Tomato 3.5/4 |
Adam (2009) |
"The film rides on Dancy's wonderfully authentic performance." |
Bruce Demara |
Tomato 3/4 |
Adoration (2009) |
"Egoyan draws strong performances from the entire cast, including a solid performance from Scott Speedman, sporting a heavy beard, as the uncle raising the orphaned Simon, a sort of everyman embodying Western liberalism who is flawed by his own insularity." |
Bruce Demara |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
American Teen (2008) |
"A moving and engrossing slice-of-life documentary about teen life in small-town Warsaw, Ind." |
Bruce Demara |
Splat 2/4 |
Awake (2007) |
"The plot has more holes in it than a tea bag and the film should come with a warning label: don't go see with anyone with even a modicum of medical knowledge, because they'll surely spend the film huffing and rolling their eyes skyward." |
Bruce Demara |
Splat 1/5 |
The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002) |
"There is nothing redeeming about this movie." |
Daphne Gordon |
Tomato 4/5 |
Agent Cody Banks (2003) |
"Agent Cody Banks provides the kind of high-quality entertainment one would expect in an adult action adventure that is expected to rake in major bucks." |
Daphne Gordon |
Splat 2/5 |
And Now Ladies and Gentlemen (2003) |
"One minute, the film is funny. The next it's romantic. For a few seconds, it's suspenseful. Other times, it's philosophical. But mostly, it's just confusing." |
Daphne Gordon |
Splat 2/4 |
A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (2006) |
"You leave a viewing with a sense of utter defeat. I can envision a future DVD special edition that comes with a razor blade, to facilitate wrist slashing." |
Geoff Pevere |
Tomato 3/4 |
A Scanner Darkly (2006) |
"As fascinating and intelligent as the movie is, A Scanner Darkly leaves you wishing it might have actually been less faithful in word, and more in spirit, to Philip K. Dick's universe of bugged-out paranoid weirdness." |
Geoff Pevere |
Tomato 4/5 |
Adaptation (2002) |
"What Adaptation nails about writing is the soul-splitting duality of it: The combination of arrogance and neediness, of ego and insecurity, of the writer's lonely inertia with the romantic grandiosity of what they create." |
Geoff Pevere |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
After The Wedding (2007) |
"Even when [Bier's] movie ventures in deepest contrivance it pulls you along like a willing puppy on a gently tugged leash." |
Geoff Pevere |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Air Guitar Nation (2007) |
"As dumb as the idea of grown men dressing up and pretending to play guitar may be, there's no arguing that some of these grown men do so with a truly awesome degree of energy and flair." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 2/5 |
The Alamo (2004) |
"Although handsomely mounted, and boasting some historically immaculate dressing and impressive battle sequences, it's a movie that ultimately can't convincingly get behind the idea of sacrifice." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 1/5 |
Alexander (2004) |
"Not just a bad movie but a bad movie of truly epic proportions." |
Geoff Pevere |
Tomato 3/5 |
Alexandra's Project (2005) |
"It's a movie that will leave few men unrattled and many women vicariously satisfied." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 2/5 |
Alfie (2004) |
"Back in the mid-1960s, Alfie Elkins was one of the reasons a women's liberation movement was necessary. Today, he's just another bad date with a surplus of personal grooming products." |
Geoff Pevere |
Tomato |
Ali (2001) |
"A movie that, at its best, is as brashly eloquent in cinematic expression as Ali was with his fists." |
Geoff Pevere |
Tomato 4/5 |
Alias Betty (2002) |
"While laterally propelled films like this are often exercises in structural cleverness, Miller's movie makes organic use of its incidental associations." |
Geoff Pevere |
Tomato 3/4 |
All About the Benjamins (2002) |
"Goes a long way on hedonistic gusto." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 1.5/4 |
All The King's Men (2006) |
"All the King's Men was suspended in editing limbo for nearly a year, and the final result only makes the mind reel at what it could have been carved from." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat |
All the Pretty Horses (2000) |
"Lovely but disengaging, mysterious but uninvolving, physical but strangely remote." |
Geoff Pevere |
Tomato 4/5 |
All the Real Girls (2003) |
"Green confirms his status as the most atmospherically distinctive American movie director since Paul Thomas Anderson." |
Geoff Pevere |
Tomato |
Almost Famous (2000) |
"The message is as stillwater clear as it is irresistibly romantic. By virtue of its transcendent graces, music pulls us above the din of our own pettiness." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 2/5 |
Along Came Polly (2004) |
"A lighthearted, lead-footed romantic comedy of the post-Farrelly sentimental yuckfest school." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat |
America's Sweethearts (2001) |
"Not so much a terrible movie as a tryingly bland one, the star-stuffed America's Sweethearts actually manages to make Entertainment Tonight seem dangerous by comparison." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 2.5/4 |
American Dreamz (2006) |
"Like a commander-in-chief who's too good-naturedly dumb to be dangerous, the writer-director is ultimately too forgiving to do much bruising. (Or maybe too calculating, which kind of blurs into the same thing.)" |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 1.5/4 |
American Gangster (2007) |
"Ridley Scott's listless Big Statement is a wheezy, hot air-inflated dud." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat |
American Outlaws (2001) |
"Ol' Jesse James has sure seemed a lot of things in a lot of movies: crazy, heroic, desperate, psychotic, villain and victim. But dadburnit if he's ever been this cute." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 2/4 |
American Venus (2007) |
"Never settling on a consistent tone or establishing a convincing context for its central character, the movie ultimately seems to grow bored even with itself." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 2/5 |
American Wedding (2003) |
"At this wedding, you can have your cake and barf it, too." |
Geoff Pevere |
Tomato |
Amores Perros (2001) |
"Stylishly gritty." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 1/5 |
Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004) |
"'There's a way in. There's a way out.' He's right. It's behind you, right below the sign that says Exit. Just follow the stampede." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 2/5 |
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) |
"Like most of these sofa-spud comedies, Anchorman bears its attention-deficit disorder proudly, as it shifts tone and abruptly sidetracks." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat |
Angel Eyes (2001) |
"Angel Eyes is really nothing more than a love story between two people who could save a lot of money by moving in together." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat |
Angela's Ashes (1999) |
"Visually immaculate but unaffecting." |
Geoff Pevere |
Tomato |
The Animal (2001) |
"A lunkheaded, sorta gross-out comedy that manages to be likeable and funny." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Annapolis (2006) |
"The movie plays out with the same martial drumbeat inevitability of a parade march." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 2/5 |
Antwone Fisher (2002) |
"Earnestly inspirational, conservatively moralistic and little on the bland side." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 2/5 |
Anything Else (2003) |
"It's as locked in ritual as Monday nights at Michael's Pub, Central Park walks or afternoons at Village record stores." |
Geoff Pevere |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Apocalypto (2006) |
"If, as a filmmaker, the obviously soul-stricken former movie star is an unabashed red-meat primitivist, he's also become an undeniably polished one." |
Geoff Pevere |
Tomato 4/5 |
Ararat (2002) |
"A pertinent powerfully intelligent account of the morality of making history." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 1/4 |
Are We Done Yet? (2007) |
"Are We Done Yet? may be remarkable only for the fact that its star was ever once actually considered a threat to civic stability. If movies came any safer than this, they'd be given honourary police citations for keeping the peace." |
Geoff Pevere |
Tomato 3/4 |
The Aristocrats (2005) |
"If the Marquis de Sade had set The 120 Days of Sodom in a Catskills club, the result might have been something like The Aristocrats." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat |
The Art of War (2000) |
"The Art of War keeps trying to distract us from the wispy inanity of what's going on by blowing something up every time we pause to reflect or wonder." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 2/4 |
Arthur and the Invisibles (2007) |
"While technically polished and adequately executed Arthur, like most of Besson's movies, is a strangely soulless experience." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 2/4 |
Ask the Dust (2005) |
"The fact is, there's something sadly lifeless about Ask the Dust." |
Geoff Pevere |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) |
"It's a western destined to outlive the pronouncements of its own death, because it knows that death is only the first stage in the life of legend." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 2/4 |
The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004) |
"It's not just Nixon's shadow that hangs like a cloud over Assassination, it's the shadow of the bummerific era of American movies his regime spawned." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat |
Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) |
"The characters and story are mere narrative lubricant to get us from one digitally goosed sensory assault to the next." |
Geoff Pevere |
Splat 2/4 |
Atonement (2007) |
"Atonement is not only too polite but maddeningly orderly, resulting in a prettily cast, professionally performed, impeccably mounted bore." |
Geoff Pevere |
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