Splat 1.5/4 |
W. (2008) |
"The Oliver Stone of the 1990s might have found something epic in the strange saga of George W. Bush, but he undoubtedly would not have made W., the contemporary Stone's incomplete rush-job of a portrait of our embattled 43rd president." |
Nick Schager |
Tomato |
W. (2008) |
"I'm still not quite sure why we needed a dramatization of one of the country's darkest chapters before it had even ended, but it apparently played a small role in my parents voting for a Democrat in the 2008 election, so I guess it was good for something." |
Sal Cinquemani |
Tomato |
W.C. Fields Comedy Collection: Volume Two |
"A respectable second set, though Never Give a Sucker An Even Break is the only one you really need to own." |
Dan Callahan |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
The Wackness (2008) |
"It's Josh Peck, though, whose performance (as the "most popular of the unpopular") holds the film together amidst all its audio-video mannerisms and increasingly sappy developments." |
Nick Schager |
Tomato |
The Wackness (2008) |
"A good-but-not-great movie gets a good-but-not-great DVD treatment. Rolling papers not included." |
Sal Cinquemani |
Tomato |
The Wages of Fear (1952) |
"A white-knuckled introduction to the concept of action-movie existentialism, The Wages of Fear makes for a pummeling black-and-white Blu-Ray." |
Eric Henderson |
Tomato 3/4 |
The Wages of Fear (1952) |
"Now seems much less like Salt of the Earth-as-a-potboiler and a lot more like the spiritual godfather to every testosterone-fuelled thrill ride since." |
Eric Henderson |
Splat 2/4 |
Wah-Wah (2006) |
"There are worse things than catching your parents doing the dirty, like watching a film reduce an African nation's black populace to window dressing." |
Ed Gonzalez |
Splat 1/4 |
Waist Deep (2006) |
"The film's racial/class issues are less developed than Gibson's beefy, inked-up arms and its unintentional humor as consistent as its pounding soundtrack beats." |
Nick Schager |
Tomato |
Wait Until Dark (1967) |
"Wait Until Dark, Frederick Knott’s gimmicky stage play about a blind woman terrorized by crooks, was brought to the screen in 1967 and was accompanied by an even more outlandish gimmick." |
Eric Henderson |
Tomato |
Wait Until Dark (1967) |
"John Carpenter owes his trademark slightly-off-frame entrances to Alan Arkin’s terrifying, famous lunge at Audrey Hepburn." |
Eric Henderson |
Splat 2.5/4 |
Waiting for Armageddon (2010) |
"The putative objectivity of Armageddon isn't quite politically savvy enough to strike its realpolitik target." |
Joseph Jon Lanthier |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Waiting for Happiness (2003) |
"Abderrahmane Sissako's Heremakono (Waiting for Happiness) is an elegiac portrait of a transit city on the West African coast struggling against foreign influences." |
Ed Gonzalez |
Splat 1/4 |
Waiting... (2005) |
"Waiting... serves up a stale dish of dim-witted drivel." |
Nick Schager |
Splat 2/4 |
Waitress (2007) |
"Comedy and tragedy exist side-by-side in this drab little film, suggesting an SNL alum's reinterpretation of the TV show Alice." |
Ed Gonzalez |
Tomato 4/4 |
Waking Life (2001) |
"Whether it's a product of stoic contemplation or reefer madness, Linklater's waking life becomes an elusive, one-way vehicle to God." |
Ed Gonzalez |
Tomato |
Waking Life (2001) |
"Both crucial and kind of demystifying, this awesome Waking Life DVD package exposes the technical brouhaha behind Linklater's magical concept art." |
Ed Gonzalez |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) |
"The film gets some mileage out of mocking fatuous biopic conventions." |
Nick Schager |
Tomato 3/4 |
A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory (2007) |
"Comprised of confused, conflicting recollections, and opinions that lead to no concrete truths, the film proves a case study in unknowability." |
Nick Schager |
Splat 2/4 |
Walk on Water (2005) |
"In Eytan Fox’s Walk on Water, the Sea of Galilee is paved with good intentions." |
Ed Gonzalez |
Splat 2/4 |
Walk the Line (2005) |
"Walk the Line missteps by routinely forgoing credible biographical grittiness in favor of glossy Hollywood mythologizing.
" |
Nick Schager |
Tomato 3/4 |
A Walk to Beautiful (2008) |
"Fernando Meirelles take note: an honest and unvarnished portrayal of your subject, no matter the intended audience, is the most optimal path toward enlightenment and empathy." |
Rob Humanick |
Tomato |
A Walk to Remember (2002) |
"For that special Christian in your life who's still trapped in the 1950s." |
Ed Gonzalez |
Splat 2/4 |
A Walk to Remember (2002) |
"As camp and sermon, the film is shamelessly undercooked." |
Ed Gonzalez |
Tomato |
A Walk to Remember (2002) |
"The soundtrack is loaded with several new tracks by Moore as well as her latest single, Cry." |
Sal Cinquemani |
Tomato 4/4 |
Walkabout (1971) |
"An innocent family picnic turns existential in Nicolas Roeg's brilliant Walkabout." |
Ed Gonzalez |
Tomato |
Walker (1987) |
"One of the greatest and most representative movies of the 1980s is still able to ironically laugh at the savagery and stupidity happening in our world right now." |
Jeremiah Kipp |
Tomato 4/4 |
Walker (1987) |
"Walker is the dark, neurotic flipside of Repo Man, where the antiheroic title character is not interested in any form of individual self-expression other than a single-minded pursuit of fame and glory." |
Jeremiah Kipp |
Splat 1.5/4 |
The Walker (2007) |
"Paul Schrader blends lethargic self-referentiality with anemic political jabs in The Walker." |
Nick Schager |
Tomato |
Walking Tall (2004) |
"The Rock beats the **** out of everything but says “no” to drugs, and as such his core fan base may have a problem adding the film to their permanent collection." |
Ed Gonzalez |
Splat 2/4 |
Walking Tall (2004) |
"The miscast Rock never comes close to matching Joe Don Baker’s sweaty, ungainly, force-of-nature hick heroism.
" |
Nick Schager |
Tomato 3/4 |
Walking to Werner (2007) |
"Phillips's singular determination is not unlike that of the artist he aspires to meet." |
Rob Humanick |
Splat 2/4 |
The Wall (2004) |
"Bitton's film exists in a contextual vacuum, and without any historical grounding to help one ascertain the reliability of the wall's numerous critics." |
Nick Schager |
Tomato |
Wall Street (1987) |
"Greed may be good, but this anniversary edition of Oliver Stone's humorless '80s satire is exceedingly generous with extras." |
Fernando F. Croce |
Splat 2/4 |
Wall Street (1987) |
"Stone's attack on the excesses of the Me Decade could easily be dubbed Mr. Smith Goes to Wall Street." |
Fernando F. Croce |
Tomato 3/4 |
WALL-E (2008) |
"WALL-E goes beyond inviting comparisons to E.T., Number 5, R2D2, even Chaplin's Little Tramp--the Waste Allocation Load Lifter relies on them, for writer-director Andrew Stanton understands this robot janitor as a study in memory and inheritance." |
Ed Gonzalez |
Tomato |
WALL-E (2008) |
"Despite its rather flimsy (but eco-friendly) packaging, Pixar pulls out all the stops for this three-disc special edition of WALL-E" |
Sal Cinquemani |
Tomato 3.5/4 |
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) |
"Were-Rabbit is most concerned with the connections between things, specifically the ties that bind animal to human and, more theoretically, film frame to film frame." |
Keith Uhlich |
Splat 1.5/4 |
A Wanderer's Notebook (1962) |
"The resultant self-aware grotesquerie finally seems more in service of hagiography than truth." |
Keith Uhlich |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
Wanted (2008) |
"Speaking of bodies, Jolie's is here front and center, her svelte frame slinking across the screen with an alluring animalism magnified by the steamy twinkle in her eyes and sensual gestures as small as a wave of the hand or a shrug of the shoulder." |
Nick Schager |
Tomato |
Wanted (2008) |
"Who needs a director's commentary with this much bonus material?" |
Sal Cinquemani |
Splat 1.5/4 |
War (2007) |
"War is the Heat of cheesy Ameri-Euro-Asian kung-fu cop-crook movies." |
Nick Schager |
Splat 1.5/4 |
War Dance (2007) |
"Filmmakers Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine continue the Hollywood insult of looking at Africa as if it were a high-fashion runway." |
Ed Gonzalez |
Tomato 4/4 |
The War Game (1965) |
"Watkins's images are shrewd propaganda." |
Jeremiah Kipp |
Tomato |
The War Game (1965) |
"Essential viewing as a political argument against not only war, but the bureaucracy that believes truth is best kept in the hands of the few than the many.
" |
Jeremiah Kipp |
- |
War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (2008) |
Click here to see the review. |
|
Tomato 3/4 |
War of the Worlds (2005) |
"War of the Worlds takes one of our deepest global fears, the threat of annihilation, and gives us a catharsis when humanity reasserts itself." |
Jeremiah Kipp |
Tomato 3/4 |
The War Tapes (2006) |
"Obligatory scenes with unhappy girlfriends, wives, and mothers waiting for their loved ones at home don't have the same impact as the film's uniquely personal perspective on American progress (or lack thereof) in Iraq." |
Nick Schager |
Tomato 2.5/4 |
The War Within (2005) |
"A haunting companion piece to Hany Abu-Assad's forthcoming character study of Palestinian suicide bombers Paradise Now." |
Nick Schager |
Splat 1.5/4 |
War, Inc. (2008) |
"Even less funny than Southland Tales and not nearly as adventurous." |
Bill Weber |
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