For 8,156 reviews, this publication has graded:
-
49% higher than the average critic
-
3% same as the average critic
-
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
|
|---|---|
| Lowest review score: |
Critic Score
0
|
Score distribution:
-
Positive: 3,636 out of 8156
-
Mixed: 3,390 out of 8156
-
Negative: 1,130 out of 8156
8,156
movie reviews
- By critic score
-
-
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. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
A murky ecclesiastical horror film, may be the nadir of the subgenre that produced "The Exorcist" (at its high end) and "Stigmata" (at its middle-to-low end). -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
May lead to a new axiom: success has many fathers, but failure has "Project Greenlight." -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
You can't get more high-concept, or less plotted, than this, and Daddy Day Care is proof. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
The delicate magic of, for instance, Hayao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away," which Disney released earlier this fall, is absent from this brainless, mechanical picture. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
Confuses an empty and derivative stylistic bravura with formal cleverness, and a sterile, mechanistic sensationalism with emotional intensity. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
The current version, however, like its predecessor, fails as entertainment. Mr. McTiernan's remake may be lighter on its feet -- the sober-minded original was as graceful as a tap-dancing rhino -- but it is just as boring and as obvious. -
-
-
Critic Score 20
Feels like a very long late-night comedy sketch that occasionally veers beyond tastelessness toward something worse. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
The story is a clever sitcomy contraption, the dialogue is pedestrian. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
As the movie methodically plods forward on a screenplay (by Shawn Slovo) consisting entirely of clichés and watered-down exposition, it becomes sadly apparent that its only reliable asset is the gorgeous view. -
-
-
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. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
Backstage isn't as good as the rap documentaries "Rhyme and Reason" and "The Show," but it still casts a keen, observant eye...on this world. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 20
It must be said that Berkowitz's shamelessness and persistence aren't inevitably irresistible. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 20
Monotonously paced and too long, Jersey Guy also suffers in its early scenes from attempts at humor that probably read better on the page than they play on the screen. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 20
Juvenile comedy targets a gallery of imperfect women. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
It is all a contrivance; the cast and filmmakers were under the delusion that putting unhappy women in a room would lead to drama. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 20
As Corky, Mr. Kattan never finds an appealing perspective on his character. Sweetness is not this gifted comedian's strong suit, and in its place Mr. Kattan offers a desperate eagerness to please, a far less charming quality. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 20
There is an explanation for everything, but it is a long time coming and not worth the wait. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
There are a few laughs, but I'm not sure that a comedy is supposed to make you recoil, which is what "Smoochy" does. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
The movie is so sloppily written and directed that its bits of bluster never cohere. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
It lumbers from one scene to the next with the stop-and-start mistiming generally seen in the outtakes shown at the end of the "Cannonball Run" movies, which this picture resembles in spirit. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
It's fleet- footed, merciless entertainment. But the mixture of laughs, bathos and brutality is a big turnoff. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
Jettisoning any ambition toward thrillerhood, Domestic Disturbance becomes a plodding, obvious angry-dad melodrama, ambling toward the final, fatal showdown between parent and usurper. -
-
-
-
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. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
Completed before the release of "American Beauty," this contrived, puffed up little picture nonetheless seems like a ripoff, perhaps because it mines the same tired assumptions and unexamined stereotypes about suburban family life. -
-
-
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. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 20
While "Dumb and Dumber" possessed a bracing, genuine vulgarity, this new film is more often merely disgusting as it piles up jokes involving various bodily discharges and the unpleasant things that can be done with them. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
There's so little chemistry between Mr. Wilson and Ms. Hudson that you begin to look back on what now seems like the halcyon time of "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days." -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
What one word might best describe Payback? How about "loathsome"? -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
A movie that knows its audience. Its underlying philosophy might be: why try harder when this is all they expect? -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Because all of this looks blatantly unreal, and because the timing of the shock effects is so haphazard, Dead Alive isn't especially scary or repulsive. Nor is it very funny. Long before it's over, the half-hour-plus bloodbath that is the climax of the film has become an interminable bore. [12 Feb 1993, p.C16] -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
"Queen" is a movie that stoops to jokes like calling Lestat's CD "a monster hit"; the movie is just a plain old monster. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
You might be tempted to say, "Huh?" Or, if you're in the theater, to leave. But wait -- there's less. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 20
Cause for fright in only one respect: the possibility that it could spawn sequels. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Corny, suds-drenched movie. The kindest way of looking at this roughly patched-together story is as the cinematic equivalent of the music it memorializes. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
This is bad cinema and bad history. Ms. Bravo is unstinting in her praise for the omelet and her admiration of the chef, but she refuses to admit that she's walking on eggshells. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
All it has in common with the original is a few dumb fun scares. In the new version, what we're left with after the scares is just plain dumb. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 20
Spectators will indeed sit open-mouthed before the screen, not screaming but yawning. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
The stripped-down narrative is almost an apology for the ludicrous story -- but it's just not enough of one. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
With the dog days of August upon us, think of this dog of a movie as the cinematic equivalent of high humidity. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
A rancid little nothing of a movie that baldly recycles plot elements of "There's Something About Mary." -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
The film's last half-hour -- or do I mean its final two weeks? -- is meant to keep the audience sniffling and sobbing uncontrollably, but the only thing likely to elicit tears is the sight of Mr. Reeves dressed in a white dinner jacket crooning "Time After Time." -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
Succumbs to its blockbuster ambitions and turns into a noisy, bloated mess. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
A film so family-safe it feels sheathed in plastic Bubble Wrap. Unfortunately, it's not even as much fun as popping the bubbles. It doesn't matter that the film is less than 90 minutes. It still feels like a prison stretch. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
(Patricia Arquette's) irritated reactions to her dire situation have all the force of a pet owner's whiny complaints when her feline refuses to use the cat box. -
-
-
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. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Because it unfolds like a garish hybrid of Simon Birch and What Dreams May Come, with some horror-movie touches thrown in to keep us from nodding off, "The Sixth Sense" appears to have been concocted at exactly the moment Hollywood was betting on supernatural schmaltz. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
Unfortunately, all of these supremely expressive vehicles come equipped with drivers, principally a pair of crash-test dummies played by Paul Walker and Tyrese, whose low-gear dialogue makes the whine of engines sound like the highest poetry. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
The movie is bulky and inarticulate, leaving behind a trail of wreckage and incoherence. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 20
All its 89 minutes of fast cuts, swooping overhead shots, sun, surf, song, sunburn and sex cannot obscure the extent of its shallowness. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
High-school cafeteria soup has more flavor than this bland, tepid throwback. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
The movie, like its lovers, is really two films smushed together in the faint hope that sheer incongruity can grind out laughter. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Bogus on every level, right down to its half-hearted trick ending. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
Buried in the slow, talky, inanities that the two stars exchange are some potentially interesting ideas about female sexual self-assertion and male surrender, but neither the actors nor the filmmakers have any notion about how to explore them. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 20
Though Mr. Hayata seems convinced that he is a colorful, romantic figure, the movie itself is crushingly mundane and unlikely to attract any audience beyond close relatives. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 20
Does little more than add another title to the very long list of movies influenced by George Romero's 1968 horror classic, "Night of the Living Dead." -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 20
The film strains mightily to be flashy and hip but finishes more in the realm of the merely distasteful. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
All hope is lost for those trapped in theaters with this picture. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
A patchwork of contrived naughtiness and forced pathos...The loose ends are neatly tied up, as they are when you seal a bag of garbage -- or if you prefer, rubbish. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
The film equivalent of the dark, boring period on a haunted house ride before the gondola crashes into another room filled with dirty mirrors. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Years from now, if Mark Christopher's timid, meandering film 54 is spoken of at all, it will probably be lumped together with Whit Stillman's ''Last Days of Disco'' as one of two movies released in 1998 to bungle the same opportunity. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 20
The heads may be dead, but at least they have a comical look. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Sadly, Mr. Smith has made a movie so false and blatantly icky that it's the film equivalent of making goo-goo noises and chucking a baby under the chin for 103 minutes. At the end, all you're left with is drool and a mountain of baby powder. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
An empty, farcical blood bath that's virtually shock-free except for one preposterous plot twist. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
That Garfield speaks in the supercilious, world-weary drawl of Bill Murray is some small consolation, as are a few of the animal tricks. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 20
In the spring a monster's fancy lethally turns to thoughts of lust. This thought, reduced to a level contemptuous of taste and reasonable intelligence, underlies Species II. -
-
-
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. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
Finally, a serial-killer movie so preposterous, so garnished with accidental laugh lines and absent essential narrative logic it may actually put a permanent kibosh on this tediously overworked crime subgenre. Here's hoping, at any rate. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Anita Gates 20
Nice, but that doesn't mean the film is worth anyone's time besides those of their families, friends, neighbors and the nice man from Connecticut who let them use his restaurant. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 20
Return of the Jedi oesn't really end the trilogy as much as it brings it to a dead stop. The film...is by far the dimmest adventure of the lot. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
Plays more like a nightmare than a dream, and an exceedingly unnerving one at that. Sam isn't just a prisoner of her parents' ambitions; like nearly everyone else in this film, she's a zombie, sleepwalking through life while Rome burns. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
What makes this nonsense more galling than usual is that while Ladder 49 might have started out as a heartfelt attempt to honor those in the line of literal fire, it weighs in as an attempt to exploit their post-Sept. 11 symbolism. -
-
-
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. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
What's disheartening is that an actress as fine as Ms. Linney has to endure the indignity of such excremental nonsense. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
Man, does this one make the first movie look like a masterpiece. What was Renée Zellweger thinking? It can't have been fun to put on all that weight, especially for a film as ghastly as this. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
If National Treasure mattered at all, you might call it a national disgrace, but this piece of flotsam is so inconsequential that it amounts to little more than a piece of Hollywood accounting. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Played in a loud sketch-comedy style that might be described as "Gay Mad TV." The haranguing, badly acted farce wears out its comic welcome within half an hour. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
A moth-eaten stranded-in-the-desert yarn that throws in every cheap trick in the manual to pump up your heartbeat, is so manipulative that the involuntary jolts of adrenaline it produces make you feel like a fool. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 20
A tedious, not-at-all titillating exploitation film. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Throughout Happy Hour, observations that mean next to nothing are presented as nuggets of profound enlightenment. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
All you really need to know about Say It Isn't So,the latest flatulent noisemaker from the Farrelly Brothers' gross-out comedy factory, is that late in the movie, Chris Klein punches a cow from behind and finds his arm stuck inside. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dave Kehr 20
There's not much for the viewer to do during God, Sex & Apple Pie except check off the obligatory plot points -- taking comfort in the thought that as each cliché appears, the film is one step closer to the blessed relief of its closing credits. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
There are brave, boundary-breaching movies, and there are mad, foolhardy ones. Harry and Max belongs to the latter breed. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
Sandra Bullock looks as if she would rather be shoveling pig waste - though of course in some respects that is exactly what she's doing. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
The film has no idea of how to develop its one-joke premise. The tepid love scenes are as erotically charged as a home movie of a little girl hugging her Barbie doll, and the satire as cutting as the blunt edge of a plastic butter knife. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
Mr. Moodysson may believe that he can stick it to the audience politically by sticking it to his characters. But like most film directors who commit to this strategy, his tactics come across as both naïve and wildly self-indulgent, while his fascination with the spectacle of the corrupt and the cruel is simply tedious. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
The makers of State of the Union subscribe to the Jerry Bruckheimer big-bang theory of action (big, bigger, biggest), but they don't share that maestro's attention to detail, or apparently his deep pockets. The state of this cinematic union is shabby indeed. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
A shrunken, cowardly movie in deep denial of its true nature, which is far uglier than it is ever willing to admit. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Kern 20
Not only is the film dreadfully dull: every time something potentially exciting does occur, the scenes are so muddled and chaotic that it is impossible to make out what is happening. -
-
-
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. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 20
The latest bit of damaged goods offered up in the Miramax clearance sale, Underclassman plays like the longest episode of "21 Jump Street" ever made. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Kern 20
A modern-day "Big Chill" wannabe without the subtlety, humor, memorable soundtrack, strong performances or convincing dialogue. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Messy, unfunny and unforgivably dull. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
But after 15 minutes, this yellow-orange vision of spiraling circles of hell, snorting devils and demonic shapes continually morphing out of one another, begins to seem redundant and conceptually impoverished. -
-
-
-
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. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
A facile exercise in nihilism posing as an indie "Training Day" with street cred. Don't believe it. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Unpleasant, uncouth and painfully unfunny.. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Not even a grumpy cameo by Burt Young and some lovely shots of the Brooklyn Bridge can save a movie as punch-drunk as its benighted protagonist. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Whether in the whorehouse or the sanitarium, Psychopathia Sexualis is an exercise in unrelenting dullness. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Mr. Edwards, who wrote and directed Land of the Blind (it's his debut film), might counter that the movie is a Brechtian comedy that's not supposed to make literal sense: the big picture is what matters. But the big picture is a mess. -
-
-
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. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 20
Comes close to being that rare film that is perfectly bad -- i.e., that has not a shred of social, entertainment or even curiosity value. But it misses out on this dubious honor by having one tiny redeeming attribute: it answers the question "Whatever happened to Edgar Stiles?" -
-
-
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. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
A grubby, lethally dull bid to cash in on the new extreme horror, the film turns on a conceit as frayed as Freddy Krueger’s shtick. -
-
-
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. -
-
-
-
Critic Score 20
The film is so clumsily written and directed, and the performances so one-note, that any potential for enlightenment is suffocated. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
The director, Marcus Nispel, takes his butchery very seriously. (He was the lead vivisectionist for the remake of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.") He may not be able to make this movie move, but, man, can he make an eyeball fly. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
A wooden police thriller that is as dull as it is impenetrable and ultimately beyond ludicrous. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Tailor-made for those who like their violence multifaceted and their women monosyllabic. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 20
This one is clumsy, mean spirited and amazingly unmusical. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 20
It is spectacularly out of touch, a laughably earnest attempt to impose heroic attitudes on some nice, small characters purloined from a ''young-adult'' novel by S.E. Hinton, the woman who wrote the novel on which ''Tex'' was based. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 20
Cocktail, which opens today at the Cinema 2 and other theaters, is ''Saturday Night Fever'' without John Travolta, the Bee-Gees and dancing. It is an inane romantic drama that only a very young, very naive bartender could love. How it got that way is difficult to understand. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 20
Harlem Nights is not the disaster some people might have been expecting. Mr. Murphy has appeared in far worse films written and directed by people much more experienced. -
-
-
Critic Score 20
The title role is played by Ariana Savalas, daughter of Telly. She's good, but not inventive enough to rescue Miriam, which is hobbled by flatly lighted video imagery, unconvincing period details and an inclination to wallow in atrocity. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 20
there is so little genuine wit to be found in ''Clue.'' The film does have a speedy pace, but that could hardly be confused with Mr. Hawks's madcap humor; instead, it involves a lot of running around through secret passages, and some slapstick routines involving dead bodies. The actors are meant to function as an ensemble, but that merely means that they often repeat the same line simultaneously. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Yawningly directed by Jim Isaac, Skinwalkers is a slavering mess that buries its clunky addiction metaphor beneath a welter of genre clichés, all delivered in extra-slow motion. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
This is one of those sadistic exercises that puts its characters through the wringer without saying anything true or meaningful. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Kern 20
An awkward “Lord of the Rings” knockoff, it features both elaborate battles and bumbling humor, though it’s never quite clear when you should be laughing. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Overkill is what Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer do best: as the uncontested titans of the parody genre (with fingers in everything from the “Scary Movie” franchise to the more recent “Epic Movie”) they continue to prove that ridiculing other movies is much easier than making your own. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
You may view Untraceable, as I do, as a repugnant example of the voyeurism it pretends to condemn. -
-
-
Critic Score 20
What rankles isn’t the gross-out humor or the verbal non sequiturs, which are expected, even welcome, in this sort of movie. It’s the smug sense of entitlement -- that of intoxicated dweebs tittering endlessly and obnoxiously at their own supposed cleverness. “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” is the gold standard in this genre. Strange Wilderness is a counterfeit bill. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
The movie offers less gore than the average Band-Aid commercial and fewer scares than the elimination episodes of "Dancing With the Stars." -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
This portrait of 20-something gay men and their straight friends is a joyless exploration of middle-class deadbeats (with the exception of Ephram) lost in a torpid funk of low self-regard. Because they’'e not rich, there is no sleazy zing of "Less Than Zero"-worthy glamor. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 20
Does little more than congratulate its audience on recognizing the source of its riffs. "High School Musical" -- ha ha ha! -
-
-
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." -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
A mawkish drama hobbled by a thoroughly unpleasant and uncharismatic lead performance. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Plods along in its sloppy, joshing way, it tastes like pasta sauce that has sat on the shelf long after the expiration date on the can. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
An aggressively noisy exercise in style over substance about nasty people doing nasty things to one another in (sigh) Southern California. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
Does it have to be so witless, so stupid, so openly contemptuous of the very audience it’s supposed to be pandering to? -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Feels like a movie whose story was slapped together during filming. Its three phases -- Southern pastorale, Sudsville and Kablooie -- don’t really connect. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 20
This sort of thing was indulgent enough the first time around; transplanted to the mumblecore milieu, it's intolerable. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
In Good, the anemic screen adaptation of C. P. Taylor's play about a respectable "good German" who passively acquiesces to Hitler's agenda, Viggo Mortensen, miscast and ineptly directed by Vicente Amorim, plays John Halder, a liberal, mild-mannered literature professor who becomes a Nazi. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Prostitutes are not the only things butchered in The Lodger, a spooky story ruined by lumpen dialogue, cloddish performances and a director and writer (David Ondaatje) oblivious to both. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
A cynical, clumsy, aptly titled attempt to cross the female-oriented romantic comedy with the male-oriented gross-out comedy that is interesting on several levels, none having to do with cinema. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Boorish, bigoted and borderline pornographic. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
Nearly every time Mr. Jordan, working from a script by Mr. Ellis and Nicholas Jarecki, tries for similar effects, he goes badly awry, so that you snicker when the movie is trying to be poignant and groan when it aims to make a joke. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
Alas, excesses of any pleasurable kind are absent from this exasperatingly dull production. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
Something TERRIBLE is afoot. Sadly, that something turns out to be the movie itself. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Death in Love hasn't a drop of humor or hope. Its dull, smudged look makes every environment appear joyless and claustrophobic. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Homecoming is coldly efficient for what it is. But what it is is trash. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Offers agony in a vacuum, a villain without a motive and a hero with more personal problems than lines of dialogue. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
The concept of an intelligent woman is apparently so exotic to Ms. Bullock and her director, Phil Traill, that they frantically kook the character up, as if female smarts were a kind of disability. This being a contemporary big-studio release, I suppose it is. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
A stunningly witless revival of the infamous British film series about a girls’ boarding school. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Trafficking in irresponsible inferences and unsupported conclusions, the filmmaker Brent Leung offers himself as suave docent through a globe-trotting pseudo-investigation that should raise the hackles of anyone with even a glancing knowledge of the basic rules of reasoning. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 20
The sex (of which there isn’t much) isn’t sexy, and the humor isn’t funny. -
-
-
Critic Score 20
Transylmania, a vampire-hunter, college road trip sex comedy, has a problem: someone has drained all the laughs out of it. -
-
-
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. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
This disjointed, desperately whimsical film is simply not funny: not for a minute. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
This might not be the Titanic of romantic comedies (it’s tugboat size), but it’s a disaster: cynically made, barely directed, terribly written. But quick: there’s still time to escape! -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Missing no stops on the road from cloying to annoying, Harlem Aria has waited more than 10 years for domestic release. Maybe its destiny has been written. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
The problem -- the catastrophe -- of The Last Airbender is not in the conception but the execution. The long-winded explanations and clumsy performances are made worse by graceless effects and a last-minute 3-D conversion that wrecks whatever visual grace or beauty might have been there. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Robert Kane Pappas’s documentary about scientific experiments in life extension, makes a digressive, disorganized hash of a fascinating topic. -
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
You are not, in a movie like this, supposed to think too much; you are supposed to be transported beyond skepticism on a wave of pure, tacky feeling. Instead, in this case, you drown in sentimental, ghoulish nonsense. -
-
-
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
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
It is no wonder that the insufferable romantic comedy Happythankyoumoreplease, set in New York, looks and sounds like a flop pilot for a television sitcom.- Posted Mar 4, 2011
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Short-circuits the novel's quirky charms and period atmosphere by its squeamish attitude toward gritty circus life and smothers the drama under James Newton Howard's insufferable wall-to-wall musical soup.- Posted Apr 21, 2011
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
Beyond the lugubrious pageantry, there is no sign of emotional or spiritual life in the film, only windy posturing.- Posted May 5, 2011
- Read full review
-
-
-
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
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
You see, this character, who is given no back story, is Life with a capital L. He is the Forneys' guardian angel who rouses them out of their funk. Given the movie's U-turn into allegory, maybe he's supposed to be a punk Jesus. Not even Mr. Gordon-Levitt's unremittingly savage performance can begin to salvage such hokum.- Posted May 12, 2011
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
As one bloody encounter treads on the heels of the next, all that remains is a tiny indie undone by its own vicious ambitions.- Posted May 19, 2011
- Read full review
-
-
-
Critic Score 20
It demonstrates that mainstream Chinese cinema can be as guilty of self-indulgent overstatement as anything out of the West.- Posted Jun 24, 2011
- Read full review
-
-
-
Critic Score 20
The principal characters can be reduced to a handful of tics, and the entire story line is immaculately devoid of incidental detail. It's like sitting in a padded cell for about 90 minutes.- Posted Jun 27, 2011
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
"How are we going to get out of here?" Sarah squawks at one point, a question that Mr. Dourif ought to have asked his agent long before the cameras began to roll.- Posted Jul 8, 2011
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Fusty research, aging interviewees and decades-old advertising campaigns offer background to the uninitiated, but Mr. Warrick's muddled, undisciplined approach destroys even the possibility of a cogent overview.- Posted Aug 19, 2011
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Mike Hale 20
Sex in this film looks so nonecstatic that a better title might have been "3D Sex and Zen: Zero Child Policy."- Posted Aug 22, 2011
- Read full review
-
-
-
Critic Score 20
The onslaught of optical effects and deafeningly expressive foley suggest a voyage through a pinball machine piloted by the director Tony Scott.- Posted Aug 25, 2011
- Read full review
-
-
-
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
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
Whatever the case, Mr. Owen and Mr. Statham (who provides a nice duet with a chair) make a prettily matched pair amid the pileup of sub-Bourne action set pieces, sad laughs and clichés.- Posted Sep 22, 2011
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Silver Bullets neither pleases the eye nor stimulates the mind.- Posted Oct 27, 2011
- Read full review
-
-
-
Critic Score 20
Immortals is the latest disaster of post-conversion 3-D, a projected spectacle so dark it is literally hard to see. This is an ugly, burlap sack of a film, stitched with jagged seams and overstuffed with computer-generated chintz, gold-lamé leotards and fetishistic headgear.- Posted Nov 10, 2011
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Really, how slovenly is it to use invisible aliens? If you're going to tease us with nothing but pinwheels of light for three-quarters of the film, you'd better have one heck of a reveal up your sleeve.- Posted Dec 26, 2011
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
The scariest thing about The Devil Inside is that a major studio like Paramount Pictures, which is distributing it, may be able to squeeze more profit out of a tedious, tediously exhausted subgenre that was already creatively tapped out when "The Blair Witch Project" spooked audiences more than a decade ago.- Posted Jan 6, 2012
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Rachel Saltz 20
Lost in all this is Halston, who comes through only in dribs and drabs. If you're curious about him, skip this film. Read about him - you'll learn far more on his Wikipedia page - and look at his clothes. And if you're a filmmaker, go out and make a decent movie about him: he deserves it.- Posted Jan 19, 2012
- Read full review
-
-
-
Critic Score 20
The "Paranormal Activity" movies don't teem with metaphor, and neither does this film, directed by Brad Parker. The original "Night of the Living Dead" left you with plenty to chew on, so to speak; Chernobyl Diaries just leaves you feeling empty.- Posted May 25, 2012
- Read full review
-
-
-
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
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
Told with multiple flashbacks and minimal taste, this exuberantly scuzzy thriller - shot in less than two weeks with a budget as micro as the women's skirts - pits sleazy cops against fun-loving disrobers in the middle of scraggly foliage.- Posted Aug 23, 2012
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
A catastrophe worth noting only for the presence of its name cast.- Posted Sep 8, 2012
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
At a certain point this would-be shocker suddenly jerks into high gear and becomes a blatant, incompetent rip-off of "Psycho."- Posted Sep 22, 2012
- Read full review
-
-
-
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
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 20
A lumbering mess in which he has somehow trapped several recognizable actors.- Posted Oct 12, 2012
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
A grim, dispiritingly stupid waste of time, energy, money and talent.- Posted Oct 18, 2012
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 20
If the Boy Scouts offered a merit badge for inept filmmaking, Todd Rohal would certainly earn it with Nature Calls, an unwatchably bad movie about a camping trip gone haywire.- Posted Nov 8, 2012
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
If you can discern any critical distance or interesting perspective here, or even a good reason to spend 90 minutes in such company, I'm afraid the joke is on you.- Posted Nov 16, 2012
- Read full review
-
-
- Posted Nov 30, 2012
- Read full review
-
-
Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 20
New Jerusalem feeling like an acting exercise in search of a theater class.- Posted Nov 30, 2012
- Read full review
-
-
-
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
- Read full review
-
-
-
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
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 20
If the opening gag in your R-rated movie is an extended flatulence joke you should reconsider whether you're qualified to make such a movie. Not that flatulence jokes aren't funny; 8-year-olds love them. The thing is, not many 8-year-olds go to R-rated movies.- Posted Jan 11, 2013
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 20
A toothless examination of marketing and morality, Álex de la Iglesia’s As Luck Would Have It combines lecture, farce and soapy sentiment in a single misshapen package.- Posted Feb 7, 2013
- Read full review
-
-
-
Critic Score 20
The movie’s humor — at the expense of Asians, Latinas and even Serbs — comes off just as tone deaf and random as Seth MacFarlane’s Oscar-night shenanigans.- Posted Mar 1, 2013
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 20
Can the major studios still make magic? From the looks of Oz the Great and Powerful, a dispiriting, infuriating jumble of big money, small ideas and ugly visuals, the answer seems to be no — unless, perhaps, the man behind the curtain is Martin Scorsese or James Cameron.- Posted Mar 7, 2013
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 20
A comedy that is so scatterbrained and long-winded that much of it feels invented on the spot. (It’s also a half-hour too long.)- Posted Mar 14, 2013
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
The film calls attention to its own artificial status. It actually knows it’s a movie! What a clever, tricky game! What fun! What a fraud.- Posted Mar 19, 2013
- Read full review
-
-
-
Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 20
It may be too much to ask for anything more, but, on the other hand, if you’re going to go to the trouble of pretending to blow up the White House, you might also want to pretend that something was at stake.- Posted Mar 21, 2013
- Read full review
-
