Splat 2/4 |
Wah-Wah (2006) |
"Maybe the film is loyal to memory, yet it loses steam while gaining speed. The plot becomes a turnstile." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
Waking Life (2001) |
"An instant cult film, or maybe it is just an odd, interesting mistake from a very gifted director." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Walk on Water (2005) |
"This keen, ambitious movie has too much on its plate, although the morsels are fascinating." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
Walk the Line (2005) |
"Walk the Line comes alive intermittently." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
Walking Tall (2004) |
"The old Walking Tall was seen as having populist politics, along with such other rousers of its time ... Now those movies seem as dim as their politics, but the old cedar magic remains: an angry good guy smashes bad ones." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2.5/4 |
War of the Worlds (2005) |
"A rather primitive demolition derby, with little of the human solidarity that was corny but meaningful in the 1953 picture." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
The Wash (2001) |
"Basically a dribbled-out home movie about a pair of slop-around L.A. homies." |
David Elliott |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Washington Heights (2003) |
"The genuine affection Washington Heights displays for the Manhattan neighborhood of the same name can't make up for its lack of originality." |
Beth Wood |
Splat |
The Watcher (2000) |
"The Watcher is watchable if you care for loudly fermenting garbage." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
Watchmen (2009) |
"Alan Moore was right in detaching himself from the project, maintaining his integrity." |
Lee Grant |
Splat |
The Waterboy (1998) |
"Stupid, stupid, stupid: Shame on Sandler & Co." |
David Elliott |
Tomato |
The Way of the Gun (2000) |
"Like Tarantino, McQuarrie can move actors and bullets through spaces." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004) |
"The key problem of this acting exercise is that we can sense what must come, and sadly it does." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
We Were Soldiers (2002) |
"It's a horrifying but gripping movie, because we can discern the fighting tactics, identify with individuals, even savor the valor and sacrifices of the enemy." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
The Weather Underground (2003) |
"Compelling, troubling documentary." |
Arthur Salm |
Splat 2/4 |
The Wedding Date (2005) |
"There's no real tension, because Kat and Nick are more surely fated than a pharaoh for his tomb." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
The Wedding Planner (2001) |
"The movie is loaded with VCTs (very contrived touches)." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
The Weight of Water (2002) |
"[Bigelow] provides the standard, repressive Victorian melodrama in the old story, while the newer one is merely afloat until a storm rolls in as climax." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
Welcome to Collinwood (2002) |
"This one is a few bits funnier than Malle's dud, if only because the cast is so engagingly messing around like Slob City reductions of Damon Runyon crooks." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
Welcome to Mooseport (2004) |
"At its best (half the time), the film is cute; when it isn't, it seems like a blank screen." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Whale Rider (2003) |
"Castle-Hughes ... combines tribal pride and modern feminism, with gentle strength and the 'natural' talent some children possess." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
What a Girl Wants (2003) |
"If there is an adult excuse to chew the taffy, beyond the need to escape news from Iraq, it is not for the plug-in charms of old pros like Eileen Atkins and Jonathan Pryce. It is Colin Firth." |
David Elliott |
Tomato |
What Alice Found (2003) |
"Candidly unsentimental yet utterly human." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
What Lies Beneath (2000) |
"Oh, pfooey." |
David Elliott |
Tomato |
What Planet Are You From? (2000) |
"Shandling is often slyly delightful as Harold Anderson." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
What the Bleep Do We Know? (2004) |
"The wise ones, including biologist Candace Pert, Dr. Joe Dispenza, physicists Fred Alan Wolf and Amit Goswami, New Age seer Ramtha (born name: J.Z. Knight) and others, do speak some wisdom. And when they sound like a bubble machine, you can still smile." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
What Women Want (2000) |
"An eviction notice for wit in movies." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 3/4 |
What Would Jesus Buy? (2007) |
"An amiable but also angry documentary." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
What's Cooking? (2000) |
"It's like a glossy new series of Norman Rockwell covers painted by numbers, then filmed by a TV station for 'Live at 5' payoffs and darling featurettes." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
What's The Worst That Could Happen? (2001) |
"Your neurons will be downloading the rest of the movie into the 'out' basket and your eight bucks will have left the building." |
Arthur Salm |
Splat |
Whatever It Takes (2000) |
"What the film takes for granted is that there is a young horde waiting to be sold the old tripe again, a group very specifically targeted (from about age 15.2 to 19.4) as laugh patsies." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
Where the Money Is (2000) |
"You might wish that Martin Scorsese had taken this one over -- Where the Color of Money Is could have been a lot better." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Where The Truth Lies (2005) |
"This oddball wallow is both tonic and toxic, packaged in Egoyan's dishy style, so capably served by Paul Sarossy's images and Philip Barker's sleek design." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
Whipped (2000) |
"One stinky, plug-ugly movie." |
Karla Peterson |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
White Countess (2005) |
"The Merchant-Ivory team ended last year when producer Ismail Merchant died on May 25. The White Countess is a very fine way to sign off on their lineage of measured, literary, often past-bound films." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
White Oleander (2002) |
"The cast delivers without sham the raw-nerved story." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Who is Cletis Tout? (2002) |
"The whole mildly pleasant outing -- the R rating is for brief nudity and a grisly corpse -- remains aloft not on its own self-referential hot air, but on the inspired performance of Tim Allen." |
Arthur Salm |
Tomato 3/4 |
Who Killed The Electric Car? (2006) |
"Paine makes a sturdy if not airtight case that the EV-1 was done in by GM, gutless politicians, fear of change (plus ignorance) and the Bush regime lashed to Big Oil." |
David Elliott |
Tomato |
The Whole Nine Yards (2000) |
"The casting is so good it purrs." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
The Whole Ten Yards (2004) |
"There are movies that could benefit from Three Stooges sound effects. This is one." |
David Elliott |
Splat |
Why Do Fools Fall In Love (1998) |
"The film is both fake and fun. And the fun has an ulcer. Under all the winking '50s and '60s pop memories, it says: Rot was built into rock." |
|
Tomato 3/4 |
Why We Fight (2006) |
"Not a lot new in this show, if you've read or seen Moore, or Gore Vidal, or Noam Chomsky. But Jarecki assembles argumentative elements shrewdly." |
David Elliott |
Splat 1.5/4 |
Wicker Park (2004) |
"Like a stream of vapor trails trying to be a cloud, a floating 'thriller' of posed moods and inane jolts that make viewers laugh." |
David Elliott |
Tomato |
Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself (2004) |
"A compelling mixture of dry humor and even drier -- if you can imagine such a thing -- sentiment." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
The Wild (2006) |
"Spaz Williams, no spaz, has the current prevailing formula nailed. Which is: Keep it moving constantly; heaps of bold color and diagonally extreme action; snappy quips and snarks for everyone; traumas immediately pacified by cute and/or musical moments." |
David Elliott |
Splat 1/4 |
Wild Hogs (2007) |
"Wild Hogs is an oinker. Feeding us slops of dud comedy are stars who ought to know better by now." |
David Elliott |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (2005) |
"It's a deeply San Francisco story, a splash of tropic color on the city's watercolor fabric." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
Willard (2003) |
"The shots often have a solemn weightiness, as if Morgan alternated reading Rat Wrangling: More Than a Hobby! with viewing The Magnificent Ambersons." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (2004) |
"For all the silky Italian pleasures, there is an aroma from this strange drama that whiffs to mind the ashen breeze from Auschwitz." |
David Elliott |
Splat 2/4 |
Wimbledon (2004) |
"Viewing Wimbledon is like playing tennis with a ball made of bubblegum." |
David Elliott |
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