Tomato |
The Baader Meinhof Complex (2009) |
"The Baader Meinhof Complex is the latest autopsy on an important and under-dramatised segment of European history. Those who do not learn from it risk being among those who might repeat it." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato |
The Band's Visit (2007) |
"Sweet human comedy." |
Nigel Andrews |
Splat |
Bangkok Dangerous (2008) |
"A (slightly belated) reappraisal of his way of life recalls John Wayne in The Shootist, and evidently this is intended as more than a gore fest. The result is surprisingly dull." |
Martin Hoyle |
Tomato |
The Banishment (2007) |
"There are prize-winning performances, seductive landscapes and hallucinatory shots of empty urban streets and shadowy interiors." |
Martin Hoyle |
Splat |
The Bank Job (2008) |
"While other countries do state-of-the-art schadenfreude, we are stuck in the steam age. We feed coal into the engines of old-fashioned heist thrillers." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato |
Be Kind Rewind (2008) |
"100 minutes of sweet-natured idiocy." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato 5/5 |
The Beaches of Agnes (2009) |
"A loose-leaf diary in which the pages are shuffled by instinct, wit and surreal art." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato |
Bedtime Stories (2008) |
"In Bedtime Stories Adam Sandler gives his most bearable performance yet." |
Nigel Andrews |
Splat |
Bee Movie (2007) |
"The best we can award is bee minus." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato 3/5 |
Before I Forget (2008) |
"Any film that boasts two jokes about Roland Barthes and one scene – surreal, deadpan, inspired – of superannuated cross-dressing will take its place, for some, near the front of the must-see queue." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato |
Belle Toujours (2006) |
"Belle Toujours is a teasing charmer from a Portuguese centenarian." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato |
Beowulf (2007) |
"The bloodiest 12A (UK) rating in memory." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato |
Better Things (2009) |
"Hopkins has a singularity of style worth watching and the courage not to flinch in putting it on screen." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato 3/5 |
Big River Man (2009) |
"There is a general air of contrivance as well as connivance on the part of the filmmakers. Best are the scenes of primitive quetitude that seem to take place outside the perimeters of the film altogether." |
Peter Aspden |
Tomato 4/5 |
BirdWatchers (2009) |
"Bechis bequeaths us a landscape scattered with enigmas, jigsaw pieces for us to complete our own picture." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato |
Black Sheep (2007) |
"Good, camp fun." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato |
Black Water (2007) |
"Nasty, brutish and at 89 minutes just the right length." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato |
Blame it on Fidel (2006) |
"Gavras is an experienced maker of documentaries, but this assured, intelligent film marks an auspicious beginning to her career in fictional features." |
Karl French |
Splat |
Blindness (2008) |
"Rhubarbed melodrama." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato |
Blindsight (2008) |
"Lucy Walker’s documentary Blindsight is breathtaking twice over. It leaves the audience gasping like a landed guppy at views of snow-coddled Himalayan peaks under ice-blue skies." |
Nigel Andrews |
Splat |
A Bloody Aria (2006) |
"It's supposedly an essay on the nature of human brutality and there is a certain amount of narrative deftness at play, but whether in the sequences of dialogue or violence, in both cases extended, the film is not merely unattractive but also uninteresting" |
Karl French |
Tomato 4/5 |
Blue Eyelids (2008) |
"Beautifully acted by Enrique Arreola and Cecilia Suárez, an actress both withdrawn and hauntingly luminous." |
Martin Hoyle |
Splat 2/5 |
The Boat That Rocked (2009) |
"A woebegone crew of comedy turns worthy of a bad Carry On film." |
Nigel Andrews |
Splat |
Body of Lies (2008) |
"Visually the film is so undistinguished it may be time for the maker of Blade Runner to be subjected to that film’s Voigt-Kampff test, to determine whether the current owner of the name “Ridley Scott” is real or a replicant." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato |
Bolt (2008) |
"Could Bolt 3D be better animated? No. Could it be funnier? A bit. Did it need the 3D? Not really." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato |
Boogie (2008) |
"The film remains dour, truthful, grimly droll." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato |
Born and Bred (2006) |
"Scenery apart, the film is penitence at 24 frames per second." |
Nigel Andrews |
Splat 3/5 |
Born in 68 |
"The problem is not length but shallowness." |
Martin Hoyle |
Tomato |
The Boss of it All (2007) |
"The script and story are what matter. They are as neat and interlocked as nail scissors. They are also grimly funny." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato |
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) |
"A rattling yarn exuberantly told, crunchingly violent but not too sadistic." |
Martin Hoyle |
Splat 2/5 |
The Box (2009) |
"A lot of stuff about Nasa, Mars exploration and amateur theatre – Sartre’s Huis Clos and its glowing chestnut adages (“Hell is other people”) – add to the film’s richness or, depending on opinion, its overcooked confusion." |
Nigel Andrews |
Splat |
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008) |
"The film’s flimsy fabric of historical reimagining – a death camp with no watchtower and an out-of-sight corner for illicit pow-wows and tunnel-digging – makes the notionally harrowing ending seem a smash-and-grab raid on our susceptibilities." |
Nigel Andrews |
Splat |
The Brave One (2007) |
"The film’s final unforgivable fault is its sheer, plodding dullness." |
Martin Hoyle |
Splat |
Brick Lane (2008) |
"The film is full of fabrics and shimmer and embroiderings of light and colour, giving a slender story the shy blush of art." |
Nigel Andrews |
Splat |
Brideshead Revisited (2008) |
"Lovely if you have the time. But if you have the time you may, I feel, be living in the wrong time." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato 5/5 |
Bright Star (2009) |
"Steadfastness, truth and a simple, blazing, incandescent humanity. This is a literary life story in which life, for once, is the meaningful word." |
Nigel Andrews |
Splat |
The Broken (2009) |
"A Babel cast in a piece of free-associative gothic babble." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato 4/5 |
Broken Embraces (2009) |
"Can Pedro Almodóvar make a bad film? The answer seems to be no, even when he might be accused of trying. Broken Embraces has a mazy plot in which a poor director would lose himself fast." |
Nigel Andrews |
Splat |
The Brothers Solomon (2007) |
"A dismal gross-out comedy." |
Karl French |
Tomato |
Bruno (2009) |
"Cohen’s new one-star show is appalling and funny and sometimes both simultaneously." |
Nigel Andrews |
Splat 2/5 |
Bunny & The Bull (2009) |
"A buddy-based road movie with fetching cut-out sets foregrounded by non-fetching cardboard characters." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato |
Burma VJ (2009) |
"Anders Ostergaard’s documentary mixes a small amount of re-enactment – scenes of the Thai-based boss co-ordinating action by phone – with large amounts of scary, shocking or in some cases infamously celebrated footage." |
Nigel Andrews |
Splat |
Burn After Reading (2008) |
"But wait. Didn’t screwball farce go out 70 years ago? Around the time of Harry Cohn? Aren’t we watching necromancy in action? Yes, yes and yes." |
Nigel Andrews |
Tomato 3/5 |
Bustin' Down the Door (2008) |
"Once or twice – making it all worthwhile – an interviewee touchingly chokes up at his own memories, and brims with sudden tears." |
Nigel Andrews |
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