Splat 1.5/4 |
Facing the Giants (2006) |
"This time, Jesus rather than Burt Reynolds or The Rock gets the credit for leading an underdog team of football players to victory." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2/4 |
Facing Windows (2003) |
"Aspires to be a self-actualization session for stifled wives, a plea for gay rights, a Holocaust story and a class in pastry appreciation, all at once..." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Factory Girl (2007) |
"Miller's commitment to the role makes a mockery of the movie's conservative and predictable riches-to-rags story arc and the conventionality of its 'edgy' visual strategy." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Factotum (2006) |
"At its best when it taps into the allure of indolence: The almost scandalous feeling of freedom that comes from sitting on a barstool in midafternoon, without a job, a schedule or responsibilities." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato |
Fahrenheit 451 (1966) |
"...celebrates the romance of the written word while also reveling in the medium that has replaced reading for many people, the cinema..." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) |
"A protest against a system of entitlement in which scare tactics and appeals to patriotism are used to exploit the underprivileged to ensure the safety of the rich." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 1.5/4 |
The Fall (2008) |
"May not do much for its director's resume, but it certainly must have filled out his passport." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
Fanboys (2009) |
"Pretty funny, as long as it focuses on geek-specific references ('Hey, it's Willow's spell book!')." |
John Beifuss |
Splat '2/4' |
Fantastic Four (2005) |
"A lack of pretense shouldn't mean a lack of wit or excitement..." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 4/4 |
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) |
"A celebration of 'wild animals with true natures and beautiful talents.' (In other words, artists and children?)" |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) |
"Both exhilarating and laughable -- a noisy neon mash-up of 'Blade Runner' and 'Eat My Dust.'
" |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
Fast Food Nation (2006) |
"If 'Texas Chain Saw,' 'Prime Cut' and a score of other features that graphically literalized the concept that Meat Is Murder didn't transform moviegoers into vegetarians, what impact will an artful polemic like this have on the national stomach?" |
John Beifuss |
Splat 0.5/4 |
Fat Albert (2004) |
"Na, na, na, gonna have a good time? Nay, nay, nay." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Fateless (2006) |
"When Gyorgy speaks, like a junkie remembering his addiction, of 'the happiness of the camps,' the moment is far scarier than the images of pale corpses and hangman's nooses.
" |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
Fearless (2006) |
"The wushu philosophy offers a welcome alternative to the ideas that motivate too many movie heroes and too many real-world personal and political transactions." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Festival Express (2004) |
"With her whiskey-marinated, desperate-for-love, full-tilt blooz mama wildcat yowl still intact, Janis Joplin is the best thing about this film..." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2.5/4 |
The Fighting Temptations (2003) |
"Crowd-pleasing but shoddy... During a funeral scene, the corpse can clearly be seen breathing..." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
The Final Destination (2009) |
"James Cameron and the folks at Pixar may disagree, but this is what 3D was made for: To make audiences scream and duck as Death hurls lethal objects from the screen." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Final Destination 3 (2006) |
"The notion of horror movie as thrill ride is cannily literalized in the bravura amusement-park opening sequence..." |
John Beifuss |
Splat '2/4' |
Finding Home (2003) |
"A movie in which you can be sure that whenever a lovable old dog is in the frame, a cutely plaintive whine will be added to the sound mix." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Finding Neverland (2004) |
"A movie that celebrates the power of the imagination while also recognizing its limits in a real world of disappointment, marital disharmony and death." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2/4 |
Firewall (2006) |
"Another Hollywood movie that presents a 'typical' American family as ultra-privileged and glamorous." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
Flags of Our Fathers (2006) |
"Simultaneously a salute to the unselfish sacrifice of America's soldiers and a rebuke to the 'Mission Accomplished' photo ops and propagandistic spin that continue to urge young men to their dooms." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
Flightplan (2005) |
"Jodie Foster, the real-life mother of two young sons, follows 'Panic Room' with another thriller that allows her to physicalize her maternal instincts into action-movie heroics. (Does her experience as a child actor help explain this protective streak?)" |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
Flow: For Love of Water (2008) |
"The overarching theme here is that the Earth's freshwater supply is being contaminated, sucked dry and 'privatized' for the benefit of huge corporations that are establishing themselves as the heirs to the oil cartels." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
Flushed Away (2006) |
"The dialogue is witty and the action exciting, but without the hands-on, homemade appeal of stop-motion, the Aardman magic is missing." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2/4 |
Flyboys (2006) |
"An 'escapist' war movie with no discernible agenda or reason for being other than to entertain, which hardly seems adequate." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 1/4 |
The Fog (2005) |
"Pale WB-style hunks and hotties and a 'funny' black guy whose sole purpose is to say words like 'dawg' confront a CGI mist that looks like it could be erased with a couple of mouse clicks." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
The Fog of War (2003) |
"Engrossing from start to finish... but it may be Morris's least challenging film..." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2/4 |
Fool's Gold (2008) |
"May have been filmed in a new process: Pectoralscope." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2.5/4 |
For Your Consideration (2006) |
"Guest carves a plastic-surgery rictus into Catherine O'Hara's face that's as disturbing as the Gwynplaine smile cut into the title victim in 'The Black Dahlia' -- a literally ugly fate unjustified by the sketch-comedy antics that precede it." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
The Forbidden Kingdom (2008) |
"Plenty of fun action sequences, but one wants more from a movie that contains this promising line: 'Summon the witch. The one born of wolves.'" |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) |
"As perfectly tailored an introduction of a new (if limited) movie star as has been seen since the golden age of the Hollywood studio system." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2/4 |
The Forgotten (2004) |
"It's not the impossible premise that snaps the suspension of disbelief but the absurd details (these all-powerful conspirators use WALLPAPER to cover up evidence??)..." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato '3.5/4' |
Forty Shades of Blue (2005) |
"The film's haunting final freeze-frame offers a visual paradox: Laura is suspended in time yet finally free.
" |
John Beifuss |
Splat 1.5/4 |
The Fountain (2006) |
"Aspires toward the transcendence of Tarkovsky but is more likely to appeal to fans of Carlos Castaneda and peyote buttons." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato '3/4' |
Four Brothers (2005) |
"Combines the loose vibe of '2 Fast 2 Furious' with the neighborhood and community portraiture that has been a Singleton specialty since 'Boyz'..." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2/4 |
Four Christmases (2008) |
"To earn a more helpful R rating, the filmmakers should have gone ahead and dropped a couple of F-bombs alongside the references to 'street whores,' nipples, senior sex and vomit." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2/4 |
Fracture (2007) |
"Sometimes when you figure out a twist ending in advance, you feel smart. But sometimes instead of feeling good about yourself, you feel scornful of the onscreen victim of the story's trap door: How'd he fall for something so obvious?" |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2/4 |
Fred Claus (2007) |
"Paul Giamatti's oddly soulful turn as Santa stands out like a Christmas cookie atop a septic tank in this randomly plotted and intermittently amusing formula comedy." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
Freddy vs. Jason (2003) |
"At the rowdy preview I attended, Jason emerged as the crowd favorite. Apparently, moviegoers identify more closely with a mute overgrown child-brute than with a smart-alecky child-killer." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2/4 |
Freedomland (2005) |
"Both a solemn search for a dead child and a violent race riot are scored with celestial keyboard washes and choral harmonies intended to imbue the scenes with Significance." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2.5/4 |
Friday the 13th (2009) |
"The 'Friday' movies are about the fear of death -- especially violent, untimely death, the type that is most scary to the teenagers who flock to the films. Jason is the car that runs a red light and kills a kid on the way to the prom..." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2.5/4 |
Friends With Money (2006) |
"That this seems at all fresh is testimony to the aridity of the so-called 'indie' movie scene and to the phoniness of most modern studio movies about adult relationships." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2.5/4 |
Frost/Nixon (2008) |
"The movie transforms the wily Nixon into a sympathetic figure -- a familiarly 'complicated' movie character, and hardly one of the darkest and most fascinating souls in 20th century America." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Frozen River (2008) |
"The rare film that acknowledges that the often humiliating pursuit of money -- not wealth, but the means to survive and support a family -- is the activity that dominates the waking hours of perhaps a majority of American lives." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2/4 |
Funny Games (2008) |
"Not only is it a carbon copy, but such recent genre movies as 'Hostel' have examined the attraction of screen violence with greater immediacy and subversiveness." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
Funny People (2009) |
"Messy, self-indulgent, intriguing -- but it only really comes alive when it focuses on the competitive 'friendship' of the actor-roommates played by Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman." |
John Beifuss |
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