Splat
The Secret Life of Bees (2008)
"A god-awful chick flick about black women bonding in a sugary, never-never South. It should be renamed How to Make an American Wilt (and any other viewer)."
Nigel Andrews
The Seeker (2007)
"An uncanny and unholy blend of The Fifth Element, The Sixth Sense and The Seventh Seal."
Karl French
Tomato 4/5
The September Issue (2009)
"A sleek, very entertaining documentary."
Seraphim Falls (2007)
"As the story self-destructs, we are left with the majestic scenery, photographed by John Toll, and the pleasure of two good actors from one side of the Atlantic stretching themselves to seem convincing on the other."
Séraphine (2008)
"Moreau’s stellar performance and the astral intensity of the paintings keep taking us where this story belongs, up into the skies."
A Serious Man (2009)
"Another impudent and exquisitely engineered comedy from Joel and Ethan Coen."
Leo Robson
Seven Pounds (2008)
"Seven Pounds compounds the schmaltz in a tale of goody-goody benefaction and glutinous redemption, whose plot the distributors mercifully injunct us from revealing."
Tomato
Sex Drive (2008)
"Neither film wins a prize for visual style. Each deserves one for clever gags and zanily zig-zagging dialogue."
Splat 1/5
Shadows in the Sun
"Time stands all but motionless. Wilby keeps plinking Träumerei on the Bechstein. And there is, no doubt, honey still for tea. Two stars for comfort, one star for originality."
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
"The script here is a pretext for fatuous action pyrotechnics, misfiring comedy, the inevitable star from Central Crumpet Casting and CG jiggery-pokery evoking Ye Olde London. In short: Doc, Sh’lock and Every Scraped Barrel."
Tomato 3/5
Shifty (2008)
"It is all done with conviction, is well acted, particularly by the two leads, and is a brisk, promising debut for Creevy."
Shoot 'Em Up (2007)
"The film is so fast it is over almost before it begins and so empty-headed it demands little but your inertia. On the way there are moments of weird charm, conjured by the movie’s velocity."
Shorts (2009)
"From whirling mini-UFOs to giant animated nose bogeys, the screen is never still and the script never smart or engaging."
Sicko (2007)
"Moore is rightly celebrated for his elaborately staged stunts and this film’s highlight, involving a boat-trip to Cuba, is as hilarious as it is disturbing."
Silent Night (2006)
"Hypnotic, so real-yet-otherworldly, that the filmgoer has a virtual out-of-body experience."
Sin Nombre (2009)
"The movie never quite determines if it is docudrama or melodrama, though each, at times, shines strongly."
Splat 2/5
Skin (2009)
"A dull, stiltedly scripted potter through re-warmed liberal indignation and heart-on-sleeve emotion."
Tomato 5/5
Sleep Furiously (2008)
"Koppel’s film transcends the pedagogic to touch the celebratory, the holistic, the mystical."
Slepe Lásky (2008)
"It’s hard to define what kind of film Blind Loves is, but whether you categorise it as animated docu-drama or perhaps as docu-fantasy, it is a peculiar, affecting piece."
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
"Don’t worry about suspending disbelief: for an hour or so Boyle will do it for you. The film’s visual panache is strong enough to ambush doubters, whose scepticism will stumble into hidden nets and be hoisted high into the firmament."
Small Engine Repair (2006)
"Not so much shapelessness as unvaried pace and emotional monotony spoil the engaging Small Engine Repair."
Martin Hoyle
The Soloist (2009)
"The revelation of poverty, squalor and mental illness in LA’s underclass is horrific. But the film suffers from uncertainty of tone."
Someone Else (2006)
"Too shapeless and unplotted; and Mangan’s not-too-ruffled rueful affability hails more from sitcom land."
Somers Town (2009)
"If Somers Town were any more unassuming, it would risk disappearing completely. Seventy-two minutes long, in black and white, with a cast as starless as a cloudy night, it is a British triumph."
Sorority Row (2009)
"An old-style stalker-slasher movie of no great distinction."
Soul Power (2009)
"Ali motormouth footage left over from When We Were Kings. Actually, this whole film was made from WWWK leftovers, we learn. But we manage to forget that detail whenever the music soars."
Sounds Like Teen Spirit
"Sounds Like Teen Spirit has its share of emotional manipulation but this documentary on the Junior Eurovision leaves one saddened by so much hope, enthusiasm, ambition and energy expended on such a tacky concept."
Southland Tales (2007)
"Whether this is a demented B-movie or a comment on demented B-movies is hard to say. It is horribly fascinating, if not for the full 150 minutes."
Sparkle (2007)
"Inertly plotted, haltingly paced, further embarrassed by Bob Hoskins in shyly lovesick mode, this broken-backed mess is fitfully illuminated by Anthony Head in a camp turn and the American Stockard Channing, her style as immaculate as her English accent."
St. Trinian's (2009)
"no girl or boy over the age of 12 would be attracted by anything so puerile, while its UK certificate and occasionally risqué subject matter rule out under-12s."
Star Trek (2009)
"But idolaters need fear no iconoclasm and newcomers no exclusion. The start of a presumably new chapter in the franchise is marked by affectionate respect tempered with an eye for modern visual tastes."
Stardust (2007)
"http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/6155d5ea-7cc4-11dc-aee2-0000779fd2ac.html"
Starsuckers (2009)
"The tone elsewhere is too often hectoring and self-righteous: a team of salesmen exhorting us not to listen to salesmen."
State of Play (2009)
"This is a smart, knowing addition to the great tradition of 1970s paranoid political thrillers, and as such includes several references to Watergate as well as featuring, as it had to, a tense sequence in an underground car-park."
Strawberry & Chocolate (1993)
"A superb Cuban film from 1993, a little classic about gay freedom and its aspirations versus Fidel Castro and his Marxist straitjacketing."
Sugar (2009)
"Sugar is dazzlingly free of message creep. We are perplexed, yet fully persuaded."
Sugarhouse (2007)
"Dominic Leyton’s script from his play starts as a flicker of fancy words and ends as a verbose fireball consuming all reality."
Summer (2008)
"Carlyle is exemplary. As the grown-up dyslexic tending a dying boyhood friend (Evets) he mints extra “dialogue” – the kind not written down – with each facial response."
Sunshine Cleaning (2009)
"The plot dithers and zigzags but only because human credibility, helped by excellent acting, has been allowed to prevail over Sundance-institutionalised designer whimsy."
Superbad (2007)
"The film proves only that a Hollywood fixated on the slapstick potential of teenage growing pains is finding it harder than ever to say, “Bye, bye, American Pie”."
Surf's Up (2007)
"A happy 85 minutes, although it might have been a teensy bit happier, banishing all hint of repetition, at 75."
Surveillance (2009)
"The scenes are shot in a clever range of styles, the dialogue is as sharp as a Stanley knife. The atmosphere in the cop shop, where the film closes in for the teased-out development before the recapitulation and surprise coda, is irresistibly seedy."
Sweet Land (2006)
"Nostalgic, gentle, loving: the elegiac mood set against endless rural space inevitably suggests Malick’s Days of Heaven. What next from this considerable talent?"
Swing Vote (2008)
"Hayseed nonsense, folksily scripted. Whenever it becomes too much – or too little – close your eyes and think of Frank Capra."
Syndromes and A Century (2007)
"Don’t think of it as film. Think of it as a series of paintings that talk to each other, raptly and quietly."
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
"The controlled romantic madness of Kaufman’s best work becomes a world of symbolic and thematic promiscuity at once lifeless and inchoate. Too many ideas interbreed as wit goes to the wall."
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