Fresh 3/5
| Rotten 58%
| Missing Person (2009) | "
Though Ryan Samul’s textured cinematography makes the stubble and shadows seem nearly 3-D, the story chokes on a dull twist from Rosow’s past." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 18, 2009 |
Rotten 1/5
| Rotten 25%
| Staten Island (2009) | "
Staten Island is not without surprises -- nor is it any good." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 18, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 77%
| The Good Soldier (2009) | "
An explicitly antiwar conclusion unwisely makes the grim focus feel like a bias, but the power of the interviews makes one wish for more stories, not fewer." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 11, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 77%
| Collapse (2009) | "
By faithfully documenting Ruppert's long-simmering analysis, Smith lets us experience the feeling of a world gone to pot, whether or not the claims are factually accurate." — Village Voice Posted Nov 3, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 67%
| Storm (2009) | "
The writing by director Hans-Christian Schmid and Bernd Lange is more stilted and righteous than even the U.N. environs, with its humanity-embracing procedural-speak, calls for." — Village Voice Posted Oct 27, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 14%
| Looking for Palladin (2009) | "
Requiring cuts, some sense of direction, and dialogue that doesn't either declare or dither, the film looks like it was fun to make." — Village Voice Posted Oct 27, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 47%
| Ong Bak 2 (2009) | "
The movie would work better as a highlight reel." — Village Voice Posted Oct 20, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 55%
| The Little Traitor (2009) | "
Set during a fascinating and hard-to-reduce moment in history, the movie steers clear of any but the most basic conflicts and resolutions." — Village Voice Posted Oct 14, 2009 |
Rotten 1/5
| Fresh 76%
| Afterschool (2009) | "
If you’ve ever balked at drifty solitude or video meta-hell in the films of Gus Van Sant or Michael Haneke, this pale imitation will drive you batty." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 30, 2009 |
Rotten 1/5
| Rotten 31%
| The Burning Plain (2009) | "
For all the pretenses of roiling or suffocated desires, the cast appears to have been ordered to deaden all sensation (except for Basinger, who frets away in an underwritten part)." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 16, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 89%
| No Impact Man (2009) | "
No Impact Man eventually runs out of gas -- or rather, pedal-power -- as the filmmakers grope for how to cap the Beavans’ story." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 9, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 20%
| Give Me Your Hand (2009) | "
It's usually a dangerous sign when a director casting about for an idea gets fascinated by twins." — Village Voice Posted Sep 8, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly (2009) | "
The resulting experience could very easily be described as off-putting -- which well suits the uneasiness of the subject." — Village Voice Posted Sep 8, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 91%
| Cloud 9 (2009) | "
The film comes to feel curiously incomplete, like one long fretful afternoon." — Village Voice Posted Aug 11, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 80%
| Bandslam (2009) | "
Todd Graff's film is written with a desperate cleverness that clamors for attention over the brainless against-the-odds music-competition plot." — Village Voice Posted Aug 11, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 67%
| Bliss (2007) | "
The movie could use more genuinely thorny moments, like when a bikini-clad student visits the prof and his flustered fugitives. Instead, Bliss gets a cheapening thriller climax that presses the cruel family patriarch into villain duty." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 5, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 72%
| I Sell the Dead (2009) | "
It's rather hard for anyone who has ever chanced upon a Poe anthology on cable and only lasted through one or two cheeky tales." — Village Voice Posted Aug 4, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 86%
| A Woman in Berlin (2008) | "
Our sense of the treacherous and tender relations between occupiers and occupied is hampered by turbulent direction that’s more intent on displaying shrill face-offs and canted angles than getting deep into a scene." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 15, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 80%
| Nollywood Babylon (2009) | "
The kicks come from some over-the-top clips and Imasuen’s disarming mix of bombast and shrewdness when he appears on set or as a commentator." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 1, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 54%
| Cheri (2009) | "
With its disconnected tones, Chéri really feels like a film that can’t do more than one thing at a time." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 25, 2009 |
Rotten
| N/A | Mancora (2009) | "
Despite dramatic pretenses, De Montreuil has essentially made a piece of sex-and-sun tourism cinema." — L.A. Weekly Posted Jun 18, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 78%
| The End of the Line (2009) | "
Through graph-wielding scientists, picturesque seascapes and Ted Danson’s voiceover, director Rupert Murray lays out the facts about the ongoing decimation of world fishing stocks, which could mean the end of tuna as we know it." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 17, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 86%
| Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love (2009) | "
The performance excerpts, starting with the head-clearing invocational introduction, are by far the most interesting part of the show." — Village Voice Posted Jun 10, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 60%
| BLAST! (2008) | "
While the portrayal of collaboration is respectable, and the balloon enchanting as it shimmers skyward, jellyfish-like, the doc is too flat for its own good." — Village Voice Posted Jun 10, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Moon and the Sledgehammer (1971) | "
True escapism this summer is to be found with the Page family in Philip Trevelyan's 1970 steam-engine idyll-doc." — Village Voice Posted Jun 3, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 94%
| Munyurangabo (2009) | "
Without proselytizing, what's left in this machetes-to-ploughshares tale is, unexpectedly, a powerfully Christian film." — Village Voice Posted May 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | I Can See You (2009) | "
The sensory disorientation climaxes in a freakout that wipes all your troubles away, as well as anything else lying around in your head." — Village Voice Posted Apr 29, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 66%
| The Merry Gentleman (2009) | "
The repetitive material hobbles the actor's energies." — Village Voice Posted Apr 28, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 78%
| Three Monkeys (2009) | "
The heavy mood of indolence and rage, calibrated with ellipses in action, is stifling -- everyone seems to move in a queasy haze." — Village Voice Posted Apr 28, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 66%
| Is Anybody There? (2009) | "
Even Crowley, who seems to have a knack with overloaded material, can't quite bring the thing in for a safe landing in all the slush." — Village Voice Posted Apr 14, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 92%
| The Lemon Tree (2008) | "
The direction is stubbornly flat-footed." — Village Voice Posted Apr 14, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 63%
| Lifelines (2009) | "
The film's befuddling direction and tone, queasy HD interiors, and tin-eared, often preposterous, screenplay prove disastrous." — Village Voice Posted Apr 1, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 28%
| Fast & Furious (2009) | "
Fast & Furious reconfirms that car-chase movies -- good, bad, or mediocre -- all assume the future employment of the quaint old fast-forward button." — Village Voice Posted Apr 1, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 97%
| The Song of Sparrows (2009) | "
The film is pleasingly meandering, till the more typically Majidian soulful and teary-eyed climax." — Village Voice Posted Apr 1, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 90%
| Z (1969) | "
The military junta that ensued in Greece gave the film a sense of urgency approved by Cannes and Oscar alike." — Village Voice Posted Mar 10, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 29%
| Severed Ways (2009) | "
The spectacle of two dudes mucking about in the primal forest becomes tedious..." — Village Voice Posted Mar 10, 2009 |
Fresh
| N/A | Toyo's Camera (2009) | "
Bumpy transitions and organization, along with New Age composer Kitaro’s temperamental soundtrack, prevent a sense of polish, but this Japanese-produced doc, which includes Reagan's 1988 reparations, testifies with dignity and restraint." — L.A. Weekly Posted Mar 5, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Great Speeches From a Dying World (2009) | "
In a sense, Phillips's mission is a variation on the tradition of semi-orchestrated socially conscious documentary that stretches back through Lionel Rogosin's On the Bowery and beyond." — Village Voice Posted Feb 11, 2009 |
Rotten
| N/A | The Sublet (2009) | "
The asexual, adopt-a-fogey impulse is a well-established one, but Simon's oldster act, glasses a-perched and dawning comprehension at the ready, is mannered and tiresome." — Village Voice Posted Jan 14, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 74%
| Just Another Love Story (2009) | "
Bertelsen's puffy sheepishness isn't involving enough to distract from the routine plot perforations." — Village Voice Posted Jan 6, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 94%
| Moscow, Belgium (2008) | "
We're not talking the Dardennes brothers here, but fellow Belgian Christophe Van Rompaey gives this light May-to-December pair-up an agreeably mussed, pedestrian milieu." — Village Voice Posted Dec 16, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 66%
| What Doesn't Kill You (2008) | "
Ruffalo draws on his knack for summoning an incongruous brooding bulk from within, and the result almost sucks the air from Hawke's rangy routine of nerves and sinewy smiles." — Village Voice Posted Dec 9, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 78%
| The End of America (2008) | "
Despite the totalitarian drumbeating and the Constitution love, the movie feels strangely ahistorical and lacks real systemic analysis." — Village Voice Posted Dec 2, 2008 |
Fresh
| N/A | Henry May Long (2008) | "
The production makes the most of shoestring means, however, with many a candlelit colloquy, though the apparent background reading in Lowlife and New York by Gas-Light is more alluded to than illustrated." — Village Voice Posted Nov 20, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| The Wild Child (1970) | "
Rather than present a clichéd fall from grace, Truffaut elicits ambivalence by closely tracking the Enlightened scientist's optimism; after the fascination, our inchoate sadness seeps in." — Village Voice Posted Nov 5, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 94%
| Nosferatu: The Vampyre (1979) | "
Between the hordes of stowaway rats that accompany Dracula's arrival, and a town-plaza dance of folly by doomed survivors (a Herzog addition), it's like being present at the birth of a medieval legend." — Village Voice Posted Oct 29, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Antonio Gaudi (1984) | "
Something of a passion project, completed decades after an earlier visit by the director, the film is given over to an eager, rolling catalog of Gaudí's fin de siècle works sans much voiceover or any explanatory text." — Village Voice Posted Oct 29, 2008 |
Rotten
| N/A | Tirador (2008) | "
With Mendoza averaging two features a year, if you don't like what you see now, just wait a few months." — Village Voice Posted Oct 22, 2008 |
IGN RSS Feeds