Tomato |
The Business Of Being Born (2008) |
"Director Abby Epstein is clearly biased in favor of home birth, but that doesn't make her case any less square." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Caramel (2008) |
"Labaki infuses her story of beauty, friendship, longing and constraint with that so painfully epitomized in the plight of her native Lebanon." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Cassandra's Dream (2008) |
"Farrell's performance is the highlight in this uneven English blend of high drama and afternoon telly." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Definitely, Maybe (2008) |
"Brooks deserves credit for a fairly satisfying survey of a heart wanting what it wants, thinking it wants what it doesn't want, wanting the first thing again and then waking up to what it needs." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Orthodox Stance (2008) |
"Hutt's instincts are solid, if occasionally unfocused; he'll be ready to turn pro any day now." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Taxi to the Dark Side (2008) |
"The Enron director's sharp, shaming torture exposé tracks another Great American Meltdown." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
The 11th Hour (2007) |
"Seeming to cater to the ADD generation even as it tackles a subject of enormous scope, The 11th Hour doesn't quite get the job done." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
2 Days In Paris (2007) |
"Delpy wrangles her metaphors without showing too much strain, and the performances are too lovely and guileless to fault." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Air Guitar Nation (2007) |
"There are enough endearing characters and charming trash talk to keep what is essentially a one-note joke running toward the spastic crescendo with alacrity." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Alpha Dog (2007) |
"Watching it is like being trapped at the biggest boneheaded gathering of snowballing stupidity you can imagine" |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Away From Her (2007) |
"There is real grace in Polley's portrait of a couple that stays together long enough to forget." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
The Band's Visit (2007) |
"A truly lovely film, as patient and generous with its characters as viewers should be with its delicately latent politics and occasional over-love of eccentric tableaux." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Becoming Jane (2007) |
"Lay back and don't think of England -- or Austen -- is the best advice I can give for prospective viewers of Becoming Jane." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Black Book (2007) |
"The overall tone is best described as glossy, where the gossamer-thin conceits are exactly as they should be." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Breaking and Entering (2007) |
"A script so larded up with consciousness-raising claptrap and milky, synthesized epiphanies, there's no way you can stomach it." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Brooklyn Rules (2007) |
"Brooklyn Rules has enough heart and personality to freshen what could easily be construed as stale cannoli." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Charlie Wilson's War (2007) |
"Nichol's and Co.'s foreign policy caper puts up a decent fight, but Hoffman wins the War." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Color Me Kubrick (2007) |
"The decision to execute the story as a kind of extended meta-sitcom -- a series of set-ups without the tidy resolution -- feels like a cheat." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Dedication (2007) |
"Moore is such a smooth and comfortable presence onscreen that the at times embarrassingly naked framework of David Bromberg's screenplay seems almost believable." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) |
"As insistent on its emotional grandiosity as it is completely meaningless." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Evening (2007) |
"All emotion registers as melodrama, though the flushed and flustered parts do not cohere into a melodramatic (i.e. generic) whole." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Exterminating Angels (2007) |
"A very straightforward, if absurdly executed, argument in favor of not just the director's innocence, but the essential hysterical whorishness lying dormant in the modern female." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Fay Grim (2007) |
"Hartley has chosen the hallmark of a great remake -- reinvention -- in approaching the concept of the sequel, for better and for worse." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman (2007) |
"A mosaic of experience and endeavor reconsidered as human (in this case, very much female) experiment." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Georgia Rule (2007) |
"There is formidable dramatic force behind many of the interchanges, but the balance between them is too tenuous, with Marshall tending toward glib mishandling of the gravely serious aspects of his story." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Gone Baby Gone (2007) |
"The film doesn't fully click into the register Affleck seems to be going for -- that of a talky, tense, intricately woven urban opera of greed (both emotional and monetary), ambition and ethical relativism." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams (2007) |
"Jasmila Zbanic's writing and directing debut takes a personal look at a citizenry reeling in the aftermath of war." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
The Hoax (2007) |
"The idea of what is and isn't plausible gets a lot of chiding play in The Hoax, and it's one that could have used more consideration in the formulation of its swell-talking centerpiece." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Interview (2007) |
"Sprawling its intriguing capital in all directions, Interview falls short even in reaching that commonest of denominators: the cinematic puff piece." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
The Italian (2007) |
"Russian director Kravchuck offers a painful but ultimately hopeful look at what is clearly his beloved country." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
The Jane Austen Book Club (2007) |
"Time was clearly taken here to do better than fine with material that had a sizeable no-brainer audience built right into the title." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Jimmy Carter Man From Plains (2007) |
"Carter's life and work deserve a fuller accounting and analysis than Demme is finally able to provide." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Jindabyne (2007) |
"Jindabyne musters all the emotional momentum of a reflecting pool despite a solid cast and fertile premise." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Juno (2007) |
"Once it gets past some serious tonal overkill, Juno's sweetness feels earned." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
The Kingdom (2007) |
"A kill-'em-all action flick that attempts to elevate itself with clumsy, rock 'n roll politics, dropping actual names and articles of political currency like catchphrases." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
The Kite Runner (2007) |
"Dolefully faithful to its source in the broad strokes, almost none of the book's cultural engagement sneaks through." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Knocked Up (2007) |
"Judd Apatow makes me want to be a dude." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
La Vie En Rose (2007) |
"La Vie En Rose operates in a mode of excellence that ultimately becomes more concerned with exploring itself than the subject at hand." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Lagerfeld Confidential (2007) |
"The fragments from much of the day-in-the-life footage feel frustratingly devoid of a guiding context." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
The Lookout (2007) |
"With Gordon-Levitt's eerily self-possessed, pitiful but never bathetic dupe as our conduit, the heist tropes take over without letting you to slip into plot auto-pilot." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Love in the Time of Cholera (2007) |
"Newell's adaptation infuses its source material's classic romantic tropes with all the poetry of a dog dish." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Margot at the Wedding (2007) |
"You've been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books/You're very well-read/It's well-known." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Michael Clayton (2007) |
"Dude, there’s a bomb in your car." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
A Mighty Heart (2007) |
"The film is as much rough-and-ready thriller as it is tragic memoir." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
No End in Sight (2007) |
"This essential documentary is a clear-eyed, coherent dissection of how crucial decisions were made in the first weeks and months following the American invasion of Iraq." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
No Reservations (2007) |
"Where Mostly Martha managed to fold its rather plotty conceit into an organic world of people and problems, in this stubbornly torpid remake, the conceit props up the characters and vice versa." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) |
"Shot at the same time as its predecessor, At World's End bears the same hallmarks of being hacked, horned and hemmed together as they went along." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Praying with Lior (2007) |
"Lior's big moment is an underdog weeper for the ages; I only wish the 80 minutes that preceded it had been as powerful." |
Michelle Orange |
Splat |
Rendition (2007) |
"There is a smart, piercing film in here somewhere, but Rendition never fully connects with its subject." |
Michelle Orange |
Tomato |
Rescue Dawn (2007) |
"[The ultimate] rescue scene is so desperate and painful, so joyous and true, that it exhausts the senses." |
Michelle Orange |
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