|
17%
|
The Happening (2008)
|
"Feeble gust of an environmental horror story."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
87%
|
Kung Fu Panda (2008)
|
"A master [course] in cunning visual art and ultra-satisfying entertainment."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
37%
|
You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008)
|
"It is simultaneously a little bit vulgar and a little bit sentimental and comes out as a virtually bullet-proof blend for the mass, summertime audience."
|
Richard Schickel
|
|
50%
|
Sex and the City (2008)
|
"Learning and hugging. There's lots of that here â" woman to woman and man to woman â" which satisfies the movie's fantasy fulfillment of both amity and eros."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
75%
|
The Firm (1993)
|
"Tom Cruise heads a tony cast in a best-seller movie that is firm at the start and infirm by the end."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
78%
|
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
|
"Once it gets going, Crystal Skull delivers smart, robust, familiar entertainment."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
99%
|
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
|
"Lavish in sets, adult in humor, it is a Broadway spectacle translated into make-believe."
|
Whittaker Chambers
|
|
39%
|
Speed Racer (2008)
|
"More than the story of the Racer family, Speed Racer is the visual autobiography of the Wachowskis and their pit crew of computer-nerd Einsteins, using the tools of their trade to transform the movie medium."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
27%
|
What Happens in Vegas (2008)
|
"Why do we have to suffer through movies like What Happens in Vegas, which is the worst-in-breed not only for this year, but very likely in living memory."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
90%
|
The Muppet Movie (1979)
|
"The transition from the yank-'em-off-if-they-bomb lunacy of the TV show to the coherent narration of the film is not a complete success."
|
John Skow
|
|
85%
|
Wayne's World (1992)
|
"Hollywood surely accepts the movie's message: laughter is the least expensive therapy. And audiences may happily parrot another Wayneism to Myers: 'He shoots! He scores!'"
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
68%
|
The Big Chill (1983)
|
"Funny and ferociously smart."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
67%
|
Redbelt (2008)
|
"It's still basically a boxing picture, not essentially different from dozens of other movies about life in and around what the old time sportswriters used to call 'the squared circle'. Mamet's circle is, alas, just a little too square."
|
Richard Schickel
|
|
93%
|
Iron Man (2008)
|
"It's Iron Man to the rescue, yanking movies and the worldwide box office out of its months-long doldrums and into the stratosphere."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
80%
|
Standard Operating Procedure (2008)
|
"All I am arguing here is that Morris's manner of relating this story is very often quite inappropriate to its substance."
|
Richard Schickel
|
|
63%
|
Baby Mama (2008)
|
"I'm not making claims that Baby Mama transcends the format's routine progressions -- opposites not only attract, they learn from each other -- only that, within these conventions, the movie is smart, funny and beguiling."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
53%
|
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008)
|
"Harold and Kumar are pothead patriots in the first feel-good torture film."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
84%
|
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
|
"This is a fairly low-keyed comedy, but a grown-up dropping in on it can appreciate its lack of frenzy, its fundamental good nature, as easily as its core audience will. It isn't exactly a gem, but as zircons go, it'll do."
|
Richard Schickel
|
|
11%
|
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008)
|
"The man made famous by Ferris Bueller, however, quickly wades into waters far too deep for him."
|
Jeffrey Kluger
|
|
50%
|
Smart People (2008)
|
"Call it a 'could see' -- something you can drop in on when you have nothing better to do and emerge from feeling not at all cheated by the experience."
|
Richard Schickel
|
|
76%
|
Silverado (1985)
|
"Agreeable but never compelling."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
52%
|
Leatherheads (2008)
|
"Maybe the film loses a little steam as it rolls along, but it is still puffing and tooting as Clooney and Zellweger ride off into the sunset."
|
Richard Schickel
|
|
89%
|
Trading Places (1983)
|
"Trading Places also makes Eddie Murphy a force to be reckoned with."
|
Richard Schickel
|
|
65%
|
Stop-Loss (2008)
|
"As a nation, we owe them more than they owe us -- as this painfully necessary and heartfelt movie makes abundantly clear."
|
Richard Schickel
|
|
25%
|
Drillbit Taylor (2008)
|
"Given the uninventive, not to say downright repetitive nature of the narrative, about all Drillbit has going for it is Wilson's star presence. Or should we say his often agreeable lack of presence."
|
Richard Schickel
|
|
83%
|
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
|
"In an age of post-Christian facetiousness, Martin Scorsese's work daringly attempts to restore passion and melodrama to the Gospel story."
|
|
|
85%
|
King of Kings (1961)
|
"Director Nicholas Ray makes few positive contributions."
|
|
|
80%
|
Soul Food (1997)
|
"Soul Food aims to be a banquet of feelings, but mostly it serves up tripe."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
79%
|
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! (2008)
|
"The movie proves a funny, elevating ride that should beguile the young and keep their parents or grandparents enthralled too. For once, the G rating stands for Glorious."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
55%
|
Married Life (2008)
|
"It's only about as interesting as...married life."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
67%
|
Snow Angels (2007)
|
"The film's success is due in large part to actors who are both faithful to all the social minutiae and seductive enough to keep you watching."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
95%
|
In the Name of the Father (1993)
|
"By the end of the movie, whether or not you're a member of Sinn Fein, the Brits' brutality toward the Conlons will get your Irish up."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
94%
|
The Counterfeiters (2007)
|
"Writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky tells [this story] with cool wit and subtle tension."
|
Richard Schickel
|
|
66%
|
Be Kind Rewind (2008)
|
"Be Kind Rewind declares that the riches of cinema history touch each of us personally. Films become so deep a part of us that we own them that our memories of them, whether faithful or fanciful, become their meanings."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
85%
|
Oliver! (1968)
|
"After a season of watching inane twitching in the name of dance, the viewer is most happily greeted by Onna White's choreography, an exuberant step-by-step exploration of Victorian zeal."
|
|
|
16%
|
Jumper (2008)
|
"So freakin' awful."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
80%
|
The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008)
|
"A pleasing melange under the direction of Mark Waters, who, after Freaky Friday and Mean Girls, is becoming the go-to auteur of traumatized youth."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
70%
|
Definitely, Maybe (2008)
|
"It is, I suppose, a premise, of sorts, but as writer-director Adam Brooks's Definitely, Maybe galumphs along, it is not a particularly romantic or comedic one."
|
Richard Schickel
|
|
80%
|
Fatal Attraction (1987)
|
"[The film brings] horror home to a place where the grownup moviegoer actually lives."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
97%
|
Body Heat (1981)
|
"Though Lawrence Kasdan's film is set in today's South Florida, its characters move through an atmosphere that suggests the confluences of decor and demeanor in a 1940s film noir."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
92%
|
Caramel (2008)
|
"Just another good-looking, gently humorous, pleasantly romanticized little comedy, which ends with everyone a little wiser than they began."
|
Richard Schickel
|
|
84%
|
The English Patient (1996)
|
"The cast is superb: Binoche, with her thin, seraphic smile; Scott Thomas, aware of the spell she casts but not flaunting it; Fiennes, especially, radiating sexy mystery, threat shrouded in hauteur. Doom and drive rarely have so much stately star quality."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
16%
|
Untraceable (2008)
|
"Untraceable really is disgraceable."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
98%
|
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
|
"Picturesquely soporific."
|
|
|
77%
|
Cloverfield (2008)
|
"We know only what they know, see what the videocamera sees. I.e., not much."
|
Richard Corliss
|
|
60%
|
End of the Game (Der Richter und sein Henker) (The Judge and His Hangman) ()
|
"The only emotion that the audience is likely to work up watching this unconscionable bore is an irresistible desire to be almost anywhere else but in the theater."
|
Richard Schickel
|
|
96%
|
Nanking (2007)
|
"I have rarely, if ever, seen a documentary reconstruction of a historical event that is so rich in firsthand (and well-preserved) photographic material."
|
Richard Schickel
|
|
74%
|
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)
|
"Call me a cynic, call me a curmudgeon, call me perverse -- I loved every moment of Dewey Cox's story."
|
Richard Schickel
|
|
78%
|
The Great Debaters (2007)
|
"The film may be manipulative in its construction, and cliché-ridden in some of the incidents it recounts, but it has a good, large heart."
|
Richard Schickel
|
|
57%
|
Love Story (1970)
|
"Ryan O'Neal gives the character of the neon scion a warmth and vulnerability entirely missing from the bestseller."
|
|
74%
21%
63%
85%
46%
40%
