|
8/100
|
——
|
Erotic Witch Project II (2001) |
"
'Erotic Witch Project 2' is an impostor, struggling to take the shape and form of at best, story-line pornography, and at worst, a credible lampoon of the unconventional storytelling techniques seen in the horror-thriller, 'Blair Witch Project 2'."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Mar 6, 2002
|
|
37/100
|
——
|
The Dress Code (Bruno) (2000) |
"
The Dress Code is Shirley MacLaine's unfortunate foray into the director's chair, and it's so feeble an attempt that it substantiates allegations of her being crazy."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Nov 6, 2001
|
|
39/100
|
60%
|
The Independent (2001) |
"
The Independent is at once the most insubstantial and doleful mockumentary of the early 2000s. As many major publications round up favourable reviews, they present themselves as counterfactual -- critiques that demand critiquing."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Mar 11, 2002
|
|
40/100
|
82%
|
Mule Skinner Blues (2001) |
"
Stephen Earnhart's documentary is a decomposition of healthy eccentric inspiration and ambition - wearing a cloak of unsentimental, straightforward text - when it's really an exercise in gross romanticization of the delusional personality type."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted May 28, 2002
|
|
45/100
|
63%
|
Camp (2003) |
"
Gives glib critics something to horselaugh about."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Sep 1, 2003
|
|
45/100
|
32%
|
Doctor Dolittle (1967) |
"
Unfortunately -- even as escapist fare -- it's a failure due to its lifeless, meandering plot, and characters."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Jan 22, 2002
|
|
49/100
|
13%
|
Hell Up In Harlem (1973) |
"
Aside from the film's social commentary misfires, there are implausible aspects of each and every scene."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Nov 20, 2001
|
|
50/100
|
77%
|
Panic Room (2002) |
"
Visual flare aside, you have a film that takes few chances -- a novelty for a director who's made his reputation on revising the thriller genre to suit his kinaesthetic picture representation and existential stance."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted May 7, 2002
|
|
50/100
|
21%
|
The Butcher's Wife (1991) |
"
The first half of the film is dreadfully contrived and artificial, from the uneven acting to the stereotype-filled script, to the aforementioned set and production design."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Nov 17, 2001
|
|
58/100
|
89%
|
Shrek (2001) |
"
There are numerous faults in Shrek, enough to addle the brain. Chief among these are the narrative infirmities, which begin with the attempt at creating a fairytale that subverts the storytelling conventions of tradition."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Mar 6, 2002
|
|
59/100
|
82%
|
Colors (1988) |
"
What is there to write about a lacklustre gang-related film that wants to be more than it amounts to?"
—
Apollo Guide
Posted May 13, 2005
|
|
59/100
|
91%
|
Shattered Glass (2003) |
"
A fascinating story, with enough dramaturgical potential to make a rock take notice. Unfortunately, Shattered Glass is an ignorant rock unto itself."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Nov 12, 2003
|
|
59/100
|
29%
|
The Other Side Of Heaven (2001) |
"
[Davis] wants to cause his audience an epiphany, yet he refuses to give us real situations and characters."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Apr 12, 2002
|
|
60/100
|
86%
|
Lilo & Stitch (2002) |
"
Similar to most contemporary American feature-length animation, the film's overall structure is frayed."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted May 13, 2005
|
|
60/100
|
50%
|
Seven Year Zigzag (2003) |
"
Said ingenuity is at times recursive in its chintzy pell-mell of images and superimpositions..."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Sep 24, 2003
|
|
60/100
|
83%
|
The Execution Of Wanda Jean (2002) |
"
[Garbus] discards the potential for pathological study, exhuming instead, the skewed melodrama of the circumstantial situation."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Sep 3, 2002
|
|
60/100
|
28%
|
Life or Something Like It (2002) |
"
With Life or Something Like it, director Stephen Herek is the envoy for the unreliable emotional demonstrations of Hollywood. But this film maintains a modicum of actual inspiration, nonetheless."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Apr 29, 2002
|
|
61/100
|
——
|
Ben Harper - Pleasure and Pain (2002) |
"
The film is a timorous, flailing attempt at docu-philosophy. Co-directors Danny Clinch and Sam Lee must have thought that desultory use of slow motion and quick-cuts can cover for aimlessness."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Nov 27, 2002
|
|
62/100
|
45%
|
Peter Pan in Return to Never Land (2002) |
"
The holes in this film remain agape -- holes punched through by an inconsistent, meandering, and sometimes dry plot."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Feb 16, 2002
|
|
2.5/4
|
100%
|
Three Colors: Blue (Trois Couleurs: Bleu) (1993) |
"
Beginning with Blue, straight through to White and Red, Kieslowski comes off like a deaf person trying, in fits of frustration, to communicate with the hearing."
—
Long Island Press
Posted Apr 26, 2003
|
|
2.5/4
|
94%
|
Lost in La Mancha (2003) |
"
From a puritanical perspective, the genius that is the chronicle is undermined by the laxity of the execution."
—
Long Island Press
Posted Feb 7, 2003
|
|
63/100
|
91%
|
Y Tu Mamá También (2001) |
"
Cuaron as sexual pedagogue is a sham, as his advice is misguided and misinformed."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Jul 12, 2002
|
|
63/100
|
80%
|
Marathon Man (1976) |
"
Marathon Man desperately yearns for acceptance among the canon of socially important, gritty, subversive 1970s 'New School' films."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Dec 4, 2001
|
|
64/100
|
74%
|
Blackboards (2002) |
"
Samira Makhmalbaf's new film Blackboards is much like the ethos of a stream of consciousness, although, it's unfortunate for the viewer that the thoughts and reflections coming through are torpid and banal"
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Dec 5, 2002
|
|
65/100
|
82%
|
Thirteen (2003) |
"
Catherine Hardwicke's idea of context is the trite schematics of schoolyard popularity."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Aug 30, 2003
|
|
65/100
|
49%
|
Unfaithful (2002) |
"
...when a film speaks to an audience, it owes more than a quasi-existential explanation..."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted May 16, 2002
|
|
65/100
|
74%
|
Frailty (2002) |
"
Like an angel singing out of tune, Frailty seems likely to be remembered for being forgotten."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Apr 4, 2002
|
|
65/100
|
78%
|
Requiem for a Dream (2000) |
"
... when the process of finding this meaning is mired in the storyteller's self-indulgent tendencies and harrowing repetitious visuals, the effort is rendered reprehensible."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Mar 6, 2002
|
|
65/100
|
34%
|
Mean Machine (2002) |
"
Plays like a series of vignettes -- clips of a film that are still looking for a common through-line."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Feb 16, 2002
|
|
69/100
|
20%
|
Stealing the Fire () |
"
The discursive nature of the information that is presented greets its audience like a plunged inert mass."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Sep 24, 2003
|
|
69/100
|
52%
|
Uzumaki (2002) |
"
Uzumaki's interesting social parallel and defiant aesthetic seems a prostituted muse..."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Jun 10, 2002
|
|
69/100
|
57%
|
Jim Brown: All-American (2002) |
"
[Lee] treats his audience the same way that Jim Brown treats his women -- as dumb, credulous, unassuming, subordinate subjects. And Lee seems just as expectant of an adoring, wide-smiling reception."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Mar 22, 2002
|
|
70/100
|
54%
|
A Wedding for Bella (2003) |
"
A story of death-as-deus-ex-machina - where the contrivances are not so offensive - with interesting performances."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Oct 24, 2003
|
|
70/100
|
82%
|
Ram Dass: Fierce Grace (2002) |
"
Ram Dass Fierce Grace moulds itself as an example to up-and-coming documentarians, of the overlooked pitfalls of such an endeavour."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Mar 12, 2002
|
|
70/100
|
——
|
Bucktown (1975) |
"
What began as a genre of films exploiting the black audience by taking their dollars to satisfy a need to see themselves succeed, wore itself thin by developing into a transparent set of conventions."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Dec 9, 2001
|
|
71/100
|
42%
|
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) |
"
A brand of entertainment that's dissatisfying intellectually and formulaically."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Feb 7, 2003
|
|
72/100
|
74%
|
Signs (2002) |
"
It's a terrain that reverses the cultural value assigned to the low angle shot... but ultimately transforms the viscera of horror/ sci-fi cinema to a feckless point."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Aug 3, 2002
|
|
73/100
|
73%
|
La espalda del mundo (The Back of the World) (2002) |
"
But the power of these [subjects] is obscured by the majority of the film that shows a stationary camera on a subject that could be mistaken for giving a public oration, rather than contributing to a film's narrative."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted May 27, 2002
|
|
74/100
|
76%
|
Revolution #9 (2001) |
"
[T]he film is never sure to make a clear point - even if it seeks to rely on an ambiguous presentation."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Nov 15, 2002
|
|
74/100
|
77%
|
Ice Age (2002) |
"
It is painful to watch the inferior aspects of the film sink under the muddy vestiges of its superior facets."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Mar 15, 2002
|
|
75/100
|
94%
|
Girlhood (2003) |
"
To the film's great credit, [director] Garbus evens out her often heavy-hand and we're given the emotional core of two young female criminals in ways often eluded in the movies."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted May 13, 2005
|
|
75/100
|
70%
|
Elephant (2003) |
"
A valiant experiment in existential pathology gone tepid."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Oct 8, 2003
|
|
75/100
|
50%
|
Southlander: Diary of a Desperate Musician (2001) |
"
Hanft captures the goosy, roach-of-a-joint lifestyle pressed upon fledgling musicians in underground circles of L.A. and other urban blights."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Oct 2, 2003
|
|
75/100
|
88%
|
28 Days Later (2003) |
"
An agoraphobic New Age."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Aug 30, 2003
|
|
75/100
|
31%
|
Returning Mickey Stern (2003) |
"
There's a sort of magical realism, but in the vein of a low-budget Big or Groundhog Day, rather than Luis Buñuel and Jan Svankmajer."
—
Long Island Press
Posted Apr 26, 2003
|
|
3/4
|
85%
|
Spider (2002) |
"
Most of Cronenberg's previous films are busy with corporeal matter-monsters or creatures-but with Spider, there's a sort of poetic singularity in that Fiennes rarely has actors to play off. The monster is his psyche, the way he interprets existence."
—
Long Island Press
Posted Feb 27, 2003
|
|
75/100
|
77%
|
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002) |
"
Hirsch... may one day realize the insouciant duality of River Pheonix's hope and fatalism that helped identify [him] with his generation of popular culture."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Jul 24, 2002
|
|
75/100
|
47%
|
Hollywood Ending (2002) |
"
As his conclusion, Allen plays into the ironic comedy he intends with his title, Hollywood Ending, and it comes as a jolly repartee to his American critics."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted Jun 21, 2002
|
|
75/100
|
79%
|
The Sleepy Time Gal (2001) |
"
To the film's credit, the acting is fresh and unselfconscious, and Munch is a marvel of reality versus sappy sentiment."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted May 24, 2002
|
|
75/100
|
3%
|
Deuces Wild (2002) |
"
This is a film that manages to find greatness in the hue of its drastic iconography."
—
Apollo Guide
Posted May 3, 2002
|
68%
——
98%
