Tomato |
Baadasssss! (2004) |
"It's an exhausting, and exhaustingly pleasurable, entertainment." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
The Baader Meinhof Complex (2009) |
"I have seen The Baader Meinhof Complex three or four times now, and, despite exasperation with its fissile form, I find it impossible not to be plunged afresh into this engulfing age of European anxiety." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
Babel (2006) |
"Iñárritu has enough talent to shake up conventional moviemaking. But he still hasn’t figured out how to use it." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Baby Mama (2008) |
"There are gags and scraps of action that give the movie fits of buoyancy, and these tend to come not so much from the younger, eager performers as from the old hands." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009) |
"Herzog, who seems to be drawing on the audience’s affection for him as an inspired madman, may not care to tell a story straight anymore." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
The Band's Visit (2007) |
"When in doubt, strike up the band." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
Bangkok Dangerous (2008) |
"Hollywood and the television industry have long since sucked what they require from the tropes and rhythms of Asian films, and parts of Bangkok Dangerous, far from seeming unfamiliar or freshly stylized, offer nothing that you couldn’t catch on CSI." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
The Bank Job (2008) |
"Roger Donaldson, the Australian-born director who, in recent years, has become the kind of solid pro that Hollywood developed in the nineteen-thirties and forties, has made a straightforward, tight-knit crime thriller." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Batman Begins (2005) |
"In Memento, Nolan and his editor, Dody Dorn, created a new syntax for movies. It’s depressing to see Nolan now relying on the same fakery as everyone else." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Be Cool (2005) |
"A lazy, rhythmless, and redundant piece of moviemaking." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Be Kind Rewind (2008) |
"Most of Be Kind Rewind feels as silly and undisciplined as the mini-movies cooked up by its hapless heroes." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005) |
"Audiard could have made the romantic side of the movie more explicit, but reticence is part of his cool." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Becoming Jane (2007) |
"Once you admit that the Jane Austen depicted onscreen bears scant relation to any person named Jane Austen, living or dead, the film fulfills its purpose." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
Bee Season (2005) |
"The trouble with these various plights is that we are required to lend them equal sympathy, and to go on sympathizing until our ears pop." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
Before Sunset (2004) |
"Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are a rare case of two movies that rightfully demand yet another sequel." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) |
"[A] furious and entertaining little morality play." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
The Best of Youth (2005) |
"The Best of Youth runs, though never dawdles, for an easy six hours, with barely a false note." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
Bewitched (2005) |
"Stepping into Montgomery’s shoes is a thankless task, but Kidman comes across as preternaturally flustered by everything that heightened the serenity of her predecessor." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
The Big Red One (1980) |
"You must see this film for one unstoppable reason, and that is Lee Marvin." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
Birth (2004) |
"A dismayingly skillful exercise in high-style creepiness." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Black Book (2007) |
"Far from turning serious, the director of Basic Instinct has proved that, when it comes to grappling with good and evil, his instincts aren’t basic enough." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
The Black Dahlia (2006) |
"The picture is a kind of fattened goose that’s been stuffed with goose-liver pâté. It’s overrich and fundamentally unsatisfying." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Blindness (2008) |
"Blindness feels at once honorably serious and way too pleased with its own soothsaying. You stagger from the dimness of the cinema, beaten down and longing for the light." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
Blood Diamond (2006) |
"Essentially a romantic adventure story with politics in the background -- an old-fashioned movie, I suppose, but exciting and stunningly well made." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Blow Out (1981) |
"It’s a great movie." |
Pauline Kael |
Splat |
Boarding Gate (2007) |
"[Director Assayas] may have something serious to say about the brutal impersonality of global capitalism, yet he’s caught somewhere between insight and exploitation." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Bobby (2006) |
"Estevez has made a vague gesture at a large, metaphoric structure without having the dramatic means to achieve it." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Body of Lies (2008) |
"Smart and tightly drawn; it has a throat-gripping urgency and some serious insights, and Scott has a greater command of space and a more explicit way with violence than most thriller directors." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Bon Voyage (2004) |
"No more than a shallow, style-mad entertainment, but it never flags or loses its balance, and, despite the theatricality of the staging and the acting, it's precisely the materiality of the cinema ... that makes us devour it with pleasure." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) |
"[Borat] is equipped, like an F-15 Eagle, to engage multiple targets at once." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
The Bourne Supremacy (2004) |
"Of its kind, The Bourne Supremacy is incredibly skilled -- much more exciting than its predecessor." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) |
"The material is formulaic, but, of all the current action franchises, this one is the most enjoyable." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
The Box (2009) |
"Kelly, as he did in Donnie Darko, avoids obvious scare techniques. Instead, he makes the bizarre, the surreal, and the frightening emerge from normal reality." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Breach (2007) |
"The unexciting look and feel of the movie wouldn’t have bothered me if the filmmakers had penetrated Hanssen’s skull a little." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Breaking and Entering (2007) |
"A shrewd and decent movie." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Brick (2006) |
"All in all, this twerpy little movie is one of the most entertaining pictures to be released so far this year." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Bright Star (2009) |
"There’s a full complement of geese and mud and some women in bonnets, but Campion avoids finery and ceremony. She doesn’t show off the period; she triumphantly makes it a time in which people live as best they can." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Brokeback Mountain (2005) |
"Its beauty wells from its sorrow, because the love between Ennis and Jack is most credible not in the making but in the thwarting." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
Broken Embraces (2009) |
"Seems a touch too long, too airless, and too content with its own contrivances to stir the heart." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
Broken Flowers (2005) |
"Broken Flowers is all of a piece; it’s maliciously observed, and it has a neat formal style. But it’s an art object without the energy or courage to be a work of art." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Brothers (2009) |
"Brothers, the new home-from-the-war film, written by David Benioff and directed by Jim Sheridan, has been made with obvious devotion and sincerity, and I wish I could take it seriously." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
The Brown Bunny (2004) |
"One of those movies that work retrospectively: the final scene pulls the film together." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Bruno (2009) |
"Wholly unsuitable for children, yet propelled by a nagging puerility that will appeal only to those in the vortex of puberty, or to adults who have failed to progress beyond it." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
Bubble (2006) |
"Soderbergh’s use of the new technology makes this situation work." |
David Denby |
Splat |
The Bucket List (2007) |
"In general, the light is golden, the mood technologically sublime, the actuality of the experience a dead zero." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Burn After Reading (2008) |
"Even black comedy requires that the filmmakers love someone, and the mock cruelties in Burn After Reading come off as a case of terminal misanthropy." |
David Denby |
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