enough to admire some of his favorite attractions." — Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 10, 2008 |
Rotten F
| Rotten 13%
| An American Carol (2008) | "
What makes An American Carol overtly depressing rather than merely lame is its allegiance to a diseased political discourse built on crude dichotomies: Either you're a bellicose, God-fearing patriot or a troop-hating, traitorous hippie." — AV Club Posted Oct 6, 2008 |
Rotten C+
| Rotten 53%
| Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys (2008) | "
While it's wonderful to see actresses as shamefully underemployed as Woodard and Bates on the big screen, even they can't make sense of [these] incoherent characters." — AV Club Posted Sep 15, 2008 |
Fresh B-
| Fresh 91%
| August Evening (2007) | "
Although its plot has its share of melodramatic twists and tearful revelations, August Evening focuses on the moments between, the mundane interactions that make up a life." — AV Club Posted Sep 4, 2008 |
Rotten D-
| Rotten 2%
| Disaster Movie (2008) | "
It's too easy to say Disaster Movie deserves its title, but why put more effort into trashing it than the filmmakers did into writing it?" — AV Club Posted Aug 29, 2008 |
Fresh B-
| Rotten 59%
| Sukiyaki Western Django (2008) | "
[A] superheated stir-fry." — AV Club Posted Aug 28, 2008 |
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