Splat |
The Saddest Music in the World (2004) |
Click here to see the review. |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
The Savages (2007) |
"Vital, honest, and engaging." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Saved! (2004) |
"A minor work, yet it has a teasing lilt to it, and to make it at all took courage and originality." |
David Denby |
Splat |
The Science of Sleep (2006) |
"The Science of Sleep is a frantic and funny diversion, but it pales and tires before its time is up. It doesn’t know the meaning of enough." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
The Secret of the Grain (2008) |
"[Director] Kechiche digs a good story out of the flux, and, in the movie’s final forty minutes, the suspense is terrific." |
David Denby |
Splat |
A Serious Man (2009) |
"As a piece of moviemaking craft, A Serious Man is fascinating; in every other way, it’s intolerable." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Sex and the City - The Movie (2008) |
"I walked into the theatre hoping for a nice evening and came out as a hard-line Marxist, my head a whirl of closets, delusions, and blunt-clawed cattiness. All the film lacks is a subtitle: The Lying, the Bitch, and the Wardrobe." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
Shall We Kiss? (2008) |
"The result is that Shall We Kiss? puts its viewers in a bind worthy of the lovers themselves: should we organize a Socratic symposium on the issues raised by the film, or hurl our popcorn violently at the screen?" |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
Shaun of the Dead (2004) |
"A smart, cultish, semi-disgusting homage to the fine British art of not bothering." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
She Hate Me (2004) |
"The mélange of plots, subplots, reveries, gags, cartoons, dirty bits, and hissy fits points to a work that is structurally modelled less on the classic narratives of cinema than on, say, a portion of Russian salad." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
Shine a Light (2008) |
"At times, the cutting shifts from the hasty to the impatient to the borderline epileptic, and, while never doubting Scorsese’s ardor for the Stones, I got the distinct impression of a style in search of a subject." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
Shooter (2007) |
"The engaging, fast-talking idiosyncrasy of [Wahlberg's] performance in The Departed has vanished." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Shrek the Third (2007) |
"The plot material isn’t as strong as in the first two movies -- if anything, it feels a bit desperate -- but the anti-Disney joke blunderbuss remains in good working order." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Sicko (2007) |
"Moore winds up treating the audience the same way that, he says, powerful people treat the weak in America -- as dopes easily satisfied with fairy tales and bland reassurances." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Sideways (2004) |
"It's clear that the filmmakers -- Alexander Payne, the director and screenwriter, and Jim Taylor, his co-writer -- know what they are up to." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
The Silence Before Bach (2008) |
"Brings Bach’s music to life with a mysterious, magnificent blend of drama, documentary, and quasi-surrealist whimsy." |
Richard Brody |
Splat |
Silver City (2004) |
"The plot of Silver City is movieish in the extreme, with filthy abandoned mines subbing for the bars and alleys of urban noir, but it's no more than mild cheese." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Sin City (2005) |
"Can bring more pain than satisfaction." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
A Single Man (2009) |
"Two characters trying and failing to drown their hopes and regrets, and two strong actors refusing to be tight-laced by a director’s exercise in style: here is a mood piece looking for a fight." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
The Situation (2007) |
"Awkward and half-digested." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
Slumdog Millionaire (2008) |
"There are no surprises in this movie, and most people will be able to predict, within the first ten minutes, roughly how the last ten will pan out." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
Smart People (2008) |
"In his first film as director, Noam Murro creates moments of comic disconnection, relieved by minuscule surges of warmth. He’s very precise; he has a nice touch." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Smokin' Aces (2007) |
"When Carnahan tries to tug at our emotions, he just compounds the whorish insensitivity of the movie." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Snakes on a Plane (2006) |
"Intentional low camp always seems wrong unless it’s very funny; in trash, one wants clumsiness, even a certain tackiness, and this movie has the production values and the high-tech fluency of a much bigger movie." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
The Soloist (2009) |
"I don’t know if Beethoven and a sympathetic newspaper reporter can redeem a messy American city, but this movie makes a plausible case for so fervent a dream." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005) |
"Sophie Scholl: The Final Days may sound like a history lesson, but don’t be fooled. It’s a horror film." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
Speed Racer (2008) |
"I reckon the M.P.A.A. should use the advent of Speed Racer to revive an old ratings symbol: a big Roman X, meaning 'of no conceivable interest to anyone over the age of ten.'" |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
Spider-Man 2 (2004) |
"Like the first installment, refreshingly perverse in its intent." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
Spider-Man 3 (2007) |
"Laziness mingles with overkill, violence with mawkishness: most of the characters weep at the slightest provocation, but heads are beaten, burned, and sheared off by passing subway trains." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
The Squid and the Whale (2005) |
"It’s a small miracle." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Stage Beauty (2004) |
"Mixes daring and conventionality in ways that never jell." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Stagedoor (2006) |
"... charming documentary ..." |
Shauna Lyon |
Splat |
Star Trek (2009) |
"Quinto is the one person here who may leave teen-aged viewers more perplexed than puffed up; he somehow rebukes the movie’s whole obsession with backstory and immaturity by seeming riper and wiser than the charmless folly that is spun around him." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005) |
"So much here is guaranteed to cause either offense or pain..." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
Starting Out in the Evening (2007) |
"Langella is superb, and Starting Out in the Evening is a classy film... but it could have used a little less circumspection, a little more juice." |
David Denby |
Splat |
State of Play (2009) |
"The three screenwriters may have been trying to work too many plot strands into two hours; in any case, State of Play is both overstuffed and inconclusive." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Stephen King's The Mist (2007) |
"The Mist is a supermarket of B-movie essentials, handsomely stocked with bad science, stupid behavior, chewable lines of dialogue, religious fruitcakes, and a fine display of monsters." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
Still Life (2008) |
"Despite all this desolation and depression, Still Life is an extremely beautiful movie: the river and the green mountains on both sides of it extend into the distance in majestic panoply; gray clouds hang over the scene like painted backdrops." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Stop-Loss (2008) |
"Stop-Loss is not a great movie, but it’s forceful, effective, and alive, with the raw, mixed-up emotions produced by an endless war -- a time when the patriotism of military families is in danger of being exploited beyond endurance." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Street Fight (2006) |
"In brief, Marshall Curry, the young director of Street Fight, has hit the documentary jackpot." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Summer Hours (2009) |
"In the end, Assayas, shooting the film with relaxed, flowing camera movements, gives his love not to beautiful objects but to the disorderly life out of which art is made." |
David Denby |
Tomato |
Summer Palace (2008) |
"In truth, I’ve never seen so much lovemaking in an aboveground film, but the revelation, and great triumph, of Lou’s work is that these scenes are never pornographic -- that is, never separated from emotion." |
David Denby |
- |
Sunshine (1999) |
Click here to see the review. |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
Sunshine (2007) |
"The film is nonsense, and what counts is whether viewers will feel able to lay aside their logical complaints and bask in what remains: a trip in search of a tan." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
Sunshine Cleaning (2009) |
"Adams, forging ahead gamely, keeps it aloft." |
|
Tomato |
Superbad (2007) |
"The movie succeeds as a teen’s wild fantasy of a night in which everything goes wrong, revised by an adult’s melancholy sense that nothing was ever meant to go right." |
David Denby |
Splat |
Superman Returns (2006) |
"Picture my disappointment as I realized that, for all the pizzazz of Superman Returns, its global weapon of choice would not be terrorism, or nuclear piracy, or dirty bombs. It would be real estate." |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) |
"How do you rescue the hell brew from absurdity?" |
Anthony Lane |
Splat |
Synecdoche, New York (2008) |
"If you want to show a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, go right ahead, but give that hour all the life you can." |
Anthony Lane |
Tomato |
Syriana (2005) |
"It’s a strange movie, and a stunningly pessimistic one, and the strangeness and pessimism connect it (in my mind, at least) to other recent American films in ways that suggest that something unhappy in the national mood has crept into the movies." |
David Denby |
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