For 8,226 reviews, this publication has graded:
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49% higher than the average critic
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4% same as the average critic
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47% 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: 3,670 out of 8226
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Mixed: 3,411 out of 8226
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Negative: 1,145 out of 8226
8,226
movie reviews
- By critic score
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 30
Mr. Gianvito's approach cannot really be called critical, since criticism would require some cogent analysis of causes and events. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 30
If you're looking for laughs, give "Valley of the Dolls" another read instead. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 30
The end titles and the ones that introduce Veronica Guerin...are the most informative parts of the film, and also the most powerful. What comes between them is a flat-footed, overwrought crusader-against-evil melodrama, in which Ms. Blanchett's formidable gifts as an actress are reduced to a haircut and an accent. -
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 30
Eventually becomes preaching that is likely to tax the credibility of the unconverted. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
A film worthy neither of Mr. Keaton's talents nor even a desperate horror fan's attention. -
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 30
The team that gave the world "Dumb and Dumber" returns with something feeble and feebler. -
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Reviewed by
Anita Gates 30
The filmmakers are smart enough to keep the monster out of sight for a long time and then to show only glimpses, but a similar tactic of providing only glimpses of plot and character is disastrous. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 30
As directed by Barry Levinson and acted by an incredible collection of male stars, Sleepers settles the authenticity question by allowing not a whiff of real life into its universe. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 30
An astonishingly lazy and perfunctory effort that does little to realize his (Carrey) comic potential. -
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Reviewed by
Anita Gates 30
Finally it becomes clear that Mr. Corley's film is meant to be a tribute to the love of theater. It has just been posing as the story of one man's finding himself. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 30
It's not bad enough to make you curse, but you are likely to laugh when you should scream, and to roll your eyes when you are meant to laugh. -
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 30
Nearly every one of the film's emotional scenes is too predictable to hit its mark, but Mr. Jones's dry delivery has its moments. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
A tediously didactic, often condescendingly reductive 10-part lesson on cinema. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
Despite Mr. Nakata's track record and the radiant presence of its star, Naomi Watts, The Ring Two is a dud. -
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 30
Think of it as a modern-day variant on a Shakespearean comedy, only without the verbal felicity or dramatic structure. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 30
The human landscape of Palindromes is a vista of grotesqueness, dishonesty and creepiness. These are qualities Mr. Solondz has explored before, but this time he fails to make them interesting, partly because he lets himself and the audience off the hook. -
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 30
The law of averages demands that every once in a while a movie must come along starring young nonprofessional actors who aren't very good. That's unfortunately the case in 15. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 30
The burden of the story, which is maudlin and entirely unbelievable, weighs down even the more credible performances. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Evokes a mood of tenderness. Beyond that, it is a weightless, sentimental and intellectually lazy effort from an independent filmmaker whose movies seem increasingly insubstantial. -
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Reviewed by
Anita Gates 30
Not a shred of suspense enlivens the proceedings, and the movie's idea of humor is having a man slip and slide on a floor covered in blood. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
A most unfortunate film that combines standard documentary techniques, including talking-head interviews, with some maladroit dramatizations from Aury's life and her novel. -
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 30
With its heavy symbolism and awkward, lurching pace, A Hole in One leaves viewers with little more than the vague conviction - which I think I already had going in - that falling in love is better than an ice pick to the brain. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
Softer, louder and cleaner than the 1974 version, the new film sentimentalizes the prisoners and the game, filing down their sharpest edges so that winning becomes a matter of triumph rather than resistance. -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 30
The film is a labor of love for Casper Andreas, who wrote, directed and starred in this first feature. For the actors he has chosen, it's a labor of lust, with copious necking and grappling required. For the audience, it's just a labor. -
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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
Lawrence Van Gelder 30
That "The Keeper" was made by a novice is evident in the visible seams between the present-day narrative and the flashbacks; the whole thing plays like a loopy amalgam of stilted costume picture and after-school special. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
By the time we reach the "Butch Cassidy"-inspired climax, any filaments of credibility still clinging to these characters have completely disappeared. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 30
Yes is not just a movie, in other words, it's a poem. A bad poem. There is no denying Ms. Potter's skill at versifying - or for that matter, at composing clear, striking visual images - but her intricate, measured lines amount to doggerel, not art. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
Wildly overproduced and filled with fussy flourishes that make even a derelict hallway look like a million bucks, Dark Water fails to rustle up either meaning or meaningful scares. -
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Reviewed by
Anita Gates 30
Most of this is old news. And the filmmakers never make a coherent case, at least not to the layperson. As a result, the film, which runs about 90 minutes, seems painfully long. -
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 30
Meant to be funny, but it only swells the sinus passages. It is a painfully inept comedy. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Proving once again that skillful performances can't create something out of almost nothing - the best they can do is make it palatable. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
What's interesting about Stealth isn't its nitwit story... No, what's interesting about this movie - and many others of its kind - is that it continues the love affair Hollywood, that hotbed of liberalism, has long had with militarism. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
This crude, inspirational tear-jerker is as sweet as a bowl of instant oatmeal smothered in molasses. It should please those who honestly believe that Santa Claus and God are synonymous; others may retch. -
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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
Stephen Holden 30
A tedious World War II epic that slogs across the screen like a forced march in quicksand. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Though filled with romantic contrivances and overlong musical numbers, Undiscovered is curiously lifeless. Bland actors portray single-cell characters in a plot scarcely more diverting than Ms. Simpson's reality vehicle, "The Ashlee Simpson Show." -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Solemn, sentimental bore of a movie that suffocates in its own predictability and watered-down psychobabble. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Neither funny nor sexy, nor leavened by the wistful laissez-faire wisdom of the typical sophisticated Gallic comedy, it is less than a trifle. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Even if it ends on a hopeful note, this is a feel-bad movie that leaves a bitter aftertaste. -
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 30
For all its experimental intentions, Loudmouth Soup feels familiar: a claustrophobic Hollywood satire that's short on kinesis and long on conversation. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
Marc Forster takes a maximalist approach to this mumbo jumbo, which means that in addition to lots of wacky angles, shiny surfaces, seemingly endless stairs, and sets of twins, triplets and quadruplets, he deploys the unsettling vision of three talented actors - Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling - straining credulity and neck tendons in the service of serious claptrap. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 30
A hectic, uninspired pastiche of catchphrases and clichés, with very little wit, inspiration or originality to bring its frantically moving images to genuine life. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
Riddled with holes and undeveloped characters, and marred by lurching rhythms that may reflect some triage editing, so it's hard to see what Mr. Hafstrom brings to this film other than a murky palette. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
There is very little fun in The Ice Harvest, which wouldn't pose a problem if the film had some fleshed-out ideas to go along with the booze, the booty and the recycled plot points. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Overcompensates for its sloppiness with loud, knockabout farce. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Good intentions do not guarantee good movies, or even watchable ones. A sad case in point is The Kid and I. -
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 30
This kind of thing might tickle a drunk, way off Broadway audience, but on screen it merely shows the futility of following in the faux-silent footsteps of the director Guy Maddin. -
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Reviewed by
Laura Kern 30
This messy blend of silly slapstick and oversentimentality probably won't please children, teenagers or adults. -
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 30
Less sassy than shrill, more crass than clever, the maiden cartoon from the Weinstein Company turns the Little Red Riding Hood legend into a sub- "Shrek" bummer that appears to have been manufactured for the pleasure of tone-deaf kids with a thing for sarcasm, extreme sports, and Andy Dick. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 30
I suppose Rumor Has It could be worse, though at the moment I'm at a loss to say just how. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
The fascist undercurrents of this battle remain unexplored. Maybe one day, Hollywood will figure out that pouring acting-challenged starlets into black neoprene and sticking them in front of a blue screen do not a movie make. We can but hope. -
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Reviewed by
Lawrence Van Gelder 30
Film Geek has a likable premise, an unusual setting in downtown Portland, Ore., and a pleasantly homemade indie feel. Unfortunately, Scotty Pelk, as written by James Westby and played by Mr. Malkasian, is actually so irritating, so genuinely hard to take, that like the rest of the characters in this semiautobiographical movie, we soon find ourselves itching to get away from him. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Annapolis has enough material for an exciting trailer. But that's all the movie really is: a trailer tricked out with protracted boxing sequences and an undernourished romantic subplot that culminates in a single tepid kiss. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Written and directed with overwhelming earnestness by Debra Kirschner, The Tollbooth can't overcome Sarabeth's self-involved narration and insipid personality. -
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Reviewed by
Elvis Mitchell 30
Instead, Mr. Carrey turns up in a sloppy second Ace Ventura film that's little more than an echo of the first. A two-minute trailer wouldn't miss many of its highlights. -
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 30
The third installment lacks the novelty of the first, the panache of the second and the twisted sense of humor that gives the series its participatory sense of fun. -
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Reviewed by
Anita Gates 30
Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, who wrote the screenplay, have crammed dozens of movie parodies into this deliberately juvenile spoof of romantic comedies. Mr. Seltzer, who directed, has made very few of them funny. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Mr. Wimmer is more concerned with fetishizing his heroine and patronizing his audience. The verdict? Ultrasilly. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Unfolds with such utter looniness that the horrible final moments are more likely to inspire laughter than shock. Casually insulting our emotions and intelligence, Mr. Stanzler seems to have shaped his film with one goal in mind: to prove that audacity and recklessness are acceptable substitutes for craft and common sense. Needless to say, they're not. -
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 30
Everything projects as if for the benefit of a nearsighted and dimwitted ticket holder at the back of the room. To his credit, Mr. Fickman has mastered one device unique to the cinema, making repeated use of the corny training montage. -
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Reviewed by
Laura Kern 30
Amateur acting, a wobbly script and a hard-to-swallow finale round out the film, which will, sadly, invoke ridicule in place of shock and anguish. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
The gay, independent comedy Adam & Steve is as crude and nonsensical as any number of B-list studio equivalents, with the added disadvantages of a low budget and shaky direction by Craig Chester, who wrote and also stars. -
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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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Critic Score 30
In his sour little movie When Do We Eat?, the director Salvador Litvak, like many before him, misses the target, landing instead in the adjacent territories of Tries Too Hard and Bad Taste. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
The jokes don't just fizzle into insignificance; they flop about with gaudy ineffectualness, gasping for air like newly landed trout. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
The question is why. Why would a star of Michael Douglas's stature and intelligence attach himself to a Washington thriller as deeply ridiculous, suspense-free and potentially career-damaging as The Sentinel? -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
During the ensuing narrative unpleasantness and visual incoherence (meaningless choker close-ups, pointless slow motion), Hayley subjects Jeff to a range of torture, all in the name of, well, what? Despite the two fine performances, it's hard to say. -
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 30
In Her Line of Fire -- produced to be shown on the gay cable network Here! -- flaunts its Sapphic subplot (all five minutes of it) like a pesky contractual obligation, and otherwise plays like straight-to-video gun pornography from the heyday of Chuck Norris. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Nowadays no family movie is complete without a values-oriented agenda and a bountiful supply of fecal matter, and RV supplies both. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
See No Evil devolves into an increasingly bloody and creative string of butcherings and impalings. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
The upbeat ending can't erase the lingering aura of being trapped in an insane asylum with the Manson family. -
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 30
As they scheme to secure a mysterious silver briefcase, secrets are revealed, agendas come to light and not a single plausible line of dialogue is uttered. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
Following the lead tendered by the credited screenwriters, Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe, the director Frank Coraci struggles to push the character toward the kind of age-appropriate complexity lost on Mr. Sandler, forgetting that his star only works when, as all those ponderous bosoms suggest, he's un-weaned. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Say Uncle may be trying to address gay persecution and social paranoia, but it mostly comes off as a study of arrested development. The movie's most laudable gamble is its refusal to make either Maggie or Paul sympathetic, but the moral subtleties are obscured by a one-dimensional script and a protagonist as self-centered and lacking in expression as a fetus. -
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 30
Of all the modes of modern alienation, there is none so persistent and arbitrary as finding oneself trapped in a glacially paced European art film. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
Delectably vulgar for 20 minutes or so, almost too bad to be true, but because it lacks the demented conviction of real camp, the glint of madness that keeps a bauble like "Valley of the Dolls" afloat, it soon loses its cheap-thrills appeal. -
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 30
A rude, rollicking and exceedingly raunchy attempt to turn "American Pie" into "American Quiche." -
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 30
A generic coming-of-age movie whose arrival on the scene suggests that the audience for gay indie clunkers is inexhaustible. -
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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
Manohla Dargis 30
The real-life sisters Hilary and Haylie Duff star in this incompetent spin on the poor-little-rich-girl story. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
Neither ambitious enough to take seriously nor sleazy enough to enjoy, The Quiet flirts with the trappings of exploitation cinema without going all the way. -
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 30
For a movie premised on unrelenting action, Crank proves fatally turgid. -
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Reviewed by
Dana Stevens 30
A movie like this can survive an absurd premise but not incompetent execution. And Mr. LaBute, never much of an artist with the camera, proves almost comically inept as a horror-movie technician...It's neither haunting nor amusing; just boring. -
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Reviewed by
Nathan Lee 30
From a producer of "Crash" comes Haven, an even phonier exercise in manufactured conflict, facile irony and preposterous contrivance. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 30
Nothing in the picture works. It is both overwrought and tedious, its complicated narrative bogging down in lyrical voiceover, long flashbacks and endless expository conversations between people speaking radically incompatible accents. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
Billy Bob Thornton's leer is much in evidence in the shoddy comedy School for Scoundrels, though the tackiness of the film, its lazy direction and its self-satisfied stupidity may mean that Mr. Thornton curled his lip about the production rather than for it. -
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Reviewed by
Anita Gates 30
The script, by Chris Haddock, leaves numerous questions unanswered. It also reflects the character depth and conversational complexity of a 14-year-old’s first effort at fiction. -
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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
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Cocaine Cowboys is a tabloid headline, a movie as oppressive and inarticulate as the lives it represents. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
One of the good things about bad movies is that when someone sneers about the unworthiness of a perfectly mediocre film like, say, "Crash," you can turn to a seriously unworthy film like, say, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause and laugh. Ho. Ho. Ho. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
A limp urban comedy not nearly as whimsical as its title. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Though the film's final, disturbing image forces race to the forefront and belatedly raises wider issues of persecution, its most controversial suggestion is not that Jesus might have been black but that he might have been a really terrible actor. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
A Rubik’s Cube of shifting sexual orientation and elaborate sex fantasies, “Sloppy Seconds” gathers all the accouterments of soft pornography -- cheesy music, low-rent acting and attractively framed genitals -- into a plot of stunning imbecility. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
National Lampoon’s Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj harnesses smut and silliness to an oddly innocent tale of true love. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
A movie like We Are Marshall stands or falls on its ability to make you feel the pain and loss of individuals in a place where community pride and football are one and the same. As the film, directed by McG (the "Charlie's Angels" movies) from a wooden screenplay by Jamie Linden, follows a handful of Huntington residents during the months after the accident, not one of them comes fully to life. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 30
Try as it might to be refined and provocative, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer never rises above the pedestrian creepiness of its conceit. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Just when it seems as though the language of insult and humiliation couldn’t get any nastier, the movie escalates the barrage. -
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Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 30
The computer-generated world is visually rich, but short on the droll humor that makes good children's films bearable for adults. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
The kindest thing to be said about this deluxe photo spread of a film is that Sienna Miller's Edie and Guy Pearce's Andy capture their characters' images and body language with relative precision. -
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Critic Score 30
The movie genuflects toward pop depth in a scene where Grace sprawls on a motel bed watching Alfred Hitchcock’s "Birds," another thriller about implacable, undefined evil, but there’s a difference between refusing to give viewers the answers and having nothing to say. For all its death-metal vigor, The Hitcher falls into the latter camp. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
A limp sci-fi comedy with fewer laughs than a meeting of Abductees Anonymous. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Feels like a desperate attempt to stretch a flimsy half-hour made-for-cable concept into a feature film. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
This dissociation leaves the supporting cast to its own devices, with no one suffering more than the appealing Eva Mendes as Johnny's true love, Roxanne. If Ms. Mendes ever finds a director willing to allow her to perform with her shirts fully buttoned, there will be no stopping her. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 30
It feels willed, aggressive and unconvincing -- clammy rather than cool -- in a way that suggests artistic frustration rather than discovery. The water shortage may be a metaphor for the director’s creative desiccation, which his admirers can only hope is temporary. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 30
Another movie -- Matt Stone and Trey Parker's "Team America," whose wooden puppets were more compelling actors than most of the cast of 300 -- calculated the cost [of freedom] at $1.05. I would happily pay a nickel less, in quarters or arcade tokens, for a vigorous 10-minute session with the video game that 300 aspires to become. -
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Critic Score 30
The director, James Wan, and the writer, Leigh Whannell (the team behind the controversially brutal "Saw" series), deliver the mandatory shocks and gross-outs, backed by dissonant bursts of music and made almost elegant by the cinematographer John R. Leonetti's desaturated images. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
The sloppy, absent-minded Premonition is a giant step backward for Ms. Bullock. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
The director, as he showed in movies like "After Dark, My Sweet," and "Fear," specializes in conjuring conspiratorial atmospheres in which anxiety and sexual menace hang in the air like a heavy, bitter perfume. Long after you've dismissed the movie's ridiculous, convoluted story, traces of that scent may linger. -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 30
For every necessary touch that Valmont has reduced or dispensed with (the climactic duel scene, for instance), there is another, less vital moment that has been expanded. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
This banal horror retread involves a couple of critters flailing inside a sticky trap for what is, in effect, the big-screen equivalent of a roach motel. -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 30
One of the many problems with Gus Van Sant's tortured, worked-over Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is that Sissy Hankshaw talks like a novel, and a dated one at that. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Under the direction of Andy Tennant, the Olsen sisters lay on the icky-poo cuteness with several trowels, often delivering their lines as though they were reciting the alphabet. -
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Critic Score 30
Perhaps the people most insulted are white Southerners, who presumably are expected to embrace one whopping brain-dead metaphor. -
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 30
Conan the Barbarian is an extremely long, frequently incoherent, ineptly staged adventure-fantasy set in a prehistoric past. -
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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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Critic Score 30
The quirky characters they meet aren't quirky enough, and the political points Ms. Bettauer sprinkles into her script thud awkwardly. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Rehashing characters and plots from the "Law & Order" playbook, the director, Rafal Zielinski, supplements his material with religious iconography and more gauzy close-ups than a Barbra Streisand marathon. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
A scare movie about gambling addiction, is as grim and lurid as any in the recent spate of films about the evils of crystal meth. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
The film's elegantly tricky cinematography and ominous, pounding score by Hans Zimmer (provocatively juxtaposed with the Rolling Stones), only underline the emptiness behind its technical flash. -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 30
The essentially two-character play has been opened up to the point that it includes a variety of settings and subordinate figures, but it never approaches anything lifelike. -
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Critic Score 30
In films like Quick Change, he is bogged down by scripts that don't begin to match his comic imagination. Even though he chose and developed Quick Change himself, Bill Murray deserves better than this clunky, stereotypical comedy. -
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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 30
Sweetness and whimsy fill the screen to capacity in I'm Reed Fish, a rural coming-of-age tale that's so laid-back that its cast is almost horizontal. -
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 30
The film tries to cover too much ground, even though Calder Willingham's script eliminates or telescopes events and characters from the Berger novel. -
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Reviewed by
Laura Kern 30
Mr. Roth, part of a new breed of horror directors affectionately labeled the "Splat Pack," is regarded by some as a savior of the genre, though it could be argued that he is more effectively a saboteur. He might have mastered the cheap sadism-as-entertainment gross-out, but he has yet to produce a single genuine, old-fashioned fright. -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 30
Newsies is a long, halfhearted romp through what is made to seem a not terribly compelling chapter in New York City's history. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
The movie, which imagines its principal characters as metaphorically ticking time bombs, never convincingly portrays their passions. -
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 30
The Dead Pool, possesses a couple of good jokes, but nothing can disguise the fact that it's a mini-movie in the company of a mythic figure. -
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 30
In Twins, which is supposed to be funny, the former Mr. Universe and pint-sized Danny DeVito play twins, the result of a genetic experiment that went awry. To the extent that Twins is carried by anybody, it is carried by Mr. DeVito. Mr. Schwarzenegger is dead weight. [9 Dec 1988, p.C18] -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Nightwatch spends so much time churning up eerie atmospheric effects that it doesn't have time to develop its preposterous story in which Martin finds himself accused of the murders. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
This existentially and aesthetically unnecessary sequel to the equally irrelevant if depressingly successful "Fantastic Four." -
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Reviewed by
Janet Maslin 30
The plot of Michael Grais's and Mark Victor's screenplay is even more nonsensical than it needs to be. [11 Jul 1992] -
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 30
The film, which opens today at the Sutton and other theaters, is composed of a prologue, written for the movie, plus four separate stories, each of them either based directly on a script from the television series or suggested by one. A lot of money and several lives might have been saved if the producers had just rereleased the original programs. -
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 30
A Chorus Line is less a movie than an expensive souvenir program. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
Doesn’t seem as if it would translate easily to the big screen. It hasn't. -
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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
Rachel Saltz 30
There’s probably more wit and pointed social commentary in the average four-minute OutKast song than in the entirety of Who’s Your Caddy? -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Arriving as inevitably as puberty, Bratz introduces the swollen-headed, fashion-addicted dolls of the title to a live-action movie. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 30
Hot Rod might be called the poor man’s “Eagle vs. Shark” if “Eagle vs. Shark” were not already the poor man’s “Napoleon Dynamite.” It certainly lacks the conceptual purity and aesthetic integrity of the “Jackass” movies. In any case poor certainly describes the quality of the filmmaking. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Underdog may have been originally created to sell cereal for General Mills, but this latest incarnation couldn't sell Frisbees at a dog park. -
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Reviewed by
Vincent Canby 30
The screenplay is priceless (funny) and it's Mr. Reeve who sets the film's tone. Unfortunately, his unshadowed good looks, granite profile, bright naivete and eagerness to please - the qualities that made him such an ideal Superman - look absurd here. -
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Critic Score 30
A recruiting poster for kids, insisting that there’s no domestic problem that military values can’t solve. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
The junky, clunky, grimly unfunny follow-up to the marginally better “Rush Hour 2” and the significantly finer “Rush Hour,” isn’t the worst movie of the summer. But it’s an enervating bummer nonetheless, largely because it shows so little respect for its two likable stars and its audience. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Luridly earnest and laughably immoral, Illegal Tender is an old genre movie with a new look. Call it Hispanixploitation. -
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Critic Score 30
A deranged, sometimes desperate parody of an inspirational losers-make-good comedy. Three gags miss for every one that hits. -
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Critic Score 30
A late appearance by a supporting character -- a pushy plumber and aspiring writer named Jim Fortunato (Michael Imperioli), who offers his mentally damaged young ward (played by Mr. Auster’s own daughter, Sophie) as a servant and possible concubine -- pushes the movie from bland pretension into distastefulness. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 30
The main audience for this dim little sex comedy has no particular interest in seeing Ms. Alba act. They want to see her in her underwear and also to confront one of the central cultural questions of our time: will she take her top off? -
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Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 30
Gregory M. Wilson, the film’s director, has made the kind of movie that makes you wish you could rinse your brain in bleach, to wash all traces of it from your memory. -
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Critic Score 30
The performers have little to do besides spill and drink blood in this tedious, inconsequential B picture. The sun doesn’t rise nearly fast enough. -
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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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Critic Score 30
The film is sunk by a pervasive stasis, the byproduct not of mood but of the filmmakers’ amateurish abilities. If there’s one thing Nick and Disney know, it’s that youthful entertainment needs to keep moving. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
The result is that what was once insignificant is now insufferable. -
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Critic Score 30
A triptych of short films set on and immediately after 9/11, A Broken Sole is based on a stage production by its screenwriter and co-producer, Susan Charlotte. One hopes the material played onstage, because it dies on screen. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
Hitman exploits every action-flick cliché imaginable and still manages to be dull. It’s bang, boom, blah -- action movies for bored dummies. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
The writer and director, Joby Harold, claims to have been inspired to write the film while suffering from a particularly painful kidney stone. Watching it may be for some a comparable experience. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Watching the movie is like reaching into a Christmas stocking and pulling out handfuls of cheap plastic toys that are broken. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
The film version is now being granted a limited release. Exactly how limited will depend on your tolerance for tasteless behavior, extravagant overacting and a decibel level to rival the unveiling of Oprah’s Favorite Things. -
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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
Manohla Dargis 30
Like too many big-studio productions, Cloverfield works as a showcase for impressively realistic-looking special effects, a realism that fails to extend to the scurrying humans whose fates are meant to invoke pity and fear but instead inspire yawns and contempt. Rarely have I rooted for a monster with such enthusiasm. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
The movie speeds up and slows down as though controlled by a director in the grip of competing medications. For those who make it to the final beatdown, however, the only pill worth taking is the one that makes you forget. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 30
No real mockery is intended by this harmless, mindless grab bag of slightly used gags, which lampoons some of the conventions of recent comic-book epics and adds the expected staples of juvenile humor: urine, vomit and intestinal gas. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 30
What is harder to comprehend is how Mr. Clooney turned out such a sloppy, haphazard and tonally incoherent piece of work. Leatherheads lurches hectically between Coen brothers-style pastiche and John Saylesian didacticism, while Mr. Clooney works his brow and his jaw and waits in vain for his charm to kick in and save the day. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Harnessing mostly fine actors to a wholly asinine script, the directors, Melisa Wallack and Bernie Goldmann, have created a movie as spineless and dithering as its benighted namesake. -
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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
Manohla Dargis 30
Although it's often laugh-out-loud laughably bad, 88 Minutes is mostly just a slog. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Expelled is an unprincipled propaganda piece that insults believers and nonbelievers alike. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
A would-be erotic thriller with no heat and zero chills, Deception has the kind of glassy, glossy sheen and risible story that mean to suggest "Basic Instinct" but instead invoke lesser laughers like "Jade" and "Sliver." -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
A dreary, interminable drama written and directed by Eva Aridjis, is exactly one-third of a good movie. That third is Frank Wood's beautifully modulated and modest central performance. -
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Reviewed by
A.O. Scott 30
This movie sets out to honor and refresh a youthful enthusiasm from the past and winds up smothering the fun in self-conscious grandiosity. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Shirley’s instant metamorphosis from insecure high school student to ruthless madam is ludicrous in spite of the best efforts of the talented Ms. Waterston to convince you otherwise. The Babysitters has the increasingly jerky momentum of a film that was butchered in the cutting room, sacrificing continuity and character development to whip the plot forward. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
War, Inc. is gonzo moviemaking with a bleeding heart. A satirical farce that wants to be "Dr. Strangelove" for the age of terrorism, it is a zany, nihilistic free-for-all that goes soft. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
I wish Ms. Parker had let that bee in her bonnet go silent, because the movie that she and Mr. King have come up with is the pits, a vulgar, shrill, deeply shallow -- and, at 2 hours and 22 turgid minutes, overlong -- addendum to a show that had, over the years, evolved and expanded in surprising ways. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
This candy-colored movie, whose soft hues match the colored cereal loops that Alby devours at his mother's house, is a post-Freudian fable that wants to be a kind of anti-"Wizard of Oz" for a culture inundated with toys and toons. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
All in all, this is a movie best enjoyed with a snoot full and a morbid disposition. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
The movie's amoral momentum is fatally slowed by an acronym-heavy script and flimsy characterizations that offer fine actors -- including Rip Torn as Tom's contemptuous father and Naomie Harris as his missed opportunity -- little to play. -
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Reviewed by
Neil Genzlinger 30
Ms. Zeta-Jones is too elegant for the lowlife she's supposed to be, Ms. Ronan isn't endearing enough to be a ragamuffin, and, under Gillian Armstrong's direction, never for a minute do you believe they're mother and daughter. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
The kindest thing to be said for this frantic, cluttered mess of cheesy computer-generated action-adventure clichés is that at least you can see how the estimated $175 million budget was spent. -
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Reviewed by
Laura Kern 30
Strains to sell itself as one crazy ride (raging parties! hot lesbian sex! bare breasts!), and chances are it won't disappoint those looking solely for unadulterated raunch. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
The film's spiritual deck is stacked. In the mawkish tradition of movies like "Simon Birch," "Wide Awake," "August Rush" and "Hearts in Atlantis," Henry Poole Is Here is insufferable hokum that takes itself very, very seriously. -
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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
Nathan Lee 30
One of the most undermotivated plots in many a moon, the zero-wit, zero-gravity misadventures of Nat, I.Q. and Scooter are embarked on merely because they're bored on their garbage dump. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Features annoying characters navigating unbelievable situations. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Soon after that the movie simply stops dead in its tracks, as though the money had run out and the project had been called off in the middle of a scene that makes no psychological or dramatic sense. It leaves you frustrated and annoyed. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
The suds that cascade through Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys more than equal the cubic footage from nighttime soaps like "Dallas," "Dynasty" and their offspring. -
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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
Stephen Holden 30
A supernatural thriller so mechanically inept and lacking in suspense that it doesn't even pass muster as lowbrow Halloween-ready entertainment. -
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Reviewed by
Jeannette Catsoulis 30
Soured by its enervated star and uninspired writing, the movie offers only tiny moments of joy, like a hailstorm of gumballs that's unexpectedly magical. -
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Reviewed by
Manohla Dargis 30
The film teeters so perilously and routinely at the edge of camp, both with some of its casting choices and some unfortunate dialogue (the repeated warning that "Jumby wants to be born now"), that it's hard to know if Mr. Goyer wants to make us howl with fear or laughter. -
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Reviewed by
Stephen Holden 30
Watching Ms. Zellweger’s joyless performance, you have to wonder what happened to this formerly charming actress who not so long ago seemed on the verge of becoming a softer, more vulnerable Shirley MacLaine. -
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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. -
