Tomato 3.5/4 |
Mad Hot Ballroom (2005) |
"Watching these lively people, young and old, express their wishes, confess their fears and kick uptheir heels is enough to make you proud to be a New Yorker. Heck, proud to be human." |
Gene Seymour |
Tomato 3/4 |
Mad Money (2008) |
"Mad Money is no Rififi, but Khouri and Gers invest it with an individuality and generosity of spirit that lift it into the realm of guiltless pleasure." |
Jan Stuart |
Splat 2/4 |
Madagascar (2005) |
"As with most recent animated features not affiliated with Pixar Studios, Madagascar oversells itself with superstar voices and set pieces bloated with noise and undernourished in wit." |
Gene Seymour |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008) |
"Typical tale of self-discovery, punctuated by genuine hilarity and top-flight animation." |
John Anderson |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Madame Sata (2003) |
"Madame Satã is an admirably uncompromising journey, but one you wouldn't want to have to make more than once." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato |
Made (2001) |
"You still laugh a lot in spite of a lot of jittery babble." |
Gene Seymour |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Madea's Family Reunion (2006) |
"There's a ragged road-show texture to Madea's Family Reunion, which, along with the rest of the movie, would be easy to dismiss if one didn't suspect that it might be calculated." |
Gene Seymour |
Splat 2/4 |
Madison (2005) |
"That Madison would emerge from this thrilling chapter in its history as one of the biggest tourist towns in the Midwest is the film's one genuine surprise." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato |
Maelström (2002) |
"By turns fanciful, grisly and engagingly quixotic." |
Gene Seymour |
Tomato 4/4 |
Mafioso (1962) |
"We can only wonder how Mafioso struck American audiences in its brief 1962 appearance. In 2007, it reveals the universal hallmarks of a classic." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 4/4 |
The Magdalene Sisters (2003) |
"McEwan nails the degenerate blend of humanity and hypocrisy that can coexist when people become slavemasters of moral rectitude." |
Jan Stuart |
Splat 2/4 |
Maid in Manhattan (2002) |
"Trite, banal, cliched, mostly inoffensive." |
John Anderson |
Splat |
The Majestic (2001) |
"I never thought I'd say anything like this, but it makes you long for Ace Ventura." |
John Anderson |
Splat |
Maléna (2000) |
"The balance between broad ribaldry and gritty tragedy is so off-kilter that you really don't care what life lessons Renato has learned in the end." |
Gene Seymour |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Malibu's Most Wanted (2003) |
"Kennedy identifies with B-rad's ghetto-envy on some level, but his humor is too broad to be subversive, too bland to qualify as satire." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 3/4 |
Mama Africa (2002) |
"Mama Africa pretty much delivers on that promise. It does give you a peek. The main problem being that it's only a peek." |
Gene Seymour |
Splat 2/4 |
Mambo Italiano (2003) |
"It's quite possible that [Mambo] may have closed the territory for raucous comedies about gay Italians coming of age in North America. For those of us whose ears keep ringing from the din of such movies, it's an errant wish." |
Gene Seymour |
Splat 1/4 |
Mamma Mia! (2008) |
"The ingredients seem perfect: a stellar cast, an unassailable soundtrack and source material from a proven hit. Somehow, though, this sugary mix turns into a sour hairball that will have you gagging to expel it for 108 minutes." |
Rafer Guzman |
Splat 2/4 |
The Man (2005) |
"The formula that powers The Man is so rusty from overuse that you can practically hear it creaking and sputtering." |
Gene Seymour |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
A Man Apart (2003) |
"If you take the picture at face value, it delivers the goods." |
Jan Stuart |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Man of the House (2005) |
"Although it took three people to write the script, you can see the laugh lines coming across the flat Texas landscape all the way from Oklahoma." |
John Anderson |
Splat 2/4 |
Man of the Year (2006) |
"Man of the Year sets its audience up to ponder the unthinkable, loses its resolve and congeals into reassuring kitsch." |
Gene Seymour |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Man on Fire (2004) |
"Two hours and 20 minutes of the most out-of-control filmmaking you've seen since your Jack Russell terrier grabbed the Handicam off the coffee table, mistaking it for a tug toy." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 3/4 |
Man on the Train (2003) |
"Patrice Leconte's fanciful odd-couple drama oozes flavorful, provincial atmosphere." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 3/4 |
Man On Wire (2008) |
"The film's soaring climax becomes surprisingly emotional thanks to testimony from those lucky enough to have witnessed it." |
Rafer Guzman |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Man Push Cart (2006) |
"Synthesizes aspiration, resignation, anonymity, celebrity, opportunity and denial into a portrait of something far beyond the immigrant experience." |
John Anderson |
Tomato 3/4 |
The Man Who Copied (2005) |
"Insistently quirky romp from Brazil." |
Jan Stuart |
Splat |
The Man Who Cried (2001) |
"Suzie and Cesar are essentially reactive characters, as much victims of underwriting as they are of persecution." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 3/4 |
The Man Without a Past (2003) |
"An understated but weirdly grabbing portrait of a man who loses his memory after being mugged and cobbles together an alternative existence with minimal means." |
Jan Stuart |
Splat 1/4 |
Management (2009) |
"It's a handful of ostensibly quirky ideas glued together by irritatingly conventional devices." |
Rafer Guzman |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
The Manchurian Candidate (2004) |
"Like its fabled predecessor, and novelist Richard Condon's 1959 potboiler before that, Jonathan Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate refashions an old gag into something cautionary, frightening and far less than far-fetched." |
John Anderson |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Manda Bala (2007) |
"Kohn takes seemingly disjointed and mildly bizarre elements to create a crafty, infuriating portrait of a society seemingly poised, like a scorpion, to be consumed by its own toxins." |
Gene Seymour |
Splat 2/4 |
Manderlay (2006) |
"As clumsy and ham-fisted as the movie's narrative process may be, its conclusion, however mordant or unforgiving, can't quite be shaken off so easily." |
Gene Seymour |
Tomato 3/4 |
Manic (2003) |
"The young cast throw themselves (quite literally) into their demanding assignments with vigor." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 3/4 |
Manito (2003) |
"Eason has made a film about family tragedy that sings along on an electrical pulse of energetic editing, convincing naturalism and a confident sense of turf." |
John Anderson |
Splat 2.5/4 |
Manufactured Landscapes (2007) |
"Doesn't go very far beneath the surface, or ask many provocative questions." |
John Anderson |
Tomato 2/5 |
A Map of the World (1999) |
"Defying every pitfall and eclipsing everything else in the film, Sigourney Weaver delivers a bravura portrait of a complex woman falsely accused of child abuse." |
John Anderson |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Marathon (2004) |
"A portrait of a certain urbanite mind and a city whose tolerance of anonymity provides a perfect stage for compulsion, neuroses and the fulfillment of hidden needs." |
John Anderson |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
March of the Penguins (2005) |
"Jacquet has made a film possessed of an intimacy that seems unfilmable." |
John Anderson |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Marci X (2003) |
"If this had been released in, say, 1994 at the latest, it might have been cutting-edge. As it is, it's just so much sticky foam on the cappuccino." |
Gene Seymour |
Splat 2/4 |
Mardi Gras: Made in China (2005) |
"Feels like a sermon on vegetarianism being delivered to occupants of a Sudanese refugee camp." |
John Anderson |
Splat 1/4 |
Marebito (2004) |
"Marebito, a piece of soft-core trash disguised as pop art from director Takashi Shimizu, marks a new low in the genre." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Margaret Cho - Assassin (2005) |
"In her third concert film ... one does detect a new level of calm about her that suggests Cho is growing more secure in her bones or is simply getting older. Or both." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 3/4 |
Margarita Happy Hour (2001) |
"Its portrait of a very unsung sector of society is refreshingly honest and entertaining." |
John Anderson |
Tomato 3/4 |
Margot at the Wedding (2007) |
"Along with its genteel rage and sour whimsy, the ultimate grace of Margot at the Wedding is to make its onlookers feel that, no matter how dysfunctional their families are, there are those who have it much worse." |
Gene Seymour |
Tomato 4/4 |
Maria Full of Grace (2004) |
"The unalloyed earnestness with which Marston tells his story, the frankness of that story and the insistently powerful performance of Catalina Sandino Moreno make Maria one of the more noteworthy debuts in recent filmmaking." |
John Anderson |
Splat 2.5/4 |
Marie Antoinette (2006) |
"Perhaps Marie Antoinette can best be appreciated in the haphazard way you savor a pop song that's about nothing beyond its own expression of energy and flash." |
Gene Seymour |
Tomato 3/5 |
Marigold (2007) |
"Amusing diversion." |
John Anderson |
Splat 2/4 |
Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School (2006) |
"Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dance & Charm School is like a first date who shows up at the door with flowers, candy, a blood test and a U-Haul. It's trying much too hard." |
John Anderson |
Tomato |
Marley & Me (2008) |
"The nonthreatening adorableness of Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson is no match for the emotional range of Marley." |
Linda Winer |
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