Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Goldberg (2009) | "
Celebratory but clear-eyed." Village Voice Posted Jul 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 44%
| Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) | "
There's no breathing life into a formula that ought to have bowed out gracefully while the going was good." Village Voice Posted Jul 1, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 17%
| I Hate Valentine's Day (2009) | "
Vardalos calls her film "the ultimate indie experiment," and if that's what is meant by ham-fisted pacing, writing, and acting, this is as ultimate and as indie as it gets." Village Voice Posted Jul 1, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Afghan Star (2009) | "
If you think it's impossible to underestimate the cultural significance of American Idol, go see British filmmaker Havana Marking's documentary about its Afghani imitator." Village Voice Posted Jun 24, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 81%
| Quiet Chaos (2009) | "
Not even the momentary participation extraordinaire of a vertically challenged famous filmmaker self-exiled from the United States can save this phony pseudo-drama from its final collapse into a heap of inconsequence and male vanity." Village Voice Posted Jun 24, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 28%
| Land of the Lost (2009) | "
A pleasantly undistinguished pudding." L.A. Weekly Posted Jun 4, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Séraphine (2008) | "
Lyrical but bracing." Village Voice Posted Jun 3, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Laila's Birthday (2009) | "
Laila's Birthday is beautifully shot and overlaid with a spare, lyrical score that lends rueful emphasis to Masharawi's exasperated fidelity to a chronically malfunctioning city." Village Voice Posted May 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 73%
| Departures (2009) | "
Departures is built for simplicity, and, if nothing else, the appeal to decency and integrity of this sweetly old-fashioned tale make it a must for Bernie Madoff's prison Netflix queue." Village Voice Posted May 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 50%
| Easy Virtue (2009) | "
Stephan Elliott's deliciously cheeky screen adaptation of one of the satirist's lesser-known jabs at the British upper crust will charm your pants off." Village Voice Posted May 19, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 89%
| Burma VJ (2009) | "
A roller coaster of alternating hope and despair." Village Voice Posted May 19, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 37%
| Angels & Demons (2009) | "
The movie clips along, tricked out with state-of-the-art hardware and a hotter, brighter partner for Hanks." Village Voice Posted May 13, 2009 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Fresh 83%
| Treeless Mountain (2009) | "
Kim is deft and sensitive with her tiny co-stars, but Treeless Mountain lacks the freshness and surprise of In Between Days." Los Angeles Times Posted May 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 55%
| The Soloist (2009) | "
Foxx and Downey's disciplined duet come close to redeeming The Soloist from its visual excesses." Village Voice Posted Apr 22, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 90%
| Il Divo (2009) | "
Hard on the heels of the acclaimed Gomorrah, Italian corruption gets a much quieter but equally vigorous workout in Paolo Sorrentino's highly stylized portrait of the country's most enduring political leader." Village Voice Posted Apr 22, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 50%
| Empty Nest (2009) | "
Empty Nest comes thickly and pleasurably detailed with the minutiae of domesticity." Village Voice Posted Apr 22, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 85%
| Three Monkeys (2009) | "
[The film's] hauntingly slow rhythms underscore the immanent violence and impotent rage that cripple already attenuated lives." L.A. Weekly Posted Mar 26, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 68%
| Guest of Cindy Sherman (2009) | "
A highly entertaining evisceration and celebration of the milieu." Village Voice Posted Mar 24, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 76%
| Shall We Kiss? (2008) | "
Bogs down in the philosophical shallow end and never quite recovers from what's clearly meant to be a deceptively light tone." Village Voice Posted Mar 24, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 75%
| The Country Teacher (2009) | "
This sweetly ingenuous film, written and directed by Bohdan Sláma, is a lot less sentimental about cows and flowers than it is about its human protagonists, who fall domino-like in love with churls who won't love them back." Village Voice Posted Mar 24, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 73%
| The Great Buck Howard (2009) | "
No one does raging unlovability quite like John Malkovich, who’s a total gas when he drops the bombast that often bogs down his more serious roles." L.A. Weekly Posted Mar 19, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 50%
| Perestroika (2007) | "
On the evidence of his new movie, Slava Tsukerman, who made the 1982 cult movie Liquid Sky, would make a brilliantly entertaining dinner guest." L.A. Weekly Posted Mar 19, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 89%
| Everlasting Moments (2009) | "
Lovely to look at but too slow and deliberate to get lost in." L.A. Weekly Posted Mar 5, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 84%
| Cherry Blossoms (2009) | "
Yearning for Ozu, Dörrie stops off at cute, and parks." L.A. Weekly Posted Feb 26, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| Must Read After My Death (2009) | "
Dews helps Allis hold out a gendered posthumous snapshot of an era whose smug surface, barely masking oceans of suffering, makes Revolutionary Road look like a tea party." L.A. Weekly Posted Feb 26, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 84%
| Two Lovers (2009) | "
Gray’s lack of interpretive distance from his subject, coupled with extreme overacting from his lead actor, results in melodrama that sits up and begs to be farce." L.A. Weekly Posted Feb 12, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 43%
| He's Just Not That Into You (2009) | "
What’s depressing about this movie and others like it is the low bar it sets for both modern women and the movies that seek to represent them." L.A. Weekly Posted Feb 5, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 65%
| Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh (2009) | "
Roberta Grossman’s film is an ungainly hybrid of straight-up documentary and ingenuous re-enactment." L.A. Weekly Posted Feb 5, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 17%
| The Lodger (2009) | "
Nodding, winking and sighing, The Lodger lumbers its way to a final twist so anticlimactic and silly as to warrant an incredulous titter." L.A. Weekly Posted Jan 22, 2009 |
| N/A | The Lodger (1944) |
Click here to read article Village Voice Posted Jan 21, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 46%
| Hotel for Dogs (2009) | "
In the department of small mercies, the dogs don’t talk, but the human dialogue is as stale as the characters bathing in love-the-family-you’re-with pathos." L.A. Weekly Posted Jan 15, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 56%
| Defiance (2008) | "
if there's one instance of the road to perdition paved with fat budgets and good intentions, it's Defiance, or, as I prefer to call it, Custersky's Last Stand in Belarus." Village Voice Posted Dec 30, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 33%
| Good (2008) | "
A really terrible movie based on what I imagine was a far more interesting 1981 play." Village Voice Posted Dec 30, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 97%
| The Class (2008) | "
For anyone who loves language, this cut-and-thrust is a heady delight, so rich and free-flowing in its rhythms that it’s hard to decide whether what we’re seeing is a vérité-style documentary or a realist drama." L.A. Weekly Posted Dec 18, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 91%
| Gomorrah (2009) | "
Visceral but disciplined and beautifully acted." L.A. Weekly Posted Dec 18, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 55%
| The Tale of Despereaux (2008) | "
Clumsily wedged in like a TV commercial between deafening stunts, the emotional storytelling sinks without a trace." L.A. Weekly Posted Dec 18, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 90%
| Hunger (2008) | "
The farther I got from the queasy beauty of McQueen's movie, the more I hated it." L.A. Weekly Posted Dec 11, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 62%
| The Reader (2008) | "
The Reader is low-budget, high-profile and beamed straight at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Category of High Moral Tone." L.A. Weekly Posted Dec 11, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 80%
| $9.99 (2009) | "
The stop-motion animated puppets in Tatia Rosenthal’s beguiling first feature look like clay-mated slabs of glazed meat, at once unreal and hyper-real." L.A. Weekly Posted Dec 11, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 78%
| Doubt (2008) | "
Doubt is being squired around town as prime Oscar bait. But in Shanley’s hands, it only looks deep." L.A. Weekly Posted Dec 11, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 54%
| Australia (2008) | "
The result is mostly a woodenly derivative melding of ’40s maternal melodramas, oaters and World War II actioners." L.A. Weekly Posted Nov 26, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 88%
| Bolt (2008) | "
There’s something touching about the yearning for ordinary life and decency that, to judge by its ubiquity in films for the nominally innocent, plagues those who live and work in the realms of the unreal." L.A. Weekly Posted Nov 20, 2008 |
Fresh
| Rotten 45%
| Antarctica (2008) | "
Antarctica takes urban loneliness as its subject, but though all the characters are strikingly attractive, there's nothing frothy or pandering about Hochner's hermetic homosexual world." Village Voice Posted Nov 13, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 87%
| A Christmas Tale (2008) | "
Followed by Desplechin’s restless camera, they roam the house, which is at once a lived-in haven and a mausoleum filled with the relics of past battles and shifting alliances." L.A. Weekly Posted Nov 13, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 88%
| Ballast (2008) | "
Ballast is an impressive first feature." L.A. Weekly Posted Nov 6, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 61%
| Changeling (2008) | "
Biblically classical, tastefully vintage with aerial shots of wet umbrellas and Homburg hats and not a little staid considering its sensational source material, Changeling isn’t so much dull as it is an open book." L.A. Weekly Posted Oct 23, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 90%
| I've Loved You So Long (2008) | "
Solicitously shepherding us into the shallows of the therapeutic women’s novel, Claudel tamps down his magnificently intransigent Hedda Gabler, and makes her gently weep just when she should be baying at the moon." L.A. Weekly Posted Oct 23, 2008 |
Fresh
| Rotten 43%
| The Tree of Life (2008) | "
[Volterra's] affinity for Italian stereotypes is countered with delightful truculence by the film’s most engaging character, her down-to-earth octogenarian aunt Viviana." L.A. Weekly Posted Oct 23, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 66%
| High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008) | "
The world’s tweens and teens deserve better than this bottomlessly bland pap." L.A. Weekly Posted Oct 23, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 54%
| What Just Happened (2008) | "
Jaw-droppingly arcane and dripping with self-regard." L.A. Weekly Posted Oct 16, 2008 |