Critics » Lawrence Toppman » Rotten
Lawrence Toppman

Lawrence Toppman

Agrees with the Tomatometer 72% of the time.

Publications:
Baltimore Sun , Charlotte Observer
Critics' Group:
Southeastern Film Critics Association
Total Reviews:
1317
Total QuickRatings:
2

Worst Reviewed Films

Showing 1 - 50 of 1315
Previous | Next
Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
0/4 27% Waist Deep (2006) " The dialogue by Curtis-Hall and Darin Scott is a degrading string of profanities and inanities, interspersed with sadism and exploitation of women. Their opinion of their target audience should depress moviegoers of any color." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Jun 23, 2006
.5/4 7% Basic Instinct 2 (2006) " Praising her [Stone] for flaunting herself is like applauding George Foreman for climbing into another ring or TV commercial whenever someone holds out a paycheck." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Mar 31, 2006
53% City of Ember (2008) " The film adapts Jeanne Duprau's novel with visual flair and vague, clumsy storytelling." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Oct 10, 2008
62% Hamlet 2 (2008) " [It] starts with a zany idea, carried out with energy and a mild sense of anarchy; then the film loses steam and settles for a conventional ending that doesn't give us a payoff." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Aug 22, 2008
39% Henry Poole Is Here (2008) " I felt let down by Henry Poole Is Here, which seriously examines questions of religious faith until it skips away at last from being pinned down." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Aug 15, 2008
82% Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) " Allen's laziness is startling, even in so mechanical a filmmaker. He uses a monotonous narrator to tell us what the characters think and do, though he then shows them performing the actions that have just been described." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Aug 15, 2008
1/4 13% The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) " It's barely possible that Mummy 3 is a colossal in-joke, a spoof of all the adventure movies that have drab actors, laughable computer-generated effects, a threadbare plot, continuity lapses and one-liners that repeatedly fall flat." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Jul 31, 2008
1/4 45% The Strangers (2008) " Speedman remains comatose, though Tyler flickers fitfully to life. The mournful look on her face suggests she's remembering the days when she was given more psychologically complex scripts, such as Armageddon." — Charlotte Observer
Posted May 29, 2008
56% Flawless (2008) " Banal or bogus." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Apr 18, 2008
39% Feast of Love (2007) " Director Robert Benton and writer Allison Burnett don't give us time to breathe. Characters meet, fall in love and set out on condensed journeys of self-discovery at top speed, as if their lives consisted entirely of momentous events." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Sep 28, 2007
1/4 39% Hot Rod (2007) " Once again, something that might have been a faintly amusing sketch on Saturday Night Live -- maybe even a tolerable 30-minute short, had the writing been more clever -- gets tortured into the shape of a feature film." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Aug 3, 2007
1/4 5% Because I Said So (2007) " Lehmann must've hoped Keaton's appealing daffiness would offset the character's repulsive behavior, but it doesn't." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Feb 1, 2007
1/4 54% Alpha Dog (2007) " Has the most unappetizing film of 2007 really arrived just 12 days into the New Year? Alpha Dog will face contenders for that title, but it sets the bar high." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Jan 12, 2007
72% Flushed Away (2006) " ...Brilliantly designed, frantically paced, sadly soulless and immediately forgettable." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Nov 3, 2006
1/4 22% The Quiet (2006) " Babbit clumsily underlines emotional moods." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Aug 31, 2006
1/4 18% Shadowboxer (2005) " I'd sooner sit through 32 hours of Congressional committee testimony about imported yarn than watch Shadowboxer again." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Aug 4, 2006
1/4 19% The Wild (2006) " I've never seen a less interesting animated film from that studio in 45 years, stretching all the way back to my first viewing of Dumbo in 1961." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Apr 14, 2006
65% Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic (2005) " She's like a child who's discovered that adults can be disturbed by dirty words and runs through her repertoire at Mommy's cocktail party." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Dec 16, 2005
1/4 46% The Ice Harvest (2005) " This Harvest yields nothing but chaff." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Nov 23, 2005
1/4 6% A Sound of Thunder (2005) " Some of this might have passed muster in a Twilight Zone episode, which would have been an ideal home for such a tale." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Sep 2, 2005
1/4 25% House of Wax (2005) " The filmmakers have one good idea ... Otherwise, the picture remains imagination-free." — Charlotte Observer
Posted May 6, 2005
1/4 78% Sin City (2005) " Talking bluntly about sex for five minutes will earn an NC-17. Showing it frankly for one minute will do the same. Maiming and slaying people in close-up for two hours -- and delighting in it -- will get you only an R." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Apr 1, 2005
1/4 10% The Wedding Date (2005) " The film's generic nature extends to everything about it: the unengaging cinematography, haphazard editing, emptily jaunty score, even use of locations." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Feb 4, 2005
1/4 1% Alone in the Dark (2005) " I didn't see director Uwe Boll's zombie dud House of the Dead, but on the evidence of Alone in the Dark, he belongs in the pantheon of hopelessly inept directors." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Jan 28, 2005
43% Beyond the Sea (2004) " Proves Spacey knows Darin's ambitions, egotism, controlling nature, swinging performance style, family dynamics and lifelong fear of the early death that came in 1973 -- everything, I think, except that he's miscast as Darin's idol." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Dec 30, 2004
53% The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) " If that's true, maybe Anderson is wearing his heart on his sleeve for the first time: He could be paying wry tribute to the medium, showing real love for the process that lets him use his offbeat gifts. But I wouldn't bet on it." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Dec 24, 2004
1/4 16% Alexander (2004) " An act of hubris so huge that, in Alexander's time, it would draw lightning bolts from contemptuous gods. Today it will get sniggers from stunned critics and a collective yawn from a public unlikely to share Stone's egomania." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Nov 24, 2004
39% Birth (2004) " The film can only be enjoyed as laugh-out-loud camp." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Oct 28, 2004
1/4 23% Wicker Park (2004) " Depends on coincidences so remote and behavior so improbable that they couldn't take place once in a millennium." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Sep 3, 2004
1/4 9% Catwoman (2004) " Catwoman is destined not for a Mystery Science Theater 3000 fate but for immortality as one of the subtlest, most thorough parodies I've ever seen." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Jul 22, 2004
1/4 31% Around the World in 80 Days (2004) " Days represents everything that over-budgeted Hollywood can possibly get wrong in a period piece." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Jun 18, 2004
24% Stateside (2004) " Writer-director Reverge Anselmo has created a movie of ineptness so perfect and unified as to boggle the mind." — Charlotte Observer
Posted May 21, 2004
1/4 6% Johnson Family Vacation (2004) " Writers Todd R. Jones and Earl Richey Jones, who make their feature film debut after brief careers in television sitcoms, have no sense of how to sustain a gag or make it pay off." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Apr 7, 2004
1% Twisted (2004) " No one associated with the film tries very hard, from cinematographer Peter Deming -- San Francisco has never looked so drab -- to composer Mark Isham, whose watery jazz score is meant to summon melancholy but merely relieves insomnia." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Feb 26, 2004
27% Paycheck (2003) " The first third builds up suspense through dialogue, plotting, ambiguity. Then Woo apparently recalls that he's expected to fill pictures with chases, explosions and 'stylish' trademarks." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Dec 25, 2003
1/4 10% Dr. Seuss - The Cat in the Hat (2003) " 82 of the most wretched minutes ever imprinted on celluloid." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Nov 21, 2003
63% Love Actually (2003) " The film has no plot but nine subplots, which are four too many." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Nov 7, 2003
34% Wonderland (2003) " It's theoretically possible to make a fascinating film about a thieving, self-indulgent, freebasing, treacherous scumbag who pimps his girlfriend to a gangster and contributes nothing to society. Wonderland isn't that film." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Oct 24, 2003
1/4 36% The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) " I don't know if Nispel and Scott Kosar, who make their feature film debuts here, are the worst director and writer in the world, though they might well represent the United States if anyone holds a competition." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Oct 17, 2003
85% Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) " A bloated, simplistic, cartoonishly violent film." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Oct 10, 2003
66% Out of Time (2003) " Except for Sanaa Lathan, who sears the screen in a brief appearance, director Carl Franklin and his cast seem to realize they're making a second-tier thriller." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Oct 3, 2003
95% Lost In Translation (2003) " Coppola lacks a firm grip on this material, and it starts to get away from her midway through." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Sep 26, 2003
59% Secondhand Lions (2003) " [Caine and Duvall] lift this button-pushing blob of faux folksiness to a higher plane than it deserves." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Sep 19, 2003
36% Le Divorce (2003) " Like the cold froth off a latte without any caffeine buzz underneath." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Aug 29, 2003
23% Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003) " JC2 is the simplest, stupidest kind of shockfest." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Aug 29, 2003
1/4 18% The Medallion (2003) " The cheapest looking, least exciting, least funny Chan project I've ever seen." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Aug 22, 2003
48% S.W.A.T. (2003) " S.W.A.T. is like a chauvinist on a first date." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Aug 8, 2003
77% L'Auberge Espagnole (Pot Luck)(Euro Pudding)(The Spanish Apartment) (2003) " Even when I was in grad school, I'd have found this film excruciatingly long, juvenile, self-indulgent and implausible." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Jul 25, 2003
28% How to Deal (2003) " The movie betrays the books, as director Clare Kilner and writer Neena Beber throw together a generalized hodgepodge of events." — Charlotte Observer
Posted Jul 18, 2003
17% The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) " What a riveting movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen might have been! And what a rickety mess it turned out to be when the people responsible lost faith in the origin of the material!" — Charlotte Observer
Posted Jul 11, 2003
Showing 1 - 50 of 1315
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)

Best to Worst Sampling

Best Reviewed

More...

Worst Reviewed

More...
Help | About | Jobs | Critics Submission | API | Licensing | Mobile
Copyright © Flixster, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright Policy | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Ad Choices