Splat 2/4 |
S.W.A.T. (2003) |
"A throbbing dose of high-testosterone schlock in which logic, credibility and characterization also are dispensable in the name of that all-consuming end: keeping things moving." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
S1m0ne (2002) |
"Pacino is the best he's been in years and Keener is marvelous." |
John Anderson |
Tomato 4/4 |
S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2004) |
"Serves as a potent and necessary reminder of how easily war can defeat the humanity of the good and the well-intentioned." |
Jan Stuart |
Splat 2/4 |
Saawariya (2007) |
"When the most intriguing thing about a film is the production design, you know you're in trouble." |
John Anderson |
Tomato 3/4 |
Sacco & Vanzetti (2007) |
"[Director Peter Miller] shrewdly exposes the monolithic, class-driven legal machinery that sent a pair of innocent, hard-working immigrants to the chair." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 3/4 |
Sacred Planet (2003) |
"IMAX gives everyone a spacious window seat from which to view remote, unspoiled and starkly beautiful natural terrain in North America, Asia and Africa." |
Gene Seymour |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
The Saddest Music in the World (2004) |
"The amber-refracted comedy can serve as an introduction to the work of Canada's most original filmmaker or as a culmination of everything he's done before" |
John Anderson |
Tomato 4/4 |
Safe Conduct (2002) |
"For devotees of French cinema, Safe Conduct is so rich with period minutiae it's like dying and going to celluloid heaven." |
Jan Stuart |
Splat 2/4 |
The Safety of Objects (2003) |
"Conceptually, it's a good try. But even with a fine cast working near peak proficiency, The Safety of Objects gets all tangled up by its own aspirations and, ultimately, trips into a quicksand of bathos." |
Gene Seymour |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Sahara (2005) |
"Feels as plodding and fruitless as trekking the length of a desert on a pogo stick with a busted spring." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Saint of 9/11 (2006) |
"You come away from this movie with a bracing recognition that grace and perfection don't always share the same corners of the soul -- which doesn't and shouldn't prevent you from doing good works for others." |
Gene Seymour |
Tomato 3/4 |
Saint Ralph (2005) |
"A charmer with heart." |
John Anderson |
Splat 2/4 |
The Salon (2005) |
"Good-natured but curiously flat, a bottle of root beer that's lost its fizz." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 3/4 |
Salton Sea (2002) |
"As convoluted in its own way as Memento, and almost as sardonically funny." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Sangre de Mi Sangre (2008) |
"The grimy elegance of this Sundance award winner elevates it well above the standard-issue immigrant drama." |
John Anderson |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
The Santa Clause 2 (2002) |
"It's as home-entertainment ready as a shrink-wrapped sack of microwave popcorn. But at least it works hard at finding ways of pushing this one-joke premise ahead a space or two." |
Gene Seymour |
Splat 2/4 |
The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006) |
"As a full-service holiday movie, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause gets you into the mood to shop early and often by making the North Pole look like a shopping mall with a never-ending school pageant." |
Gene Seymour |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Saraband (2005) |
"The performances are -- no surprise -- subtly spectacular." |
John Anderson |
Tomato 3/4 |
Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic (2005) |
"The key to her delivery is about sly surprise, a 'did-she-really-say-what-I-think-she just-said' technique." |
John Anderson |
Tomato 3/4 |
Satin Rouge (2002) |
"The powder blues and sun-splashed whites of Tunis make an alluring backdrop for this sensuous and spirited tale of a prim widow who finds an unlikely release in belly-dancing clubs." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 3/4 |
Savage Grace (2008) |
"Howard Rodman's fine-tuned script and terrific acting across the board (Hugh Dancy is marvelous as a fashionable, well-manicured monster) makes Savage Grace a pleasure -- albeit a ghastly one -- to watch." |
Rafer Guzman |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
The Savages (2007) |
"The Savages is the perfect comic offering for a season when family Pandora's boxes come swinging open like so many must-return gifts." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 3/4 |
Save Me (2007) |
"There are heroes, battles and triumphs -- but no villains -- in Save Me, a thoughtful, nuanced drama about guilt-stricken gay men trying to fix their 'sexual brokenness' at a Christian recovery house." |
Rafer Guzman |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Save The Green Planet! (2005) |
"Unlike just about every other American action movie, this film knows how to embrace momentum without sacrificing challenges to the mind or the soul." |
Gene Seymour |
Splat |
Save the Last Dance (2001) |
"The high school repartee has snap, crackle and pop, but the romantic drama is strictly cornflakes that have been left in the milk too long." |
Jan Stuart |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Saved! (2004) |
"Spares us from offending any religious sensibilities by insulting our intelligence instead." |
Jan Stuart |
Splat |
Saving Silverman (2001) |
"There is nothing in the personalities of J.D., Wayne or Darren that makes me believe that they don't deserve to be slapped upside their heads for being pathetic losers." |
Gene Seymour |
Tomato 3/4 |
Saw (2004) |
"A gruesome blast of psychological horror that is so giddily pumped up with nasty hormones, you can't help but dissolve into laughter at the same time as you are hiding your eyes." |
Jan Stuart |
Splat 0/4 |
Saw II (2005) |
"Saw II -- better-acted than its predecessor, which isn't saying much -- is so gratuitously, sadistically violent, and to such little end, that it finally falls over dead on the far side of obscene." |
John Anderson |
Splat 2/4 |
Saw III (2006) |
"Ee'll just entertain you by mentioning such extraneous details as a human skull being opened and probed, a naked woman being frozen to death, a man drowning in the ground-up carcasses of dead pigs ..." |
Gene Seymour |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Saw V (2008) |
"Thank goodness Lionsgate made another Saw film! Otherwise, how would we as a country get to feel good about ourselves while watching humans suffer through prolonged torture, degradation and death?" |
Rafer Guzman |
Splat |
Scary Movie (2000) |
"Anything resembling taste, wit or political correctness is strictly prohibited." |
Jan Stuart |
Splat |
Scary Movie 2 (2001) |
"Gone is the surprise, the laughter of disbelief that made Scary Movie such a vacation from civility." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Scary Movie 3 (2003) |
"Crass, crude and sledgehammer- subtle. Yet, you can't help giggling yourself stupid, even at the more obvious sight gags." |
Gene Seymour |
Splat 1/4 |
Scary Movie 4 (2006) |
"Isn't it amazing to see just how low some people will stoop if you pay them just enough money?" |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 3/4 |
Schizo (2005) |
"A transfixing, gracefully constructed slice of realistic cinema." |
Gene Seymour |
Splat 1.5/4 |
School for Scoundrels (2006) |
"A battering ram of rude encounters that aspires to be a romantic comedy." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 4/4 |
School of Rock (2003) |
"Easily the funniest film of the year and one of those 'movies for all ages' (seriously)." |
John Anderson |
Tomato 4/4 |
Schultze Gets the Blues (2005) |
"A rough-cut wonder, a movie that evolves from Teutonic inertia into a deadpan polka, a bouquet of edelweiss tossed into the melting pot." |
John Anderson |
Splat 2.5/4 |
The Science of Sleep (2006) |
"To borrow one of Stephane's malapropisms, by the last half hour you feel positively schizometric, which I take it refers to that discombobulated state of being nowhere in more than one place at the same time." |
Jan Stuart |
Splat 2.5/4 |
Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004) |
"Imagine you are given a free pass to go on every ride at Great Adventure, but the fine print stipulates that you have only 90 minutes in which to do them all ... This, more or less, is the Scooby-Doo experience." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Scooby-Doo - The Movie (2002) |
"By embracing the original series' tacky elements and inserting just enough self-mockery to avoid smugness, the movie manages to fulfill basic expectations." |
Gene Seymour |
Splat 2/4 |
Scoop (2006) |
"Filmmaking for Allen appears to have settled into little more than personal habit, like shaving, dining or playing clarinet once a week with his jazz band. The result has for some time been a hit-and-miss process." |
Gene Seymour |
Tomato |
The Score (2001) |
"It is the human spectacle of three of America's finest screen actors passing on their wisdom and gifts from one generation to the next that lends this movie a self-reflexive glow and lifts it above the clichés on which it is constructed." |
Jan Stuart |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
The Scorpion King (2002) |
"Rock's got the kind of sly charm and non- self-conscious sincerity that could fit into any action hero archetype imaginable, even the old-school ones." |
Gene Seymour |
Tomato 3/4 |
Scotland, PA (2002) |
"Film can't quite maintain its initial momentum, but remains sporadically funny throughout." |
John Anderson |
Tomato 3/4 |
The Sea (2003) |
"A film of a neo-classical design, embellished by director Baltasar Kormakur's blackly comedic inclinations." |
John Anderson |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
The Sea Inside (2004) |
"Bardem, who continues to make a good case that he is among a handful of the best screen actors alive, is totally transformed." |
John Anderson |
Splat 2/4 |
Seabiscuit (2003) |
"Despite the mugging from Macy and sparks of genuine turmoil generated by the ever-surprising Maguire, there isn't a spontaneous moment in the whole picture." |
Jan Stuart |
Splat 2/4 |
The Seagull's Laughter (2001) |
"A childhood reminiscence set in 1953 that seems to recycle elements from every coming-of-age movie ever made." |
Jan Stuart |
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