Fresh 89/100
| Fresh 93%
| Three Kings (1999) | "
Three Kings mightn't be the best thought-out or most reassuring movie of the year, but the more I think about it, the more I'm sure that it is one of the best." Posted Jun 28, 2009 |
Fresh 89/100
| N/A | War Eagle, Arkansas (2009) | "
an example of tough-minded, well-executed independent filmmaking rooted in the specific circumstances of credible human characters ... a damn good movie" Posted Jun 26, 2009 |
Fresh 88/100
| Fresh 100%
| At the Death House Door (2008) | "
makes great sense from a journalist's perspective." Posted Jun 26, 2009 |
Fresh 88/100
| N/A | At the Death House Door (2008) | "
...makes great sense from a journalist's perspective." Posted Jun 26, 2009 |
Rotten 79/100
| Fresh 65%
| Away We Go (2009) | "
...takes the boorishness of conventional Americans as a given and valorizes nonconformity for its own sake." Posted Jun 26, 2009 |
Rotten 83/100
| Rotten 50%
| Easy Virtue (2009) | "
...almost undone by the casting of thoroughly modern Jessica Biel." Posted Jun 22, 2009 |
Rotten 77/100
| Rotten 46%
| The Proposal (2009) | "
By its own modest aims, it's not horrible ..." Posted Jun 22, 2009 |
Rotten 68/100
| Rotten 17%
| Year One (2009) | "
In the beginning, there was the dud." Posted Jun 22, 2009 |
Fresh 91/100
| Fresh 93%
| Sugar (2009) | "
...an immigrant's song, a story about cultural dislocations and human connections that happens to be one of the year's best movies." Posted Jun 12, 2009 |
Rotten 83/100
| Rotten 38%
| Gigantic (2008) | "
...the story of how two emotionally damaged but terribly affected andprivileged underachievers meet, fall in love and presumably somehow form a family." Posted Jun 12, 2009 |
Fresh 87/100
| Rotten 50%
| The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009) | "
There are few things in life more pleasant than watching John Travolta enjoy himself on-screen." Posted Jun 12, 2009 |
Fresh 87/100
| Fresh 82%
| Pontypool (2009) | "
...most of the pleasures the movie offers are visceral, from the silken roar of character actor McHattie's FM shock jock voice and the bloody meltdown of a production assistant to the bizarro epilogue appended to the credits." Posted Jun 7, 2009 |
Fresh 86/100
| Rotten 58%
| The Girlfriend Experience (2009) | "
...a slightly monstrous movie about the retailing of intimacy" Posted Jun 7, 2009 |
Rotten 77/100
| Rotten 32%
| Terminator Salvation (2009) | "
...plenty of people who will enjoy this kind of soulless, technically correct, mark-hitting moviemaking, but it's difficult for me to imagine why." Posted May 29, 2009 |
Fresh 91/100
| Fresh 97%
| Up (2009) | "
If only live action adventure movies were as well-written, subtle and painstakingly realized as this, we might be willing to renew our almost expired belief in the transporting powers of what Pauline Kael called "movie movies."" Posted May 29, 2009 |
Fresh 87/100
| Rotten 37%
| Angels & Demons (2009) | "
...also about antimatter, which is like the opposite of matter, which I guess means that it doesn't matter, just like Hitchock's famous Mac-Guffin, except that it blows up real good." Posted May 15, 2009 |
Fresh 89/100
| Fresh 78%
| 12 (2007) | "
Slavic gloom and Russian dukh - a word that can be loosely translated as "cunning spirit" - permeate ..." Posted May 15, 2009 |
Fresh 91/100
| Fresh 100%
| Knife in the Water (1963) | "
...a dazzling black-and-white chamber piece" Posted May 1, 2009 |
Fresh 86/100
| Rotten 37%
| X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) | "
Apparently not everyone in Canada is nice." Posted May 1, 2009 |
Fresh 88/100
| Fresh 91%
| Gomorrah (2009) | "
...grinds away in documentary fashion, like relentless evil wearing on the soft hearts of the poor." Posted Apr 24, 2009 |
Rotten 70/100
| Rotten 15%
| The Informers (2009) | "
I wish they'd kept the vampire. I wish they'd given him a rocket launcher." Posted Apr 24, 2009 |
Fresh 87/100
| Fresh 80%
| The Audition (2009) | "
... a boon to opera fans, the uninitiated will find much to like in this American Idol for Eggheads true-life story of competition, triumph and disappointment." Posted Apr 17, 2009 |
Fresh 91/100
| Fresh 84%
| Wendy and Lucy (2008) | "
...an American Bicycle Thief, a simple, powerful film about the oppressive indignity of being poor in a wealthy country." Posted Apr 17, 2009 |
Fresh 86/100
| Fresh 73%
| The Great Buck Howard (2009) | "
...a charming, pleasantly diverting movie that is hard to dislike." Posted Apr 10, 2009 |
Fresh 89/100
| Fresh 97%
| The Class (2008) | "
...so low key and naturalistically realized that it could easily be mistaken for a documentary" Posted Apr 10, 2009 |
Fresh 86/100
| Fresh 88%
| Adventureland (2009) | "
the plot's romantic rhythms ... leading to the inevitable reconciliation are right out of the Hughes playbook" Posted Apr 3, 2009 |
Fresh 86/100
| Fresh 85%
| JCVD (2008) | "
...reveals ... a supple and engaging actor with a sense of humor and a rare kind of self-recognition. Van Damme knows what we think of him and understands why." Posted Mar 31, 2009 |
Fresh 87/100
| Fresh 76%
| Che, Part Two (2008) | "
... a deeply interesting and commercially brave movie, one that recognizes the limits inherent in cinematic biography. It is meant to be experienced, not sounded for meanings, and is weakest when Soderbergh caves into his poetic impulses..." Posted Mar 27, 2009 |
Fresh 88/100
| Fresh 64%
| Watchmen (2009) | "
one comic book ... that genuinely approachesthe complexity and sociological gravity of literature." Posted Mar 13, 2009 |
Fresh 87/100
| Fresh 84%
| Two Lovers (2009) | "
...melodrama, predictable yet compelling, [but] there are things about this movie that make it better than it might sound." Posted Mar 13, 2009 |
Rotten 83/100
| Fresh 71%
| Che, Part One (2008) | "
...an episodic, sometimes frustrating military procedural occasionally lightened by flashes of Che's (or is it Del Toro's?) star power." Posted Mar 13, 2009 |
Fresh 87/100
| Fresh 90%
| Ironweed (1987) | "
...slow and crushing, a heavy film that has a simple plot, a despairing tone and none of the ostentatious "acting" often evinced in Nicholson's later career" Posted Feb 27, 2009 |
Rotten 82/100
| Rotten 58%
| The International (2009) | "
Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York gets its props.... Not since Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle has the Upper East Side landmark hosted such violence." Posted Feb 13, 2009 |
Rotten 74/100
| Rotten 13%
| The Pink Panther 2 (2009) | "
Mr. Martin, it's perfectly all right to be serious and distinguished and write plays about Picasso, Einstein and bunny rabbits. You don't have to always be the wild and crazy guy!" Posted Feb 6, 2009 |
Fresh 87/100
| N/A | American Scary (2006) | "
... a lot of what is in the film is fascinating and more valuable than mere nostalgia. It tells us another kind of truth - about an America that's no less real or vital for its obscurity." Posted Feb 6, 2009 |
Fresh 88/100
| Fresh 98%
| The Wrestler (2008) | "
...strong, affecting stuff that can stand as a comment on the actual actor's career as much as that of a fictional grappler." Posted Jan 23, 2009 |
Fresh 89/100
| Fresh 69%
| Revolutionary Road (2008) | "
...brilliant and cold, like a sun-flooded winter's day." Posted Jan 16, 2009 |
Fresh 89/100
| Rotten 56%
| Defiance (2008) | "
Gigglers may be excused with no prejudice from Defiance, but if you share Zwick's unabashed wonder that such men as Tuvia Bielski (Craig) and his brothers emerge in our species' darkest hours, then you'll find Defiance as rousing and inspiring as t" Posted Jan 16, 2009 |
Fresh 87/100
| Fresh 70%
| Last Chance Harvey (2008) | "
Minor in both key and purpose, Joel Hopkins' Last Chance Harvey is a pleasantly hopeful film about the possibilities of late happiness." Posted Jan 16, 2009 |
Rotten 68/100
| Rotten 34%
| Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009) | "
So, as much as I hate to be mean, it is my solemn responsibility as a movie reviewer to award Paul Blart Mall Cop a Frowny Face. (Don't hate me, Kevin James! Or you either, Steve Carr!)" Posted Jan 16, 2009 |
Fresh 87/100
| Fresh 86%
| Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) | "
...a more ordinary movie than I remembered, with its clunky bits and a story that seems to betray authorial intent. Holly Golightly is not about the conventional American dream of domestic paradise; she is about the American perquisite of reinvention" Posted Jan 13, 2009 |
Fresh 90/100
| Fresh 98%
| Let the Right One In (2008) | "
,,,could even be read as a kind of grim metaphor for marriage in that it explores the thanklessness of constancy and the long-distance loneliness of the impenetrable soul." Posted Jan 12, 2009 |
Fresh 86/100
| Fresh 92%
| Frost/Nixon (2008) | "
You can enjoy the evil licking at Langella-as-Nixon's jowls, but you have to wonder if the glamorization is appropriate, particularly given most of our fellow Americans' dubious command of history." Posted Jan 9, 2009 |
Fresh 91/100
| Fresh 80%
| Gran Torino (2008) | "
Eastwood can be ham-handed ... but he never allows moral instruction to dilute the entertainment value of his films. He loads his movies with ideas ... but is never ostentatious with his intelligence and deep themes." Posted Jan 9, 2009 |
Rotten 83/100
| Fresh 62%
| The Reader (2008) | "
It's only when The Reader begins to dig at these big questions that the movie begins to feel slight and inadequate. As a soft-core love story, a seedy and silly male fantasy piece, it sort of works." Posted Jan 2, 2009 |
Fresh 87/100
| Fresh 78%
| Doubt (2008) | "
[The] performances are so enjoyable, it feels ungenerous to note Doubt isn't quite as profound as it seems to think." Posted Dec 26, 2008 |
Rotten 85/100
| Fresh 72%
| The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) | "
...has all the features of greatness except the magic." Posted Dec 26, 2008 |
Rotten 80/100
| Rotten 28%
| Seven Pounds (2008) | "
...a dumb movie put together by people who think they're a lot smarter than their prospective audience." Posted Dec 19, 2008 |
Fresh 87/100
| Fresh 92%
| It's a Wonderful Life (1946) | "
If you can separate - or rescue - It's a Wonderful Life from its niche as a Christmas classic, you might discover a film that swings wildly from noirlike starkness to saccharine bathos." Posted Dec 12, 2008 |
Fresh 90/100
| Fresh 67%
| Synecdoche, New York (2008) | "
An impossible, bewildering and brave failure of a movie ..." Posted Dec 12, 2008 |
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