Tomato 3/4 |
Face Off (1997) |
"This is your action movie on drugs--any questions? [Blu-Ray]" |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 2/4 |
Factory Girl (2007) |
"Sedgwick's thoroughly photographed life would doubtless make an engrossing documentary (a genre to which Hickenlooper ought to stick)..." |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Factotum (2006) |
"Hard liquor goes in at the mouth, but when we're lucky, it comes out in the writer's grip." |
Peter Canavese |
Splat .5/4 |
Failure to Launch (2006) |
"Paula's practiced fraud sounds criminal at worst and grounds for civil suits at best, but to Hollywood, it's a romantic comedy....downright repellent." |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 3/4 |
The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) |
"From back in the day when epic meant upwards of 10,000 extras, gargantuan sets, and 122-piece orchestras...in other words, CGI is for wimps." |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 3/4 |
Falling Down (1993) |
"A heavy-handed potboiler, but as it raises the temperature, it does give cause to consider the line--so easily crossed--between social function and disasterous personal undoing. [Blu-ray]" |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 3/4 |
The Family Stone (2005) |
"[A] pleasingly off-kilter domestic comedy." |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Fanboys (2009) |
"If you want to hear characters talk to each other in Star Wars dialogue, I've got a couple of trilogies for you." |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 2/4 |
Fantastic Four (2005) |
"So much...is bungled with inept storytelling and watered-down dialogue, and Story is so powerless to right the course, that Fantastic Four winds up more dopey than fun." |
Peter Canavese |
- |
The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) |
"Ioan Gruffud: '[The Silver Surfer's] just this shiny, silver, gorgeous sexy thing. Takes away from us a little bit. He upstages us a little bit.'" |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 2/4 |
The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) |
"A reading from the Books of Marvel...And the Surfer passed through buildings and buses with a squish...And Twentieth Century Fox said that it was good." |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 4/4 |
Fargo (1996) |
"The Coen Brothers have always loved to go far, a tactic they don't forgo in Fargo. [Blu-ray]" |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 2/4 |
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) |
"On par with the rest of the series....it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt, and then it's off the hook!" |
Peter Canavese |
- |
Fast Food Nation (2006) |
"Eric Schlosser: 'Rick and I both really structure our works before we sit down to write them. So it was actually a really easy and natural collaboration.'" |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 3/4 |
Fast Food Nation (2006) |
"You know what they call a Royale with Cheese in Austin, Texas? The Big One...ambitious and a typically satisfying outing for one of America's most consistent directors." |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 2/4 |
Fat Albert (2004) |
""Hey hey hey," Fat Albert exclaims, "How did I get this way?"" |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Fatal Attraction (1980) |
"The film's moderate artistic success rests on Lyne's unsettling soft-lit style and the resonant leading performances by Douglas, Archer, and Close, who brilliantly does all the work the screenplay doesn't...[Blu-ray]" |
Peter Canavese |
- |
Fearless (2006) |
"Jet Li: 'If you play a cop, or the tough guy, Mafia, whatever, you need to think first. You need to understand the character, the personality. Then you put a different move for the character.'" |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Fearless (2006) |
"If this is Li's epic swan song, it's a reasonably graceful exit." |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 3/4 |
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) |
"A next generation Eddie Haskell, Ferris Bueller redefined "cool" misbehavior for Generation X....Hughes has a knack for memorable set pieces. [new DVD review]" |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Fever Pitch (2005) |
"Fever Pitch may be something short of miraculous, but perhaps it isn't how you play the game that matters after all, as long as you have a "winning" personality." |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Field of Dreams (1989) |
"Widely regarded as a modern populist classic, the film is both a fabulist fable and a celebratory baseball movie that acknowledges scandal within the sport but also the game's transcendent ability to rise above attempts to damage its integrity. [Blu-ray]" |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 4/4 |
Fight Club (1999) |
"One of the seminal films of the 1990s...just as darkly funny, epic, and psychically wrenching as ever. [Blu-ray]" |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 2/4 |
Fighting (2009) |
"Montiel and his collaborators can pat themselves on the back for elevating empty material just a bit, but this is disposable cinema, designed to hit and run after an opening weekend. [Blu-ray]" |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 2/4 |
Final Destination 3 (2006) |
"Morgan and Wong's snarky iterations on their initial premise don't show much development...a fair diversion but, make no mistake, a waste of time." |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Find Me Guilty (2006) |
"The most fun I've had at the movies this year." |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Finding Amanda (2008) |
"Doesn't have a nuance in it, but it's pretty consistently amusing in its latter-day Woody Allen way. For most of the way, its morals are happily, believably wrong, but all bad things must come to an end." |
Peter Canavese |
- |
Finding Neverland (2004) |
"Marc Forster on Finding Neverland and Career Highlights" |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Finding Neverland (2004) |
"A missed opportunity...recommendable to audiences looking for a warm-hearted, tearjerking movie, but not terribly commendable for cineastes in search of a sophisticated film." |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Firewall (2006) |
"Play[s] it safe...to sit through this home-invasion scenario yet again, I think we're owed a dead kid. Or at least a contusion. Maybe lightly stun the dog? Toss us a bone here!" |
Peter Canavese |
Splat .5/4 |
First Daughter (2004) |
"Though you might think this Forest Whitaker film (yeah, you read that right) has more going for it than the other 274 cookie-cutter fairy-tale comedies...you'd be wrong." |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 2.5/4 |
First Knight (1995) |
"Goes for a pass as a shallow but occasionally rousing swordfighting flick with a handful of thoughtful scenes...has something those other pictures don't have: Sean Connery as King Arthur." |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 2.5/4 |
First Snow (2007) |
"Seeing where the road leads, audiences will be forgiven for asking their own existential question: 'Is that all there is?'" |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
The Five Pennies (1959) |
"A bit of a sprightly-tragic mess, but if one doesn't try to sum up its parts, it's plenty entertaining in a nostalgic, old-movie way." |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 2.5/4 |
Flags of Our Fathers (2006) |
"Broyles and Haggis redundantly hammer home the same point in scene after scene...while fail[ing] in 132 minutes fully to breathe life into their triad of reluctant heroes." |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 2.5/4 |
Flash Point (2008) |
"It's all about the extensive climax, a gunfight turned mixed martial arts throwdown." |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 3/4 |
Flawless (2007) |
"An enthralling bauble of many facets: part feminist thriller, part "howdunnit" mystery, and all good old-fashioned story." |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Fletch (1985) |
"What truly holds Fletch together isn't the somewhat off-putting Chase--whose screen presence was always defined by a love-it-or-hate it smugness--but his time-tested collaborators: screenwriter Bergman...and director Michael Ritchie...[Blu-ray]" |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 2.5/4 |
Flight of the Phoenix (2004) |
"Flatly retells a high-concept Boy's Life adventure story that's hard to break, but easy to bleed of its significance." |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
The Flight of the Red Balloon (2008) |
"All suggestion and no imposition, a subtle meditation on how we position ourselves in space, and to what end." |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 3/4 |
Flushed Away (2006) |
"More concerned with character, well-timed sight and sound gags, and witty banter than it is with smooth plotting....[but] well-worth the plunge." |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Fly Me To The Moon (2008) |
"Only the 3D process helps to dispel the impression that what you're seeing lacks wit and is completely generic in terms of characters and 'humor.'" |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 2/4 |
Flyboys (2006) |
"Flyboys' spectacular predictability confirms its shallowness." |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 3/4 |
Following Sean (2006) |
"Without belaboring his narrative shaping, Arlyck asks big questions about life paths and philosophical drift." |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Food, Inc. (2009) |
"Usefully, it provides counter-balance to its own doom-saying with numerous suggestions of how to deal with the corporatization of food." |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 2/4 |
Fool's Gold (2008) |
"Harmless but seriously wit-deficient." |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
For All Mankind (1989) |
"For All Mankind is about what makes these men all the same...and, to some extent what makes us all the same: our infinitesimal smallness in the humbling vastness of the universe. [Blu-ray]" |
Peter Canavese |
- |
For Your Consideration (2006) |
"Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy: [Guest:] 'I could tell, her head was exploding. And I said, "What's going on?" She said, "Everyone wants a wig."'" |
Peter Canavese |
Splat 2.5/4 |
For Your Consideration (2006) |
"Are Guest and Levy scared of biting the hand that feeds or simply out of touch? In either case, the answer can't be good." |
Peter Canavese |
Tomato 3/4 |
For Your Eyes Only (1981) |
"First-time director John Glen knows what's needed to create suspense...put the series' trademark wit, women, and song alongside the high-stakes adventure of a more brutal 007. [Blu-ray]" |
Peter Canavese |
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