Fresh
| Rotten 41%
| New York, I Love You (2009) | "
The characters are all more or less useless, inhabiting the frivolous tippy-top of Maslow's pyramid of needs, with little sense that there's anyone essential at the bottom. It's fun, but decadent." Posted Oct 16, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 96%
| The Cove (2009) | "
It is filmmaking not just in the service of the environment, but in the service of a victim, and while that victim may have flippers and fins, it is straight from central casting." Posted Aug 7, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 26%
| Shrink (2009) | "
Shrink is no worse than the average Hollywood comedy. But it shows, more obviously than most, the bankruptcy of standard-issue American pop narrative, circa 2009." Posted Jul 31, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 95%
| In the Loop (2009) | "
Film should do more than television. In the Loop is tremendous fun at times, especially in its vicious power plays and betrayals." Posted Jul 23, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Tokyo Sonata (2009) | "
Kurosawa is the rare director who simply lets his film dissolve into music, allowing the plot to take the film naturally to a musical conclusion." Posted Jul 17, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 96%
| Herb & Dorothy (2009) | "
You can't hate the film anymore than you can hate Herb and Dorothy. But this is lazy work." Posted Jul 2, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 81%
| Departures (2009) | "
It is as polished as it is heavy-handed, and it leaves one under a spell." Posted Jun 19, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 51%
| The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009) | "
Like most of Scott's recent films, this one ends in self-indulgent silliness. You end up asking yourself, how do the few fun bits of the film manage to survive in the midst of so much lousy filmmaking?" Posted Jun 12, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 79%
| The Garden (2009) | "
A good documentary leaves the viewer wanting more. A problematic one leaves the viewer needing more." Posted May 15, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 66%
| Is Anybody There? (2009) | "
Caine is magnificent, and the film is worth a look for his contribution alone." Posted Apr 30, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| The Lemon Tree (2008) | "
Riklis has made a powerful film, but can a powerful film change anything about the fatalistic culture of powerlessness that is felt throughout Palestine and Israel?" Posted Apr 30, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 75%
| Tokyo! (2009) | "
All three films deal with things hidden, or disappearing, or suppressed. But Tokyo, if anything, becomes more of a mystery after Tokyo! than it was before." Posted Apr 9, 2009 |
Fresh
| Fresh 92%
| Amarcord (1974) | "
Orthodox Fellini lovers will give primacy to La Strada or La Dolce Vita, but Amarcord has its fans, and it's easy to see why." Posted Mar 13, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 64%
| Watchmen (2009) | "
Sad to say, the much-anticipated adaptation of the world's most celebrated graphic novel is long, dull and sinks under the weight of its reverence for the original." Posted Mar 5, 2009 |
Rotten
| Rotten 49%
| Donkey Punch (2009) | "
Donkey Punch is almost humorless, and there's no wink and nudge behind the mayhem to absolve us of taking its ugly, class-obsessed subtext seriously." Posted Feb 12, 2009 |
Rotten
| Fresh 61%
| Marley & Me (2008) | "
Not every book has a movie lurking in it." Posted Dec 29, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 60%
| Valkyrie (2008) | "
Valkyrie is a brutally efficient bit of storytelling, and it makes no unforced errors." Posted Dec 29, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 91%
| Frost/Nixon (2008) | "
It isn't Shakespeare, but it is drama at a level one doesn't often get in movies." Posted Dec 12, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 25%
| Nobel Son (2008) | "
It's all wildly implausible and occasionally fun, but it could be so much better if director Randall Miller had thrown in a little more character development and excised a half-dozen crazy plot twists." Posted Dec 5, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 67%
| Synecdoche, New York (2008) | "
The acting is magnificent, especially Hoffman's anguished, distracted, solipsistic portrayal of Cotard." Posted Nov 7, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 13%
| The Women (2008) | "
In the end, English just wants to make a nice chick flick with some sassy lines. Genuine nastiness has been eliminated, while not-very-funny banter is retained." Posted Sep 12, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 74%
| A Jihad for Love (2007) | "
[Director Sharma's] focus on religion and this particular religion's all but certain hostility to same-sex love means there can be no answers to the spiritual searching of many of his characters." Posted Sep 4, 2008 |
Rotten
| Fresh 61%
| Traitor (2008) | "
Traitor traffics in the cliches of the terrorist chase film -- including the usual stereotypes of Muslims -- while trying not to succumb to outright bigotry." Posted Aug 27, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 63%
| Hamlet 2 (2008) | "
[A] dazzling little comedy." Posted Aug 22, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 43%
| Death Race (2008) | "
If a movie could drag its knuckles on the ground, Death Race would leave eight little tracks in the sand." Posted Aug 21, 2008 |
Rotten
| Rotten 38%
| Henry Poole Is Here (2008) | "
A few smart turns in a forest of stupid doesn't make a film smart." Posted Aug 14, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 95%
| My Winnipeg (2008) | "
An unhinged, utterly delightful 'documentary'." Posted Jun 26, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 95%
| Diva (1981) | "
Diva, as a lifestyle, a fantasy, a model for alienation and solipsism and eccentricity, has gone deep into all of us." Posted Jan 24, 2008 |
Fresh
| Fresh 79%
| Manda Bala (2007) | "
Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), a documentary about corruption, crime and human adaptation during difficult circumstances, is a slick, sly and beautifully shot documentary." Posted Sep 27, 2007 |
Fresh
| Fresh 95%
| 12:08 East of Bucharest (2007) | "
It's easy to end a film with the idea that life goes on. It's extremely difficult to make the cliche the only possible, necessary and satisfying ending. Porumboiu's film does that." Posted Jul 19, 2007 |
Fresh
| Fresh 88%
| ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway (2007) | "
It is filled with neurotic people in greasepaint, some charming, most amusing, and by the time you've spent an hour and a half with them, you're more than invested in their lives and cares." Posted Jun 21, 2007 |
Fresh
| Fresh 74%
| La Vie En Rose (2007) | "
Olivier Dahan's film is both faithful to and freewheeling with the facts of Piaf's life. Much is left out, but the essentials are there." Posted Jun 14, 2007 |
Rotten
| Fresh 71%
| In The Pit (2007) | "
Like the highway these men are building, Rulfo's film sails above the larger context that would actually bring emotional meaning to the lives he wants to celebrate." Posted Apr 23, 2007 |
Fresh
| Fresh 86%
| The Prisoner Or: How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair (2007) | "
The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair, a documentary with a tiny cast of characters and a modest budget, is a microscopic view of a big and ugly war." Posted Mar 22, 2007 |
Rotten
| Fresh 85%
| Hurricane on the Bayou (2006) | "
The narrative is built one happy cliche at a time until the story of Katrina ceases to be about appalling environmental neglect, or the colossal failure of the federal government to manage a disaster." Posted Mar 22, 2007 |
Fresh
| Fresh 83%
| This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006) | "
For a film with this much argument in it, This Film is remarkably entertaining." Posted Sep 15, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 76%
| Time to Leave (2006) | "
Sumptuously filmed but rather distant." Posted Aug 17, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2006) | "
A tour de force of cinema verite with astonishing performances by a huge cast of small players." Posted Jul 13, 2006 |
Rotten
| Fresh 81%
| Sketches of Frank Gehry (2006) | "
The parameters of Gehry's genius, as suggested by Pollack, are essentially the same as those captured in generations of cliched artist biopics." Posted Jun 2, 2006 |
Rotten
| Rotten 57%
| Drawing Restraint 9 (2006) | "
Doesn't advance the Barney oeuvre an inch past where he left it with his massive, megalomaniacal opus known as the Cremaster series." Posted May 25, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 93%
| Duma (2005) | "
Visually panoramic, a film that revels in making the expanse of a beautiful place palpable." Posted Mar 30, 2006 |
Fresh
| Rotten 51%
| Manderlay (2006) | "
Even the basic look of the film -- it was filmed on a stage with every shot set against a bleak, dark backdrop -- underscores the filmmaker's position as master manipulator, in a laboratory, looking down at his mice running through his maze." Posted Feb 16, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 77%
| Music From the Inside Out (2004) | "
Among the dull passages there are moving stories, and a very loving sympathy for the people it profiles." Posted Feb 2, 2006 |
Fresh
| Fresh 87%
| 3-Iron (2005) | "
Kim works with the barest of materials but returns the viewer's attention to the pure visual pleasure of filmmaking." Posted May 20, 2005 |
Fresh
| Fresh 71%
| William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (2004) | "
For lovers of the play's language ... the losses will hurt. But as cinematic storytelling, it works." Posted Jan 28, 2005 |
Rotten
| Fresh 87%
| Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (2004) | "
A case study in cultural analysis that aims at too much and achieves too little." Posted Dec 31, 2004 |
Fresh
| Rotten 33%
| Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera (2004) | "
The movie version of Lloyd Webber's smash hit does to the music what the music did to the words and story: It distracts the mind and cajoles the eyes to the point that one doesn't really care that everything the ears are hearing is pure nonsense." Posted Dec 22, 2004 |
Rotten
| Rotten 41%
| Callas Forever (2004) | "
Goes far deeper into one man's opera-diva fetish than most people will want to follow." Posted Nov 29, 2004 |
Rotten
| Rotten 11%
| Celsius 41.11 (2004) | "
There's really nothing more here than you can find watching dreadful political advertisements and dreadful political talk shows." Posted Oct 22, 2004 |
Fresh
| Fresh 95%
| Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... And Spring (2004) | "
The floating monastery strikes one, at first, as far too empty a stage for a movie of any length, but it becomes, in the end, a meditation on walls, rules and memory, on the keeping out and the keeping in of life." Posted May 7, 2004 |
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