Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 71%
| Sherlock Holmes (2009) | "
There's a mystery at the heart of Sherlock Holmes and it's not the one the great master of detection has been called on to solve. It's how a film that has so many good things going for it has turned out to be solid but not spectacular." — Los Angeles Times Posted Dec 24, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 89%
| Crazy Heart (2009) | "
It's a mark of how fine a performance Bridges gives that it succeeds beautifully even though the besotted, bedeviled country singer has been an overly familiar popular culture staple for forever." — Los Angeles Times Posted Dec 17, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 83%
| Avatar (2009) | "
Whatever way you choose to look at it, Avatar's shock and awe demand to be seen. You've never experienced anything like it, and neither has anyone else." — Los Angeles Times Posted Dec 17, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 87%
| Four Seasons Lodge (2009) | "
Perhaps the most remarkable thing this unexpectedly warm and affirmative film shows us about the survivors is that, far from blocking out their past, they've managed to enjoy these unexpected years despite continually living with their personal horrors." — Los Angeles Times Posted Dec 15, 2009 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Rotten 40%
| The Lovely Bones (2009) | "
Everything that's good is undermined by an overemphasis on one part of the story that is essential but has been allowed to overflow its boundaries." — Los Angeles Times Posted Dec 11, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 76%
| Invictus (2009) | "
Eastwood, who will be 80 next year, understands the flow of narrative in a way younger directors might envy." — Los Angeles Times Posted Dec 11, 2009 |
Fresh 5/5
| Fresh 89%
| Up in the Air (2009) | "
It's hard to think of an actor who's better at projecting the professional smoothness that's essential to make this character palatable, but Clooney turns out to be willing to take that persona further." — Los Angeles Times Posted Dec 4, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 69%
| The Last Station (2009) | "
For those who enjoy actors who can play it up without ever overplaying their hands, The Last Station is the destination of choice." — Los Angeles Times Posted Dec 3, 2009 |
Fresh 4.5/5
| Fresh 96%
| Crude (2009) | "
What Crude does best is take us behind the scenes and show in often candid detail how campaigns are waged, tactics decided on and strategies prioritized." — Los Angeles Times Posted Dec 3, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Fresh 88%
| 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 72%
| 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 95%
| 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 28%
| 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 93%
| 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 39%
| 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 81%
| 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 53%
| 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 95%
| 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 73%
| 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 94%
| 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 84%
| 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
| Rotten 58%
| 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 87%
| 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 87%
| 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 87%
| 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 87%
| 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 82%
| 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 86%
| 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 92%
| 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 79%
| A Woman in Berlin (2008) | "
[A] brutal, unforgettable film." — Los Angeles Times Posted Aug 7, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 75%
| 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 96%
| 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 |
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