ROTTEN TOMATOES: James Kendrick

Send Email
Mail
Official Websites:
Q Network Film Desk

JAMES KENDRICK

""Movies are the art form most like man's imagination." -- Francis Ford Coppola

"Great movies are rarely perfect movies." -- Pauline Kael"

Agrees with the Tomatometer 79% of the time.

Biography: James Kendrick is the film and DVD critic at QNetwork.com, where he has worked since 1998. From 1996 to 1998, he wrote reviews at his own, now defunt web site, "Charle Don't Surf!" He is also an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Baylor University.

Favorites: Current All-Time Top 10 (Chronological Order)�Always Subject to Change Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916) Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946) Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966) Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967) 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969) The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) Best Films of 2004: 1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry) 2. Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood) 3. Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi) 4. The Aviator (Martin Scorsese) 5. Maria Full of Grace (Joshua Marston) 6. Before Sunset (Richard Linklater) 7. Sideways (Alexander Payne) 8. The Incredibles (Brad Bird) 9. Kill Bill Vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino) 10. Primer (Shane Carruth) Honorable Mention: Garden State (Zack Braff) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Alfonso Cuar�n) Mean Creek (Jacob Aaron Estes) The Bourne Supremacy (Paul Greengrass) The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson) Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (Kerry Conran) Mean Girls (David S. Waters) Spartan (David Mamet) Wish I could include: Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927) The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1929) M (Fritz Lang, 1931) Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) Ivan the Terrible Parts I & II (Sergei Eisenstein, 1945/1946) Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946) The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio De Sica, 1947) Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952) The Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953) Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954) The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959) 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963) Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968) Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah, 1971) Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972) Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972) Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974) Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero, 1978) Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979) Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) Dressed to Kill (Brian De Palma, 1980) Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980) Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986) Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989) Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg, 1993) Seven (David Fincher, 1995) Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) In the Mood for Love (Wong-Kar Wai, 2000)

Publications: Q Network Film Desk

Critics' Group: Online Film Critics Society

Total Reviews: 2356
Total QuickRatings: 8

Location: Waco, Texas

LISTING OF ALL REVIEWS & ARTICLES

# a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Results for All Genres

Showing 1 - 50 of 2356

Previous | Next

Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date (default)

Fresh 2.5/4	Rotten 46%	Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)	" The jokes don't always hit like they should, but there is a pleasant familiarity that mixes well with the sense of adventure to underscore the film's warm-n-fuzzy proclamations about the nature of family and togetherness." Posted Jul 5, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 88%	My Dinner With Andre (1981)	" What makes the film so intriguing and so beguiling and so utterly wonderful is the way it slowly reveals itself, uncoiling in ways that don't produce dramatic fireworks, but rather gradual realizations" Posted Jul 1, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Fresh 88%	Wise Blood (1979)	" strange, sub-Coen Brothers caricature that, especially when underscored with Alex North's deliberately hammy hillbilly music, never amounts to much more than a condescending tragicomic satire of spiritual emptiness" Posted Jun 30, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 86%	The Insect Woman (1963)	" an intriguing, albeit rough-edged, portrait of the struggles of womanhood in modern Japan" Posted Jun 30, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 91%	Glory (1989)	" one of the great war films and perhaps the greatest film ever made about the American Civil War" Posted Jun 30, 2009
Rotten 1.5/4	Rotten 28%	Land of the Lost (2009)	" perhaps the movie isn't quite weird enough, so instead of seeming inspired in its dementedness, it just seems inept and desperate" Posted Jun 30, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 100%	Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)	" a slow burn crime thriller that may lack flash, but is heavy with presence" Posted Jun 30, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Rotten 50%	The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009)	" Because of Scott's reliably indiscriminant overdirection, the film only works in fits and starts" Posted Jun 30, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 17%	Year One (2009)	" throws its comedy around with semi-reckless abandon, but never quite achieves more than a few good chuckles" Posted Jun 30, 2009
Rotten 1/4	Rotten 20%	Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)	" takes everything that was bad about the first Transformers movie two years ago, and amplifies it to deafening proportions" Posted Jun 30, 2009
Rotten 2.5/5	Rotten 35%	Friday the 13th - Part 2 (1981)	Click here to read article DVD REVIEW Posted Jun 30, 2009
Fresh 3/5	Fresh 78%	The Hangover (2009)	" a cleverly vulgar comedy that manages to take a tired conceit and make it feel inventive and consistently funny" Posted Jun 9, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 93%	Drag Me To Hell (2009)	" good, malicious fun that revels in its own absurdity, lack of lofty ambitions, and determination to drag you down with it" Posted Jun 3, 2009
Fresh 3/4	N/A	Man Hunt (1941)	" a daring film that explicitly prefigures the surge of anti-Nazi cinema that was to come" Posted Jun 2, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Rotten 44%	Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009)	" an amusing concept that still holds some charm now, although it also lends itself to bombastic overkill, which sequels are naturally inclined toward anyway" Posted Jun 1, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 97%	Up (2009)	" a wonderful, whimsical flight of fancy, a wild 3-D excursion into storybook delirium that is nonetheless firmly grounded in trecognizable human emotions" Posted Jun 1, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 37%	Angels & Demons (2009)	" one wonders how much more engrossing its nick-of-time shenanigans would have been had we cared for the central character ... or even found him remotely interesting" Posted May 29, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 67%	Is Anybody There? (2009)	" a quirky, sometimes schmaltzy British dramedy that mixes meaningful ruminations about growing old with broad black comedy" Posted May 29, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 91%	A Bug's Life (1998)	" pure joy--whimsical, funny, and downright entertaining" Posted May 29, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 32%	Terminator Salvation (2009)	" weighed down with so much grit and gloom that there's no fun left" Posted May 29, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 63%	The Brothers Bloom (2009)	" a confident and even touching bit of genre twisting, with its best moments providing plenty of anticipation for what else Johnson has up his sleeve" Posted May 29, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 85%	State of Play (2009)	" It doesn't have anything particularly profound to say, but its old-fashioned virtues make its depictions of dark dealings along the Potomac feel all too possible." Posted May 11, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 98%	The Wrestler (2008)	" Rourke wears his scars (both physical and emotional) with such naked humanity that his performance becomes a kind of on-screen outpouring of his own grief and waylaid potential" Posted May 11, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 85%	JCVD (2008)	" a bold attempt to humanize Van Damme, not by trying to ignore his personal and professional pitfalls, but by reminding us that behind ever movie star, loved or loathed, is a complex human being" Posted May 11, 2009
Rotten 1.5/4	Rotten 41%	Fighting (2009)	" pretty much everything you need to know about this by-the-numbers clunker is summarized in the one-word title" Posted May 11, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 18%	Obsessed (2009)	" a stylishly empty stab at the genre that makes no bones about its obviousness even as it introduces a deliberately racialized twist" Posted May 11, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 80%	The Hit (1985)	" really more of an exploration of the disjunction between exteriors and interiors, and while some may find it slow-going, those who see it for what it is will find it an intriguing portrait of human nature" Posted May 11, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 72%	The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)	" an outsized romantic epic built on a potentially flimsy bit of fantastical whimsy that instead becomes an affecting allegory for the fleeting joys of life" Posted May 11, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Rotten 36%	X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)	" never quite good or original enough to justify itself beyond an obvious extension of a money-making franchise that won't quit as long as the cash registers keep clanging" Posted May 11, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Rotten 46%	Battle for Terra (2009)	" an intriguing and frequently exciting experiment in using 3-D computer-generated animation for serious-minded entertainment" Posted May 11, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	N/A	Empire Of Passion (1978)	" a moody and beautiful film, engrossing and evocative" Posted May 11, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Fresh 84%	In the Realm of the Senses (1976)	" quickly becomes as monotonous as bluenoses accuse it of being prurient" Posted May 11, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 95%	Star Trek (2009)	" successfully crafts a new beginning that both honors the series' previous incarnations but also charts its own course using a clever time-traveling narrative that essentially creates an alternate Trek universe" Posted May 11, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 51%	Observe and Report (2009)	" a strange, slightly disconcerting, and at times aggressively insistent wince-inducing comedy" Posted Apr 17, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 100%	Danton (1983)	" does not give us easy grounding, but instead constantly challenges us to see each character within the context of both his convictions and the necessities of his political position" Posted Apr 14, 2009
Fresh 3/5	Fresh 89%	The Last Metro (1980)	Click here to read article DVD REVIEW Posted Apr 7, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 89%	The Last Metro (1980)	" although not one of Truffaut's strongest works, it is nevertheless a striking and engaging film, one that reflects the great filmmaker's love of artistic creation and its role in maintaining humanity" Posted Apr 6, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 88%	Adventureland (2009)	" has just enough oddball gags and adolescent humor to fill a two-minute trailer, but its heart and soul are deeply invested in the slightly shaky, awkward, geek-chic moroseness of indie-art dramedy" Posted Apr 5, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Fresh 72%	Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)	" a brightly colored mash-up of pop-culture gags that speeds at you so fast and furiously that it feels like a rush even if you can't remember much about it the next day" Posted Apr 2, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	N/A	Dodes 'Ka-Den (1970)	" even if the film does not stand up with Kurosawa's better known works, it is still an intriguing, if only semi-successful, experiment that suggests the great director's willingess to expand his palette" Posted Mar 30, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Rotten 18%	The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)	" works at times as an effectively creepy chiller that loses its way only near the end when it starts getting too sensationalistic for its own good" Posted Mar 29, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Fresh 66%	Duplicity (2009)	" has the kind of narrative trickery that draws us in, but it's ultimately up to the actors to keep us interested, and in this regard the film is something of a mixed bag" Posted Mar 28, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 82%	I Love You, Man (2009)	" finds room to celebrate the inner caveman without discarding all of the refinements" Posted Mar 25, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Fresh 65%	Quantum of Solace (2008)	" the tougher, rougher version of Bond as incarnated by Daniel Craig is harder than ever; already a steely and unflappable man of action, he's now driven by anger and vengeance, which turns Craig's flinty blue eyes into razor-sharp ice chips and every actio" Posted Mar 24, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Rotten 42%	The Last House on the Left (2009)	" rectifies the original's bizarre tonal range, but also dilutes its thematic power by completely discarding the critical portrayal of vengeance as a zero-sum game" Posted Mar 21, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Rotten 46%	The Robe (1953)	" Had it not been the first film shot in CinemaScope, very few people would probably still be talking about The Robe." Posted Mar 20, 2009
Fresh 2.5/4	Rotten 43%	Race to Witch Mountain (2009)	" a decent and at times entertaining bit of kid-centric fantastical escapism that alternates its hectic chase sequences and special effects spectacle with comedy involving government conspiracies and a geeky sci-fi convention." Posted Mar 19, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 96%	Silence of the Lambs (1991)	" All of its most enduring aesthetic qualities and themes%u2014essentially what sets it apart from so many imitators and established it almost immediately as a canonical film%u2014are contained in its riveting first 20 minutes, which draw you in like a stee" Posted Mar 18, 2009
Rotten 2.5/5	Fresh 73%	Primal Fear (1996)	Click here to read article DVD REVIEW Posted Mar 17, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 79%	Ashes of Time Redux (1994)	" The film's imagery is its most striking asset, creating an impressionistic sense of both vastness and intimacy that frequently overwhelms the characters and their problems." Posted Mar 12, 2009

Results for All Genres

Showing 1 - 50 of 2356

Previous | Next

Sort by Rating:
Sort results by this critic's rating. This option is only available for critics with a rating system (4 star, letter grade, 1-10, etc.)
Sort by T-meter:
Sort results by the Tomatometer (percentage of critics recommending a certain movie)

4/4	WALL-E Offsite
3.5/4	Persepolis Offsite
4/5	Michael Clayton Offsite
3/4	The Emperor Jones Offsite
3.5/5	Eastern Promises Offsite
2.5/4	30 Days of Night Offsite
3/5	3:10 to Yuma Offsite
2.5/5	In the Valley of Elah Offsite
2/4	Across the Universe Offsite
2/5	Lions for Lambs Offsite
1.5/4	The Unborn Offsite
1.5/5	Pathfinder Offsite
1/4	Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Offsite

0/4	Zombie Vs. Mardi Gras Offsite
0/4	Gummo Offsite
1/4	Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Offsite
1/4	The Hills Have Eyes II Offsite
1/4	Zombie Offsite
1/4	The Dukes of Hazzard Offsite
1/4	Exorcist: The Beginning Offsite
1/4	Caligula Offsite
1/4	Friday the 13th - Part 5: A New... Offsite
1/4	Wizard of Gore Offsite

JAMES KENDRICK

LISTING OF ALL REVIEWS & ARTICLES

Sort by Rating:

Sort by T-meter:

Best to Worst Sampling

Best Reviewed

Worst Reviewed

Sponsored Links