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 |
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 |
Terminator Salvation (2009) |
"No small tragedy, this is the first Terminator film without a heart." |
Rob Humanick |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
Tomato |
George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead (2008) |
"The most labyrinthine and multifaceted of Romero's Dead films." |
Keith Uhlich |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
Splat |
Milk (2008) |
"A paint-by numbers biopic of the tireless activist that wastes the efforts of some fine actors." |
Dan Callahan |
Tomato |
Mother of Tears (2008) |
"Both the body and the body politic are under attack in Mother of Tears." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Un Mundo Maravilloso (2008) |
"Estrada's most incendiary proposition: that God is, at heart, a hoi polloi construct, a buffer and security blanket that damagingly keeps the world's many harsh realities at bay." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Revolutionary Road (2008) |
"Revolutionary Road is not a great film, per se; a great film needs the stamp of a great director. But it is a great film of this great book." |
Dan Callahan |
Tomato |
Savage Grace (2008) |
"When [Moore] embarrasses her son by forcing him to read a passage from de Sade's Justine (introduction by Georges Bataille!), ... it's a potent familial cruelty to place alongside the best of Davis and Crawford." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Special (2008) |
"Take[s] a page from the cartoonist Bill Watterson, who noted of the tiger protagonist in his great Calvin & Hobbes, 'The nature of [the character's] reality doesn't interest me, and each story goes out of its way to avoid resolving the issue.'" |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
The Adventure (2008) |
"Less a film about existential crisis than its decided lack, about how easy it is to ignore the world's disastrous and horrific elements at the slightest twinge of uncertainty or trespass into our personal space." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
They Turned Our Desert into Fire (2008) |
"Talking heads revolve and the verité stylings are undistinguished, but this is the kind of important subject matter that tempers one's desire to quibble with aesthetics." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Viva (2008) |
"Beneath all the hippies and hair, makeup and music lies a film bubbling with ridiculous humor and serious heart." |
Lauren Wissot |
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 |
Splat |
Battle For Haditha (2007) |
"Character psychology is as specious as in the Schwarzenegger canon." |
Keith Uhlich |
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 |
Chris & Don: A Love Story (2007) |
"A love unique in every respect -- nothing to sniff at and forever to be treasured." |
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 Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) |
"The Sea Inside by way of Lady in the Lake." |
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 |
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 |
Splat |
The Gates (2007) |
"The Gates only reinforces my ambivalence toward the vérité stylings of co-director Albert Maysles." |
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 |
I Am Legend (2007) |
"A film capable of more, settling for less." |
Rob Humanick |
Tomato |
Jones (2007) |
"He'll always be coming and going." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Live! (2007) |
"So spake that prescient philosopher Julie Brown: "Just be vague, there's nothing to it."" |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Redacted (2007) |
"So much blood spilled over so little." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
The Savages (2007) |
"How unfortunate the film with none." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato |
Schindler's Houses (2007) |
"Emigholz's rigorous aural/visual cataloging of Schindler's efforts uncover the souls of these structures, and it's a sight to see." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat |
Belle Toujours (2006) |
"Drains all the mystery out of a masterpiece." |
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 |
Splat |
Flags of Our Fathers (2006) |
"The film is confirmation of Paul Haggis's predilection for exploitation and easy sentimentality." |
Ed Gonzalez |
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 |
Splat |
Lady Chatterley (2006) |
"A summa cum laude graduate of the Merchant-Ivory school of Classics Illustrated." |
Keith Uhlich |
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