Fresh 3/5
| Rotten 55%
| Disney's A Christmas Carol (2009) | "
Cinematographer Robert Presley and the design team provide many instances of graphical triumph, influenced by silent cinema." — Time Out Posted Nov 6, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 94%
| BirdWatchers (2009) | "
Writer-director-producer Marco Bechis’s absorbing story of struggle and survival carries its committed ethnographic and political passions lightly." — Time Out Posted Sep 18, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 61%
| Chiko (2008) | "
Impressive directorial skills, if a trite plotline, are on offer in Turkish-German writer-director Özgür Yildirim’s occasionally violent debut feature." — Time Out Posted Aug 21, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 95%
| Home (2009) | "
A first film of laudable ambition and Meier’s directorial confidence suggests promise for the future." — Time Out Posted Aug 7, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 29%
| Mad, Sad and Bad (2009) | "
A disconcerting fluctuation in tone – from sorrowful satire to cheesy sitcom – proves the film’s fatal flaw." — Time Out Posted Jul 31, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 74%
| Just Another Love Story (2009) | "
Ambitious cross-cutting and occasional bursts of strident music hint at psychologically complex parallels and readings that the film fails to deliver." — Time Out Posted Jul 24, 2009 |
Fresh 5/5
| Fresh 95%
| 35 Shots of Rum (2009) | "
Denis magically evokes a liberal meditation on family, harmony, loyalty and belonging and their corollaries – loss, transgression, loneliness and separation – and achieves a sweet unity." — Time Out Posted Jul 10, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 83%
| Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) | "
Longer than the last, the sixth episode of the adventures of the increasingly burdened magic warrior of Privet Drive is a more human affair than its predecessors." — Time Out Posted Jul 10, 2009 |
Rotten 1/5
| Rotten 45%
| New Town Killers (2009) | "
A seemingly self-mocking jumble of sour literary, cinematic, class and genre affectations." — Time Out Posted Jun 12, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 86%
| Accident () | "
'Accident’ now seems a little self-conscious in its modernist, ‘quality’ art-cinema pretensions." — Time Out Posted Jun 5, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 66%
| Fugitive Pieces (2008) | "
One of the most delicate, approachable and rewarding Holocaust movies of recent years." — Time Out Posted May 29, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 74%
| A Girl Cut in Two (2008) | "
This is one of Chabrol’s most elegant, acerbic and heartfelt entertainments in years." — Time Out Posted May 22, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 93%
| Slepe Lásky (2008) | "
Deliberately intimate, while never invasive, it’s a film that allows and shows vulnerability while never exploiting it." — Time Out Posted May 22, 2009 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 54%
| Cheri (2009) | "
The multi-talented and adaptable director Stephen Frears has produced one of his most dull, airless and conventional films." — Time Out Posted May 8, 2009 |
Fresh 3/6
| Fresh 87%
| Blue Eyelids (2008) | "
Ably mounted and shot, ‘Blue Eyelids’ is a welcome cliché-free zone, often touching and occasionally very funny, played out in a minor register suitable for the lives it describes." — Time Out Posted May 8, 2009 |
Fresh 3/6
| Fresh 84%
| State of Play (2009) | "
Despite the clichéd nature of much of the dialogue and the derivative thriller set-ups, ‘State of Play’ provides sufficient old-fashioned entertainment value to justify the ticket." — Time Out Posted Apr 24, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 96%
| Shifty (2008) | "
Creevy’s fine ear for dialogue, sensitive and productive direction of actors and confident control of tone is all the more impressive for being delivered under the short schedule and tight budgetary exigencies." — Time Out Posted Apr 24, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 86%
| Tony Manero (2009) | "
This tough, impassive, marvellous second feature from young Chilean Pablo Larraín exhibits a candour and keen eye for its ‘lower depths’ milieu worthy of Pasolini at his most austere and non-judgmental." — Time Out Posted Apr 9, 2009 |
Fresh 3/6
| Fresh 86%
| Fifty Dead Men Walking (2009) | "
Its lack of political nous and cinematic ambition makes it seem small on the big screen." — Time Out Posted Apr 9, 2009 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 54%
| The Boat That Rocked (2009) | "
‘The Ship That Sank’ would be a more appropriate title for writer-director Richard Curtis’s latest and most disappointing entertainment. It’s a cripplingly self-conscious and self-satisfied tribute." — Time Out Posted Apr 3, 2009 |
Fresh 3/6
| Rotten 57%
| Hush (2008) | "
Mark Tonderai’s debut makes for a smart calling card but relies on one tension-destroying cliché too many and offers too few thrills to satisfy the hardened horror buff." — Time Out Posted Mar 13, 2009 |
Fresh 3/6
| Fresh 85%
| Flame & Citron (2008) | "
It’s episodic and lengthy, but on the whole this is a well-sustained and surprisingly understated drama." — Time Out Posted Mar 6, 2009 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 88%
| Bolt (2008) | "
Disney’s first 3D animation, made under new head John Lasseter, is a likeable, dynamic and seductively characterised family entertainment." — Time Out Posted Feb 5, 2009 |
Fresh 5/6
| Fresh 94%
| Barry Lyndon (1975) | "
One of cinema’s most heartfelt and sustained (it runs over three hours), if cynical, visions of an individual’s powerlessness." — Time Out Posted Jan 30, 2009 |
Fresh 3/6
| Rotten 59%
| Paris 36 (2008) | "
Colourful, undemanding musical melodrama." — Time Out Posted Jan 30, 2009 |
Fresh 6/6
| Fresh 97%
| Notorious (1946) | "
It’s the accuracy, efficiency and control of Hitchcock’s direction that most impress. They enable him to dovetail the film’s thriller format and romantic story to dizzying, expressive and unique effect." — Time Out Posted Jan 16, 2009 |
Fresh 3/6
| Fresh 100%
| North Face (2008) | "
It’s the snow-bound scenery that really steals the show." — Time Out Posted Dec 12, 2008 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 85%
| Dean Spanley (2008) | "
This nicely acted drama, in quietly intimating the quirky familial relations and peculiar fascinations of the era – not least with the transmigration of souls, mysticism and the supernatural – delivers a highly pleasurable if modest experience." — Time Out Posted Dec 12, 2008 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 97%
| Trouble the Water (2008) | "
Essential, startling and distressing insight into what it was like to be in the eye of the Katrina storm if you were a poor, black resident of the Ninth Ward of New Orleans on Monday August 29 2005." — Time Out Posted Dec 5, 2008 |
Fresh 3/6
| Rotten 58%
| The Secret Life of Bees (2008) | "
There’s a purity, clarity and honesty to this feminist heart-warmer’s melodramatic instincts that make it surprisingly moving and satisfying." — Time Out Posted Dec 5, 2008 |
Fresh 3/6
| Fresh 72%
| Julia (2008) | "
It’s the slow burn of Swinton’s idiosyncratic but engrossing interpretation of this unlikely heroine that holds the movie together and provides an end result that is both affecting and teasingly different." — Time Out Posted Dec 5, 2008 |
Fresh 3/6
| Fresh 62%
| The Express (2008) | "
The sports-movie template is capable of absorbing any story and delivering the same uplift." — Time Out Posted Dec 5, 2008 |
Fresh 3/6
| Fresh 64%
| To Get To Heaven First You Have To Die (2006) | "
This finely directed but tough Tajik tale is part love story, part social critique." — Time Out Posted Nov 28, 2008 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 73%
| Año Uña (2008) | "
The major enjoyment of the film comes not from the experiment but its gentle meditations on belonging, loneliness, family, love and the nature of cultural, sexual and emotional boundaries. In addition, curiously, it’s beautifully acted." — Time Out Posted Nov 28, 2008 |
Fresh 5/6
| Fresh 61%
| Changeling (2008) | "
It’s a tough movie but also rewarding and inspiring: something of a quiet triumph." — Time Out Posted Nov 28, 2008 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 41%
| Blindness (2008) | "
Sadly, ‘Blindness’ may realise its director’s worst fear: to produce not only an exploitation B-movie but one, paradoxically, spoiled by its own integrity and misplaced ‘artistic’ mise-en-scène and intentions." — Time Out Posted Nov 21, 2008 |
Fresh 5/6
| Fresh 64%
| Belle Toujours (2006) | "
Beautifully, economically, directed, acted and photographed (by Sabine Lancelin), ‘Belle Toujours’ is essentially an affectionate, witty, often farcical jeu d’esprit, sweetly and knowingly bringing together the old-fashioned and the modern." — Time Out Posted Nov 21, 2008 |
Rotten 3/6
| Fresh 64%
| Quantum of Solace (2008) | "
Strange for a supposedly 'humanising' franchise, Craig's Bond comes dangerously close to being a cipher himself: only a Bourne-again, action superhero could perform his physical feats." — Time Out Sydney Posted Nov 19, 2008 |
Fresh 3/6
| Fresh 86%
| The Baader Meinhof Complex (2009) | "
As an action-packed pageant of events it is excitingly demonstrative and provocative, but as human drama it proves a mite too enigmatic and unyielding." — Time Out Posted Nov 14, 2008 |
Fresh 4/6
| Rotten 59%
| RocknRolla (2008) | "
Allowing for its air of laddish self-congratulation and its sad whiff of homophobia, Ritchie's film is arguably his most entertaining to date." — Time Out Sydney Posted Nov 7, 2008 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 34%
| Pride and Glory (2008) | "
Bloody, violent and increasingly derivative, ‘Pride and Glory’ betrays its initial promise as a small-scale, ‘Godfather’-esque social tapestry with crude plotting, variable acting and an all-too-guessable storyline and conclusion." — Time Out Posted Nov 7, 2008 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 75%
| OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2008) | "
This light-hearted pastiche is a recommended antidote to ‘Quantum of Solace’." — Time Out Posted Nov 7, 2008 |
Fresh 3/6
| Fresh 64%
| Quantum of Solace (2008) | "
A slightly disappointing, furiously-paced, hi-tech, slash-and-burn sequel to the more leisurely, luxurious first ‘reboot’, ‘Casino Royale’." — Time Out Posted Oct 30, 2008 |
Fresh 4/5
| Rotten 42%
| A Bloody Aria (2006) | "
Still, Won pulls off a rare trick: to be funny and frightening while continuing to ratch the tension up and up. Performances, too, are top notch." — Time Out Posted Oct 24, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 62%
| Zoolander (2001) | "
A fashion spoof draped over the bones of a puerile conspiracy adventure, this vanity comedy fails at every level barring its incidental details." — Time Out Posted Oct 18, 2008 |
Rotten 1/6
| N/A | Sisterhood (2008) | "
It may trade with startling unoriginality in the comedy of embarrassment and plays on national stereotypes, but at least it doesn’t take itself seriously – although, you suspect, it probably couldn’t if it tried." — Time Out Posted Oct 17, 2008 |
Fresh 3/6
| Rotten 39%
| The Rocker (2008) | "
As a movie, it may not rock, but it rolls along nicely enough." — Time Out Posted Oct 17, 2008 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 60%
| Bigga than Ben (2008) | "
The performances are spiky, the use of varied locations is fresh and the dialogue – ‘How could I ever imagine that I, a Moscow hooligan and Nazi would become a negro lover?’ – is warmingly non-exemplary." — Time Out Posted Oct 10, 2008 |
Rotten 2/6
| Rotten 37%
| Swing Vote (2008) | "
He shoots simultaneously for ‘wake up, America!’ inspiration and good ol’ boy charm but ends up putting both barrels through his own cowboy-booted foot." — Time Out Posted Sep 26, 2008 |
Fresh 4/6
| Fresh 92%
| Alexandra (2008) | "
It’s also quietly challenging, in its own way, not least in its portrait of old age, its trials, new freedoms and the privilege of changing one’s mind before it becomes too late." — Time Out Posted Sep 26, 2008 |
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