Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) | "
There's something defiant in the charms of Fantastic Mr. Fox, a nose-thumbing mischief that underlies and yet is of a piece with the film's conspiratorial cheer." — Movieline Posted Nov 11, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 83%
| Four Seasons Lodge (2009) | "
What's surprising about a documentary with such an obvious hook is its unforced but trenchant look at the crisis of faith dividing a small group of mostly Polish Jews who suffered through one of the most godless blights on human history." — Village Voice Posted Nov 10, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | You Cannot Start Without Me: Valery Gergiev - Maestro (2009) | "
Footage from various rehearsals (Gergiev is imported to orchestras around the world, like a talisman) gives a strong sense of his struggle to locate and elicit the emotional effect he seeks from his musicians." — Village Voice Posted Oct 27, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 49%
| Antichrist (2009) | "
The film's incoherence breaks von Trier's trademark wave of sensibility into something lesser, something all too easily understood." — Movieline Posted Oct 25, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 20%
| Amelia (2009) | "
Every scene is glazed with a kind of Cheez Whiz glow." — Movieline Posted Oct 23, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 26%
| Motherhood (2009) | "
Dieckmann nails the look of a certain niche of urban neo-middle-class living, but the film's hyper-earnest tone and reliance on "day-from-hell" New York clichés overwhelm those details." — Village Voice Posted Oct 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 70%
| Where the Wild Things Are (2009) | "
Jonze's determination to connect adults to existential concepts of childhood is a risky move for a film that perhaps falls several risks short of brilliance." — Movieline Posted Oct 20, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 23%
| Law Abiding Citizen (2009) | "
Has the audience for these kinds of films demanded this sort of torture-porn titillation from their popcorn thrillers?" — Movieline Posted Oct 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 42%
| New York, I Love You (2009) | "
The most effective entries -- bring both bitter and sweet to their snapshots of this city's most cherished and elusive quality: intimacy." — Village Voice Posted Oct 14, 2009 |
Fresh 7/10
| Fresh 94%
| An Education (2009) | "
A striking yet strikingly conventional film." — Movieline Posted Oct 12, 2009 |
Fresh 6.5/10
| Fresh 94%
| Good Hair (2009) | "
Rock and his director Jeff Stilson have clearly touched a nerve that was ready to blow." — Movieline Posted Oct 12, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 25%
| Adventures of Power (2009) | "
The film -- despite some successful goofs and a defiantly dorky Phil Collins tribute -- can't quite win for trying." — Village Voice Posted Oct 6, 2009 |
Fresh 6.5/10
| Fresh 86%
| A Serious Man (2009) | "
It all feels mean and hard and then, in the final moment, mean and hard and transcendent and right." — Movieline Posted Oct 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 82%
| Whip It (2009) | "
Ellen Page expands on the subtleties she brought to her potentially one-note lead role in Juno." — Movieline Posted Oct 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 27%
| Pandorum (2009) | "
The script’s twisty, end-of-the-world intrigue saves this otherwise leaden film from total self-destruction." — L.A. Weekly Posted Oct 1, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 28%
| Fame (2009) | "
Members of the class of ’80 struggled to stay in school despite homelessness and crime; the greatest crisis in ’09 finds a student’s Sesame Street work schedule affecting her GPA." — L.A. Weekly Posted Oct 1, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | After the Storm (2009) | "
The class and cultural tension that exists between the well-intentioned city slickers and underprivileged kids is unavoidable, and director Hilla Medalia lets it settle evenly, refusing to judge." — Village Voice Posted Sep 29, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 57%
| As Seen Through These Eyes (2009) | "
Distractingly tortured metaphors are given a distractingly affected narration by Maya Angelou." — Village Voice Posted Sep 29, 2009 |
Fresh 7/10
| Fresh 75%
| Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) | "
Capitalism's slickness, and its illusion of cumulative coherence, is actually a product of Moore's signature bait and switch, the same lack of structural integrity that mars most of his films." — Movieline Posted Sep 23, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 23%
| Sorority Row (2009) | "
Call me the sarcastic sister, but the only thing screaming in any convincing way here are the cheap look, epileptic direction, and off-key, “edgy” humor." — Village Voice Posted Sep 15, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 67%
| Sikandar (2009) | "
A simple, cautionary tale gone berserk with potboiling twists and a moral ambition as lush and layered as the Kashmir Valley." — Village Voice Posted Aug 20, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 38%
| The Time Traveler's Wife (2009) | "
The book alternates between the first person narration of both characters, and the film attempts to replicate that balance, but the difference is split, and we can't relate to either one." — Movieline Posted Aug 15, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 95%
| The Cove (2009) | "
The mysteries at play in The Cove begin at the surface and then, like the dolphin pods the film shows zooming around coastal Japan, go way deep." — Movieline Posted Aug 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 68%
| Funny People (2009) | "
Sandler plays the ruthlessly flat affect of the entitled so well it bespeaks a kind of weary authenticity of its own, which purity is complemented whenever his natural charisma is inspired by something other than a paycheck." — Movieline Posted Aug 2, 2009 |
Fresh 6/10
| Fresh 65%
| Adam (2009) | "
Quirk is indeed in enervating effect, but the main problems with the film, ostensibly a new take on the traditional New York romantic plight of mis- and disconnection, are more fundamental, if not totally fatal." — Movieline Posted Jul 28, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 89%
| Pressure Cooker (2009) | "
Stephenson looms largest as a reminder of what the right teacher can mean to a kid looking for a way out; it takes a strong woman and a special grace to not only let her protégés go, year after year, but practically shove them out the door." — Village Voice Posted May 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 44%
| Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) | "
Though it's a little slow to start and some of the humor clunks, the film features a wholesome charm, some truly dazzling effects (the Lincoln Memorial alone is worth it), and enough mild, parent-nip in-jokes to keep all but the stone-hearted happy." — Village Voice Posted May 19, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 22%
| Next Day Air (2009) | "
There are no cops, not much farcical energy, and none of the satiric edge it would take to pull off the film’s grim denouement." — Village Voice Posted May 13, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 40%
| A Wink and a Smile (2009) | "
The tension between wanting to root for these women and ultimately being faced with what you're rooting for goes completely unresolved." — Village Voice Posted Apr 28, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 78%
| Nursery University (2009) | "
It certainly provides thorough, balanced, often playful evidence of the perverted educational ecosystem that has sprung up to support the toppling egos of Manhattan's upper-crust parents." — Village Voice Posted Apr 22, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Desert Dream (2009) | "
Zhang holds his series of quotidian moments long enough for small pockets of fear and longing to be emptied slowly, the contents arrayed like precious gems." — Village Voice Posted Apr 15, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 56%
| Enlighten Up! (2009) | "
Its director winds up focusing on the least interesting/most predictable tension of them all, that which arises between herself and her handpicked, inflexible star." — Village Voice Posted Apr 1, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 79%
| 12 (2007) | "
Nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2008, Russian actor/director Nikita Mikhalkov's masterful, engrossing 12 is finally finding its way into theaters." — Village Voice Posted Mar 3, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 33%
| Delhi-6 (2009) | "
It's pretty much irresistible and, in that sense, represents the enigmatic India of today as well as anything ever could." — Village Voice Posted Feb 18, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 80%
| Ballerina (2008) | "
Watching these women perform is a striking lesson in ballet's rigorous aesthetic alchemy -- and the extreme, exquisite individualism that prevails." — Village Voice Posted Jan 14, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 55%
| Yonkers Joe (2008) | "
Lahti burns through a thinly written role with a surprising level of warmth and humanity, and Guiry is at times repellently convincing as a kid genetically incapable of either nuance or fakery." — Village Voice Posted Jan 7, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 12%
| Lake City (2008) | "
Mother and son have an uneasy bond that should be familiar to anyone who has ever seen a movie in which a child's room has been preserved and locked tight." — L.A. Weekly Posted Nov 26, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 12%
| Lake City (2008) | "
Added to the general torpidity and twangy tropes of this Southern family drama is the discomfort of watching a natural actor force it." — Village Voice Posted Nov 19, 2008 |
Fresh
| Rotten 50%
| Stages (2008) | "
De Jong's technique of filming conversations with the camera latched onto one character for minutes at a time is both disorienting and almost suffocatingly intimate." — Village Voice Posted Nov 5, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 80%
| Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie (2008) | "
Delaney [director] is clearly at pains to protect his subjects, and the sheer, doomed tenacity of belief against all odds takes the day." — Village Voice Posted Oct 15, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 85%
| Azur and Asmar - The Princes' Quest (2006) | "
Adults will find the elegant combination of cut-out and CGI animation bewitching but the thematics unsubtle, at best." — Village Voice Posted Oct 15, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 78%
| Ashes of Time Redux (1994) | "
In a move that would become his trademark, Wong rejects the happy ending for the almost ecstatically sad, making your heart soar even as he tells you, essentially, that it's impossible, all of it -- that it'll never work." — Village Voice Posted Oct 8, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 29%
| Ripple Effect (2008) | "
Several ordinarily banal movies soldered into one amazingly bad one." — Village Voice Posted Sep 24, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 95%
| Obscene: A Portrait Of Barney Rosset And Grove Press (2008) | "
[A] very fine documentary." — Village Voice Posted Sep 24, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 16%
| Hounddog (2008) | "
The symbolism [is] clobbering." — Village Voice Posted Sep 17, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 40%
| Able Danger (2008) | "
Able Danger's various generic elements and ambitions, while successful on their own, resist melding into a successful pastiche." — Village Voice Posted Sep 10, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 33%
| Forgiveness (2008) | "
David's trauma, madness, and recovery is arranged as a puzzle of dreams, flashbacks, hallucinations, and strikingly choreographed numbers that, while occasionally dazzling, remains in pieces at film's end." — Village Voice Posted Sep 10, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 20%
| Richard Serra: Thinking On Your Feet (2005) | "
As the artist affects a symposium nearly as towering as his Promenade, always returning to process, the camera endlessly skims the narrow corridors of his planed steel walls, to increasingly fruitless effect." — Village Voice Posted Aug 19, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 91%
| I.O.U.S.A. (2008) | "
Both a handy election primer and a bowel-rattling cry of fiscal doom." — Village Voice Posted Aug 19, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 64%
| The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (2008) | "
Resist if you dare." — Village Voice Posted Aug 5, 2008 |
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