Rotten
| Rotten 19%
| Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) | "
The movie rages on for a hundred and fifty minutes and then just stops, pausing for the next sequel." — New Yorker Posted Jun 29, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 66%
| Public Enemies (2009) | "
The movie is emotionally neutered." — New Yorker Posted Jun 29, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 97%
| Food, Inc. (2009) | "
An angry blast of disgust aimed at the American food industry." — New Yorker Posted Jun 22, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 97%
| The Hurt Locker (2009) | "
The Hurt Locker is a small classic of tension, bravery, and fear, which will be studied twenty years from now when people want to understand something of what happened to American soldiers in Iraq." — New Yorker Posted Jun 22, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 66%
| Away We Go (2009) | "
Some of the episodes are ripely satirical, others almost heartbreaking." — New Yorker Posted Jun 1, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 44%
| Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) | "
The result is pretty much a free-form traffic jam in which everyone fights everyone else." — New Yorker Posted Jun 1, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 97%
| Up (2009) | "
The movie is packed with lovely jokes, some of them funny in inexplicable ways." — New Yorker Posted Jun 1, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| Summer Hours (2009) | "
In the end, Assayas, shooting the film with relaxed, flowing camera movements, gives his love not to beautiful objects but to the disorderly life out of which art is made." — New Yorker Posted May 18, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 37%
| Angels & Demons (2009) | "
If these movies made any damned sense, the public response might be no more than a yawn." — New Yorker Posted May 18, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 86%
| Tyson (2009) | "
Those who were furious at Tyson will be made even angrier by Toback’s film, for here is a fresh provocation—an attempt to restore to Tyson the human dimensions that have been taken from him (by himself, of course, as well as by others)." — New Yorker Posted May 4, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 41%
| Fighting (2009) | "
The fights may not be very convincing, but the story’s underdog structure is satisfying in a happy-cliché sort of way. Fighting is Rocky without the bombast, Fight Club without the daft metaphysical pretensions." — New Yorker Posted May 4, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 36%
| X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) | "
Alas, there’s nothing quite memorable here: much of the combat is just a whirl of movement photographed up close. As the X-Men series has progressed, the startling poetic extravagances of the first film have given way to flesh-pounding clumsiness." — New Yorker Posted May 4, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 85%
| State of Play (2009) | "
The three screenwriters may have been trying to work too many plot strands into two hours; in any case, State of Play is both overstuffed and inconclusive." — New Yorker Posted Apr 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 55%
| The Soloist (2009) | "
I don’t know if Beethoven and a sympathetic newspaper reporter can redeem a messy American city, but this movie makes a plausible case for so fervent a dream." — New Yorker Posted Apr 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 94%
| Goodbye Solo (2009) | "
Creating his fiction shrewdly, Ramin Bahrani ultimately suggests that finality, too, has its beauty, and must be valued as much as endless possibility." — New Yorker Posted Apr 6, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 88%
| Adventureland (2009) | "
The story is semi-autobiographical, but has a gentler touch than his prior work on Superbad, and certainly relies less on slapstick episodes." — New Yorker Posted Apr 6, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 90%
| Hunger (2008) | "
In the end, even though I recognized the need to be reminded of Guantánamo and of crimes carried out there, I was awed but not moved by Hunger." — New Yorker Posted Mar 23, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 66%
| Duplicity (2009) | "
Duplicity is an enormously enjoyable hybrid, a romantic comedy set at the center of a caper movie." — New Yorker Posted Mar 23, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 58%
| The International (2009) | "
Killer banks may be new to the movies, but there's nothing else original in this if-it's-Tuesday-this-must-be-Istanbul thriller, with its portentous globe-hopping and racing through colorful street bazaars." — New Yorker Posted Feb 23, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 88%
| Coraline (2009) | "
A gift to imagination." — New Yorker Posted Feb 23, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 90%
| Katyn (2007) | "
A stunning, epic film." — New Yorker Posted Feb 23, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 84%
| Cherry Blossoms (2009) | "
The movie’s conceits are just barely endurable, but the sharpness of Dörrie’s eye -- for Tokyo’s electric night, for Fuji’s iconographic landscapes, for cherry blossoms -- sustains emotion even when story logic fails." — New Yorker Posted Jan 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 84%
| Wendy and Lucy (2008) | "
The movie, for all its morose impassivity, is beautiful and haunting." — New Yorker Posted Jan 20, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 50%
| Notorious (2009) | "
The movie leaves us with the sense that, twelve years after Biggie Smalls’s death, a lot of people are trying to extract whatever profit or pride they can from the chaotic life of a young man who was, as he well knew, a work in progress." — New Yorker Posted Jan 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 90%
| The Secret of the Grain (2008) | "
[Director] Kechiche digs a good story out of the flux, and, in the movie’s final forty minutes, the suspense is terrific." — New Yorker Posted Jan 5, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 56%
| Defiance (2008) | "
The picture offers the most moving account we’ve ever had of how an ordinary, rather disagreeable man, challenged and then electrified by catastrophe, grows into a great leader." — New Yorker Posted Jan 5, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 97%
| The Class (2008) | "
The Class is a prime document of French post-colonial blues, though its relevance to American urban education could not be any greater if it had been made in the Bronx or Trenton or South Los Angeles." — New Yorker Posted Dec 15, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 79%
| Gran Torino (2008) | "
The movie, which Eastwood directed with his usual vigor, has plenty of violent scenes, but it’s mostly a rueful comedy of enlightenment." — New Yorker Posted Dec 15, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 69%
| Revolutionary Road (2008) | "
It is honorably and brutally unnerving." — New Yorker Posted Dec 15, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 54%
| Australia (2008) | "
Luhrmann is drawn to kitsch as inevitably as a bear to honey." — New Yorker Posted Dec 1, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Frost/Nixon (2008) | "
One of the virtues of Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard’s adaptation of Peter Morgan’s hit play, is that it brings the intelligence back to the forefront without dispelling the elements of menace and fraudulence that were also part of Nixon’s temperament." — New Yorker Posted Dec 1, 2008 |
Fresh
| Rotten 49%
| Twilight (2008) | "
Twilight, the first movie adapted from Stephenie Meyer’s series of best-selling teen novels, is going to be a big hit with young girls, and deservedly so -- the picture delivers." — New Yorker Posted Nov 24, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 94%
| Milk (2008) | "
Giving himself utterly to the role, Penn takes an actor’s craft and dedication to soulful heights, making a demand for dignity that becomes universal." — New Yorker Posted Nov 24, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 90%
| I've Loved You So Long (2008) | "
You may need to see I’ve Loved You So Long twice in order to see it once." — New Yorker Posted Nov 3, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 65%
| Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) | "
Kevin Smith turns out to be reverent after all: he wants to separate true love from mere copulating for money, but his story mixes romance and porn so inextricably that he seems confused, and the movie trips over its own conceits." — New Yorker Posted Nov 3, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 80%
| Men in War (1957) | "
War on the ground has rarely been done much better than this." — New Yorker Posted Oct 28, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 61%
| Changeling (2008) | "
Changeling is beautifully wrought, but it has the abiding fault of righteously indignant filmmaking." — New Yorker Posted Oct 20, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 60%
| W. (2008) | "
W. feels poorly timed: too late to have any effect on the public, most of whom long ago checked out on the President, and too early to provide more than a schematic interpretation of who he is." — New Yorker Posted Oct 20, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) | "
Happy-Go-Lucky is triumphant proof that a creative middle way is always possible." — New Yorker Posted Oct 6, 2008 |
Fresh
| Rotten 51%
| Body of Lies (2008) | "
Smart and tightly drawn; it has a throat-gripping urgency and some serious insights, and Scott has a greater command of space and a more explicit way with violence than most thriller directors." — New Yorker Posted Oct 6, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 21%
| Righteous Kill (2008) | "
The movie is hectic, exhausting, and baffling." — New Yorker Posted Sep 22, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 76%
| Appaloosa (2008) | "
In all, Appaloosa is good as far as it goes -- everything in it feels true -- but I wish that Harris had pushed his ideas further." — New Yorker Posted Sep 22, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 97%
| Trouble the Water (2008) | "
Trouble the Water, along with Spike Lee’s extraordinary four-hour epic, When the Levees Broke, remains one of the most eloquent records we have of a tragedy that brought out some of the most impressively alive men and women in New O" — New Yorker Posted Sep 8, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 78%
| Burn After Reading (2008) | "
Even black comedy requires that the filmmakers love someone, and the mock cruelties in Burn After Reading come off as a case of terminal misanthropy." — New Yorker Posted Sep 8, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 80%
| I Served the King of England (2008) | "
Jiří Menzel’s I Served the King of England is a Czech national epic served up with champagne and truffles." — New Yorker Posted Aug 25, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 60%
| Traitor (2008) | "
The filmmakers, I think, got in over their heads and couldn’t decide whether they were making an action thriller or a drama of conscience; they wound up flubbing both." — New Yorker Posted Aug 25, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 74%
| Elegy (2008) | "
Of all the good actors who have adorned the middle-aged-professor films, Ben Kingsley, in Elegy, is the most formidable and convincing." — New Yorker Posted Aug 4, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 82%
| Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) | "
Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona has a natural, flowing vitality to it, a sun-drenched splendor that never falters." — New Yorker Posted Aug 4, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 96%
| WALL-E (2008) | "
WALL-E is a classic, but it will never appeal to people who are happy with art only when it has as little bite as possible." — New Yorker Posted Jul 14, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 94%
| The Dark Knight (2008) | "
This movie is grim and jammed together. The narrative isn't shaped coherently to bring out contrasts and build toward a satisfying climax. The Dark Knight is constant climax; it's always in a frenzy, and it goes on forever." — New Yorker Posted Jul 14, 2008 |
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