Fresh
| Fresh 65%
| Love at First Bite (1979) | "
The production's genially tatty air enhances its anarchical mood and encourages one to go with its goofy yet often shrewd comic flow." — TIME Magazine Posted Oct 19, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 80%
| The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) | "
Affectlessness is not a quality much prized in movie protagonists, but Billy Bob Thornton, that splendid actor, does it perfectly as Ed Crane." — TIME Magazine Posted Oct 13, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 90%
| Barton Fink (1991) | "
Gnomic, claustrophobic, hallucinatory, just plain weird, it is the kind of movie critics can soak up thousands of words analyzing and cinephiles can soak up at least three espressos arguing their way through." — TIME Magazine Posted Oct 13, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 98%
| Taxi Driver (1976) | "
[Scorsese] seems to need scripts with well-designed humor and performers with the spirit of Ellen Burstyn to compensate for what seems to be a fundamentally depressed view of life and the belief that sobriety is the equivalent of seriousness." — TIME Magazine Posted Aug 30, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 91%
| Thelma & Louise (1991) | "
Scott has balanced action, comedy and doomy subtext to create a morally firm yet very entertaining fable that reaches out to an audience far larger than its natural feminist constituency." — TIME Magazine Posted Aug 16, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 63%
| Legends of the Fall (1994) | "
Edward Zwick, the director, and Susan Shilliday and Bill Wittliff, the screenwriters, are under the impression that they are bringing forth a tragic epic, not a silly melodrama..." — TIME Magazine Posted Aug 14, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 74%
| Sleepers (1996) | "
It is all legally preposterous. But Levinson is a slick craftsman, his actors are insinuatingly real, and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus casts a disarmingly believable light on these proceedings." — TIME Magazine Posted Aug 14, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 15%
| The Scout (1994) | "
The Scout is the best comedy-fantasy about baseball ever made, which goes to show that if Hollywood keeps trying, eventually someone will get it right." — TIME Magazine Posted Aug 12, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 50%
| The Cable Guy (1996) | "
Aiming, perhaps, for a neat double helix of black humor and prankishness, they've ended up with a pretty ugly granny knot." — TIME Magazine Posted Jul 27, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 60%
| Wrestling Ernest Hemingway (1993) | "
Wrestling Ernest Hemingway aspires to be serious about its subject. Yet in a curious way this sobriety works against it. Frank and Walt turn into schematically contrasting case studies, and the movie's sympathy for them eventually becomes patronizing." — TIME Magazine Posted Jun 14, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 90%
| Speed (1994) | "
Talk about simple. But the film's sheer cut-to-the-chase straightfowardness is part of its appeal." — TIME Magazine Posted Jun 14, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 69%
| A Time to Kill (1996) | "
A likable -- maybe even lovable -- movie." — TIME Magazine Posted Jun 14, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 65%
| The Nutty Professor (1996) | "
[Murphy] is able to invest his Professor Klump with an endearing dignity, give his lounge lizard alter ego, Buddy Love, an alligator's bite and then go on from there to play Klump's grandma. Also his mother, father and brother." — TIME Magazine Posted Jun 6, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 63%
| Coming to America (1988) | "
The director is ... rather distracted; John Landis seems to be browsing through the scenes rather than gobbling them down." — TIME Magazine Posted Jun 6, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 83%
| Beverly Hills Cop (1984) | "
Murphy exudes the kind of cheeky, cocky charm that has been missing from the screen since Cagney was a pup, snarling his way out of the ghetto." — TIME Magazine Posted Jun 6, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 94%
| 48 Hrs. (1982) | "
Neither jokes nor fast, flashy action can completely distract audiences from the failure to establish an authentic, rather than a purely conventional connection between Nolte and Murphy." — TIME Magazine Posted Jun 6, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 91%
| Splash (1984) | "
A romantic comedy that is as salty and bracing as a plunge in the surf." — TIME Magazine Posted May 10, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 76%
| Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) | "
These are classic directorial occasions, and Nimoy rises to them with fervor, in effect beaming his film up onto a higher pictorial plane than either of its predecessors." — TIME Magazine Posted May 3, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 90%
| Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) | "
There is something comfortable, even old-shoeish, about the new film, a sense, appropriate to its theme of coming to terms with middle age, that all aboard are pleasurably rediscovering their best selves." — TIME Magazine Posted May 3, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 50%
| Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) | "
Nothing but a long day's journey into ennui." — TIME Magazine Posted May 3, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 96%
| A Fish Called Wanda (1988) | "
Wanda defies gravity, in both senses of the word, and redefines a great comic tradition." — TIME Magazine Posted Apr 27, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 95%
| True Believer (1989) | "
Woods' angry energy is clarifying as well as terrifying, and when he unleashes it (usually without warning), the effect is to focus our attention where it belongs, not on a suspense story but on the mysteries of human behavior." — TIME Magazine Posted Apr 16, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 95%
| Red Rock West (1993) | "
It's well worth tracking down, wherever you can find it. For it has the kind of tension and energy -- maybe even a touch of delirium -- that is only a memory in most of today's big studio movies." — TIME Magazine Posted Mar 13, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 55%
| Return to Oz (1985) | "
Any movie in which a Midwestern prairie actually looks more attractive and more interesting than the enchanted land over the rainbow is in big trouble." — TIME Magazine Posted Mar 9, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 100%
| Never Cry Wolf (1983) | "
Ballard and his masterly crew of film makers have reimagined a corner of the natural world...They leave us awed." — TIME Magazine Posted Mar 9, 2009 |
Fresh
| Rotten 42%
| The Black Hole (1979) | "
It is good to see the Disney craftsmen doing what they do best on such a grand and risky scale. If one has time for only one space opera this season, this is the one to choose." — TIME Magazine Posted Mar 9, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 78%
| Dances with Wolves (1990) | "
As a director, Costner is alive to the sweep of the country and the expansive spirit of the western-movie tradition." — TIME Magazine Posted Feb 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 78%
| Driving Miss Daisy (1989) | "
Alfred Uhry's adaptation of his Pulitzer-prizewinning play aspires more to complex observation of human behavior than to simple moralism about it. Precisely because it has its priorities straight, it succeeds superbly on both levels." — TIME Magazine Posted Feb 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 91%
| The Last Emperor (1987) | "
It works astonishingly well." — TIME Magazine Posted Feb 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 61%
| Out of Africa (1985) | "
Out of Africa is, at last, the free-spirited, fullhearted gesture that everyone has been waiting for the movies to make all decade long. It reclaims the emotional territory that is rightfully theirs." — TIME Magazine Posted Feb 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 89%
| Terms of Endearment (1983) | "
Its quirky rhythms and veering emotional tones are very much its own, and they owe less to movie tradition than they do to a sense of how the law of unintended consequences pushes us ceaselessly through the years, permitting no pause for perspective." — TIME Magazine Posted Feb 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 91%
| Ordinary People (1980) | "
An austere and delicate examination of the ways in which a likable family falters under pressure and struggles, with ambiguous results, to renew itself." — TIME Magazine Posted Feb 20, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 98%
| Annie Hall (1977) | "
Personal as the story he is telling may be, what separates this film from Allen's own past work and most other recent comedy is its general believability." — TIME Magazine Posted Feb 20, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 96%
| One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) | "
One Flew over the Cuckoo 's Nest is an earnest attempt to make a serious film. But in the end the movie backs away from both the human reality and the cloudy but potent symbolism that Ken Kesey found in the asylum." — TIME Magazine Posted Feb 20, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 60%
| Sabrina (1995) | "
We remain outside the fourth wall looking in but are never drawn in; bemused perhaps, even agreeably complaisant, but never entirely amused." — TIME Magazine Posted Feb 3, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 79%
| Bowfinger (1999) | "
The best thing about Bowfinger is the way the script by Steve Martin is tooled to his own and Murphy's comic strengths." — TIME Magazine Posted Feb 2, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 74%
| Sleepless in Seattle (1993) | "
Mostly, Sleepless in Seattle leaves you feeling restless in the audience." — TIME Magazine Posted Feb 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Parenthood (1989) | "
There is something brave and original about piling up most of our worst parental nightmares in one movie and then daring to make a midsummer comedy out of them. It really shouldn't work, but it does." — TIME Magazine Posted Feb 2, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 32%
| Good (2008) | "
Morally speaking, everything about Good is tidily correct. But it is more a predictable parable than a full-fledged narrative." — TIME Magazine Posted Dec 31, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 61%
| Valkyrie (2008) | "
It is a well-made film that raises timeless questions about the demands of military duty when they are placed in conflict with higher principles." — TIME Magazine Posted Dec 30, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 83%
| A Few Good Men (1992) | "
An extraordinarily well-made movie, which wastes no words or images in telling a conventional but compelling story." — TIME Magazine Posted Dec 21, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 87%
| Rain Man (1988) | "
Rain Man's restraint is, finally, rather like Raymond's gabble. It discourages connections, keeping you out instead of drawing you in." — TIME Magazine Posted Dec 21, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 62%
| The Reader (2008) | "
There's something gripping about the relationship between this ill-assorted pair, and something touching about the way events beyond their control or understanding reach out to blight their lives." — TIME Magazine Posted Dec 12, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 21%
| The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) | "
... must be the worst major release in what may be the most disastrous year in recent Hollywood history." — TIME Magazine Posted Dec 12, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 86%
| A Christmas Tale (2008) | "
A triumph of willed optimism (or perhaps more accurately, of grudging good nature) over unhappy experiences..." — TIME Magazine Posted Dec 5, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 94%
| Die Hard (1988) | "
In the first half of Director John McTiernan's movie, Willis wears an undershirt. In the second half he gets rid of it. And that's pretty much it for his performance." — TIME Magazine Posted Dec 5, 2008 |
Fresh
| Rotten 54%
| Australia (2008) | "
Australia delivers with real panache." — TIME Magazine Posted Nov 26, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 95%
| Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) | "
It is, of course, always a pleasure to watch Martin's steam-gauge face register his rising internal pressures and to witness his exquisitely expressed blowoffs. But Candy offers even more insinuating delights." — TIME Magazine Posted Nov 21, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 56%
| The Doors (1991) | "
The film really proves only that Jim was a bad drunk and a worse friend, and that in no way was his life exemplary." — TIME Magazine Posted Nov 21, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 74%
| Addams Family Values (1993) | "
Like the first of the Addams chronicles, this is an essentially lazy movie, too often settling for easy gags and special effects that don't come to any really funny point." — TIME Magazine Posted Nov 21, 2008 |
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