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 |
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 |
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 |
Tomato B |
Avatar (2009) |
"For all its flaws as art, Mr. Cameron has served up functional entertainment with a gigantic price tag." |
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 |
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 |
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 |
Splat D |
Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009) |
"...the uptown, house-hawking, vegetarian Meryl gets to flex Ms. Parker's typecast, cosmopolitan dependency act..." |
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 |
- |
District 9 (2009) |
"Neill Blomkamp and Sharlto Copley: District 9" |
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 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 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 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 |
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 |
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 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 |
- |
More Than a Game (2009) |
"Kristopher Belman: More Than A Game" |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat F+ |
My Life in Ruins (2009) |
"Leave it to Hollywood to take a bad idea and make it terrible." |
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 |
Splat D+ |
Nine (2009) |
"There isn't a single intriguing, amusing, passionate or inspiring visual to be found in Nine." |
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 |
Splat D |
Post Grad (2009) |
"...a coming-of-age tableau that is neither inspirational nor uplifting." |
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 |
Splat C |
Shorts (2009) |
"...what poignancy is served injecting heavy messages about parenting... into a movie which glorifies the suburban existence, makes light of bullying, and gratuitously employs property destruction for comic effect?" |
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 |
Splat D+ |
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009) |
"This is either bad writing, bad direction, bad acting or a combination of the three." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat C- |
Taking Woodstock (2009) |
"Watch carefully as the film tries to ramrod too many themes, invoking split-screen technique, and see if you can identify how often self-indulgence is confused for enlightenment." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat D+ |
Terminator Salvation (2009) |
"...as fascinating as chewing styrofoam--with the occasional firecracker jammed in to make you chew faster." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat |
The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) |
"The entire film seems to consist of three thoughts, cycled ad nauseum: Don't leave me. I can't live without you. Make me a vampire." |
Rubin Safaya |
Splat C- |
The Ugly Truth (2009) |
"...there's no finesse or scarcity to lend impact to the vulgarity. It's handled with all the craftsmanship of an infant wielding an arc welder." |
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 |
Splat |
Where the Wild Things Are (2009) |
"...a total collapse of coherent storytelling--disconnected scenes of running, jumping, throwing, thrashing, and destroying interspersed with languid stretches of navel gazing (read: moping)." |
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 |
Splat D+ |
Year One (2009) |
"The problem is not the historicity, or lack thereof, in a comedy, but the uneven pace of the humor." |
Rubin Safaya |
Tomato |
Zombieland (2009) |
"The film involves such gratuitous, juicy spatter, Dexter Morgan would have a field day." |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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