Splat |
The 11th Hour (2007) |
"Seeming to cater to the ADD generation even as it tackles a subject of enormous scope, The 11th Hour doesn't quite get the job done." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
2 Days In Paris (2007) |
"Delpy wrangles her metaphors without showing too much strain, and the performances are too lovely and guileless to fault." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Air Guitar Nation (2007) |
"There are enough endearing characters and charming trash talk to keep what is essentially a one-note joke running toward the spastic crescendo with alacrity." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Alpha Dog (2007) |
"Watching it is like being trapped at the biggest boneheaded gathering of snowballing stupidity you can imagine" |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
American Cannibal - The Documentary (2006) |
"For all of its self-consciously sophisticated layering, American Cannibal manages a few authentically dark moments of its own." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
American Hardcore (2006) |
"Rachman's chronicle suffers not from a shortage of authentic footage of ready-made hardcore shows, complete with (completely necessary) subtitled lyrics, or doughy, balding, talking heads still bragging about the thrown punches and peed-on chicks of yeste" |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Apocalypto (2006) |
"Gibson has grown increasingly bald-faced with his thematic (if you can call them that) preoccupations, dropping the markers in his path like bloody footprints." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
The Architect (2006) |
"It is frustrating to watch the film blow some respectable capital on indulgence in narrative frippery." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Away From Her (2007) |
"There is real grace in Polley's portrait of a couple that stays together long enough to forget." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Babel (2006) |
"A better title for this film would have been "Murphy's Law," as Inarritu has a relentless grip on the banality of its tenets." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
The Band's Visit (2007) |
"A truly lovely film, as patient and generous with its characters as viewers should be with its delicately latent politics and occasional over-love of eccentric tableaux." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Becoming Jane (2007) |
"Lay back and don't think of England -- or Austen -- is the best advice I can give for prospective viewers of Becoming Jane." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Black Book (2007) |
"The overall tone is best described as glossy, where the gossamer-thin conceits are exactly as they should be." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Breaking and Entering (2007) |
"A script so larded up with consciousness-raising claptrap and milky, synthesized epiphanies, there's no way you can stomach it." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Brooklyn Rules (2007) |
"Brooklyn Rules has enough heart and personality to freshen what could easily be construed as stale cannoli." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
The Business Of Being Born (2008) |
"Director Abby Epstein is clearly biased in favor of home birth, but that doesn't make her case any less square." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Caramel (2008) |
"Labaki infuses her story of beauty, friendship, longing and constraint with that so painfully epitomized in the plight of her native Lebanon." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Cassandra's Dream (2008) |
"Farrell's performance is the highlight in this uneven English blend of high drama and afternoon telly." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Catch a Fire (2006) |
"Noyce's blockbuster tour of duty has equipped him with the skills to bring some of the 20th century's most resonant stories to the masses, dressed in the lean gloss of satisfying thrillers." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Charlie Wilson's War (2007) |
"Nichol's and Co.'s foreign policy caper puts up a decent fight, but Hoffman wins the War." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Color Me Kubrick (2007) |
"The decision to execute the story as a kind of extended meta-sitcom -- a series of set-ups without the tidy resolution -- feels like a cheat." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Days of Glory (2006) |
"A long-view history lesson and emotionally solvent treatment of the North African role in WWII that redresses the still-lingering issue in France." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Dedication (2007) |
"Moore is such a smooth and comfortable presence onscreen that the at times embarrassingly naked framework of David Bromberg's screenplay seems almost believable." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Definitely, Maybe (2008) |
"Brooks deserves credit for a fairly satisfying survey of a heart wanting what it wants, thinking it wants what it doesn't want, wanting the first thing again and then waking up to what it needs." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Deliver Us From Evil (2006) |
"Berg's portrait of a sociopath is as chilling as any in recent memory." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Dreamgirls (2006) |
"Condon and his cast have crafted the richest yet least guilty pleasure of the season, a film so daringly flawed and benign and ambitious and genuine that even a skeptic can fall in love with it." |
S.T. VanAirsdale |
Splat |
Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) |
"As insistent on its emotional grandiosity as it is completely meaningless." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Evening (2007) |
"All emotion registers as melodrama, though the flushed and flustered parts do not cohere into a melodramatic (i.e. generic) whole." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Exterminating Angels (2007) |
"A very straightforward, if absurdly executed, argument in favor of not just the director's innocence, but the essential hysterical whorishness lying dormant in the modern female." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Fast Food Nation (2006) |
"It's a shame that film is as priggish, poorly constructed and plug earnest as it is." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Fay Grim (2007) |
"Hartley has chosen the hallmark of a great remake -- reinvention -- in approaching the concept of the sequel, for better and for worse." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman (2007) |
"A mosaic of experience and endeavor reconsidered as human (in this case, very much female) experiment." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006) |
"The idea of growth as metaphor truly runs wild in Fur, until the thicketry of meaning and subtext becomes more dense than meaningful, and your attention is stopped, finally, at the surface of Nicole Kidman's placid full moon of a face." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Georgia Rule (2007) |
"There is formidable dramatic force behind many of the interchanges, but the balance between them is too tenuous, with Marshall tending toward glib mishandling of the gravely serious aspects of his story." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Gone Baby Gone (2007) |
"The film doesn't fully click into the register Affleck seems to be going for -- that of a talky, tense, intricately woven urban opera of greed (both emotional and monetary), ambition and ethical relativism." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams (2007) |
"Jasmila Zbanic's writing and directing debut takes a personal look at a citizenry reeling in the aftermath of war." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
The Hoax (2007) |
"The idea of what is and isn't plausible gets a lot of chiding play in The Hoax, and it's one that could have used more consideration in the formulation of its swell-talking centerpiece." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
The Holiday (2006) |
"Meyers gives it an honest shot, but she can't distract from a paint-by-numbers plot just by having us watch it dry." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
The Hottest State (2006) |
"Hawke telegraphs the banal, delusional, pretentious aspects of being 21 and in love too well, and without fully transforming them into something of substance." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Interview (2007) |
"Sprawling its intriguing capital in all directions, Interview falls short even in reaching that commonest of denominators: the cinematic puff piece." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
The Italian (2007) |
"Russian director Kravchuck offers a painful but ultimately hopeful look at what is clearly his beloved country." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
The Jane Austen Book Club (2007) |
"Time was clearly taken here to do better than fine with material that had a sizeable no-brainer audience built right into the title." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Jimmy Carter Man From Plains (2007) |
"Carter's life and work deserve a fuller accounting and analysis than Demme is finally able to provide." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Jindabyne (2007) |
"Jindabyne musters all the emotional momentum of a reflecting pool despite a solid cast and fertile premise." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Juno (2007) |
"Once it gets past some serious tonal overkill, Juno's sweetness feels earned." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
The Kingdom (2007) |
"A kill-'em-all action flick that attempts to elevate itself with clumsy, rock 'n roll politics, dropping actual names and articles of political currency like catchphrases." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
The Kite Runner (2007) |
"Dolefully faithful to its source in the broad strokes, almost none of the book's cultural engagement sneaks through." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Knocked Up (2007) |
"Judd Apatow makes me want to be a dude." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
La Vie En Rose (2007) |
"La Vie En Rose operates in a mode of excellence that ultimately becomes more concerned with exploring itself than the subject at hand." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Lagerfeld Confidential (2007) |
"The fragments from much of the day-in-the-life footage feel frustratingly devoid of a guiding context." |
Michelle Orange |
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