Splat 2/4 |
I Am Legend (2007) |
"In the infantile prioritizing that occurs when Hollywood wants to be 'inspirational,' the hero's Everyman crisis of religious faith is supposed to be as important to audiences as his struggle to save humanity from extinction." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2/4 |
I Heart Huckabees (2004) |
"Too fey, too coy, too precious..." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 1/4 |
I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry (2007) |
"Even before the 'gay' plot kicks in, the mix of bloated 'heroic' action with toilet humor and plugs for Hooters is unbearable..." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
I Served the King of England (2008) |
"Celebrates the pleasures of life while acknowledging its tragedy and absurdity... Its attitude might be described as good-natured fatalism." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2/4 |
I'm Not There (2007) |
"This audaciously imagined but ultimately surprisingly conventional not-quite-biopic insists on tethering Dylan to politics, to biography, to the 1960s, to 'relevance' and -- most damaging of all -- to nostalgia." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2.5/4 |
I've Loved You So Long (2008) |
"The ending is a cop-out: It lets the audience off the hook while congratulating it for its empathy." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2.5/4 |
Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) |
"In evolution, some things worked, some didn't (hooves and horns, good; shovel-shaped jaws on elephants, bad). The humor in 'Meltdown' is similarly hit-and-miss." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
The Ice Harvest (2005) |
"The movie twinkles sardonically, like the eyes of the Grinch when Chuck Jones animates the character's most cunning, twisted smile." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Identity (2003) |
"Funny, scary and slick as the frost on a frozen corpse..." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2/4 |
Idlewild (2006) |
"True, it's a little late in OutKast's career for Andre 3000 and Big Boi to make their 'Purple Rain' move, but who would have expected them to leap straight to 'Graffiti Bridge'?" |
John Beifuss |
Tomato |
If You Were Young: Rage (1970) |
"A masterpiece of dire circumstance, economic disaster and shattered dreams..." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
The Illusionist (2006) |
"'Everything is an illusion,' a character says, which, of course, is a description of the film itself: Our response to the action onscreen is a testimony to the conjurations of the filmmakers..." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Imaginary Heroes (2004) |
"If the film had been about Weaver rather than her family, Harris might have scripted an ending that represented a risky individual choice instead of a communal retreat." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Imagine That (2009) |
"Hey, kids! Nickelodeon, one of your favorite companies, has a new release with Eddie Murphy as a financial analyst, so you'll get to hear a lot of grownups in grim offices talking about 'specs' and 'yields' and 'pension funds' and -- hey, kids! Wake up!" |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2.5/4 |
In Bruges (2008) |
"As the 'ironic' contrast between historic Flemish beauty and modern vulgarity and violence increases, the movie becomes overdetermined in its twist-of-fate plotting and over-reliant on thuggish humor..." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato '3/4' |
In Her Shoes (2005) |
"A marvelous showcase for all three leads..." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2/4 |
In My Country (2005) |
"You feel insulted you're expected to care about the petty problems of the leads when other characters are dealing with child murder, political torture and genocide." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
In Praise of Love (2001) |
"When a character comments 'too many changes are in the air that lack a means of expression,' one senses that Godard, at 72, is still struggling to communicate those changes through the medium of film." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2/4 |
In the Cut (2003) |
"Film theory students researching the sexual content of movies by women directors are probably the only viewers who will be satisfied..." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2/4 |
In the Land of Women (2007) |
"The peculiarly male self-centeredness seen here is repulsive and astonishing. Meg Ryan's breast cancer, the grandmother's dementia, the teenage girl's angst: All these traumas primarily exist to help a young man find himself." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
In the Loop (2009) |
"A relentlessly foul-mouthed political satire about an obscene process: the fabrication of a phony case for war to justify U.S. and British plans to invade the Middle East." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
In the Realms of the Unreal (2004) |
"Can the secret life of the mind be as worthwhile as the 'real' life a person shares with others in the physical world?" |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 4/4 |
In the Shadow of the Moon (2007) |
"Fills you with pride for your country and your species..." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2.5/4 |
In the Valley of Elah (2007) |
"Haggis' premise becomes confused; he inadvertently seems to suggest that this war is wrong not because it was unjustified but because of its corrupting influence on its participants." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 1.5/4 |
The In-Laws (2003) |
"Familiar pop hits are exploited for a cheap Pavlovian payoff in this bland comedic blend of ersatz thrills, ersatz sentiment and ersatz locations (Toronto as Chicago)." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
An Inconvenient Truth (2006) |
"A nonfiction disaster movie about the ultimate in non-partisan concerns, the fate of the planet." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
The Incredible Hulk (2008) |
"Contains a property-damaging clash-of-the-titans free-for-all of such intensity that in the pre-computer effects era it could have been visualized only in a cartoon or a comic book." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
The Incredibles (2004) |
"The film proves there are auteurs even within the army-of-collaborators medium that is big-budget animation." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) |
"The long, go-for-broke opening sequence in the Nevada desert is a triumph that announces that Spielberg and Indiana Jones are not just an explosive combination, they're positively atomic." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2.5/4 |
Infamous (2006) |
"Resembles a Vanity Fair version of 'Hollywood Squares,' with the mincing Toby Jones doing his best Paul Lynde in the center square role of Capote." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
The Informant! (2009) |
"The jaundiced color scheme -- evocative of the corn starch that is the company's prime product -- and Damon's increasingly disturbing calmness and seemingly irrelevant narration suggest this is a movie about societal as well as personal sickness." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 4/4 |
Inglourious Basterds (2009) |
"The cameo by Rod Taylor and the references to Yvette Mimieux (the stars of 'The Time Machine') are the tip-offs: This is Tarantino's celebration of cinema as time machine -- a device that can erase the years and, on an imaginative level, change the past." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
Inkheart (2009) |
"Better an adventure movie for families that (however paradoxically) extols the value and wonder of books than yet another movie that celebrates violent revenge or asinine behavior." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
Inside Deep Throat (2005) |
"Hugely entertaining, but as its smarmy male-centric title implies,
'Inside Deep Throat' swallows whole the idea that the film was some kind of milestone of free expression." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
Inside Man (2006) |
"Like a 1940s director assigned to an improbable thriller, Lee finds ways to transform the material so it reflects not just his personality but the tensions of the times.
" |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2.5/4 |
The International (2009) |
"More intriguing than the action is Tykwer's use of architecture; his characters are dwarfed by looming towers of cold steel and glass, which says more about the apparent hopelessness of their quest for justice than any of the machinations of the plot." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2.5/4 |
The Interpreter (2005) |
"More like an acting seminar than what the press kit calls a 'high-intensity, thought-provoking thriller.'" |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2.5/4 |
Interview (2007) |
"A one-act play in search of a black box theater and an audience unfamiliar with such intense cat-and-mouse character studies as 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'" |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2.5/4 |
Intimate Strangers (2004) |
"A movie that would make a good play." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Into the Wild (2007) |
"The topography of the canyons, rivers, deserts, wheat fields and forests is no more fascinating than that of the faces McCandless encounters." |
John Beifuss |
Splat 2.5/4 |
Intolerable Cruelty (2003) |
"The Coens' most experimental film: a 'normal' movie..." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
The Invasion (2007) |
"With her line-free mask of a face and unflappable demeanor, Nicole Kidman is an odd standard-bearer for the messy imperfection of the human race; even so, this fourth movie incarnation of Jack Finney's novel is hardly a disaster..." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
Invictus (2009) |
"Risks dullness and embraces preachiness to pursue an idea that is given lip service by politicians but is rarely addressed in motion pictures: 'How do we inspire ourselves to greatness?'" |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Iron Man (2008) |
"Exciting, but the message is mixed: Stark's creation of Iron Man affirms rather than repudiates his arms race-exploiting past -- it proves once again that the one with the best weapons wins." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
Irreversible (2003) |
"...causes you to question not just the filmmaker's motives but your own reactions to what he has chosen to show you." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
Is Anybody There? (2009) |
"Worth seeing for Caine, who makes acting seem effortless, pleasurable and even noble." |
John Beifuss |
Splat '2.5/4' |
The Island (2005) |
"Basically an unauthorized gazillion-dollar remake of a fairly obscure no-budget sci-fi flick from 1979 called 'Parts: The Clonus Horror.'
" |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
It Might Get Loud (2009) |
"Extremely relaxed and unfailingly entertaining..." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
The Italian (2007) |
"Cinematographer Aleksandr Burov captures a land of frost-coated fields, cracked plaster walls and weed-choked railways with a photojournalist's eye for the telling detail." |
John Beifuss |
Tomato 3/4 |
The Italian Job (2003) |
"When an armored truck vanishes on Hollywood Boulevard, it's a nifty metaphor for the way this relatively unheralded flick is likely to steal millions in box-office gold from under the noses of such glamorous competitors as 'X2' and 'Matrix'..." |
John Beifuss |
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