Rotten
| Rotten 16%
| Planet 51 (2009) | "
Like the alien town of Glipforg at its core, Planet 51 offers attractions that are just a little too familiar to take the viewer out of this world." — Channel 4 Film Posted Nov 30, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 47%
| The Box (2009) | "
all at once an engrossing genre piece, an exceptional exercise in expansive adaptation, and a complex moral allegory, so that this is a Box that requires a lot of unpacking - which of course makes it the gift that keeps on giving..." — Eye for Film Posted Nov 23, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Lone Wolf and Cub - Baby Cart at the River Styx (1972) | "
...where shock, violence and disgust are presented as heroic responses to the status quo, and where revenge is an attitude born out of present sociopolitical iniquities." — Little White Lies Posted Nov 19, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 71%
| Lone Wolf and Cub - Sword of Vengeance (1972) | "
The very first act we see Itto perform is the Shogun-sanctioned beheading of a very young boy, immediately suggesting that there is something deeply wrong with the order that this Official Executioner is duty-bound to uphold" — Little White Lies Posted Nov 19, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Lone Wolf and Cub - White Heaven in Hell (1974) | "
the last film in the series, White Heaven in Hell, holds the all-time record for the most on-screen deaths perpetrated by an individual character in a single film" — Little White Lies Posted Nov 19, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| For All Mankind (1989) | "
It could be argued that the Apollo missions were essentially a big, expensive photo opportunity for the propaganda machine of the Cold War, but Reinert's film serves to remind us that they also redefined who, where and why we are." — Little White Lies Posted Nov 13, 2009 |
Rotten
| N/A | It's Alive (2009) | "
Bijou Phillips... lacks the presence let alone the gravitas to carry off the tragedy of having created her own monster, and so the film's examination of maternity and madness falls short" — Little White Lies Posted Nov 13, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 62%
| Love The Beast (2009) | "
'non-car people' will find themselves forced into the position of disengaged anthropologist, observing all the vehicular bump and grind without gaining any real insight or emotional connection from the experience." — Eye for Film Posted Nov 13, 2009 |
Fresh 4.5/5
| Fresh 100%
| Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno () | "
This 'unmaking-of' documentary is as mesmerisingly compelling as its subject might have been, and adds some splendidly disorienting reels to the cinema of anxiety. Unmissable - even if we all missed the film at its centre." — Channel 4 Film Posted Nov 6, 2009 |
Rotten
| N/A | Summer's Moon (2009) | "
Demarbre's direction is at times clunkily pedestrian, but there is definitely something to the film's genetic themes and ambiguous ending that might just broaden the horizons of any Greene fans who have come expecting another Twilight" — Little White Lies Posted Nov 6, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 67%
| Carriers (2009) | "
it abandons these models of action, comedy and the supernatural, preferring instead to root its horror in the grimly realistic human drama of four random wanderers gradually losing everyone and everything that they hold dear." — Eye for Film Posted Nov 4, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 45%
| Jennifer's Body (2009) | "
Occupying similar territory to Heathers (1988), Ginger Snaps (2000) and Teeth (2007), Karyn Kusama's film is sharp, witty and diabolically funny" — Eye for Film Posted Nov 4, 2009 |
Rotten
| N/A | Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (2009) | "
amid all its man-traps, macho posturing and monetary moralising, this is an overfamiliar exercise in by-numbers filmmaking that always seems merely to be coasting on auto-pilot. No wonder it took the wrong turn..." — Eye for Film Posted Nov 4, 2009 |
N/A | Fresh 83%
| Paranormal Activity (2009) | "
Peli exhibits paranormal skill at escalating tension, so that even the most banal visual elements... quickly become associated with unbearable menace and foreboding." — Eye for Film Posted Nov 4, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 80%
| Survival of the Dead (2009) | "
As always, Romero uses his zombie framework to expose the monstrousness of the living, in this case focusing on the (self-)destructive human need for divisive lines in the sand." — Eye for Film Posted Nov 4, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Rotten 43%
| Lala Pipo - A Lot of People () | "
A Tokyo Story (or six) about urban alienation - although Ozu never thought to include a talking penis in his oeuvre. Masayuki Miyano's debut may be flashily outrageous and upbeat, but its laughs are rooted in the misery of modern humanity." — Channel 4 Film Posted Nov 3, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 83%
| Paranormal Activity (2009) | "
It's a bit of The Exorcist, a bit of Poltergeist, a bit of The Blair Witch Project and a bit of Lost Highway - and it all adds up to a whole lot of scary." — Channel 4 Film Posted Nov 3, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Fresh 89%
| The White Ribbon (2009) | "
As an anatomisation of the insular envy, malice and brutality that would lead to the rise of Nazism, The White Ribbon is clinically precise - but also just a little dull." — Channel 4 Film Posted Nov 3, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Nang mai (2009) | "
Nymph is ultimately like [its] lengthy opening shot - deliberately paced, oblique and somewhat meandering... and leaving the viewer to puzzle out what they have seen, and what might have gone on in the shadowy ellipses that have remained off-screen" — Eye for Film Posted Nov 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 72%
| The Boys Are Back (2009) | "
An affecting blend of warm comedy and high pathos, The Boys Are Back brings an unusual all-male perspective to its otherwise familiar themes of domesticity, death and dysfunction." — Eye for Film Posted Oct 30, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 91%
| Love Exposure () | "
Ambitious, inventive and endlessly arresting, Sion Sono's epic romance is a vibrant rite of passage, guiding us through a world of repression, hypocrisy and delusion towards true love." — Channel 4 Film Posted Oct 30, 2009 |
Rotten
| N/A | Nowhere Boy (2009) | "
There is something a bit bland, a bit kitchen sink, a bit telemovie, about this portrait of the artist as a young man." — Eye for Film Posted Oct 30, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Last Thakur (2008) | "
Sadik Ahmed is less interested in cowboy movie pastiche than in an intense drama of misunderstandings, madness and murder." — Little White Lies Posted Oct 29, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 86%
| Trick 'r Treat (2009) | "
there is something traditional, something classical, in the festively macabre stories that fill Dougherty's script" — Little White Lies Posted Oct 29, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 73%
| Starsuckers (2009) | "
Atkins manages to convey a mass of information in a highly palatable form, at the same time as prompting his viewers to challenge and scrutinise everything that they see and hear - including, of course, his own arguments." — Eye for Film Posted Oct 28, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Valhalla Rising (2009) | "
Christianity collides with paganism, nature rubs up against culture, heaven is confused with hell, and everything in this sparse allegorical landscape takes on the metaphysical qualities of a symbol." — Eye for Film Posted Oct 27, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 56%
| 9 (2009) | "
Pamela Pettler's screenplay sucks out the very soul of Acker's original creations, leaving little behind but a ghost-like shell, pretty to look at, but free from any substance" — Channel 4 Film Posted Oct 26, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| A Prophet (2009) | "
for all its gripping excitement as a thriller, and its grim realism as a sociopolitical exposé of life inside, A Prophet is also concerned with the mysterious processes of education, assimilation and transfiguration." — Eye for Film Posted Oct 25, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Colin (2008) | "
Like many a cadaver, Colin certainly has its share of roughnesses and blemishes, but these can be overlooked for the memory of the life that was. It is an elegy for the end of days, full of love, loss and hopeless longing." — Eye for Film Posted Oct 20, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 50%
| Automaton Transfusion (2006) | "
ineptly scripted, amateurishly edited, poorly acted, ugly looking and determinedly adolescent in its focus. Worst of all, it is entirely without subtext - and a zombie flick without subtext is like a bottle without the wine." — Eye for Film Posted Oct 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) | "
a fantastic adaptation that manages to surpass its source material while staying entirely true to its spirit." — Eye for Film Posted Oct 19, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 73%
| The Road (2009) | "
pure, stripped-down bleakness, both in the desaturated drabness of its appearance and in the last-days essentialism of its themes." — Eye for Film Posted Oct 18, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Inside (2007) | "
it is only after the closing credits have rolled and your fists have unclenched that the film's ambiguities and irrationalities return, not unlike Dalle's creepy 'femme', to haunt you." — Little White Lies Posted Oct 16, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 81%
| Triangle (2009) | "
Without question Smith's most mature film to date, and one of the best (and most bewildering) genre films of 2009." — Channel 4 Film Posted Oct 16, 2009 |
Fresh 4.5/5
| Fresh 84%
| Pontypool (2009) | "
This unsettlingly quirky account of semiological breakdown and small-town apocalypse plays like My Winnipeg for fans of intellectual horror. Pontypool is as astonishing as it is original, and amply repays multiple viewings." — Channel 4 Film Posted Oct 16, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 87%
| Johnny Mad Dog (2008) | "
Raw, harrowing and unforgiving, Johnny Mad Dog is hardly easy to enjoy, but impossible to forget." — Channel 4 Film Posted Oct 14, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 85%
| Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009) | "
No film by Herzog has ever been so defiantly mainstream - and yet this remains one of the director's craziest, most outlandish affairs. Finding a way out the other side of that contradiction is half the fun for the incredulous viewer" — Eye for Film Posted Oct 12, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Head Against the Wall (1958) | "
commenting on the difficult dynamic between freedom and control within any system... it is an important missing link between the cinéma du papa and the emerging nouvelle vague" — Little White Lies Posted Oct 12, 2009 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Fresh 82%
| Thirst (2009) | "
The heart of Thirst may be a vampire film but its soul is a morality play, while its flesh is a sensuous playground of desire." — Channel 4 Film Posted Oct 5, 2009 |
Rotten 3/5
| Fresh 78%
| I P Man (2009) | "
Ip Man is a highly competent, even slick biopic, but by reshaping its protagonist's life story towards cinematic convention, it ends up being just another martial arts movie." — Channel 4 Film Posted Oct 4, 2009 |
Fresh 5/5
| Rotten 58%
| Vinyan (2008) | "
Without resorting to cheap frights or bogeymen, Vinyan locates its horror in the human heart of darkness." — Little White Lies Posted Oct 4, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Pig Hunt (2008) | "
shows a real adeptness at confounding the viewer with all manner of genre-bound elements presented in gleefully unpredictable combinations... which merge into a much bigger picture, way beyond the bounds of conventional genre cinema" — Little White Lies Posted Oct 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Rogue (2008) | "
a slick, serviceable nature's revenge flick...[but] one can almost feel the clashing instincts of McLean and his Hollywood executive producers the Weinsteins, with the hokey spirit of Crocodile Dundee winning out in the end." — Little White Lies Posted Oct 2, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 89%
| Zombieland (2009) | "
A funride through zombified American society, full of genuinely hilarious lines and situations." — Little White Lies Posted Oct 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 57%
| Vinyan (2008) | "
Without resorting to cheap frights or bogeymen, Vinyan locates its horror in the human heart of darkness." — Little White Lies Posted Oct 2, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 85%
| White Lightnin' (2009) | "
From its bleakly comic beginning to its fire-and-brimstone ending, this artful trailer-trash quasi-biopic will set your heart pounding and your feet tapping." — Channel 4 Film Posted Sep 25, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 86%
| Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009) | "
As a hyperbolic exposé of unnatural obesity and environmental destruction, in many ways this serves as an unacknowledged prequel to the post-apocalyptic nightmare envisaged in Wall-E. Chew (and choke) on that!" — Little White Lies Posted Sep 18, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Dynamic: 1 - The Best of DavidLynch.com (2006) | "
[a] sense of something presented merely in embryo, but full of suggestion and possibility, marks most of the material in this collection... no fan of Lynch will be able to resist peering into this box of half-formed ideas." — Eye for Film Posted Sep 11, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 88%
| Adventureland (2009) | "
Add to this some winningly low-key performances, a slacker sensibility that refuses to subscribe to the American Dream, and some genuine laughs, and you have a film that feels both wise and real." — Eye for Film Posted Sep 10, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 77%
| Chevolution (2008) | "
Like the ubiquitous image that it celebrates, this documentary says many things about history, culture and ideology, without ever seeming anything less than clear and compelling." — Channel 4 Film Posted Sep 10, 2009 |
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