Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 82%
| Mississippi Mermaid (1969) | "
Try to view this tale of a siren’s song as something chewier than a cover version of Hitch’s greatest hits, and what’s left is a facile take on l’amour fou." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 8, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 87%
| Lion's Den (2009) | "
A portrait of a subculture whose members take pride in walking their kids to the penitentiary’s pre-K class." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 1, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 100%
| Afghan Star (2009) | "
Though the who-will-win? structure both allows a too-brief peek into the quartet’s backgrounds and generates tension, the answer almost seems superfluous. The phenomenon itself is the real star." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 25, 2009 |
Rotten 3/5
| Fresh 80%
| DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation (2009) | "
Mix [it] up, Mr. DJ; don’t just sample the hate wholesale." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 17, 2009 |
Fresh 3/6
| Fresh 79%
| Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love (2009) | "
When the movie lets the music do the talking, you understand the singer’s determination to see the album through. Praise filtered through pop is never an easy sell, but such gorgeously transcendental expressions can’t -- and shouldn’t -- be ignored." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 10, 2009 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 8%
| What Goes Up (2009) | "
If What Goes Up is what we can expect in the post-Juno era of alt-dramedy programming, then burn, Indiewood, burn!" — Time Out New York Posted May 28, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 93%
| Drag Me To Hell (2009) | "
Raimi’s return to Evil Dead territory is proof that, respectability be damned, he can still whip up a slapstick splatterfest -- albeit a PG-13 one -- when the mood strikes." — Time Out New York Posted May 28, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 97%
| Up (2009) | "
If such first-rate entertainment simply offers a remarkably fun experience instead of a life-changing one, it’s only because we’ve come to regularly expect epiphanies from its creators." — Time Out New York Posted May 28, 2009 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 50%
| Easy Virtue (2009) | "
Coward’s champagne-fizz lightness has never felt so labored; nothing here comes easy." — Time Out New York Posted May 20, 2009 |
Rotten 2/6
| Fresh 83%
| Kabei: Our Mother (2009) | "
The film’s comparisons of one woman’s suffering to one nation’s social descent aren’t well drawn enough to escape its own melodramatic pitfalls." — Time Out New York Posted May 20, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 89%
| Burma VJ (2009) | "
Embedded within this meta-testament to the brave Burmese souls who risk all is a reminder that, in our era of info overload (too much imagery, too many screens!), technology is the next-gen frontier for fighting oppression." — Time Out New York Posted May 20, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| N/A | Being Jewish in France (2009) | "
Even those who’ve boned up on Gallic history will have their eyes opened by Yves Jeuland’s comprehensive documentary regarding the Chosen People and this motherland blithe and brave." — Time Out New York Posted May 13, 2009 |
Fresh 5/6
| Fresh 100%
| Revue (2009) | "
By juxtaposing labor-filled activities with TV shows and plays proclaiming the 'bounties' of revolution, the film offers glimpses of a government-sanctioned alt universe." — Time Out New York Posted May 13, 2009 |
Fresh 5/6
| Fresh 86%
| Blockade (2005) | "
Blockade doesn’t barrage you with battle scenes; instead, we get eerie moments of calm as people walk down snowy streets littered with corpses and tanks roll off into the distance." — Time Out New York Posted May 13, 2009 |
Rotten 3/6
| Fresh 78%
| The Garden (2009) | "
The Garden does a fine job of promoting the power of grassroots advocacy; in almost all other respects, however, this is nonfiction filmmaking that’s nearly as dull as dirt." — Time Out New York Posted May 6, 2009 |
Fresh 3/6
| Fresh 69%
| Julia (2009) | "
Watching the actor broadly wallow in human ugliness before turning into a red-maned mama lion single-handedly redeems this exercise in semigratuitous grit." — Time Out New York Posted May 6, 2009 |
Rotten 1/6
| Rotten 8%
| The Skeptic (2009) | "
Tennyson Bardwell’s pretentious psycho-supernatural flick doesn’t even qualify as guilty-pleasure camp. It’s the sort of bad movie that will make you lose faith in the genre altogether." — Time Out New York Posted May 1, 2009 |
Rotten 1/6
| Rotten 28%
| Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009) | "
There’s precious little to laugh at – not the lead’s one-dimensional swagger, Michael Douglas’s Rat Pack-meets-Robert Evans jive talk or an anti-misogyny parable with the gall to make every female a neurotic shrew or a sex-starved harpy." — Time Out Posted May 1, 2009 |
Rotten 1/6
| Rotten 28%
| Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009) | "
McConaughey’s character is finally forced to face up to past transgressions; one day, the filmmakers behind this rancid, hypocritical farce will have to deal with theirs." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 30, 2009 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 18%
| Obsessed (2009) | "
Don’t think that exploiting female paranoia and the promise of Knowles throwing punches is enough to make up for your unabashed B-movie hitting the skids at the halfway point." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 30, 2009 |
Rotten 3/6
| Fresh 64%
| Eldorado (2008) | "
Lanners’s preference for po-faced Continental quirk eventually wears out its welcome." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 30, 2009 |
Rotten 3/6
| Rotten 50%
| Empty Nest (2009) | "
The longer the film’s fiftysomething playwright watches his marriage wither, his kids grow up and his teeth rot, the more psychological acuity gives way to the usual obsessing over loss and nubile females." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 22, 2009 |
Rotten 3/6
| Fresh 67%
| Nursery University (2009) | "
Despite its behind-the-scenes peeks, the film would have benefited from a deeper examination of how these institutions prosper from parental paranoia run amok." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 22, 2009 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 31%
| A Touch of Spice (2006) | "
The meals look ravishing; the film, however, leaves nothing but a sickly-sweet aftertaste." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 22, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 90%
| Il Divo (2009) | "
Il Divo taps into something that’s indeed borderless: Americans recognize political corruption and backroom conspiracies even if we don’t intimately know the players." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 22, 2009 |
Fresh 3/6
| Fresh 85%
| Earth (2009) | "
Nature can be cruel, children, but damned if it isn’t seriously photogenic." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 22, 2009 |
Rotten 2/6
| Fresh 67%
| Is Anybody There? (2009) | "
Uttered by both characters at various times, the film’s title is meant to evoke fears of a finite world. If you didn’t know better, you’d swear they were asking about the state of the theater." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 15, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 88%
| The Pope's Toilet (2007) | "
Watch it now, and you’ll be surprised how such a little movie can cut so deeply to the bone." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 8, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 97%
| The Song of Sparrows (2009) | "
It’s Majidi’s impeccable eye that lifts the movie’s everyday-people parable above the norm; wedded to such visual poetry, even its minor tragedies and smaller victories seem positively profound." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 1, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 96%
| Tulpan (2008) | "
The documentary aspects of Tulpan offer an interesting, if familiar, portrait of hardscrabble existence. It’s the fictional aspects focusing on thwarted hearts and libidos, however, that stick with you." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 1, 2009 |
Rotten 3/6
| Fresh 76%
| Shall We Kiss? (2008) | "
Intellectual pretensions are trotted out, yet everything remains mired in bourgie rom-com cuteness and Pottery Barn aesthetics." — Time Out New York Posted Mar 25, 2009 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 52%
| American Swing (2009) | "
Such a sociologically rich subject deserves better than a reductive K-tel treatment." — Time Out New York Posted Mar 25, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 64%
| Watchmen (2009) | "
What the film rightfully retains, and often nails, is the book’s commitment to seriously digging deep into the psychic debris of these archetypes." — Time Out New York Posted Mar 4, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 60%
| W. (2008) | "
Endeavours this even-handed and entertaining shouldn't be "misunderestimated."" — Time Out Sydney Posted Feb 27, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 100%
| Birdsong (2009) | "
Birdsong’s hard-core adherence to such rigorous aesthetics is strictly for the true believers, but they will be rewarded tenfold." — Time Out New York Posted Feb 26, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 80%
| Dillinger is Dead (1969) | "
The titular gangster isn't the only one who's dead; according to Ferreri, it was a condition shared by everyone who bought into the late-20th-century ideal of success. They just didn't know it at the time." — Time Out New York Posted Feb 25, 2009 |
Fresh 5/6
| Fresh 100%
| Gomorra (2008) |
Click here to read article — Time Out New York Posted Feb 12, 2009 |
Fresh 3/6
| Fresh 100%
| Great Speeches From a Dying World (2009) | "
The film’s success in giving the voiceless a platform balances out Phillips’s more precocious and pretentious flourishes." — Time Out New York Posted Feb 11, 2009 |
Fresh 5/6
| Fresh 91%
| Gomorrah (2009) | "
Every story strand informs the others, creating a devastating 360-degree view of how organized crime impacts the country’s everyday people." — Time Out New York Posted Feb 11, 2009 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 23%
| Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009) | "
Bad timing is merely one of this rom-com’s lesser problems; the abundance of wasted talent on display is an even bigger concern." — Time Out New York Posted Feb 11, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 72%
| The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) | "
For a melodrama concerned with emotional pain, this fairy tale favours formal trickery over human connection to a fault." — Time Out Sydney Posted Feb 5, 2009 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 10%
| Memorial Day (2009) | "
Rather than backing up the old chestnut about the banality of evil, Memorial Day does nothing but remind us that cinematic repetition inevitably robs immorality of its impact." — Time Out New York Posted Feb 4, 2009 |
Rotten 3/6
| Fresh 88%
| Coraline (2009) | "
The dark delights of the book show up in scattered spurts, but what should be a gleefully perverse alternative to saccharine young-adult entertainment is reduced to a mere puppet show." — Time Out New York Posted Feb 4, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 80%
| Serbis (2009) | "
Rather than settling into a contemplative groove, Serbis bristles with live-wire intensity; neither the characters nor the camera stay still for long before something new propels the story into the next chapter." — Time Out New York Posted Jan 29, 2009 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 50%
| Notorious (2009) | "
Notorious delivers nothing but clumsy filmmaking and a greatest-hits checklist, without offering insight into the man or his myth. If you don’t know now…you still won’t know." — Time Out New York Posted Jan 14, 2009 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 57%
| Yonkers Joe (2008) | "
Whatever atmosphere [director] Celestino milks from the seedy world of late-night poker games and whiskey-soaked mornings after is leached away once Tom Guiry’s pantomime idiot savant shows up." — Time Out New York Posted Jan 7, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 100%
| Made in U.S.A. (1966) | "
It’s still essential for those interested in watching the filmmaker take cinema to new levels of allusion and modernist game playing." — Time Out New York Posted Jan 7, 2009 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 33%
| Good (2008) | "
Despite its rather highbrow pedigree, Good’s journey along its predetermined path from book burnings to concentration camps reeks of middlebrow button-pushing, which the cast’s clipped British accents do nothing to dispel." — Time Out New York Posted Dec 25, 2008 |
Fresh 5/6
| Fresh 93%
| Bigger Than Life (1956) | "
The suits wanted a torn-from-the-headlines melodrama; what they got was the director at his expressionistic best, subverting the suburban fantasy and leaving nothing but tattered gray flannel and scorched earth in his wake." — Time Out New York Posted Dec 25, 2008 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 15%
| The Spirit (2008) | "
Miller systematically reduces Eisner’s urban heroics to noirish less-than-nothings." — Time Out New York Posted Dec 24, 2008 |
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