Tomato B+ |
W. (2008) |
"It leaves us with a sense that it has nailed the man and the spirit of those around him and defined the New Millennium tragedy of America in a succinct and dramatic way." |
William Arnold |
Tomato B |
The Wackness (2008) |
"Beneath the desperate bad behavior of Squires' aging hippie and Luke's tentative steps to connection is a story that rings with the authenticity of lived experience and earned life lessons." |
Sean Axmaker |
Tomato B |
Wah-Wah (2006) |
"The film is so well acted -- by Byrne, who makes Harry's internalized agonies and continuously carried torch for his ex-wife touching, and by Watson and Hoult -- that its more cloying moments ... are a moot point." |
Paula Nechak |
Splat C+ |
Waist Deep (2006) |
"The camerawork is jerky and distracting, the dialogue is cliched and the story makes so little sense that the script seems to have been improvised by the actors as they went along." |
William Arnold |
Splat C- |
Waiting... (2005) |
"... don't watch this film unless you have a high tolerance and an undemanding appreciation for penis jokes..." |
Sean Axmaker |
Tomato B+ |
Waitress (2007) |
"... a tartly enjoyable slice of romantic comedy served up with a dramatic bite." |
Sean Axmaker |
Tomato B- |
Waking Life (2001) |
""Waking Life" is "Slacker" remade as a navel-gazing series of monologues, structured like a Bunuel dream farce and run through a computer paint program." |
Sean Axmaker |
Tomato B |
Waking the Dead (2000) |
"Crudup and Connolly are both unusual and unusually appealing young stars, the chemistry between them is potent, and their teaming creates a palpable sense of haunting, breathless romance." |
William Arnold |
Splat C |
Waking Up in Reno (2002) |
"... built on the premise that middle-class Arkansas consists of monster truck-loving good ol' boys and peroxide blond honeys whose worldly knowledge comes from TV reruns and supermarket tabloids." |
Sean Axmaker |
Tomato B |
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) |
"The glory of the movie is Reilly's performance, which is executed with a perfectly straight face and no hint of self-consciousness." |
William Arnold |
Splat C+ |
Walk on Water (2005) |
"The film's themes are undermined by a heavy-handed use of paradox and symbolism." |
Bill White |
Tomato B+ |
Walk the Line (2005) |
"The movie is entertaining, reasonably true to the facts of its subject's life and full of music." |
William Arnold |
Tomato B- |
A Walk to Remember (2002) |
"What saves the film is the chemistry between the two leads." |
Ellen Kim |
Splat C- |
The Walker (2007) |
"A mystery that isn't mysterious, a thriller that's barely thrilling." |
Paula Nechak |
Tomato B- |
Walking Tall (2004) |
"It s not exactly On the Waterfront and will not be contending for Oscars, but it does have some bite." |
William Arnold |
Tomato A |
Walking to Werner (2007) |
"It's the closest thing to a cinematic religious experience I can think of -- all combined with Phillips' terrific sense of visual style, humor and willingness to risk life for art." |
Paula Nechak |
Tomato A- |
WALL-E (2008) |
"WALL*E, an animated robot love story with an environmental message and a slapstick delivery, is a charmer of a film and a delightful piece of storytelling." |
Sean Axmaker |
Tomato A- |
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) |
"The plot is whimsically charming and the goofy Plasticine characters -- with their toothy faces, beady eyes and hammy hands -- are irresistible." |
William Arnold |
Tomato B |
Wanted (2008) |
"ou either go with the fantasy and enjoy the impossible acts of kinetic creativity or get stuck in the preposterousness of the premise and the flippant execution." |
Sean Axmaker |
Tomato A |
War and Peace (1968) |
"More than a dozen sequences defy description, and the vast battle scenes of Austerlitz and Borodino have no equal." |
William Arnold |
Splat D |
War Dance (2007) |
"Directors Sean and Andrea Fine have set out to make an inspirational film about the transcendent power of music in a war zone. What they have achieved is a piece of emotional pornography." |
Bill White |
Tomato B |
War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (2008) |
"No distractions, no theatrics, no colorful personalities, just an efficiently produced documentary with a simple, direct and compelling argument." |
Sean Axmaker |
Tomato B+ |
War of the Worlds (2005) |
"It's the movies' ultimate disaster epic: a genuinely unsettling movie experience that uses the new technology to create an alien invasion of unprecedented scale and realism." |
William Arnold |
Tomato B |
The War Tapes (2006) |
"A scary diary of their increasingly dehumanized daily lives (mostly spent protecting supply convoys on the dangerous highways) and the movie evokes the futile larger war around them in a series of haunting images." |
William Arnold |
Tomato B |
The War Within (2005) |
"Its most chilling scenes are the ones that show us how easy it is for an intelligent mind to grab onto a fundamentalist simplicity in order to avoid having to think its way through a complex political and cultural situation." |
William Arnold |
Tomato B |
The War Zone (1999) |
Click here to see the review. |
Paula Nechak |
Splat C |
War, Inc. (2008) |
"Its comedy too often blunders into meaningless slapstick, with bombs and bloodshed replacing pratfalls and pies in the face." |
Bill White |
- |
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001) |
Click here to see the review. |
|
Tomato B- |
Warriors of Heaven and Earth (2004) |
"A fairly rousing example of the genre." |
William Arnold |
Tomato C+ |
Wasabi (2002) |
"Wasabi does its job colorfully and entertainingly, as long as you don't lean too hard on such niggling details as logic, legality and the laws of physics." |
Sean Axmaker |
- |
The Wash (2001) |
Click here to see the review. |
|
Tomato B |
Wassup Rockers (2006) |
"Clark's vision of Los Angeles, where extravagant fantasies and inner-city social issues wildly intersect." |
Bill White |
Splat D |
The Watcher (2000) |
"It's grindingly mediocre, in a way that probably would have sent it straight to video were Reeves' name not on the marquee." |
William Arnold |
Tomato B+ |
Watchmen (2009) |
"Fans of the 1986 graphic novel Watchmen should be pleased with the eye-filling, slavishly faithful, long-time-coming film version that opens today and threatens to become the first true movie event of 2009." |
William Arnold |
Tomato A |
Water (2006) |
"Works on a large, almost operatic, scale but, instead of seeing its world in simplistic terms of heroes and villains, it's a tapestry of immensely complex characters motivated by historic forces and quirks of personality." |
William Arnold |
Tomato 8/10 |
Water Drops on Burning Rocks (2000) |
Click here to see the review. |
Sean Axmaker |
Tomato B- |
The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep (2007) |
"The special-effects creature is a fairly marvelous creation." |
William Arnold |
Tomato B |
Water Lilies (2007) |
"Water Lilies is that rare film about female sexuality that is made for females to relate to, not for males to fantasize about." |
Bill White |
Tomato A |
Wattstax (1973) |
"Commentary from shockingly outspoken Watts residents on topics ranging from revolution to infidelity are a vital part of the documentary, as are the several Richard Pryor monologues upon which the film is structured." |
Bill White |
Tomato A- |
The Way Home (2002) |
"An uncluttered, resonant gem that relays its universal points without lectures or confrontations." |
Ellen Kim |
Splat C |
The Way of the Gun (2000) |
"The material seems agonizingly stale and the movie just doesn't have the same kind of power to carry us away." |
William Arnold |
Splat B- |
We Are Marshall (2006) |
"The movie goes through the usual paces with a certain panache and a handful of interesting performances, but there's almost not enough story to support a movie, and it's so overblown in places it's unintentionally funny." |
William Arnold |
Splat C |
We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004) |
"These are people whose disappointments and emotional struggle have produced a world of resentment and dishonesty that's unpleasant to visit. There's nothing to make us want to stay there and witness the hurts produced by excruciatingly selfish acts." |
Paula Nechak |
Splat D |
We Go Way Back (2006) |
"First time director Lynn Shelton breaks too many narrative laws for it to work as a feature." |
Bill White |
Tomato B- |
We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen (2005) |
"Those who know the band only through its recorded work will be amazed to see it in action." |
Bill White |
Tomato B+ |
We Own The Night (2007) |
"At its core, it's an exploration of the demands and obligations of brotherly love, staged with honesty, originality and a surprising spark of intelligence." |
William Arnold |
Tomato B+ |
We Were Soldiers (2002) |
"... a harrowingly realistic and gut-wrenching piece of filmmaking ..." |
William Arnold |
Tomato B |
The Weather Man (2005) |
"Cage is always most enjoyable when he's digging into deeper, more personal territory and he's in fine form as David Spritz." |
Winda Benedetti |
Tomato B+ |
The Weather Underground (2003) |
"A perceptive, fascinating and relatively evenhanded look at the most radical arm of the American student rebellion of the Vietnam era." |
William Arnold |
Splat C+ |
Wedding Crashers (2005) |
"The movie has a fair share of laughs -- the opening sequence is particularly clever and funny -- but the lengthy competition to see which of these self-centered jerks can be the most obnoxious and shallow soon wears out its welcome." |
William Arnold |
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