For 8,156 reviews, this publication has graded:
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49% higher than the average critic
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3% same as the average critic
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48% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.9 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 59
| Highest review score: |
Critic Score
100
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| Lowest review score: |
Critic Score
0
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 3,636 out of 8156
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Mixed: 3,390 out of 8156
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Negative: 1,130 out of 8156
8,156
movie reviews
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Reviewed by
Andy Webster 30
Limp pacing and countless shots of Washington’s skyline plague the narrative. Ms. Smollett-Bell exudes an earthy appeal, but it’s the charismatic Mr. Jones who steals the picture. Given all the stifling preachiness, that’s to be expected.- Posted Mar 29, 2013
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 10
The ugly smell of unexamined privilege hangs over this film like the smoke from cheap incense. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 40
There are barely enough titter-worthy one-liners in Marc Lawrence's good-natured romantic comedy Did You Hear About the Morgans? to prevent it from sinking under the weight of its clichés.- Posted Apr 18, 2011
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 50
Everything she (Spears) does seems diluted and secondhand and is never transformed into something original or indelibly self-expressive. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Most of the meager charms of the chaotic romantic farce A Guy Thing spring from the deft comic contortions of Hollywood's ultimate nerdy sidekick, Jason Lee. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 30
The most indolent waste of screen time since Andy Warhol's marathon shot of the Empire State Building. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 30
A howlingly silly, moderately diverting exercise in high, pointless style. -
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Critic Score 40
Artistry is not the inevitable outcome, and fluffy costumes and French location shoots are the only production elements that don't seem wholly amateurish. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 40
Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Allen, who have never aspired very far beyond their affable television-comedy personas, are easier to watch than Mr. Travolta or Mr. Macy, who both undertake what can only be called acting. This is more than the picture deserves, but then again, so is Ray Liotta, as the chieftain of the bad bikers, and so is Ms. Tomei. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 0
Viewer discretion is advised, if only because it's well-nigh unwatchable. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 40
The outtakes are not all that great but still better than anything else in the movie. -
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 40
Theresa Russell is terrific as Angela's slatternly but loving mother, but her character disappears abruptly midway through the movie. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 10
Looks like a big-budget version of a Miller's Genuine Draft commercial. -
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Reviewed by
Anita Gates 40
It does achieve a certain claustrophobic fascination, but never gets around to making its point. -
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Reviewed by
Anita Gates 50
Jake Wade Wall's screenplay does deserve a word of praise. It has managed to incorporate the advent of cellphones, the *69 command and caller ID, which could have easily made the entire story impossible. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 40
Sometimes the movie swerves toward farce, sometimes into the zone of smiley family comedy and at other times into full-on weepiness. None of it is especially credible or engaging.- Posted Dec 6, 2012
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Reviewed by
Anita Gates 40
Mildly scary here and there. It does not play by all the horror movie rules (e.g., the black guy always dies first). And the cast is good-looking. -
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Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 70
It takes a while to realize that this is actually a sly, very funny comedy, one that stays admirably deadpan every time you think it’s about to veer into gross-out territory. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 30
The film's only bright idea is a duo named Chain Saw (Cameron) and Dave (Riley), who love horror films and instigate grisly but imaginative practical jokes, like pretending to be attacked by bunnies when the class makes a field trip to a petting zoo. [22 July 1987, p.C22] -
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 30
A bland, half-finished film that seems to have been conceived as off-peak cable fodder. -
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 30
The American version of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Pulse" mimics the plot fundamentals, but lacks any traces of Mr. Kurosawa’s creepy minimalism and conceptual rigor. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Dramatically as well as visually, The Musketeer conflicts with itself by trying to blend grand old- school costume drama and MTV- style rhythm and attitude into the same movie. The juxtapositions are often preposterous. -
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Reviewed by
Anita Gates 60
A predictably dumb movie made for very young audiences, playing to youth's love of excess and loaded with masturbation jokes. -
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Reviewed by
Rachel Saltz 40
Mr. Quandour's utopian vision may seem improbable - that fairy tale quality again - but his odd, guileless, folkloric movie doesn't feel cloying so much as something from a different world.- Posted Nov 4, 2011
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 40
Not exactly uproarious. But Mr. Murphy, going back at least to his Gumby and Buckwheat days on "Saturday Night Live," has always had the ability to turn broad caricature into something stranger and more inventive. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 0
An excruciating demonstration of the unsalvageability of a movie saddled with an amateurish screenplay. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 40
A bland, well-meaning mishmash that never coheres into a dramatic whole. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Ms. Paltrow is not the only star in the film who tries gamely to churn this cinematic glass of diluted skim milk into something resembling butter. -
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 40
It is a measure of the shortcomings of this genial, well-meaning but ultimately unenchanting film that scene after scene is stolen by the second bananas. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
The director has fallen into the common first-timer's trap of biting off more than he can chew, stitching together an unwieldy, disorganized story out of subplots and flashbacks, without paying enough attention to the basic requirements of character and narrative. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
Apparently, because all the good jokes were used up in the first two "Fockers" movies, the wisenheimers behind the latest installment in this unnecessary trilogy decided to bring in some spew, opening a sick toddler's mouth like a fire hydrant and letting it rip.- Posted Dec 21, 2010
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 30
The film dissolves into a series of diminishing anticlimaxes, ending on a note of portentous ambiguity. To the last, Mr. Levin maintains his uneasy balance of reportage and melodrama. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 40
Laborious and nonsensical psychological thriller, a mediocre piece of studio hackwork unredeemed by a first-rate director. -
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 20
A tedious, not-at-all titillating exploitation film. -
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 20
Somewhere within all the crude slapstick and crass stereotypes, Little Man operates as a vulgar burlesque on the crisis of African-American manhood, particularly the relationships, or lack thereof, between fathers and sons. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 50
A mild exercise in deliberate mediocrity, with chuckles and heartwarming moments distributed as carefully as nuts in a factory-made brownie. The movie's lack of ambition is hardly surprising, but both Ms. Moore and Ms. Keaton, who can wring flustered comedy out of the mildest provocation, deserve better. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Features annoying characters navigating unbelievable situations. -
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Critic Score 40
The director, Brian Robbins, perhaps as a result of his prime-time pedigree, has so carefully engineered this manipulative machine that little emotional residue remains - only a product inoffensive, unsurprising and uninspiring.- Posted Mar 8, 2012
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
Our judgments, in any case, may be superfluous, since the director, Mathieu Kassovitz, has already publicly described it as "pure violence and stupidity." -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Despite its occasional flashes of brilliance (every Rudolph film has them), this unsavory stew never comes to a boil. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 60
Ultimately, Ms Lynch has nowhere to take her erotic parable except to a dead end, but she makes the unfolding of the story a spooky, engrossing process. [9 Sept 1993, p.C1] -
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Critic Score 70
The Reunion has no pretensions of originality, and maybe that's just fine. It's relaxing to watch formula roll in front of you if that formula is engaged with affection, and that's the case here, much to the credit of the writer and director, Mike Pavone.- Posted Oct 20, 2011
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 0
It's a little sad to see actors of the quality of Christopher Plummer and Jonny Lee Miller struggling straight- faced to dignify this sewage. -
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 40
What's lacking is the sense of structure that might have made Van Wilder more than a meandering succession of random gags. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
The worst that can be said of the first two-thirds of Tideland is that it is tiresome. Toward the end it becomes creepy, and not in a good way. -
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Reviewed by
Anita Gates 40
A lot like the brothers themselves: undeniably pathetic but strangely lovable. Still, do you really want to spend an hour and a half with them in a dark room? -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 40
I felt tentative stirrings of admiration for an indie movie that so aggressively flouts the hard-shelled conventions of romantic comedy. But more often than not, I felt suffocated by the gaseous sentimentality and lightheadedness of a story that drops in subplots that it can't begin to develop.- Posted Feb 3, 2011
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 0
If you are going to be this mean-spirited, you had better deliver the jokes, but the film's attacks on pretentious parents - not to mention put-downs of hardworking immigrants - consistently come off as more hateful than humorous.- Posted Jun 24, 2011
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Reviewed by
Laura Kern 40
Provides plenty of authentic dirt-flying motorcycle thrills, but the film's excruciating earnestness and clunky script frequently slow its energetic pace to a grinding halt. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 40
A mediocre gross-out movie that barely pushes the envelope. -
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Critic Score 20
Use experts and eyewitnesses to less rousing effect than Michael Moore has. Sometimes their arguments inspire unintended doubts about the alleged abuses. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 10
When a sheriff's deputy (Carla Gugino) visits the house, I Melt With You turns into a ludicrous, cheap horror thriller that sheds any claims to integrity. By the end, you feel nothing, not even contempt.- Posted Dec 8, 2011
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 10
The movie's computer animation is so cut-rate and its direction (by Joe Chappelle) so slack that the attacks are virtually terror-free. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 40
The producers are going to have to hire a better director if they want moviegoers to be curious enough about this Galt guy to buy a ticket for the presumptive third and final chapter.- Posted Oct 17, 2012
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 70
A smoother, funnier, more suspenseful and more endearing version of the 1980 John Cassavetes film of the same title. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
Not that Madonna has gone in for originality, which isn't really her thing: rather, instead of repurposing a genre, she has riffled through the art-house catalog for inspiration, as evidenced by the film's intentionally grubby visual texture, jumpy editing, direct-address commentary, freeze frames and other tricks. -
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Reviewed by
Nicolas Rapold 10
This tedious chronicle has the interest level of a home movie of a vacation with bickering and yammering left intact.- Posted Mar 7, 2013
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
A movie that pits a substantial actor like Mary McDonnell, playing a New York madam, against a bogus story that crossbreeds noirish affectations and romantic comedy into an unpalatable mush that suggests strawberry ice cream slathered with beer. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
A tiresome blend of overacting and underwriting, The Salon moves from one predictable conversation to another -- the lack of available black men, the wondrousness of Bill Clinton -- without originality or comic rhythm. -
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Reviewed by
Mike Hale 30
Some obvious comparables for Skyline are "Independence Day" and Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds," but there is nothing here that even approaches the comic-book verve of the first or the churning dread of the second.- Posted Nov 12, 2010
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 30
It might have been a satisfying if not terribly original piece of historical melodrama, but its clumsiness turns it, against its best intentions, into half-baked operatic kitsch. -
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Critic Score 0
The maudlin, grotesque western September Dawn, about the massacre on Sept. 11, 1857, of about 120 settlers by Mormons (and their Paiute Indian mercenaries), apes "Schindler’s List" in hopes of creating a Christian Holocaust picture. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 50
Radiating a distinctly retro vibe, this throwaway thriller from the German director Christian Alvart tosses a bone to Renée Zellweger, who chews it to a nub as Emily Jenkins, a harried social worker. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
So narratively garbled and its screenplay so underwritten that you have to strain to piece together the story. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 50
A mellow dream of a movie that's an acquired taste. It's attractive because of the oblique way that Mr. Wenders ambles through a murder mystery that's stronger on characterization than on plot. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
The Benchwarmers is the sort of trash that Hollywood does really well. It is also, to quote Mr. Schneider, "a master's thesis on the form of a quintessential Adam Sandler comedy." -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 50
It's an interesting, maddening mess -- not a terrible movie, and by no means a dull one. -
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Reviewed by
Rachel Saltz 10
It's depressingly self-conscious and turgid, and a cast that includes Dennis Hopper, David Carradine, Michael Madsen and Eric Balfour can't drag Hell Ride out of the mire. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 10
The only thing that kept me watching License to Wed until the end (apart from being paid to do so) was the faith, perhaps misplaced, that I will not see a worse movie this year. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 10
A dreary crash of malapropisms and slapstick maimings wrapped very loosely around a murder mystery. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 40
May be simple, but it's also simple-minded; this is, after all, a movie determined to transform its Rebel soldier heroes into men of the people, making it as neglectful of politics as last summer's "Patriot," which evaded that nasty issue of slavery during the America Revolution. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 40
Low humor might count for more here if it weren't constantly overshadowed by the film's maudlin streak. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 0
With its red lighting and Hades-like smoke and fog, the lurid look of The Big Bang suggests a tacky disco inferno. I have a mental picture of the film's creators, stoned out of their minds on who knows what, cackling crazily as they outline a movie that would have more appropriately been titled "The Big Goof."- Posted May 12, 2011
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Critic Score 30
The movie’s low aspirations are depressing because its best gags are agreeably demented. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 0
A film that even a rabid lowbrow like Homer Simpson (or, when the mood strikes, this critic) would find beneath his dignity. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 50
Instead of building sustained comic set pieces, it takes a machine-gun approach to humor. Without looking at where it's aiming, it opens fire and sprays comic bullets in all directions, trusting that a few will hit the bull's-eye. A few do, but many more don't. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 10
The moment the movie loses its lighthearted spirit is the moment it loses touch with reality -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Even for a fairy tale, A Cinderella Story, directed by Mark Rosman from a screenplay by Leigh Dunlap, fails to make sense. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 30
There are dull stabs at verbal wit that leave you baffled, bored or slightly grossed out. -
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 10
When it comes to entertainment, children deserve better than Pokémon 4Ever. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 50
Together, Mr. Lee and Mr. Green have a daft comic energy, and they are assisted by game performances from the rest of the cast. -
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 30
Moves from clever mock documentary to groan-inducing conceptualism. Mr. Fox may well have put his finger on certain shared impulses between these repellent bacchanalia, but his manner of drawing them out is heavy-handed. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 10
The movie’s most disturbing aspect, of which the filmmakers could not have been unaware, is the physical resemblance between Mr. Elba and Ms. Larter to O. J. and Nicole Brown Simpson. It lends Obsessed a distasteful taint of exploitation. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 10
The best and maybe the only use to be made of the catastrophic screen biography Modigliani is to serve as a textbook outline of how not to film the life of a legendary artist. -
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Reviewed by
Anita Gates 40
Venom certainly can't be called a good movie, but within its genre it's perfectly palatable. -
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 30
Even the imaginative gore can't hide the musty scent of Todd Farmer's screenplay. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 10
As the movie dragged on, I thought I heard a mysterious voice, and felt myself powerfully drawn toward the light -- the light of the exit sign. I have returned from the beyond to warn you: this movie is 90 minutes long, and life is too short. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
May be the opposite of trash, but it is something just as disposable: dead literary meat. Dragged down by a stuffy screenplay clotted with generic period oratory, overdressed to the point that the actors seem physically impeded by their ornate costumes, and hopelessly muddled in its storytelling, the movie is edited with a haphazardness that leaves many dots unconnected. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Failing to expand on the intriguing notion that evil can find physical form online, Smiley, like its sutured monster, is sadly more to be pitied than feared.- Posted Oct 12, 2012
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Doesn't really know how to end. But if its melodramatic final moments are ludicrous, they don't seriously dilute the acidity of the sour little swatch of urban sociology that has come before. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
A sloppy, exploitative act of star worship created (if that's the right word for cynical hackwork) around Mr. Lautner, the pouty 19-year-old heartthrob of the "Twilight" franchise.- Posted Sep 22, 2011
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Without Mr. Roberts and his grinning insouciance, this well-meaning mess would have no heartbeat at all.- Posted Apr 12, 2012
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 10
What does it add up to? Um ... I have no idea and don’t really care. Just because the characters waste their time doesn’t mean you should waste yours watching them circle the drain.- Posted May 2, 2013
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
In the end you have to wonder why the highly reputed director Michael Apted ("Coal Miner's Daughter") and the gifted screenwriter Nicholas Kazan ("Reversal of Fortune") chose to go slumming in territory like this. They must have been offered wads of money to do the dirty job. -
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Reviewed by
Laura Kern 30
When it finally seems likely to happen, the film crashes to a sudden and unsatisfying conclusion. But this is the first part of a projected trilogy and, assuming these characters’ lives -- or deaths -- will be further explored, it’s really just the beginning. -
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Reviewed by
Mike Hale 30
A drab combination of science-fiction horror film and conspiracy thriller, accomplishes something the world wasn't really crying out for: it recreates the tedium of watching the later Apollo missions.- Posted Sep 3, 2011
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Flagrantly old-fashioned, triple-hankie tear-jerker. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 10
The only reason I can think of to watch Vivi Friedman's flat, satirical farce The Family Tree - and it's not a good enough reason - is the opportunity to play a game of spot the semi-star.- Posted Aug 25, 2011
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Critic Score 40
A Warrior's Heart is factory-issue jingoism, yielding no surprises and frightfully few insights.- Posted Feb 11, 2012
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Reviewed by
Laura Kern 20
A misfired attempt at provocation and the exploration of philosophical thought, London is little more than an immature display of male bonding on speed. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
This picture achieves a level of badness that is its own form of sublimity. You almost - please note that I said almost - have to see it to believe it. -
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Critic Score 40
This film is about surfaces, for young men with testosterone to burn, and the racing passages snap. -
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 30
Of all the shoddy, insipid qualities of Bangkok Dangerous, the most egregious is the most fundamental: The film is simply dreadful to look at. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 30
At least it isn't a remake -- though given how slovenly and forced this movie is, maybe that wouldn't have been such a bad idea. -
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 30
Less interested in politics than in profitably flattering the suspicions and resentments of its intended teenage audience. -
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Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 10
When a movie aspires to be gay pornography but can't even manage that, well, you know you've got a bad movie. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
The appealing Mr. Baker never manages to find the right tone for the material, partly because he’s been seriously miscast (he radiates too much decency and intelligence for the role), though more because Mr. Waters never establishes a coherent tone for either the character or his situation. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
An interminable mess of a film that juggles more characters and undeveloped subplots than it can handle and even manages to bungle the setup. -
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Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 20
The sex (of which there isn’t much) isn’t sexy, and the humor isn’t funny. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
As depressing as the résumés of its 9-to-5 characters, The Strip sweats to wring laughs from overworked themes and underwhelming performances. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 40
Tenderness is a movie undone by its formulaic plot conventions, and its need to give its star more screen time than his characters merits. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 50
Clogged with court transcripts, medical records and repetitive (if moving) patient testimony, Burzynski tickles the mind only at the cost of trampling the eyes. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 40
Offensive only in Mr. Wortham's dreadful acting, Now & Later is part of a series at the Quad called "Unrated: A Week of Sex in Cinema" - a title that should ensure plenty of backsides on seats.- Posted Feb 17, 2011
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Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 20
The director, John Gulager, has no idea how to mix his ingredients to create a savvy self-parody.- Posted Jun 1, 2012
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
He might as well be describing the act of watching this grating round robin of connubial dysfunction and romantic disappointment.- Posted Nov 30, 2012
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Ms. O'Neal's Grace is a fluttery Blanche DuBois type who transforms into a ranting madwoman wreaking havoc. Instead of an ax, she wields scissors. From here on, the movie is a grotesquely overacted, ineptly staged screamfest.- Posted Dec 13, 2012
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 10
So minimally plotted that not only does it lack subtext or context, but it also may be the world's first movie without even a text. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
Mr. Deeds is mostly terrible, a shambles of a comedy that looks as if it was shot by a tabloid news crew. -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 10
Renny Harlin, who did a much better job directing ''Die Hard 2,'' displays no sense of humor and takes the film's nonsensical action scenes much too seriously, at one point even blowing up a beach house in the process. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
A poker-faced puzzle whose biggest shock is the absence of Sarah Michelle Gellar. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
The movie has been thoroughly eclipsed by "Captivity" the marketing. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 70
But even though, most of the time, you know exactly what will happen next -- you don't much mind. Nor do the many plot holes and improbabilities -- undermine its silly, raucous spirit. -
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 30
The results, to judge from the examples here, have been stuffy and disappointing, an unholy alliance between Playboy Channel prurience and PBS cultural alibis. -
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 40
Structurally, Sex, Politics and Cocktails is wildly, almost frantically inventive, with techniques ranging from stop-motion to split-screen to silent film-style intertitles. But no amount of directorial trickery can mask the essential vacuousness of the story and its characters. -
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Reviewed by
Mike Hale 40
A number of talented performers are stymied by this mediocre material.- Posted Oct 21, 2010
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
The movie equivalent of a box of Froot Loops followed by a half-gallon Pepsi chaser. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 0
This strident exposé may gladden the hearts of some anti-’60s conservatives, but it is a shapeless mess steeped in prurience. Its grain of truthfulness, however, is just enough to leave you unsettled in the pit of your stomach. -
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Critic Score 40
The star of Stay Alive is a cutting-edge video game, but the film still has hackneyed horror at its heart. And worse, it's not even the stylishly, wittily executed hackneyed horror of the "Scream" movies. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 10
Endure the long, slow, unraveling of this movie, which can't even muster the intelligence to be pretentious or the bravado to be amusingly bad. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 30
The picture, which fails to achieve its ambitions or to fulfill our expectations, is ultimately worse than a violent piece of hack work, in which the director isn't interested in displaying his integrity -- or taste. You'd be better off downloading the trailer: a much more convincing piece of storytelling. -
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Reviewed by
Mike Hale 40
Be aware: if you see the film in a theater equipped with RealD 3D and Dolby sound, you'll come away with a pretty good idea of what it would feel like to have flying body parts hit you in the face.- Posted Dec 14, 2010
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 0
The Love Guru is downright antifunny, an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh again. -
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Critic Score 50
Like its predecessor, All Saints Day will, if nothing else, be a cult item for Roman Catholic schoolboys; the next sequel, blatantly set up, should arrive no later than 2019. -
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Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 50
No swear words here; just harmless fun.- Posted Dec 15, 2011
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
After a particularly brutal, attention-grabbing start, Breaking Point quickly devolves into a flavorless stew of murder, corruption, blackmail and baby tossing. -
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 30
Though the body count is high, all of the people killed are faceless or only minor characters, until the end. It's as if the movie were saying that lethal violence is acceptable (and fun) as long as the victims - like the victims of guided missiles and high-altitude bombing - remain anonymous. Any comedy that allows the mind to ponder high-altitude bombing is in deep trouble. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 70
The movie is 74 minutes of hilarious pro-drug vignettes, loosely strung together like a themed episode of "Saturday Night Live." -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 30
There is an essential meanness to the entire project, tapping the manipulative power of taunts. Such jokes don't jibe with the times, the culture. -
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Reviewed by
Laura Kern 20
A modern-day "Big Chill" wannabe without the subtlety, humor, memorable soundtrack, strong performances or convincing dialogue. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 30
There are a few funny moments in Jack and Jill, most of them celebrity cameos that also serve to affirm what a cool, connected celebrity Mr. Sandler is. The most sustained of these is the appearance of Al Pacino as himself, falling for Jill and giving the film a jolt of genuine zaniness. I'm sorry to say that this may be Mr. Pacino's most convincing performance in years.- Posted Nov 10, 2011
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 10
An R-rated version of this mess would be only more gratingly dishonest as it tried to hide its weak sentimentality behind a fig leaf of vulgarity. -
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 20
Cause for fright in only one respect: the possibility that it could spawn sequels. -
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 20
If Make a Wish is meant to be a parody, it lacks one essential element: humor. If it's meant to be a horror movie, it lacks the corresponding qualities of shock and suspense. It's almost enough to make "Friday the 13th" look like a masterpiece. Almost. -
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Critic Score 10
Not a satire of the idiocy of professional wrestling, but a long, self-satisfied wallow in it. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 30
Having established its premise and set in motion an overloaded plot, the picture lurches this way and that, evoking more restlessness than laughter and more boredom than pathos. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Cuter than a basket of puppies licking a litter of kittens, An Invisible Sign is an excruciatingly whimsical collision of adult themes and kid-friendly aesthetic.- Posted May 6, 2011
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 10
A witless, gruesome barrage of jokey violence and lame trans-Atlantic humor, kept moving by the pointless, derivative kineticism of Mr. Yu's hyperactive cuts and splices. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Tailor-made for those who like their violence multifaceted and their women monosyllabic. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 10
This delectable fusion of New Age babble and luridly bad filmmaking may not "open" you up, to borrow one of the film's favorite verbs, but it might leave your jaw slack and your belly sore from laughter. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Substituting sex for suspense and pop music for ideas, the director Christian E. Christiansen drags The Roommate from limp beginning to lame conclusion.- Posted Feb 4, 2011
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 10
Teeters from a noisy sitcom (only one step removed from "The Beverly Hillbillies") to brickbat satire until it collapses in a pool of redemptive mush. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 40
About as scary as a ride on a minor roller coaster, it unrolls its amplified butcher-block shock effects within the first five minutes. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 50
Despite huge resources at Mr. De Bont's disposal and the fact that both he and Ms. Bullock have achieved stellar status since ''Speed'' screeched onto movie screens, the sequel is still a B-movie at heart. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 10
Festooned with yards of gross-out jokes, sniggering allusions and, astonishingly, a sentimental climax that's more repellent than any of the crude effluvia the film is drenched with. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
After several scenes of this tacky nonsense, you'll be wistful for the testosterone-charged wizardry of Jerry Bruckheimer productions, especially because Half Past Dead is like "The Rock" on a Wal-Mart budget. And the marked-down price tags are incredibly visible. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Long before it ends Dark Tide capsizes and sinks with a sickening glug.- Posted Mar 29, 2012
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Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 40
The whole affair has an artificial look reminiscent of a community theater production on a cardboard set. The vintage images don’t add enough to make up for the visual distraction. The story, though, is of moderate interest.- Posted Feb 14, 2013
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 40
Reunion overflows with catharsis -- at least for those on screen. This may not be quite the moment to solicit our sympathy for self-absorbed beneficiaries of Ivy League privilege. -
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Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 40
Steve Guttenberg is probably supposed to be a lovable loser in A Novel Romance, a drab, clumsy film by Allie Dvorin, but he can manage to be merely annoying. Mr. Guttenberg, though, deserves only part of the blame for this unrewarding movie.- Posted Nov 10, 2011
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Critic Score 30
The career of the actor Dax Shepard hasn't skyrocketed, but neither has it sputtered...Brother's Justice, his flailing, ultralow-budget directorial debut, will not accelerate his professional trajectory.- Posted Sep 8, 2011
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Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 30
Someone involved with Beneath the Darkness has either watched too many horror movies or not enough. There is not an original thought in this story, written by Bruce Wilkinson, or in the way it is directed by Martin Guigui.- Posted Jan 5, 2012
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 30
For his sins poor Stewart is kidnapped, tortured and shot up with horse tranquilizer after his leg is broken. It’s disturbing, and somewhat baffling too, until you grasp that this hapless sucker is a surrogate for the audience. -
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Reviewed by
Rachel Saltz 50
An unpleasant comedy about friendship, aims to be a female twist on the bromance. Crude and knockabout, it nonetheless has - like many a bromance - a sloppy, sentimental heart.- Posted Oct 18, 2012
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Reviewed by
Mike Hale 30
About the only honestly funny thing in the movie is Faizon Love's uncredited performance in the Joe E. Brown role, as the school maintenance man who's immediately smitten with Big Momma.- Posted Feb 19, 2011
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
Vacillates between cutesy Disney-style anthropomorphism and "Born Free" exoticism. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 30
Has some funny, dirty-minded jokes, a few amusing cameos (including Julianne Moore in clown makeup) and a soundtrack loaded with juicy cuts of mid-70's vintage soul and funk. -
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 30
Remains a sadly earthbound thing, mired in a dismal realism that lies far from its natural environment. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
Does occasionally rise out of the sewer of its self-imposed idiocy, ascending in brief moments from utter witlessness to half-witlessness, mostly thanks to the loose comic byplay between Mr. Black and Mr. Zahn. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Dry as new bank notes and doggedly uncinematic, Simon Yin's $upercapitalist approaches the seamy side of international finance with a story as stale as the subprime meltdown.- Posted Aug 9, 2012
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 60
Threadbare as it's beginning to look, the Superman series hasn't lost its raison d'etre. There's life in the old boy yet.- Posted Mar 25, 2013
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 40
This glib, overheated film about vicious primates delivers little suspense, nor are there signs of the 65 cited volumes and articles that turned Mr. Crichton's book into such a learning experience. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 30
The film's bright look and visual energy are much more liberating than the machinations of its teen queens. -
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 50
Instead of deepening the material, however, the narrative twists feel like purely formal interventions, intended to keep the film moving toward its foregone, heavily moralistic conclusion. Mr. Smith Gets a Hustler is faultlessly professional but finally slight. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
With a peephole-riddled set and a flashback-heavy screenplay, Black Christmas smothers terror beneath a blanket of unnecessary information, revealing too much and teasing too little. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
This 95-minute movie is so overstuffed with characters, it would take a whole television season to sort them out and give them any depth. And even then, these people have so little on their minds that 13 hours might not do the trick. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
A depressing two-hour infomercial pitching Times Square as the only place in the universe you want to be when the ball drops at midnight on Dec. 31. (Believe me, it's not.)- Posted Dec 8, 2011
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 10
Infantile, irreverent and boorish to the max, Postal explodes with bad attitude and lousy filmmaking. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
Even when Mr. Coogan can't make his scenes work, his prickly presence keeps you watching, as does the eerie scenes of winter that Mr. Glatzer captures with the camera. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Strains to be the ne plus ultra of arch, hyper-sophisticated fun, but the laughs are few. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 10
You might reasonably assume that any movie starring Mr. Rourke and Mr. Murray would have to have something to recommend it. But aside from a haunting musical interlude, in which Mr. Rourke, with pathetic ineptitude, mimes playing a trumpet, Passion Play is barely palatable.- Posted May 5, 2011
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 40
The result is a movie that isn't crummy, exactly, just blah: when the freakiest teeth on screen belong not to one of Walt Conti's animatronically realized sharks but to a good-ol'-boy called Red, you know you have a problem.- Posted Sep 2, 2011
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Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 30
A ski party movie in which the clothes are a little more revealing than they were 35 years ago, the practical jokes are a little more tasteless, and the uncertainty over sex is pretty much nonexistent. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 0
The kind of witless production that should rightly be cluttering the discount bins at your local video store. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 0
A scorching affront to Italians, Iraqis and the intelligence of movie audiences everywhere. -
