Splat |
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2008) |
"Strange to long for the humorous undercurrents of the no less despondent Lazarescu and Bucharest, but perhaps making sense of the red specter requires just such a penetrating mix of solemnity and absurdity." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
The Air I Breathe (2007) |
"Godliness, so The Air I Breathe finally tells us, is all about the Benjamins." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) |
"The mechanics of it are so aggravating that by the time you get to an actual throw-down, it's all but impossible to care about how poorly lit the rumble is." |
Rob Humanick |
Tomato |
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) |
"The film's centerpiece battle runs only eight minutes, yet its hellfire feels twice as long as Saving Private Ryan's D-Day onslaught." |
Rob Humanick |
Tomato |
The American Soldier (1970) |
"As Billy Wilder turned a crumbling Berlin into a slapstick, satirical playground in One, Two, Three, so Fassbinder offers up The American Soldier's Munich as a monochrome city of sadness." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
The Baron of Arizona (1950) |
"The Baron of Arizona (1950) is all thumbs, as much a forgery as the one perpetrated by its protagonist James Addison Reavis (Vincent Price)." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Battle For Haditha (2007) |
"Character psychology is as specious as in the Schwarzenegger canon." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
The Beaches of Agnes (2009) |
"Varda turns the camera on herself and her own life, even though she convincingly posits that she's much more interested in other people." |
Dan Callahan |
Tomato |
Before I Forget (2008) |
"[Jacques] Nolot writes, directs, and stars as Pierre Pruez, an HIV-positive bottom boy-no-longer who navigates his ruined life and beauty with aplomb." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Belle Toujours (2006) |
"Drains all the mystery out of a masterpiece." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Berlin Alexanderplatz (1983) |
"If greatness is determined less by perfection than by sheer forward thrust, I can think of few better examples than Berlin Alexanderplatz." |
Rob Humanick |
Tomato |
Berlin Alexanderplatz (1983) |
"This Criterion release could have been entirely without features and it would still rank among the finest DVDs of the year." |
Rob Humanick |
Splat |
Black Book (2007) |
"One longs for Nomi Malone to enliven the proceedings with her ketchup bottle of doom." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Black Sheep (2007) |
"Black Sheep takes one of nature's most decidedly non-threatening creatures and arms 'em, deliriously and deliciously, with ravenous, razor-edged teeth." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) |
"Borat's cultural learning is revealing, even if it doesn't adequately convey how it benefits glorious nation of Kazakhstan." |
Ed Gonzalez |
Tomato |
California Dreamin' (2009) |
"What surprises and delights is how complete the work feels, finished in every way aesthetically and thematically, any longueurs or asides entirely part of Nemescu's indelible emotional tapestry." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Changeling (2008) |
"[Eastwood's] overwrought excesses don’t cohere into anything like satire or analysis; they seem instead like the work of a man too passionate about his material to realize that so much of it feels so very false." |
Matt Noller |
Tomato |
Chris & Don: A Love Story (2007) |
"A love unique in every respect -- nothing to sniff at and forever to be treasured." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Chui-si Zao-wu Ai-ge (2005) |
"A literalist's portrait of apocalypse." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
The Darjeeling Limited (2007) |
"A highly flawed personal vision, containing what the Screenwriter 101's among us would deem various and sundry "third act problems."" |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
The Dark Knight (2008) |
"Now you see it, now you don't." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Dark Matter (2008) |
"Meryl Streep guest stars on a special episode of Sunrise Earth, doing Method Tai Chi while heavenly chorines, chanting in Hollywood Sanskrit, bemoan the eternal tragedy of man." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) |
"The Sea Inside by way of Lady in the Lake." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Doubt (2008) |
"[The play is] a shallow work easily interpreted, and Shanley's own film version is no different in the low bar it aims for and ultimately attains." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Eat, For This Is My Body (2008) |
"A true, unadulterated trip into a most unique subconscious." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) |
"An extended game of 16th-century Barbie." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Exterminating Angels (2007) |
"The beauties of Brisseau's movies lie in their defiantly messy imperfections: pretty poison all the way." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Face to Face (1976) |
"Cries out for Madeline Kahn to step in, cigarette in hand, and inquire, "Phallic-un zymbol?"" |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Factory Girl (2007) |
"In Factory Girl, a jumbled account of the short life and photogenic hard times of the first Andy Warhol superstar, Edie Sedgwick, Sienna Miller makes Sedgwick into an archetypal over-confident blond with a mannered young Kathleen Turner croak." |
Dan Callahan |
Tomato |
Faithless (2001) |
"This could be a regretful remembrance of things past on the part of "Bergman" or it could be a pure fiction torn from the ether." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
The First Films of Samuel Fuller (1949) |
"Tempting as it is to describe Samuel Fuller as the cinema's brute poet, the three films included on "The First Films of Samuel Fuller" encourage a more multifaceted reading." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Flags of Our Fathers (2006) |
"The film is confirmation of Paul Haggis's predilection for exploitation and easy sentimentality." |
Ed Gonzalez |
Splat |
The Gates (2007) |
"The Gates only reinforces my ambivalence toward the vérité stylings of co-director Albert Maysles." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead (2008) |
"The most labyrinthine and multifaceted of Romero's Dead films." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Ghost Rider (2007) |
"Director Mark Steven Johnson is infinitely less concerned with exploring Blaze's smoldering, soul-deprived isolation than he is infatuated with the character's skull-'n'-bones imagery." |
Rob Humanick |
Splat |
The Happening (2008) |
"Only half good cinema, seemingly the result of its maker's stunted belief/determination in both himself and his audience." |
Rob Humanick |
Splat |
I Am Legend (2007) |
"A film capable of more, settling for less." |
Rob Humanick |
Tomato |
I Shot Jesse James (1949) |
"Fuller goes deeper into his protagonist's tortured psyche, uncovering a sublimated sense of love that only finds expression as climax to his death rattle." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
The Incredible Hulk (2008) |
"Sound and fury signifying nothing, indeed." |
Rob Humanick |
Tomato |
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) |
"Whichever way we go, we have to always, always be looking." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) |
"Now only twilight and sunset. Illumination fades; the self annihilates in silhouette. And all (father, son, and spirit) is one." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Inland Empire (2006) |
"The film is a detailed analysis of Nikki's creative process, of her struggle towards that transcendent point where her art... only connects." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Jones (2007) |
"He'll always be coming and going." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Jumper (2008) |
"So lazily assembled and unenthusiastically performed that it could very well be an alternate cut of itself, assembled from takes that were justly consigned to the cutting room floor." |
Rob Humanick |
Splat |
Lady Chatterley (2006) |
"A summa cum laude graduate of the Merchant-Ivory school of Classics Illustrated." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) |
"In Letters, the glossy romanticism of history crumbles before our very eyes." |
Rob Humanick |
Splat |
Live! (2007) |
"So spake that prescient philosopher Julie Brown: "Just be vague, there's nothing to it."" |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Made in U.S.A. (1966) |
"The foreground drama ends on a query, while the Gallic hills and highways stretch to eternity. FIN." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
The Man from London (2008) |
"Moral rot captured with religious fervor." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Married Life (2008) |
"Screens within screens, frames within frames -- that's the simplest way of approaching Married Life's allusive/elusive roundelay." |
Keith Uhlich |
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