Fresh
| Rotten 46%
| Whatever Works (2009) | "
This is pretty broad stuff, but Clarkson is so much more vital and amiable than anyone else that you instantly root for her." Posted Jun 15, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 50%
| The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009) | "
Can a director be arrested for the attempted hijack of our emotions?" Posted Jun 15, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 83%
| Jerichow (2009) | "
So compact and controlled is this fine film." Posted May 26, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 32%
| Terminator Salvation (2009) | "
Terminator Salvation is a confused, humorless grind, with nobody, from the stars to the set designers, prepared to prick its self-importance." Posted May 26, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 95%
| Star Trek (2009) | "
Quinto is the one person here who may leave teen-aged viewers more perplexed than puffed up; he somehow rebukes the movie’s whole obsession with backstory and immaturity by seeming riper and wiser than the charmless folly that is spun around him." Posted May 7, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 33%
| The Limits of Control (2009) | "
For all its cinematic references, [the movie] seems impatient with the need to tell a narrative at all, as if its secret wish were to be a photography exhibit, or an album of half-connected songs." Posted Apr 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 90%
| Il Divo (2009) | "
You could dismiss Servillo’s portrayal as a cartoon, but the great actors know that beneath the dark surface of caricature lies a heightened and vivifying truth, as potent as fortified wine. Consume with great caution, and with joy." Posted Apr 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 98%
| Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2009) | "
The most stirring release of the year thus far." Posted Apr 13, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 76%
| Shall We Kiss? (2008) | "
The result is that Shall We Kiss? puts its viewers in a bind worthy of the lovers themselves: should we organize a Socratic symposium on the issues raised by the film, or hurl our popcorn violently at the screen?" Posted Mar 30, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 72%
| Monsters vs. Aliens (2009) | "
As I took off my gray-lensed 3-D spectacles at the end of Monsters vs. Aliens, I felt not so much immersed as fuzzy with exhaustion." Posted Mar 30, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 73%
| The Great Buck Howard (2009) | "
The cast is speckled with lively souls like Steve Zahn and Griffin Dunne, but the only person who wakes the movie from its slumbers is Emily Blunt." Posted Mar 16, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Tokyo Sonata (2009) | "
For all its oddities, this movie does carry weight, and, with more than eight per cent of Americans out of work, the timing of its release here could not be more acute." Posted Mar 16, 2009 |
— | Fresh 100%
| Gomorra (2008) |
Click here to read article Posted Mar 5, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Leave Her to Heaven (1945) | "
As for the brother’s death, with Ellen looking on coolly in white robe and shades, it remains one of the most perturbing in the history of Hollywood." Posted Mar 2, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 64%
| Watchmen (2009) | "
Incoherent, overblown, and grimy with misogyny, Watchmen marks the final demolition of the comic strip, and it leaves you wondering: where did the comedy go?" Posted Mar 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 84%
| Two Lovers (2009) | "
However moody, Two Lovers didn’t strike me as a downer, for the simple reason that it wells with sights and sounds that are guaranteed to lift, not sink, the spirits." Posted Feb 17, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 91%
| Gomorrah (2009) | "
The result demands a patient viewing, and maybe more than one; only after a second dose did I get the measure of [director] Garrone’s mastery, and realize how far he has surpassed, not merely honored, the author’s courageous toil." Posted Feb 17, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 57%
| Taken (2009) | "
[Neeson's] performance is the most perturbing thing in the film, even more so than its electrical-torture sequence or its revelations about sex-trafficking." Posted Feb 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 86%
| California Dreamin' (2009) | "
It could use a trim, but only rarely does it strain for effect, and, for a young man, Nemescu was uncannily versed in the emotions of middle age." Posted Jan 26, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 63%
| Che (2008) | "
For all the movie’s narrative momentum, Che retains the air of a study exercise -- of an interest brilliantly explored. How else to explain one’s total flatness of feeling at the climax of each movie?" Posted Jan 12, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 60%
| Valkyrie (2008) | "
The problem is not that we know the outcome. The problem is the buildup." Posted Dec 29, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 78%
| Doubt (2008) | "
If only Doubt had been made in 1964, shot by Roger Corman over a long weekend, and retitled Spawn of the Devil Witch or Blood Wimple, all would have been forgiven." Posted Dec 8, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 62%
| The Reader (2008) | "
The whole film, in fact, with its loping pace and plaintive score, feels like a woefully polite, not to say British, take on a foreign horror; was there really no one, from the fierce new wave of German filmmakers, prepared to dramatize the Schlink?" Posted Dec 8, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 98%
| The Wrestler (2008) | "
What Rourke offers us, in short, is not just a comeback performance but something much rarer: a rounded, raddled portrait of a good man." Posted Dec 8, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 87%
| A Christmas Tale (2008) | "
Watching A Christmas Tale is like getting to know a family other than your own by leafing through its scrapbooks and laughing at its photograph albums, while it bickers in the next room over stuff you may never understand." Posted Nov 17, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 94%
| Slumdog Millionaire (2008) | "
There are no surprises in this movie, and most people will be able to predict, within the first ten minutes, roughly how the last ten will pan out." Posted Nov 17, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 65%
| Quantum of Solace (2008) | "
Quantum of Solace is too savage for family entertainment, but, as a study in headlong desperation, it’s easier to believe in than many more ponderous films." Posted Nov 10, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 66%
| High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008) | "
Its winning formula is driven not by narrative but by what isn't there: no sex, no drugs, and no rock and roll-- unless you count the logjam of thundering power ballads." Posted Oct 27, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 67%
| Synecdoche, New York (2008) | "
If you want to show a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, go right ahead, but give that hour all the life you can." Posted Oct 27, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 86%
| Rachel Getting Married (2008) | "
A minor work, but so menaced by distress that the characters take every opportunity to dance the dark away." Posted Oct 18, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 59%
| RocknRolla (2008) | "
If RocknRolla clings to the company of ne’er-do-wells, it’s not because they bristle with the frustrations of society, but purely because Ritchie wants to borrow their cheeky charm -- a virtue that, in reality, none of them possess." Posted Oct 13, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 28%
| Filth and Wisdom (2008) | "
In technical terms, more professional productions than this are filmed and cut on iMovie, by ten-year-olds, a thousand times a day." Posted Oct 13, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 54%
| What Just Happened (2008) | "
Levinson has assembled a fine field of actors, no question, but the going is too easy for them underfoot; movies about movies are old ground." Posted Oct 13, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 41%
| Blindness (2008) | "
Blindness feels at once honorably serious and way too pleased with its own soothsaying. You stagger from the dimness of the cinema, beaten down and longing for the light." Posted Sep 29, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 47%
| Lakeview Terrace (2008) | "
It’s a shame that the later stages of Lakeview Terrace should overheat and spill into silliness." Posted Sep 15, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 13%
| The Women (2008) | "
The funniest thing about The Women is that Mick Jagger is one of the producers. There was a knowing laugh in the theatre as his name sprang up in the opening credits -- our last chance to laugh, as it turned out, for the next two hours." Posted Sep 15, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 72%
| Mister Foe (2008) | "
Mister Foe flirts too often with the unlikely and the foolish, yet there is something to admire in the nerve of its reckless characters, so uneasy in their skins." Posted Sep 2, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 9%
| Bangkok Dangerous (2008) | "
Hollywood and the television industry have long since sucked what they require from the tropes and rhythms of Asian films, and parts of Bangkok Dangerous, far from seeming unfamiliar or freshly stylized, offer nothing that you couldn’t catch on CSI." Posted Sep 2, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 73%
| A Girl Cut in Two (2008) | "
Never more than semi-plausible." Posted Aug 18, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 82%
| Tropic Thunder (2008) | "
After the dazzle of the early scenes, something droops and flags in Tropic Thunder." Posted Aug 18, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 84%
| In Search of a Midnight Kiss (2008) | "
To praise the beauty of this film is not enough; what lends it tension is that it’s wrapped around people for whom beauty is at best an anachronism and at worst an embarrassing joke." Posted Jul 28, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 61%
| Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) | "
Most of the movie, directed by Eric Brevig, is as daft, outlandish, and speedy as it needs to be, and, for all its newfangled effects, touchingly old-fashioned in its reverence for the Jules Verne novel that inspired it." Posted Jul 21, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 53%
| Mamma Mia! (2008) | "
The legal definition of torture has been much aired in recent years, and I take Mamma Mia! to be a useful contribution to that debate." Posted Jul 21, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 19%
| The Happening (2008) | "
The Happening is an awful letdown, yet it leaves you with something new, as a gently waving tree -- that classical image of pastoral tranquillity -- mutates into a harbinger of doom." Posted Jun 23, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 71%
| Wanted (2008) | "
What looks set to be a boyish, pop-eyed fantasy warps into a welter of bloodletting." Posted Jun 23, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 50%
| Sex and the City - The Movie (2008) | "
I walked into the theatre hoping for a nice evening and came out as a hard-line Marxist, my head a whirl of closets, delusions, and blunt-clawed cattiness. All the film lacks is a subtitle: The Lying, the Bitch, and the Wardrobe." Posted Jun 2, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 90%
| The Edge of Heaven (2008) | "
The Edge of Heaven is about something more exasperating than crossed paths; it is about paths that almost cross but don’t, and the tragedy of the near-miss." Posted May 19, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 67%
| Turn the River (2008) | "
Skip the coda to this movie, with its tiny upswing of hope, and remember the days at the tables, as dim and endless as nights, and the click of the dialogue." Posted May 5, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 36%
| Speed Racer (2008) | "
I reckon the M.P.A.A. should use the advent of Speed Racer to revive an old ratings symbol: a big Roman X, meaning 'of no conceivable interest to anyone over the age of ten.'" Posted May 5, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 5%
| 88 Minutes (2008) | "
Nothing would give me keener pleasure than to reveal the identity of the killer, but a day after seeing the film I have genuinely forgotten." Posted Apr 21, 2008 |
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