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 |
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 |
Tomato B |
Avatar (2009) |
"For all its flaws as art, Mr. Cameron has served up functional entertainment with a gigantic price tag." |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
Tomato |
Good Hair (2010) |
"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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
Tomato C |
My Sister's Keeper (2009) |
"The film has its flaws and swims in meticulously crafted schmaltz... yet also has well-conceived tender moments hiding in the fringes." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Neil Young - Heart of Gold (2006) |
"While his lyrics aren't complicated, both the words and the delivery reflect years of pain and anguish, particularly in seeing time pass, friends come and go." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Ninja Assassin (2009) |
"As a viewer, your only task here is to watch, eat popcorn, and laugh, jump or shriek%u2014whichever works for you%u2014whenever you see heads roll, limbs fly or or hemoglobin spurting." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Over the Hedge (2006) |
"Where it lacks ingenuity and cohesive storytelling, it satiates with manic energy, oddball observation and witty humor..." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato B |
Red Cliff (2009) |
"The film's countless canned platitudes aside, an intriguing plot unfolds wherein intellect and brute strength play against one another..." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
A Serious Man (2009) |
"It's a funny film, but mostly to those who convince themselves that there's truth behind every facet of Larry's ludicrously-miserable existence." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato B+ |
Sita Sings the Blues (2008) |
"The story shifts effortlessly between the two-dimensional collage style of the narrator segments, the classical artistic design of the Rama-Sita story, the pencil sketch style of the modern story, and finally Hanshaw's musical numbers in a two-dimensional" |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005) |
"...to shorten the discussions between Mohr and Scholl would have been to miss the point. She makes her lasting impression on Mohr, and us, not by violence, or cacophony, but by the persistence, patience and persuasiveness of her intellectual discourse..." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato A- |
Star Trek (2009) |
"...the film will go down, and endearingly so, as the Brokeback Mountain of space operas... In all the cosmos, a fatherless human and a motherless Vulcan find in one another that which they had lost." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Thank You For Smoking (2006) |
"It's not quite as dark a satire as "Lord of War," and its protagonist's jolly attitude, resembling (frighteningly) a more rational sort of Timothy Treadwell, does distract one... But... the movie is never in danger of being crushed by it's own weight." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2006) |
"...we see around and behind and underneath the stage, so to speak -- peering into the intertwined lives of the people who are caught up in the maelstrom of an untenable subject for film adaptation." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Tsotsi (2006) |
"Without cheap deceptions, clever editing, plot conveniences or overt exposition, the film pulls you in and keeps you there on the merit of the story's substance." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
United 93 (2006) |
"it's a respectable extrapolation that doesn't paint the terrorists as villains or the passengers as heroes. The movie doesn't need to." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato A- |
Up (2009) |
"...if you've ever wondered what kind of jokes dogs would tell if they could speak, here's your chance." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato A- |
Up in the Air (2009) |
"The consummate bachelor, Mr. Clooney reflects just enough comfort in his own skin without teetering into arrogance, quietly amused by life's idiosyncrasies." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Water (2006) |
"...you're an observer to a real dialogue and not merely a viewer in an audience watching a scripted drama and plot unfold." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato B |
Whip It (2009) |
"Whip It is a coming-of-age story told straight, devoid of trendy hipster sensibilities, yet aiming equally for entertainment as well as insight." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Wordplay (2006) |
"So many aspects of our lives are mundane that just having some sort of passion... means that people are taking time to engage themselves in more than merely subsistence. That demonstrates that there is culture left in the world..." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Zombieland (2009) |
"The film involves such gratuitous, juicy spatter, Dexter Morgan would have a field day." |
Rubin Safaya |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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