Fresh 3.5/5
| Fresh 86%
| Red Cliff (2009) | "
Returning to his roots after a stint in Hollywood, Woo has made the most expensive film in mainland Chinese history, a pleasantly traditional picture that marks a new direction for one of the world's premier action maestros." — Los Angeles Times Posted Nov 24, 2009 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Fresh 73%
| The Road (2009) | "
What we've been given is no more than a reasonable facsimile, an honorable attempt at filming an unfilmable book." — Los Angeles Times Posted Nov 24, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 100%
| La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (2009) | "
Bodies in motion tend to remain in motion, but almost never with the heart-stirring beauty and grace on view in Frederick Wiseman's exceptional portrait of the Paris Opera Ballet, La Danse." — Los Angeles Times Posted Nov 19, 2009 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Rotten 29%
| The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) | "
Constrained by the plot of the novel, the film keeps the two lovers apart for quite a spell, robbing the project of the crazy-in-love energy that made Twilight, the first entry in the series, such a guilty pleasure." — Los Angeles Times Posted Nov 18, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 92%
| Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) | "
It provides a pleasantly cerebral experience, exhilarating and fizzy, that goes to your head like too much Champagne." — Los Angeles Times Posted Nov 13, 2009 |
Rotten 1.5/5
| Rotten 37%
| 2012 (2009) | "
[Nothing] will give you more respect for how difficult it is to be an actor than watching top talent like John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet and Oliver Platt struggling to treat the film's ungodly language and situations with perfect seriousness." — Los Angeles Times Posted Nov 13, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 85%
| Araya (1959) | "
It cares so passionately about its subjects that you will as well." — Los Angeles Times Posted Nov 5, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Rotten 54%
| The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) | "
If there doesn't seem to be enough story here to make a movie, seeing the film's practiced farceurs at work can't help but be amusing. A lot more fun, all things considered, than trying to will yourself through a wall." — Los Angeles Times Posted Nov 5, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 100%
| The Maid (2009) | "
The Maid has that particular gift of leaving you off balance in the best possible way, and whenever something like that comes around you owe it to yourself to check it out." — Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 23, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Rotten 47%
| Ong Bak 2 (2009) | "
Ong Bak 2 is slicker production-wise than the original, and it has so much noisy action that Thai foley artists must have made a fortune inserting thuds and grunts." — Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 22, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Fresh 100%
| Visual Acoustics: The Modernisms of Julius Shulman (2009) | "
Visual Acoustics is nominally about the life and career of landmark Southern California architectural photographer Julius Shulman, but it's more about the buildings he photographed than it is about him. Which is probably the way he'd like it." — Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 16, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 71%
| Where the Wild Things Are (2009) | "
Sometimes you are better off with 10 sentences than tens of millions of dollars, and this is one of those times." — Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 15, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 93%
| The Damned United (2009) | "
Though his notoriously big mouth often got him into trouble, Clough is a great character for Sheen to play because his personal charm invariably -- but not always -- got him out of the difficulty." — Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 8, 2009 |
Fresh 4.5/5
| Fresh 94%
| An Education (2009) | "
Invariably funny and inexpressibly moving." — Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 8, 2009 |
Fresh 4.5/5
| Fresh 87%
| A Serious Man (2009) | "
[The Coens have made] their most personal, most intensely Jewish film, a pitch-perfect comedy of despair that, against some odds, turns out to be one of their most universal as well." — Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 2, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 73%
| More Than a Game (2009) | "
It's always risky to mix sports metaphors, but it's hard to resist the notion that the basketball-themed More Than a Game is a knockout of a sports documentary." — Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 2, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 65%
| Coco Before Chanel (2009) | "
Tautou not only resembles Chanel, she inhabits the role completely, using flashing eyes and a relentless intelligence to convey the unbending strength of a woman determined to make something of her life in a time and place when that was far from the norm." — Los Angeles Times Posted Sep 25, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 75%
| Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) | "
Moore's scattershot is a lot more interesting than some filmmakers' focus, and many of those individual parts are classic." — Los Angeles Times Posted Sep 23, 2009 |
Fresh 4.5/5
| Fresh 83%
| Bright Star (2009) | "
Bright Star satisfies a hunger we may not have known we had, a hunger for an exquisitely done, emotional love story that marries heartbreaking passion to formidable filmmaking restraint..." — Los Angeles Times Posted Sep 17, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 77%
| The Informant! (2009) | "
While this film fits squarely into Soderbergh's recurrent goal of ignoring audience interest when possible, that's the only area in which it can be considered a success." — Los Angeles Times Posted Sep 17, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 60%
| Art & Copy (2009) | "
They are the giants of modern advertising, and they have some alluring tales to tell." — Los Angeles Times Posted Sep 11, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 86%
| Big Fan (2009) | "
Big Fan is a poignant, dead-on character study, an examination of a crisis in the life of the most die-hard of die-hard New York Giants football fans." — Los Angeles Times Posted Sep 11, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 86%
| Big Fan (2009) | "
Big Fan is a poignant, dead-on character study, an examination of a crisis in the life of the most die-hard of die-hard New York Giants football fans." — Los Angeles Times Posted Sep 10, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 71%
| Walt and El Grupo (2009) | "
Walt & El Grupo is the best kind of labor of love. A documentary made with affection and intelligence..." — Los Angeles Times Posted Sep 10, 2009 |
Fresh 4.5/5
| Fresh 100%
| Still Walking (2009) | "
It will strongly move you, but you won't be able to say exactly why. It illuminates 24 hours in the life of a Japanese family, and though it may appear that not much is happening, by the end everything is revealed." — Los Angeles Times Posted Sep 4, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 88%
| Amreeka (2009) | "
This piquant film brings a keen and serious eye as well as that feeling for affectionate human comedy to this fraught situation, smartly avoiding both stridency and sentimentality in the process -- it's an elegant balancing act." — Los Angeles Times Posted Sep 3, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Fresh 86%
| The Baader Meinhof Complex (2009) | "
Even though its purpose couldn't be more serious, its style could hardly be more pulp. Which is probably fitting for a group that started out with high-minded goals and ended up robbing banks and blowing people away." — Los Angeles Times Posted Aug 28, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Fresh 80%
| Earth Days (2009) | "
These people, including Whole Earth catalog editor Stewart Brand and 87-year-old former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, are smart and interesting folks who are worth listening to." — Los Angeles Times Posted Aug 21, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Fresh 90%
| Gotta Dance (2009) | "
It's a charmer in its own right." — Los Angeles Times Posted Aug 21, 2009 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Fresh 88%
| Inglourious Basterds (2009) | "
Clocking in at 2 hours and 32 minutes, it is unforgivably leisurely, almost glacial, a film that loses its way in the thickets of alternative history and manages to be violent without the start-to-finish energy that violence on screen usually guarantees." — Los Angeles Times Posted Aug 21, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 85%
| Flame & Citron (2008) | "
A deeply involving look at people living permanently on the knife-edge of danger." — Los Angeles Times Posted Aug 14, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 100%
| Leon Morin, Priest (1961) | "
A fascinating, unexpected movie that fans of French film in general, and Melville in particular, will not want to miss" — Los Angeles Times Posted Aug 14, 2009 |
Fresh 5/5
| Fresh 91%
| Ponyo (2009) | "
Five minutes into this magical film you'll be making lists of the individuals of every age you can expose to the very special mixture of fantasy and folklore, adventure and affection, that make up the enchanted vision of Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki." — Los Angeles Times Posted Aug 14, 2009 |
Fresh 5/5
| Fresh 86%
| A Woman in Berlin (2008) | "
[A] brutal, unforgettable film." — Los Angeles Times Posted Aug 7, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 74%
| Julie & Julia (2009) | "
A consummate entertainment that echoes the rhythms and attitudes of classic Hollywood, it's a satisfying throwback to those old-fashioned movie fantasies where impossible dreams do come true." — Los Angeles Times Posted Aug 7, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 100%
| Being Jewish in France (2009) | "
Being Jewish in France makes exceptionally good use of vintage photographs and film clips in telling its story, and in fact won an award for best utilization of archival footage. It also boasts an especially varied and articulate group of talking heads." — Los Angeles Times Posted Aug 7, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Fresh 95%
| The Cove (2009) | "
The Cove's story of a quiet village in Japan that specializes in clandestine dolphin slaughter is quite consciously structured as a thriller by director Louie Psihoyos who won an audience award for it at Sundance." — Los Angeles Times Posted Jul 31, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 100%
| Afghan Star (2009) | "
This eye-opening film reveals that even systems as dubious as the Idol format mean dramatically different things when transferred to radically dissimilar cultures." — Los Angeles Times Posted Jul 24, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 83%
| Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) | "
The Potter pictures have become the modern exemplars of establishment moviemaking." — Los Angeles Times Posted Jul 14, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 96%
| Herb & Dorothy (2009) | "
If Ripley's Believe It or Not! were still around, Herb and Dorothy Vogel would surely be in it for amassing a world-class art collection on the most ordinary of working-class salaries." — Los Angeles Times Posted Jul 10, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 84%
| Soul Power (2009) | "
A vibrant and joyous new documentary." — Los Angeles Times Posted Jul 10, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 67%
| Public Enemies (2009) | "
With Public Enemies, he has made an impressive film of great formal skill, one that inescapably has a brooding dark-night-of-the-soul quality about it." — Los Angeles Times Posted Jul 1, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Rotten 54%
| Cheri (2009) | "
It's the kind of refined, delicate acting Pfeiffer does so well, and it's a further reminder of how much we've missed her since she's been away." — Los Angeles Times Posted Jul 1, 2009 |
Fresh 4.5/5
| Fresh 98%
| The Hurt Locker (2009) | "
Overwhelmingly tense, overflowing with crackling verisimilitude, it's both the film about the war in Iraq that we've been waiting for and the kind of unqualified triumph that's been long expected from director Kathryn Bigelow." — Los Angeles Times Posted Jun 26, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 78%
| The End of the Line (2009) | "
The End of the Line is an apocalyptic documentary that is as beautiful as it is damning." — Los Angeles Times Posted Jun 19, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 47%
| Whatever Works (2009) | "
Except for brief moments, Whatever Works does not involve." — Los Angeles Times Posted Jun 19, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 80%
| Unmistaken Child (2009) | "
Its privileged glimpse deep into unfamiliar spiritual territory has the strength of revelation." — Los Angeles Times Posted Jun 12, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Rotten 52%
| The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009) | "
The film does what a good hostage negotiator does: It distracts us from what's going wrong and pulls us into the story." — Los Angeles Times Posted Jun 12, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 90%
| Séraphine (2008) | "
The long French tradition of thoughtful, intelligent films of quality for adults is alive and well here, and that is reason to rejoice." — Los Angeles Times Posted Jun 5, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 66%
| Away We Go (2009) | "
Away We Go is a self-satisfied film about insecure people, a quirky and episodic comic drama that squanders its genuine assets and ends up not as special as it tries to be." — Los Angeles Times Posted Jun 5, 2009 |
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