Splat 2.5/4 |
The Machinist (2004) |
"The story, which should strip down scarily like Reznik, starts to bulge and wander pretentiously." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Machuca (2005) |
"As perceptive about youth as were the French New Wave films, and in its wide sympathy and honest outrage extends some of the rich implications of The Motorcycle Diaries." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Mad Love (2001) |
"It's like an old Warner Bros. costumer jived with sex -- this could be the movie Errol Flynn always wanted to make, though Bette Davis, cast as Joan, would have killed him." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Mad Money (2008) |
" What's not to believe? A lot. But asking for bolted logic and dramatic structure in such a movie is about like asking former Fed chief Alan Greenspan to open a mosh pit in Miami. Anyway, the money in the bank here is Keaton." |
David Elliott |
Tomato |
Made (2001) |
"Vince Vaughn owns this one." |
Dennis Hunt |
Splat 2.5/4 |
Made of Honor (2008) |
"The plot becomes very familiar -- not just like My Best Friend's Wedding, but like a mishmash of every romantic comedy ever written." |
Nina Garin |
Tomato |
Madison (2005) |
"Direct, folksy, more than a bit boosterish, the movie pulls you along to the wow finish." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
The Magdalene Sisters (2003) |
"Mullan can direct scenes so that your skin crawls while your blood freezes, but his feel for drama is fairly primitive ... and before the movie ends, you may feel bilious from his force-fed revelations." |
David Elliott |
Tomato |
Magnolia (1999) |
"He [Paul Thomas Anderson] has a wonderful cast, including Tom Cruise in the best work of his career." |
David Elliott |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Maid in Manhattan (2002) |
"Apart from the see-through script that is like a '30s society comedy dumbed down to I Am Sam's Maid, the film is most marked by the flagrant waste of talent." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
The Majestic (2001) |
"Do Sloane and Darabont really think they can drop the complex blacklist agony into this vat of mush, and say something real?" |
David Elliott |
Splat 1/4 |
Mambo Italiano (2003) |
"It is agony to watch veteran Paul Sorvino as Angelo's pathetic meatball of a dad, because you recall how much better Michael Constantine was as the patriarch in MBFGW." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 3/4 |
Mamma Mia! (2008) |
"There's something infuriatingly entertaining about this silly story, those slumming actors (Meryl Streep! Pierce Brosnan!) and those cruel, cruel songs." |
James Hebert |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
A Man Apart (2003) |
"[Diesel] is credible in the physical stuff, only reaching too far when he brays emotion." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
Man of the Year (2006) |
"Robin Williams doesn't need to prove he can act, not after The Fisher King, The Night Listener, Good Will Hunting and Mrs. Doubtfire. What he does in Man of the Year seems a long way from actual acting." |
David Elliott |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Man on Fire (2004) |
"Denzel Washington is an actor of such magnetic conviction that he could read Schopenhauer to earthworms and probably hold their interest. But in 'Man on Fire' he has to haul around so much guilt and threat and doom that he seems ready to sag from rot." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
Man on the Moon (1999) |
"Maybe Forman and the writers were paralyzed by the thought that Andy might, true to tabloid rumor, still be alive. It would be great if he did turn up on TV, pop his eyes and, in his Latka voice, call the movie a mistake." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
The Man Who Cried (2001) |
"After a vivid start, [Potter's] movie turns into an inventory of set-pieces nearly devoid of tension, momentum, even much sense." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 3/4 |
The Man Without a Past (2003) |
"You can feel tickled into a Finnish shade of pink." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
The Manchurian Candidate (2004) |
"Frankenheimer's film was prophetic of the Age of Assassinations. Demme's is a warmed-over casserole of anxiety." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Manic (2003) |
"I've rarely seen the hand-held, docudrama approach done with more intimacy or accuracy." |
David Elliott |
Tomato |
Mansfield Park (1999) |
"Rozema tends to hurtle past some moments and dawdle fussily over others, but she gets a lot of the best things right." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
Margot at the Wedding (2007) |
"It's a movie in which everyone wants answers without being able to formulate the questions." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 3/4 |
Maria Full of Grace (2004) |
"We get a truly gut sense of what it must be like to carry, next to your pregnant womb, a shipment of potentially lethal contraband into an alien world." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 3/4 |
Marie Antoinette (2006) |
"If not so witty as Coppola's Lost in Translation, this is like a funnier and feminine Barry Lyndon." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
Maryam (2002) |
"It's a very sincere work, but it would be better as a diary or documentary." |
David Elliott |
Tomato |
Masculin Feminin (1966) |
"It could shake up young viewers now as it 40 years ago, except that there's no French New Wave momentum of film passion." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 3/4 |
Masked and Anonymous (2003) |
"A simultaneously serious and satirical film that should delight longtime Bob Dylan fans and mystify nearly everyone else." |
George Varga |
Tomato 4/4 |
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) |
"This is the finest movie ever made about men fighting under sail." |
David Elliott |
Splat 1.5/4 |
The Master of Disguise (2002) |
"[A] shapeless blob of desperate entertainment." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 3/4 |
Match Point (2005) |
"Woody Allen is a lippy guy, but what makes Match Point sexy is the converging, special lips of Scarlett Johansson and the special lips of Jonathan Rhys-Meyers." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
Matchstick Men (2003) |
"What most hurts the movie is its topper, its Big Plot Twist." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
The Matrix (1999) |
"Wherever they tell their story they tell it too long and too loud." |
Arthur Salm |
Splat 2/4 |
The Matrix Reloaded (2003) |
"Viewing The Matrix Reloaded is like being eaten alive slowly by a machine. Some machine parts are impressive and you can slip into a sort of trance as you are noshed." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 3/4 |
Max (2002) |
"Max doesn't 'humanize' Hitler, but makes him frighteningly plausible as a dud artist who took revenge by twisting history into a personal, obscene project." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
Maze (2001) |
"What drains the movie is that Lyle is such a sweet, noble, suffering soul that he simply sponges our interest into banality." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Me Without You (2002) |
"The movie, so briskly alert in details, is generic in its guiding ideas." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Mean Girls (2004) |
"Parts of it are quite funny. So, go fetch." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
The Medallion (2003) |
"A blatant rip-off of Eddie Murphy's The Golden Child from 1986." |
Jerry McCormick |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Meet the Fockers (2004) |
"This is American Pie for people over 35." |
David Elliott |
Tomato |
Meet the Parents (2000) |
"I didn't laugh so often as many of the people sitting around me at Meet the Parents, but I laughed enough to think: Yep, not bad." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 3/4 |
Meet the Robinsons (2007) |
"Giddily inventive, cute, charming, even wry." |
David Elliott |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Melinda and Melinda (2005) |
"So much more depth has gone into seductively photographed interiors (residents complain of being poor while living in terrific Manhattan lofts) that Melinda starts to seem like an accessory, to be packed and hauled away." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
Memento (2001) |
"It seems less than the sum of its time-slicing moves." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
Men in Black II (2002) |
"Eye-filling but curiously joyless entertainment." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
Men of Honor (2000) |
"A museum of every ramrodded steel-gutted cliche from the era when Hollywood turned out officially approved salutes to military figures." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 3/4 |
Merci Pour le Chocolat (2002) |
"Merci pour le movie." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) |
"Poorly conceived." |
Neil Kendricks |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004) |
"A memorable tragic-comedy that produces its share of laughs in between the very real tears of rage and frustration." |
George Varga |
Tomato 4/4 |
Metropolis (1927) |
"The acting is campy, the airplanes quaint, but Metropolis defines fearful futurism." |
David Elliott |
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