Rotten
| Rotten 40%
| The Lovely Bones (2009) | "
The Lovely Bones has been fashioned as a holiday family movie about murder and grief; it’s a thoroughly queasy experience." — New Yorker Posted Dec 7, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 57%
| Brothers (2009) | "
Brothers, the new home-from-the-war film, written by David Benioff and directed by Jim Sheridan, has been made with obvious devotion and sincerity, and I wish I could take it seriously." — New Yorker Posted Dec 7, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 21%
| Amelia (2009) | "
Amelia is handsome yet predictable and high-minded -- not a dud, exactly, but too proper, too reserved for its swaggering subject." — New Yorker Posted Oct 26, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 73%
| Where the Wild Things Are (2009) | "
I have a vision of eight-year-olds leaving the movie in bewilderment. Why are the creatures so unhappy?" — New Yorker Posted Oct 12, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 75%
| Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) | "
Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story is something else -- not a good movie or a coherent exposition of the meltdown but an emotional attack on capitalism as a system, an attempt, literally, to de-moralize capitalism." — New Yorker Posted Sep 28, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 87%
| A Serious Man (2009) | "
As a piece of moviemaking craft, A Serious Man is fascinating; in every other way, it’s intolerable." — New Yorker Posted Sep 28, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 88%
| Inglourious Basterds (2009) | "
Inglourious Basterds is not boring, but it’s ridiculous and appallingly insensitive—a Louisville Slugger applied to the head of anyone who has ever taken the Nazis, the war, or the Resistance seriously." — New Yorker Posted Aug 17, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 20%
| 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 |
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 |
Rotten
| Rotten 36%
| 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 |
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 84%
| 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 |
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 |
Rotten
| Rotten 59%
| 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 |
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 |
Rotten
| Rotten 54%
| Australia (2008) | "
Luhrmann is drawn to kitsch as inevitably as a bear to honey." — New Yorker Posted Dec 1, 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 |
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 |
Rotten
| Rotten 20%
| Righteous Kill (2008) | "
The movie is hectic, exhausting, and baffling." — New Yorker Posted Sep 22, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 77%
| 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 |
Rotten
| Fresh 61%
| 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 |
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 |
Rotten
| Rotten 36%
| You Don't Mess With The Zohan (2008) | "
This moviegoer has no trouble with lowbrow comedy. The problem with Zohan, however, is that it’s like a kid who tells you a silly joke, gets a laugh, and immediately tells the same joke again." — New Yorker Posted Jun 16, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 66%
| The Incredible Hulk (2008) | "
Digital spectacle is both too much and too little, and it’s beginning to put some of us in a funk of disappointment and boredom. When you’ve seen one half-ton piece of metal flung through the air, you’ve seen them all." — New Yorker Posted Jun 16, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 77%
| Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) | "
Crystal Skull isn’t bad -- there are a few dazzling sequences, and a couple of good performances -- but the unprecedented blend of comedy and action that made the movies so much more fun than any other adventure series is mostly gone." — New Yorker Posted May 27, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 93%
| Iron Man (2008) | "
There’s a slightly depressed, going-through-the-motions feel to the entire show." — New Yorker Posted Apr 28, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 84%
| Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) | "
It’s not hard, it turns out, to forget Sarah Marshall. The problem is remembering her." — New Yorker Posted Apr 14, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 27%
| Boarding Gate (2007) | "
[Director Assayas] may have something serious to say about the brutal impersonality of global capitalism, yet he’s caught somewhere between insight and exploitation." — New Yorker Posted Mar 17, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 42%
| The Bucket List (2007) | "
In general, the light is golden, the mood technologically sublime, the actuality of the experience a dead zero." — New Yorker Posted Jan 4, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 74%
| Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) | "
Walk Hard runs down quickly, and suffers further from having the wide-eyed and weightless Reilly as its star." — New Yorker Posted Jan 4, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 52%
| Margot at the Wedding (2007) | "
Margot is sensually as well as dramatically impoverished." — New Yorker Posted Nov 12, 2007 |
Rotten
| Fresh 82%
| Into the Wild (2007) | "
Sean Penn’s Into the Wild is certainly visual -- it’s entirely too visual, to the point of being cheaply lyrical." — New Yorker Posted Oct 1, 2007 |
Rotten
| Rotten 33%
| The Nanny Diaries (2007) | "
The Nanny Diaries, despite many bright moments and a superior level of craftsmanship, is now a flabby urban fairy tale." — New Yorker Posted Aug 27, 2007 |
Rotten
| Rotten 27%
| Evening (2007) | "
This is one of the rare movies that are too sensitive for their own good." — New Yorker Posted Jun 25, 2007 |
Rotten
| Fresh 93%
| Sicko (2007) | "
Moore winds up treating the audience the same way that, he says, powerful people treat the weak in America -- as dopes easily satisfied with fairy tales and bland reassurances." — New Yorker Posted Jun 25, 2007 |
Rotten
| Fresh 69%
| Ocean's Thirteen (2007) | "
After a lot of buildup, not much happens at the climax." — New Yorker Posted Jun 4, 2007 |
Rotten
| Rotten 29%
| Lucky You (2007) | "
Most of Lucky You, starting with the title, is ordinary or outright awful. Moviemakers, it seems, cannot bluff their way to success." — New Yorker Posted May 7, 2007 |
Rotten
| Fresh 69%
| Year of the Dog (2007) | "
The movie’s meaning seems to be: we’re all crippled in some way, so just live with it -- celebrate it, even. That isn’t satire; it’s moss-brained sentiment that turns 'sensitivity' into a dimly dejected view of life." — New Yorker Posted Apr 16, 2007 |
Rotten
| Fresh 82%
| Grindhouse (2007) | "
Tarantino and Rodriguez assume that we’ll relish the movie’s violence or shrug it off as play, as they do, but not everyone in the audience will want his enjoyment of it taken for granted that way." — New Yorker Posted Apr 9, 2007 |
Rotten
| Rotten 47%
| Shooter (2007) | "
The engaging, fast-talking idiosyncrasy of [Wahlberg's] performance in The Departed has vanished." — New Yorker Posted Mar 26, 2007 |
Rotten
| Fresh 60%
| 300 (2007) | "
A muscle-magazine fantasy crossed with a video game and an Army recruiting film." — New Yorker Posted Mar 26, 2007 |
Rotten
| Rotten 18%
| Factory Girl (2007) | "
Whatever shrewdness or charm Sedgwick possessed that caused people to believe that she was a revolutionary figure in New York night life, it doesn’t come through in this movie." — New Yorker Posted Feb 12, 2007 |
Rotten
| Fresh 84%
| Breach (2007) | "
The unexciting look and feel of the movie wouldn’t have bothered me if the filmmakers had penetrated Hanssen’s skull a little." — New Yorker Posted Feb 12, 2007 |
Rotten
| Rotten 27%
| Smokin' Aces (2007) | "
When Carnahan tries to tug at our emotions, he just compounds the whorish insensitivity of the movie." — New Yorker Posted Jan 25, 2007 |
Rotten
| Fresh 91%
| Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) | "
The project lacks the variety of sensuous pleasures that a great movie has to provide." — New Yorker Posted Jan 8, 2007 |
Rotten
| Rotten 57%
| Deja Vu (2006) | "
I felt cheated." — New Yorker Posted Dec 4, 2006 |
Rotten
| Rotten 51%
| Fast Food Nation (2006) | "
The fiction that Schlosser and the director Richard Linklater have extracted from the book is a mess, with narrative lines that go astray or simply wind up in the air." — New Yorker Posted Nov 20, 2006 |
Rotten
| Rotten 45%
| Bobby (2006) | "
Estevez has made a vague gesture at a large, metaphoric structure without having the dramatic means to achieve it." — New Yorker Posted Nov 20, 2006 |
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