Tomato 4/5 |
500 Days of Summer (2009) |
"A sharp spin on the usual rom-com formulae, this is funny, sensitive and challenges the genre’s gender conventions." |
Chris Roberts |
Tomato 3/5 |
9 (2009) |
"Pretty exciting in its Sturm-und-Drang. And, aww, really, the little sack puppets really were the cutest poppets." |
Michael Bonner |
Tomato 4/5 |
Adventureland (2009) |
"Much like its anti-hero, Adventureland is at first too gauchely intelligent for its surroundings, then learns to merge the best of what it is and what it isn’t. Gentle is the new gross, it seems." |
Chris Roberts |
Tomato 3/5 |
Am I Black Enough For You |
"The feeling that the film’s subject has been over-stretched isn’t helped by some crass overdubs of Paul’s live performances. Authenticity starts at home." |
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Tomato 3/5 |
Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2009) |
"Not just one of the best films ever made about rock’n’roll, but an astute exploration of the thin border between ambition and dementia, a moving hymn to friendship, and a heartbreaking acknowledgement of the utter unfairness of life in general." |
Andrew Mueller |
Tomato 3/5 |
Awaydays (2009) |
"To the music fans, it’s watching Echo & The Bunnymen gigs at nightclubs; to The Pack, Awaydays contingent of football hooligans, it’s fighting in car parks." |
Michael Bonner |
Tomato 3/5 |
The Boat That Rocked (2009) |
"But Curtis tries to juggle too many storylines, giving none of them enough time to develop. A final act swerve into disaster movie territory is also ill-advised. Still, Bill Nighy is superb, here playing Bill Nighy as the station’s rakish boss." |
Michael Bonner |
Tomato 3/5 |
Broken Embraces (2009) |
"His films can be uncomfortably navel-gazing, and that’s the case in this somewhat maudlin contemplation of the woes of film-making and the life artistic." |
Jonathan Romney |
Tomato 3/5 |
Che, Part Two (2008) |
"Soderbergh deserves all credit for attempting a very un-Hollywood project, an objective, forensic war film in the lineage of Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, and as Benicio del Toro is convincing as the warrior in decline." |
Jonathan Romney |
Tomato 3/5 |
The Class (2008) |
"By casting aside rose-tinted spectacles and *Blackboard Jungle*-style gritty-delinquency clichés, *The Class* pays so much more respect to teachers, and to pupils. Goodbye Mr Chips, indeed." |
Damien Love |
Tomato 3/5 |
Coraline (2009) |
"Admirably, it never condescends, and the subtexts about child abduction and the nature of maternal love identify Coraline as something measurably apart from what traditionally passes for “kids” films these days." |
Michael Bonner |
Tomato 3/5 |
The Damned United (2009) |
"Hooper’s film rattles along crisply, with the director mixing punchy tussles on and off the field." |
Chris Roberts |
Tomato 3/5 |
District 9 (2009) |
"The originality of the first hour is squandered as Blomkamp unmasks corporate villainy and resorts to an increasingly programmatic series of action set-pieces that pit Wikus and a friendly alien against the multi-national’s private army." |
Michael Bonner |
Tomato 4/5 |
Drag Me To Hell (2009) |
"Drag Me To Hell is never less than trashy, adrenalised fun." |
Damon Wise |
Tomato 3/5 |
Encounters At the End of the World (2007) |
"Herzog is baffled, amused and fascinated by them all, exults in their palpable strangeness, draws us deep into their unique world and, via Henry Kaiser’s extraordinary underwater photography, what looms often unnervingly beneath it." |
Allan Jones |
Tomato |
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) |
"Fantastic Mr Fox resembles a high-budget update of British children’s programmes from the ’60s and ’70s like Pogles’ Wood and Bagpuss. Home-made and hand-made, all arts and crafts; peculiarly English, in other words." |
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Tomato 4/5 |
Fish Tank (2009) |
"There are moments of athletic grace, as Mia dances in an abandoned flat to her Discman; and a closing image, of a floating heart balloon, which does little to dispel the sense of emotional agoraphobia which has spooled out over the previous two hours." |
Alastair McKay |
Tomato 4/5 |
Frost/Nixon (2008) |
"It’s all about the two men on camera, the showman and the politician: superbly rendered exemplars, respectively, of the lengths and the depths to which men will go to be liked." |
Andrew Mueller |
Tomato 3/5 |
Gigantic (2008) |
"Yet there’s an echo of Hal Ashby, or even Hal Hartley, in the subversion of easy truisms about relationships, and its primary note - mild anxiety - may make it a cult favourite." |
Chris Roberts |
Tomato 5/5 |
The Hurt Locker (2009) |
"One of the greatest American films of the decade, certainly the best American movie since There Will Be Blood, shocking, overwhelming and unforgettable." |
Allan Jones |
Tomato 3/5 |
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) |
"A cheerily irreverent memorial to Ledger. Ledger, meanwhile, immerses himself enthusiastically into the low-budget spirit of Gilliam’s film." |
Nick Hasted |
Tomato |
In Search of a Midnight Kiss (2008) |
"Honestly one of those films that, when you see it, you're hooked." |
Michael Bonner |
Tomato 3/5 |
In the Loop (2009) |
"In this department, In The Loop commendably resembles a Howard Hawks-style screwball comedy enhanced with the furious profanities of a David Mamet play." |
Michael Bonner |
Tomato 3/5 |
The Informant! (2009) |
"Only one role is fleshed out, and that’s Damon’s. With walrus ‘tache and a dazzling mix of the naive and the Machiavellian, his is, despite the movie’s lack of flair, one of the year’s stand-out performances." |
Chris Roberts |
Tomato 3/5 |
Inglourious Basterds (2009) |
"Lively and literate, Inglourious Basterds feels fresher than any Tarantino film in a while. Even so, smart as his writing is, it wouldn’t kill him to see a blue pencil now and again." |
Jonathan Romney |
Tomato 4/5 |
Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee (2009) |
"It’s the dynamic between the crass, artless Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee, his quiet, overweight partner who’s capable of delivering brilliant raps, that wins here." |
Michael Bonner |
Tomato 4/5 |
The Limits of Control (2009) |
"Plot isn’t in it. This is an essay in style, in which a great American director is transplanted to Southern Spain." |
Alastair McKay |
Tomato 3/5 |
Looking for Eric (2009) |
"One of Loach's most entertaining, uplifting films." |
Chris Roberts |
Tomato 4/5 |
Me and Orson Welles (2009) |
"If there are romantic comedy elements to what is one of the eclectic Linklater’s finest films yet, these are outweighed by a stellar character study." |
Chris Roberts |
Splat 2/5 |
The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) |
"An amusing little farce inspired by some genuinely hair-raising true stories. But it loses its nerve in its second half as the need to impose conventional narrative closure eclipses the wacko subject matter. Fun, but forgettable. Burn after viewing." |
Stephen Dalton |
Tomato 5/5 |
Mesrine: Killer Instinct (2009) |
"This atypically French director takes on the proud heritage of American gangster movies and, wickedly, trumps them. Mesrine, who was no stranger to the canon of gangster lore, or indeed to egomania, would approve." |
Chris Roberts |
Tomato 5/5 |
Mesrine: Part 2 - Public Enemy #1 (2009) |
"The second [part] throws in heart-stoppingly exciting blasts of Bullit and Papillon." |
Chris Roberts |
Tomato 4/5 |
Milk (2008) |
"This is a warm, moving, non-preachy and surprisingly funny slice of contemporary history." |
Stephen Dalton |
Tomato 4/5 |
Moon (2009) |
"Make no mistake: Jones is a uniquely exciting prospect, whose cerebral, creepy and riveting Moon carves out his own elevated flight path." |
Chris Roberts |
Tomato 3/5 |
Public Enemies (2009) |
"This crisp digital look affords Public Enemies an incredible sense of immediacy. Mann, too, has a strong eye for forensic detail that ramps up the vividness of the film." |
Michael Bonner |
Tomato 4/5 |
Red Cliff (2009) |
"Woo has created a resounding epic, blending a distinctly Chinese ethos with a Hollywood sense of scale." |
|
Tomato 3/5 |
Religulous (2008) |
"Religulous isn’t all it could have been: Maher spends too much of his interactions with believers of various stripe scoring easy points off the mad and stupid." |
Andrew Mueller |
Tomato 3/5 |
Revolutionary Road (2008) |
"While Yates’ story retains flecks of perceptiveness, this is as disappointing as the characters’ compromises." |
Chris Roberts |
Tomato 4/5 |
The September Issue (2009) |
"It’s the relationship between these two intransigent British women that’s the backbone here." |
|
Tomato 5/5 |
A Serious Man (2009) |
"A Serious Man feels – initially, at least – like a return to an earlier kind of filmmaking for the Coens." |
Michael Bonner |
Tomato 3/5 |
Sounds Like Teen Spirit |
"The children dominate the film, and their openness and enthusiasm overwhelm any latent cynicism." |
Alastair McKay |
Tomato 3/5 |
State of Play (2009) |
"It’s very successful, gripping from start to finish in the way that Michael Clayton almost but not quite did." |
Chris Roberts |
Tomato 3/5 |
Synecdoche, New York (2008) |
"Despite flaws of intellectual hubris, this is no vanity botch-up like Southland Tales. Fairweather fans may flee towards sunnier pictures. But when it’s in the zone, it’s moving, radical and exhilarating." |
Chris Roberts |
Tomato 3/5 |
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009) |
"The film thrills like a super-saturated fairground ride, but Scott ducks the question of post -9/11 terror, and fails to deliver on a metaphorical level." |
|
Tomato 4/5 |
Taking Woodstock (2009) |
"Ang Lee's latest dissection of the American dream is one of his most complex and even most deceptively subversive films." |
Damon Wise |
Tomato 3/5 |
Telstar: The Joe Meek Story (2009) |
"Moran’s film is not empty nostalgia. It is not The Boat That Rocked. It should be filed alongside Stephen Frears’ Joe Orton biopic, Prick Up Your Ears, because its breezy exterior conceals a thoughtful consideration of a strange moment in British pop." |
Alastair McKay |
Tomato 3/5 |
Thirst (2009) |
"While its most dazzling scenes recall David Cronenberg’s The Fly and Schrader’s Catpeople, it topples into self-parody in spells, as if John Waters was remaking In The Realm Of The Senses." |
Chris Roberts |
Tomato 3/5 |
Three Miles North Of Molkom (2009) |
"Much is learnt about the characters, but it really needs a journalistic presence, a Ronson or Theroux asking questions and trying to get these people to explain themselves, rather than just filming them yammering New Age speak." |
Andrew Mueller |
Tomato 3/5 |
Tony Manero (2009) |
"A highly original portrait of a sociopath in a corrupt, festering, morally bankrupt society, this bleakly funny psycho-horror movie makes for clammy, compulsive viewing." |
Stephen Dalton |
Tomato 3/5 |
Tyson (2009) |
"James Toback’s been close with Tyson since the 80s (he played in Toback’s Black And White), and this stab at redemption is subjective and sympathetic." |
Chris Roberts |
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