Fresh
| Fresh 91%
| Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) | "
For the reportedly painstaking labor it took to create, the film is a marvel to behold." — Village Voice Posted Nov 10, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 90%
| Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire (2009) | "
A former casting director, Daniels shows undeniable savoir faire with his actors, a mix of musicians and comedians effectively cast against type." — Village Voice Posted Nov 3, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 17%
| The Fourth Kind (2009) | "
A couple of modestly effective shocks lie in store, but none as frightening as the onscreen text informing us that some 11 million people claim to have seen a UFO." — Village Voice Posted Nov 3, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 16%
| Gentlemen Broncos (2009) | "
Hess deserves credit, I suppose, for so effectively channeling his inner seven-year-old. Personally, I preferred spending two hours in the company of Spike Jonze's." — Village Voice Posted Oct 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 89%
| Night and Day (2009) | "
Finally, he arrives at a masterfully deployed bit of third-act rug-pulling so unexpected that it may be Hong's way of saying we are all stumbling toward an uncertain horizon." — Village Voice Posted Oct 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 70%
| Where the Wild Things Are (2009) | "
Jonze and Eggers have added a lot without betraying a thing." — L.A. Weekly Posted Oct 15, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 77%
| Bronson (2009) | "
Tom Hardy proves more than ready for his close-up, cackling, snarling and head-butting his way through Pusher director Nicolas Winding Refn’s mercifully unconventional biopic." — L.A. Weekly Posted Oct 15, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| The Maid (2009) | "
Chilean television vet Saavedra goes through one of the most uncanny psychophysical transformations I've ever seen in a movie without the benefit of obvious makeup or other prosthetics." — Village Voice Posted Oct 14, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| An Education (2009) | "
Playing a character who is herself a rare bloom in a field of mediocrity, Mulligan has a star quality they can't teach in acting school." — Village Voice Posted Oct 6, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 89%
| Zombieland (2009) | "
Ho-hum zombie mayhem lurks around every bend, but the movie's comic tone becomes increasingly strained." — Village Voice Posted Sep 29, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Stingray Sam (2009) | "
In an American indie-film landscape, where a 500 Days of Summer is lauded for its “originality,” McAbee should be a candidate for canonization. Somebody get this man an order for a second season." — L.A. Weekly Posted Sep 17, 2009 |
— | Fresh 80%
| Sam and Joe (2003) |
Click here to read article — Variety Posted Sep 17, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 95%
| Crude (2009) | "
Joe Berlinger's remarkable documentary, Crude, recounts an infuriating litany of South American exploitation, backroom glad-handing, and bureaucratic dead ends." — Village Voice Posted Sep 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 56%
| 9 (2009) | "
The result is never as gripping in narrative terms -- a well-worn litany of dystopian-future chestnuts -- as it is visually, but Acker keeps things moving briskly for the movie's 70-odd minutes." — Village Voice Posted Sep 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 29%
| The Final Destination (2009) | "
[The] set pieces never quite muster the giddy brio of Final Destination 1 and 3 auteur James Wong at his best." — L.A. Weekly Posted Sep 1, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Passing Strange (2010) | "
Passing Strange conjures a rare kind of theatrical magic with its emotionally raw, frequently euphoric portrait of the artist as a young man." — Village Voice Posted Aug 18, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 90%
| District 9 (2009) | "
Even in the movie's most conventional stretches, Blomkamp puts things across with terrific verve, using action and computer effects to enhance rather than trump story and character." — Village Voice Posted Aug 11, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 91%
| Ponyo (2009) | "
It's a movie for anyone who, like Miyazaki himself, can still happily commune with his inner five-year-old." — Village Voice Posted Aug 11, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2009) | "
Not Quite Hollywood returns us to a time when the price of admission was cheap and the thrills even cheaper." — Village Voice Posted Jul 30, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 68%
| Funny People (2009) | "
There's so much that's so disarmingly good and sharp about Funny People that you wish the whole movie weren't so much of a shambles." — Village Voice Posted Jul 30, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 85%
| Import/Export (2009) | "
Seidl's film arguably offers the toughest (and toughest to stomach) portrait of individuals tempest-tossed by the currents of the new global economy." — Village Voice Posted Jul 21, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| California Company Town (2009) | "
The companies in Lee Anne Schmitt's elegy for California boom towns gone bust run the gamut from farming to logging to mining, but after a while, the towns themselves take on the same ghostly countenance." — Village Voice Posted Jul 21, 2009 |
— | Fresh 80%
| 7th Street (2003) |
Click here to read article — Variety Posted Jul 16, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 96%
| Somers Town (2009) | "
Meadows has made a lovely film about the ability of the imagination to offset the harshness of reality." — Village Voice Posted Jul 15, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 83%
| Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) | "
I'd be lying if I didn't say this movie gave me as much innocent pleasure as any I've seen this year." — Village Voice Posted Jul 15, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 15%
| I Love You, Beth Cooper (2009) | "
[A] joyless, offensively stupid end-of-high-school farce." — Village Voice Posted Jul 8, 2009 |
— | N/A | Human Touch (2004) |
Click here to read article — Variety Posted Jul 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 67%
| Public Enemies (2009) | "
Even when Dillinger is at rest, Public Enemies exudes a nervous tension, the sense that flight is imminent." — Village Voice Posted Jul 1, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 47%
| The Girl From Monaco (2009) | "
The modest pleasure of the film issues chiefly from the performances." — Village Voice Posted Jul 1, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 88%
| Amreeka (2009) | "
When most filmmakers want to say something important about cultural conflicts, they labor to bring tears to our eyes. Dabis, by contrast, makes us laugh at ourselves and, in turn, each other." — L.A. Weekly Posted Jun 25, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 50%
| Life is Hot in Cracktown (2009) | "
Life goes far past the boiling point for most of the characters in this hilariously overwrought ghetto soap opera from cult writer-director Buddy Giovinazzo." — L.A. Weekly Posted Jun 25, 2009 |
— | Fresh 92%
| People Say I'm Crazy (2004) |
Click here to read article — Variety Posted Jun 25, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 98%
| The Hurt Locker (2009) | "
Instead of setting out to prove a point, it seeks to immerse us in an environment -- something Bigelow does with a conceptual rigor usually associated with those directors whose work is confined to film societies and art houses." — Village Voice Posted Jun 24, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 36%
| Irene in Time (2009) | "
There can be no denying that the filmmaker has an ear for a certain brand of self-absorbed discourse often overheard in restaurants and bars in the shadow of the Hollywood sign." — L.A. Weekly Posted Jun 18, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 10%
| My Life in Ruins (2009) | "
Substitute "career" for "life" in the title of this stillborn travelogue comedy, and you'll have a succinct verdict on My Big Fat Greek Wedding writer/star Nia Vardalos." — Village Voice Posted Jun 3, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 98%
| Up (2009) | "
Up emerges as a gentle hymn to adventure of both the soaring, storybook variety and the smaller, less obvious kind -- the perilous, unpredictable and richly rewarding journey of ordinary, everyday life." — L.A. Weekly Posted May 28, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 89%
| O'Horten (2009) | "
The movie, on its own modest terms, satisfies greatly." — Village Voice Posted May 19, 2009 |
— | Fresh 80%
| Standing by Yourself (2002) |
Click here to read article — Variety Posted May 15, 2009 |
— | N/A | Visitors (2003) |
Click here to read article — Variety Posted May 15, 2009 |
— | Fresh 86%
| The Ister (2004) |
Click here to read article — Variety Posted May 15, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Anaglyph Tom (Tom with the Puffy Cheeks) (2009) | "
It seems only fitting that in the same year Jeffrey Katzenberg proclaimed 3-D to be the savior of big-screen moviegoing, that tireless celluloid elastician Ken Jacobs has routed the technology back to the very origins of cinema itself." — Village Voice Posted May 13, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 95%
| Star Trek (2009) | "
Even by the standards of its own predecessors, this Trek feels like it was made by a committee of logic-minded Vulcans (or franchise-protective studio executives) rather than a filmmaker with the singular personality of Nicholas Meyer." — L.A. Weekly Posted May 7, 2009 |
— | N/A | Big City Dick: Richard Peterson's First Movie (2004) |
Click here to read article — Variety Posted May 6, 2009 |
— | N/A | Cry Funny Happy (2003) |
Click here to read article — Variety Posted May 6, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 78%
| Outrage (2009) | "
Dick approaches his subject with little of the self-righteous effrontery of Michael Moore or Bill Maher, instead maintaining a modicum of objective distance and even mustering a certain sympathy for both the accuser and the accused." — Village Voice Posted May 5, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 72%
| Julia (2008) | "
Jeered upon its premiere at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival and only now receiving a token U.S. release, Julia demands to be reassessed and reckoned with." — Village Voice Posted May 5, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 69%
| Adoration (2009) | "
A movie considerably more absorbing to talk, write, and think about afterward than it is to actually watch." — Village Voice Posted May 5, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 94%
| Revanche (2009) | "
Directed with terrific control and economy of means by Spielmann -- a film and theater vet who has had only one previous movie distributed in the U.S. -- Revanche gets its hooks into you early and leaves them there/" — Village Voice Posted Apr 28, 2009 |
— | N/A | Siblings (2005) |
Click here to read article — Variety Posted Apr 23, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 41%
| Fighting (2009) | "
It's like an exploitation movie that thinks it's an art movie, only there's no art to be found." — Village Voice Posted Apr 22, 2009 |
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