Splat |
16 Blocks (2006) |
"It's like those cartoon chase sequences where the scrolling background is on a loop. Here, the characters are on a loop, and the backgrounds change." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
2012 (2009) |
"I'm curious, just a bit, about what goes on in the mind of Roland Emmerich. Does he know that he makes some of the best comedies ever written?" |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat D+ |
500 Days of Summer (2009) |
"The film revels in the hip witticisms that swim mostly inside a writer's head but never come forth in the real world with the timing and execution seen here." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat C- |
9 (2009) |
"Entirely superfluous conversations and thoughts hinder what could have otherwise been a beautiful, somber existentialist film about a number of potential themes%u2014loss, survival, consciousness." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
A Scanner Darkly (2006) |
"As the drugs keep cranking the gears of suspicion, seducing them down syllogistic corridors of absurd reasoning, you can feel them out-thinking their own paranoia to the brink of insanity." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Akeelah and the Bee (2006) |
"It had the potential... to be great had it avoided running lockstep with the structure of lesser films." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat F |
All About Steve (2009) |
"Were you thinking "deaf kids", "sinkhole"? No? I defy you to write a dumber screenplay." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat C- |
Amelia (2009) |
" Watching Ms. Swank struggle to emote through carefully-patterned enunciation is an exercise in patience." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
American Dreamz (2006) |
"It figures... that Universal Pictures would see fit to inject multiple jabs at the world of television while unable to re-examine its own hubris." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
The Blind Side (2009) |
"The black kid is the MacGuffin around which revolves the affected lives of white people." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
The Box (2009) |
"...I walked into a Cameron Diaz film expecting to be treated to shlock, and concluded that I had just witnessed the rebirth of the classical sci-fi/thriller." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Brick (2006) |
" I felt like I was watching a bad film school rehash of Godard in the most contrived manner. But somewhere along the way, this flagrantly self-affected and at times dementedly jocular piece of art-house trash earned my respect." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato A+ |
Brokeback Mountain (2005) |
"Brokeback Mountain is ultimately about the paralysis of regret and how it fractures the lives of not just those afflicted by it, but everyone else around them." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat D |
Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) |
"Mr. Moore's documentary fluctuates from lucid, cogent arguments, to cartoonish abstractions and conjectures--all the while, his lilting voice massaging our guilt reflex." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
Cars (2006) |
"...scenes involving the colorful townspeople, capitalizing largely on Paul Newman's skill at playing wise yet ostensibly cantankerous old men, are repeatedly interrupted by long stretches of boring homages to the world of celebrity..." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Clerks II (2006) |
"The turning point is Dante's serious conversation with Becky about his future plans. From there, the movie finds its narrative center and becomes a real story about real people and, suddenly, you find you even care about Randal." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
CSA: The Confederate States of America (2006) |
"Here, technique interferes with the film's argument because it's attempting to satirize a history that didn't occur." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
The Da Vinci Code (2006) |
"...the real secret to "The Da Vinci Code" is that there is no secret." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
The Damned United (2009) |
"THE DAMNED UNITED is an intriguing study in human ego, and its ability to interfere with sound management." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Dave Chappelle's Block Party (2006) |
"Because Chappelle's really digging into who people are... he has the capacity to adeptly grasp such perennial wellsprings of humor as class conflict to a degree unparalleled by modern entertainers..." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
The Devil Wears Prada (2006) |
"...a story that makes studio executives proud, in which the end lesson is that Stockholm Syndrome is a healthy outlook on life for a career gal." |
Rubin Safaya |
- |
District 9 (2009) |
"Neill Blomkamp and Sharlto Copley: District 9" |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato A |
District 9 (2009) |
"The film persuades us to look beneath the aliens' chitinous exterior, and slowly eats at us as the images of racism, subjugation and internment become familiar and prod our conscience." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato B- |
Extract (2009) |
"...it's not quite as uninhibitedly ridiculous as The Hangover, the tacked-on moral lesson for which no apology is even attempted." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
Failure to Launch (2006) |
"...logic be damned if this film needs an artificial catharsis to keep audiences from falling asleep." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
Find Me Guilty (2006) |
"We could have done just as well to watch the proceedings on Court TV -- free, as it were, to flip channels or get up for a snack and skip the parts that disinterest us, rather than be held hostage by 125 minutes of drive-by clichés." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Good Hair (2009) |
"Mr. Rock and Mr. Stilson don't beat you up with a tiresome polemic a-la Michael Moore. Never does he put himself at the center of the film, condescend to the audience, or insult his interview subjects regardless of their views..." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat D- |
The Goods (2000) |
"Did the studio put so little faith in this snowball of ineptitude that the filmmakers couldn't even afford a tripod?" |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato B+ |
The Hangover (2009) |
"Question: What do Mike Tyson's tiger, a chicken, a horrible effeminate Chinese man stereotype naked in a car trunk, a stolen police car, a baby, a missing tooth and Phil Collins' music all have in common? Answer: Nothing..." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
Hard Candy (2005) |
"If Slade's intent is so clever, then why is the film so stupid as to hamfist a two-hour anti-pedophilia PSA down the throats of an entire culture that, by and large, already agrees with the premise...?" |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
The Hills Have Eyes (2006) |
"To describe this film as "pornographically violent" is an affront to pornography." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat C- |
I Love You, Beth Cooper (2009) |
"The movie could have been much improved by slicing a few frames from each shot, and reining in Rust's weirdness just a bit%u2014so as to not contribute to the lumbering, hallucinogenic feel of his initial characterization." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat D |
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) |
"When the story does get underway, the incident that sets it into motion seems thrown in%u2014precisely what you'd expect for the third installment in a series that was already tired by the second." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) |
"...the film doesn't try to be too clever and hip for the kids, as have many animated movies of late in the endless attempt to sell attitude to credit-card wielding adults at the box office." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
An Inconvenient Truth (2006) |
"...the fundamental obstacle to making the average human aware and concerned about the ecology is a matter of comprehending scale--a problem which the formerly robotic Democrat tackles rather elegantly." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato A |
The Informant! (2009) |
" Visual and narrative punchlines strike flawlessly like the absurdist humor of a Bugs Bunny cartoon..." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato B |
Inglourious Basterds (2009) |
"Mr. Waltz's dynamic performance contrasts satirical and dramatic hues, effectively charismatic and repulsive at once." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
Inside Man (2006) |
"This isn't the kind of story that can really occupy the full length of a feature film, unless of course you're fooled into believing something more actually happened." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato B- |
The Invention of Lying (2009) |
"Mr. Gervais... has given us a static, crass Phil Connors to introduce the world to belief in the supernatural. Where are the Ghostbusters when you need them?" |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat C- |
Invictus (2009) |
"...suspension of disbelief is strained to its limits by portentous dialogue which, in overuse, dilutes its potency." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat D |
Jennifer's Body (2009) |
"Devil's Kettle might as well have been called Crock Pot." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato C |
Julie & Julia (2009) |
"Amy Adams is so meek she echoes Cynthia Nixon's waif servant in Forman's Amadeus. In fact, for a moment I thought she was Ms. Nixon, until I remembered that Amadeus was twenty-five years ago." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
Just My Luck (2006) |
"Lohan reads more like oak than Marilyn Monroe on her most inebriated day." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
Keeping Up With The Steins (2006) |
"...the director treats this movie much in the same way he treats the religion--an endless series of blindly-adhered liturgies, the deeper history and meaning of which is never fully contemplated." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
The Lake House (2006) |
"It's odd, but now I can say I've seen a movie which makes the timing of character interaction in the "Star Wars" prequels look fantastic." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
Law Abiding Citizen (2009) |
"On a side note, can you believe the Oscar-winning star of RAY made a crack about Helen Keller?" |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
The Libertine (2005) |
"Stumble away from this film as quickly as possible." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) |
"At best, it's an assembly line of disconnected gags that rely entirely on Mr. Clooney's sub-deadpans and Mr. McGregor's innocent mug working perpendicular to the jokes. At worst, it's a meditation on the greater absurdities of New Age beliefs and ideals." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
Mission: Impossible III (2006) |
"The movie leaves you no sense of reward for having paid attention and everything might as well have been one large dream sequence." |
Rubin Safaya |
- |
More Than a Game (2009) |
"Kristopher Belman: More Than A Game" |
Rubin Safaya |
IGN RSS Feeds
