Fresh
| Rotten 50%
| It's Complicated (2009) | "
Meyers has dropped something a bit more subtle than her usual anvil. This one is more like a mere tire iron, but at least we've got Baldwin: He's the pixie dust that chases away the ensuing headache." — Salon.com Posted Dec 23, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 70%
| Sherlock Holmes (2009) | "
It's hard to get too bent out of shape about Sherlock Holmes, partly because the actors seem to take so much pleasure in the act of giving us a crazy spectacle." — Salon.com Posted Dec 23, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 74%
| The Young Victoria (2009) | "
Watching the slow, cautious courtship between Victoria and Albert is so pleasurable, so surprisingly not-boring, that it doesn't matter how much of the ending we already know." — Salon.com Posted Dec 21, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 88%
| Inglourious Basterds (2009) | "
Quentin Tarantino seems to be hanging on to a lost world of moviemaking. He may be nuts. But he's a nut who cares." — Salon.com Posted Dec 16, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 89%
| Crazy Heart (2009) | "
Gyllenhaal and Bridges are marvelous together, playing their characters' cautious affection for each other as an alluring winding path that's actually laden with minefields." — Salon.com Posted Dec 16, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 76%
| Invictus (2009) | "
For a picture with so much invested in its staunch sense of social justice, Invictus ultimately goes down not as medicine but as entertainment." — Salon.com Posted Dec 11, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 46%
| Everybody's Fine (2009) | "
Another actor might have greedily milked the story's pathos quotient (believe me, there are plenty of opportunities). But De Niro hangs back, and the approach works." — Salon.com Posted Dec 3, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 57%
| Brothers (2009) | "
Sheridan shapes the drama so casually that he succeeds in making it feel naturalistically unshaped." — Salon.com Posted Dec 3, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 83%
| Me and Orson Welles (2009) | "
This is a standard coming-of-age story set in a milieu that's anything but standard, and that's what keeps the picture's motor running." — Salon.com Posted Nov 24, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 31%
| Ninja Assassin (2009) | "
Ninja Assassin lives in the moment, a visceral gouge of a picture, and sections of it move so fast -- and are so intriguingly, dimly lit -- that you have to use your imagination a bit to discern what's happening." — Salon.com Posted Nov 24, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 86%
| Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009) | "
There's a valuable lesson to be learned from Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans: Two wrongs don't make a right -- it takes at least three." — Salon.com Posted Nov 19, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 83%
| Broken Embraces (2009) | "
Cruz doesn't coast on her beauty in Broken Embraces, and she has the kind of role that can be difficult to flesh out." — Salon.com Posted Nov 19, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) | "
Fantastic Mr. Fox is possibly the finest picture about family, community and poultry thievery ever made." — Salon.com Posted Nov 12, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 87%
| The House of the Devil (2009) | "
The House of the Devil is really a romance: a love letter to the kind of gal we thought had given up the ghost." — Salon.com Posted Oct 30, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 80%
| Michael Jackson's This Is It (2009) | "
Jackson's mystery deepens, even as it dissolves between our fingers." — Salon.com Posted Oct 28, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 94%
| Good Hair (2010) | "
Chris Rock's Good Hair is one of those rare documentaries that works on two seemingly incongruous levels at once: It's both social commentary and pure delight." — Salon.com Posted Oct 9, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 83%
| Whip It (2009) | "
Whip It has such a sweet spirit that it's easy enough to let its flaws sail by." — Salon.com Posted Oct 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 57%
| The Invention of Lying (2009) | "
There's no hope that Gervais' performance in The Invention of Lying will open up new hope for a different kind of leading man -- and that's what makes his resoluteness so great." — Salon.com Posted Oct 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 89%
| Zombieland (2009) | "
Zombieland is a romance, a comedy, a road movie and a freewheeling schlock horrorfest, all in one." — Salon.com Posted Oct 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 40%
| Surrogates (2009) | "
Surrogates stays afloat by not taking itself too seriously, but also by recognizing that a movie about robots shouldn't look as if it were made by one." — Salon.com Posted Sep 24, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 85%
| Bright Star (2009) | "
Campion -- who also wrote the screenplay, inspired by British poet Andrew Motion's biography of Keats -- tells the story of Keats and Fanny in delicate, painterly colors, layered in such a way that they're vividly vital." — Salon.com Posted Sep 18, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 63%
| Extract (2009) | "
This isn't a misanthropic picture; its true subject is the way love for our fellow human beings is so often thwarted by their actual behavior -- and still, stupidly perhaps, we just won't give up on them." — Salon.com Posted Sep 4, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 84%
| The September Issue (2009) | "
R.J. Cutler's vibrant and mischievous documentary The September Issue is only partly a movie about fashion. At its heart, it's really a movie about work, about the ways individuals compete with, grate against and inspire one another in the workplace." — Salon.com Posted Aug 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 70%
| My One and Only (2009) | "
My One and Only is an affectionate picture, set in the early 1950s, that coasts breezily on its charm and style." — Salon.com Posted Aug 21, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 91%
| Ponyo (2009) | "
Ponyo hasn't changed my mind about Miyazaki. But I'm willing to accept and enjoy this little window into the dream life of fish." — Salon.com Posted Aug 19, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 75%
| Julie & Julia (2009) | "
Ephron does the smart thing in Julie & Julia and lets Streep carry the day, with a minimum of embellishment." — Salon.com Posted Aug 7, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 75%
| Cold Souls (2009) | "
Cold Souls works precisely because its ambitions are somewhat mellow; this isn't a relentlessly high-strung picture." — Salon.com Posted Aug 7, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 95%
| In the Loop (2009) | "
The jagged rhythms of the movie's dialogue are entertaining in themselves, and it's fun to watch the actors keep their lines spinning and bouncing off each other." — Salon.com Posted Jul 24, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 86%
| 500 Days of Summer (2009) | "
Everything that's wrong, on the surface, with (500) Days of Summer pales in light of everything that's going on beneath its surface." — Salon.com Posted Jul 17, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 83%
| Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) | "
The Half-Blood Prince is a beautifully paced feat of filmmaking, one that navigates potentially choppy shifts in scale with grace and ease." — Salon.com Posted Jul 15, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 67%
| Bruno (2009) | "
Cohen has come up with some marvelous satirical motifs; elsewhere, he's just showing how far he'll go to get a laugh." — Salon.com Posted Jul 10, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 97%
| The Hurt Locker (2009) | "
In the end, Bigelow's point of view is what's most interesting about The Hurt Locker. The picture's strength lies in the details she focuses on." — Salon.com Posted Jun 26, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 43%
| The Proposal (2009) | "
A romantic comedy doesn't need to be original to be enjoyable, and yet The Proposal still falls way too short of the mark." — Salon.com Posted Jun 19, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 77%
| The Hangover (2009) | "
The Hangover is a cut above the typical contemporary guy-friendship comedy." — Salon.com Posted Jun 5, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Drag Me To Hell (2009) | "
The looseness Raimi allows himself here results in an especially joyous kind of filmmaking, the sort where the filmmaker's delight in scaring us (and making us laugh) becomes part of the movie's fabric." — Salon.com Posted May 29, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 44%
| Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) | "
Whatever its flaws may be, it at least refuses to be a stiff, lifeless relic." — Salon.com Posted May 21, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| Summer Hours (2009) | "
The magic of Summer Hours is that even in its elusiveness, it gives us something to hang onto." — Salon.com Posted May 15, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 73%
| Objectified (2009) | "
Objectified is so straightforward, sensible and thought-provoking that it alleviates that design noise instead of adding to it." — Salon.com Posted May 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 94%
| Star Trek (2009) | "
With Star Trek Abrams honors the show's legacy without fossilizing its best qualities. Instead, he's whisked it off to a planet where numbing nostalgia can't kill it, and where the future is still something to look forward to." — Salon.com Posted May 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 55%
| The Soloist (2009) | "
In the end, The Soloist is about how unknowable other people really are -- an idea that's terrifying until you step back and see the wonder of it." — Salon.com Posted Apr 24, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 58%
| 17 Again (2009) | "
17 Again takes a while to get cooking, and at times it just feels like a pale imitation of 13 Going on 30. Still, it's often breezily entertaining, partly thanks to Efron, who certainly knows how to be cute." — Salon.com Posted Apr 17, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 84%
| State of Play (2009) | "
State of Play does get a little creaky in its last third -- at that point it needs to be more streamlined, more concise. But Macdonald and the screenwriters manage to weave their ideas through a sturdy-enough plot, so we never feel we're being preached to" — Salon.com Posted Apr 17, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 50%
| The Education of Charlie Banks (2009) | "
There's enough sweetness, and enough just-under-the-surface intelligence, in "The Education of Charlie Banks" to suggest that Durst may have a future as a filmmaker." — Salon.com Posted Mar 26, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 83%
| I Love You, Man (2009) | "
The marvelous thing about John Hamburg's new comedy, I Love You, Man, is that rather than conforming to fit into some preexisting trend, it recognizes and even exalts in the reality that close male friendships can be a source of confusion and awkwardness." — Salon.com Posted Mar 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 75%
| Tokyo! (2009) | "
The refusal of Tokyo! to proffer even the most perfunctory air kiss is what makes it so intriguing." — Salon.com Posted Mar 6, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 59%
| The International (2009) | "
The International is so self-assured, so assertive in its devotion to craftsmanship, that it proves Tykwer is continually building on his promise as a filmmaker, not squandering it." — Salon.com Posted Feb 12, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 89%
| Coraline (2009) | "
Nearly everything in Coraline has been painstakingly handmade." — Salon.com Posted Feb 6, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 57%
| Taken (2009) | "
[Director] Morel keeps Taken moving swiftly. It's never dragged down by excess feelings; instead, it's powered by the potency of the right ones." — Salon.com Posted Jan 30, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 50%
| Notorious (2009) | "
Notorious is surprisingly and pleasantly unflashy, a straightforward picture that makes a distinction between classiness and bling." — Salon.com Posted Jan 16, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 61%
| Marley & Me (2008) | "
The movie is ultimately less about the pain of loss than about the way families often take shape around a pet." — Salon.com Posted Dec 29, 2008 |
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