For 6,913 reviews, this publication has graded:
-
34% higher than the average critic
-
3% same as the average critic
-
63% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 7.7 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 54
| Highest review score: |
Critic Score
100
|
|---|---|
| Lowest review score: |
Critic Score
0
|
Score distribution:
-
Positive: 2,534 out of 6913
-
Mixed: 3,062 out of 6913
-
Negative: 1,317 out of 6913
6,913
movie reviews
- By critic score
-
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Amy Taubin 60
The film belongs to Fleiss, and he makes Joe's inner life so transparent that it's heartbreaking to watch the boy dig himself into a hole. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
Still most easily defined by its unavoidable parallels to any number of lesbian-overtone psychodramas. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
Being French, the film at least has indelible details -- something a Hollywood remake would fix but good. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Mark Holcomb 60
Thanks to an uninhibited screenplay and the easy, unforced chemistry of its ensemble cast, Punks is mostly good, snappy fun. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
Spear's portrait of unpaid, passionate fastpitchers could give filmmakers of all budgets a notion of how real Americans speak. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
The doc is also fat with film clips from before and after the 1979 revolution, but innocent of sensationalism as they are, Iranian films aren't terribly quotable—except when used to illustrate how filmmakers must choreograph their action so that men and women never touch on-screen. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Amy Taubin 60
Filled with people who cut Holmes more slack than he deserved. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Morris, who more or less invented the ironic documentary, seems to struggle here for an appropriate tone even as he allows Leuchter more than enough rope to hang himself. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
Tumbles happily into every pitfall that lines its well-trodden path. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
In its compassionate absurdism and underlying dark humor, the movie seeks to reestablish contact with the Czech new wave. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
Mariage takes his time and allows the film to drift in an almost ostentatiously casual manner. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
For all its ambitions, Illuminata sheds only murky light on what separates theater from life. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Though the genre collisions (horror/WWII submarine/undersea Macbeth) are as jarring as the sound design, the cumulative effect is one of claustrophobic creepiness. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
It's boilerplate Miramax: a sentimental import with lovingly photographed Euro locale. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
The art direction is impeccable, but this is a pop-up book that I was impatient to slam. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jessica Winter 60
First-time director Bonnie Hunt pays slavish adherence to the Nora Ephron rules of assembly for the prefab rom-com. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Leslie Camhi 60
Himalaya lacks such lightness, humor, and grace, offering instead the surface beauty of an ancient and inviolate culture. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
At times you can feel Van Sant trying to loosen the movie's windpipe-folding collar, but he doesn't get far, except with Busta Rhymes, as Jamal's gone-nowhere big brother. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
A movie as laconic as its hero, Ghost Dog is nonetheless diminished by its most un-Zen-like attachment to this underlying sentimentality. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Like any self-respecting Ferrara film, 'R Xmas has its intimations of hellfire, yet it's a weirdly benign Christmas fable -- something like "Miracle on 134th Street." -
-
-
Reviewed by
Amy Taubin 60
Seems like a TV movie. A well-written, sympathetically acted TV movie, to be sure, but so timid and clumsy in its deployment of picture, sound, and editing that you have to wonder if executive producer Martin Scorsese bothered to give notes. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Leslie Camhi 60
It traces a sustained and moving portrait of the worldly Sam, whose despair as the society he embraced abandons him is both clear-eyed and devastating. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Sinagra 60
The real charm of this trifle is the deadpan comic face of its star, Jean Reno, who resembles Sly Stallone in a hot sake half-sleep. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Leslie Camhi 60
Offers an incisive glimpse into one woman's inner transformation -- her secret sense of loss in the midst of plenty and her sudden perception of a world of suffering lying just beyond her home. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Like many late-franchise attempts, it stretches its material thin and grasps at novelty, overstaying its welcome despite a handful of requisite dude-that-is-so-fucking-cool moments. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
One leaves with barely a clue as to how this group was able to orchestrate a successful string of terror bombings. -
-
-
-
Critic Score 60
A lively tribute to the awkwardness and power of adolescent girlhood. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Historical forces and famous ghosts jostle past each other in this evocation of mid-1930s New York like harried commuters at Grand Central Station. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Filled with bird sounds, Vertical Ray is almost surreal in its paradise imagery -- the movie is a sultry, harmoniously expressionistic riot of pale greens and deep yellows. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Visually more coherent than "American Beauty," but despite the burnished mahogany of Conrad Hall's cinematography, Mendes still doesn't quite know how to fill a frame. Like the Hanks character, he's a slow study: The action is stilted and the tabloid energy embalmed. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Ed Park 60
An anti-"Rififi" in which nearly everybody loses their cool, not after the big score goes down but repeatedly and neurotically throughout. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Sinagra 60
Has a sweet low-budget quality that sometimes slips into TV-movie schmaltz. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Ed Park 60
Still enigmatic is the figure of Shackleton himself. The film conveys his remarkable leadership without explaining (beyond a because-it's-there romanticism) what would compel such a journey in the first place. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Ed Park 60
As a dirtier Deepak, Mistry is blankly sweet, suitable for his role as Subcontinental Rorschach. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
The film is slight but sweetly inquisitive, and its participants are endlessly fascinating. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
In its post-Vietnam cynicism, Buffalo Soldiers feels almost avant-garde. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Earnhart's auteurs are better adjusted, integrating their art into the daily routine of their (equally fucked-up) lives. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Sinagra 60
On a dark set, between strums and archival clips, this master raconteur exudes his own brand of obnoxious charm, the kind that can only be possessed, never imitated. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Leslie Camhi 60
There's much to admire here, including an often witty script and a cast that includes Theresa Russell, Seymour Cassel, and the irrepressible Lupe Ontiveros (Celia's mother-in-law). -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jessica Winter 60
There are pages missing from this fable: Meadows reports that his financiers asked him to cut one-quarter of his original script just before production began, and his fondness for long takes sits uneasily beside the apparent gaps in the narrative. -
-
-
-
Critic Score 60
This breezy comedy deconstructs the struggles of assimilation, satirizing the stereotypical "culture clash" Indian-American identity narrative. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
Smitten by the symmetry of his parable, director Roger Michell crosscuts emphatically between the preening leads -- a strategy that only draws attention to the numerous lapses in logic and unpersuasive changes of heart while sidelining the lively supporting cast -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Nausea-inducing street luge provides the requisite kinesthetic thrill of this mega-cinematic genre. -
-
-
-
Critic Score 60
Plotwise, Daughter is an "aha!"-intensive but thoroughly random mystery. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
There is a lot of electricity running in these cables, and directors Chris and Paul Weitz, responsible for "American Pie," know how to tap enough of it that almost every minute of Down to Earth is entertaining. But not quite surprising. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jessica Winter 60
Godard light, but not lite: Its breezy postures front for melancholia. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
There's no denying bespectacled, brace-ridden, homely wild child Eliza (Lacey Chabert), who can speak to animals and emerges as one of the most stirring heroines in contemporary media. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Mark Holcomb 60
Best in Show succeeds only insofar as you're willing to laugh at a bunch of sad freaks. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
Kormakur's debut feature fulfills the basic requirements of good slacker comedy: It's grounded in quotidian tedium and frustration, and it acknowledges both the humor and pathos of the relevant coping mechanisms (here, lackadaisical flings, porn addiction, amnesia-courting binges). -
-
-
Critic Score 60
E.T. is a dog movie. Genre-wise, I mean. It's about a boy meeting a dog, naming it, taming it, learning from it, and growing up. Of course, the genre is superficially disguised as science fiction, as was the fashion at the time. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Leslie Camhi 60
It does best when it leaves behind hothouse literary discussions and closes in on these two legendary behemoths, battling for sexual supremacy. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Ed Park 60
Family goes easy on the schmaltz, and the catastrophes have the puncturing feel of real life. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
A first-person doc assembled largely from footage taken in the course of the five features they made, being madmen together. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jessica Winter 60
As documentary filmmaking, it's cheap and suspect. As advocacy, it's necessary. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Last Dance is riveting when it focuses on the challenges of crossing a generational divide --The movie loses steam toward the end. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
Hilary and Jackie tries far too hard to dictate emotional involvement right out of the gate, and you're left counting off the doom-laden cues for things that are sure to return full circle. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Although a marked improvement over Algrant's nightmarishly whimsical debut, "Naked in New York," People I Know is perfumed less by the sweet smell of success than the musty aroma of the Miramax vault. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
Seinfeld's cool professionalism is almost cruelly juxtaposed with the tortured narcissism of heel-nipping tyro Orny Adams, who illustrates the mirror-image view from below. Comedy is pain, whether you're top- or underdog. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
A documentary to make the stones weep -- as shameful as it is scary. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Writer-director Bose shows depth when he deals directly with Xen's loneliness. The scenes that show him after-hours, as he gazes yearningly at the nightclub patrons across the street, are especially moving. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
Solid middlebrow entertainment, a vast period epic with an almost DeMillean taste for excess. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
Stevenson's performance is at once clueless and fiercely committed, a volatile combination that pays off in the best scene: the mother of all PFLAG meetings. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
There's plenty to enjoy -- in no small part thanks to Lau. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Ed Park 60
The leads smooth over the plot holes endemic to all 4D fables, making the movie more than mere déjà vu. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Leslie Camhi 60
Baltasar Kormákur's wacky version of "King Lear," set in an Icelandic village where virtually everyone plays the fool. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
In her role as Becky the half-assed tiki girl, Stiles's left-footedness can finally be named, only one of the many pleasures tugging this girl-snatches-guy-from-altar comedy a notch above standard. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
Virtually plot-free, the movie's organic cultivation of Argentina's economic tension and ethnophobic woes is smooth as silk. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Betty sustains her character, the movie fails to maintain its own. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
An enjoyably glib and refreshingly terse exercise in big beat and constant motion. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Ed Park 60
The adventure-book pace and topsy-turvy English setting evoke the feel of Stephen Sommers's "Mummy" films. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Jessica Winter 60
The poised Vega and pleasingly phlegmatic Sabara are resolutely uncute performers, and the reach-out-and-touch-it gadgetry carries a homey scent of proactive nostalgia. Spy Kids 2 is an island of lost Circuit Cities. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
Anyone expecting the decorous serenity of the Ang Lee film should be aware that Iron Monkey strives for no more or less than comic-strip thwack and thump. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Placing blame sorta misses the point in a world of matrixed self-interest where all is equally just and unjust. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
There's a palpable avoidance of risk as this new mythology is wheeled gingerly into the marketplace and carefully positioned to zap your pre-sold brain...Solid but uninspired, Harry lacks brio. It's respectable and a bit dull. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
I'd have welcomed more archival footage (Pennebaker did, after all, document Otis Redding's epochal performance at the Monterey Pop Festival), but that would be asking for another movie. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Ultimately sacrifices nuance to tidy epiphanies about personal growth. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Sinagra 60
Unfortunately, during the inevitable "what every woman wants" breakdown, Zellweger can't muster Doris Day's detached fume. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Amy Taubin 60
A highly talented filmmaker, Radtke draws intense, focused performances from these two inexperienced young actors. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
Davis has energy, but she doesn't bother to make her heroine's book sound convincing, the gender-war ideas original, or the comic scenes fly. Instead, the film is buttressed by song montages and jokey chapter titles. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
This is Oliver Stone country, but Broomfield's self-effacing affect is more Woody Allen, -
-
-
Reviewed by
Leslie Camhi 60
Handsomely shot, German filmmaker Sandra Nettelbeck's third feature suffers from a certain romantic predictability. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Amy Taubin 60
I suspect that Time Code was a lot more fun to make than it is to watch. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
The digital animation is far more evident here than in "The Phantom Menace." -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
The central conceit is Allen's most amusing since "Bullets Over Broadway." -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
Essentially humorless, Me Without You manages some pleasing textures all the same. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Miscast, misguided, and often nonsensical, Minority Report is nevertheless the most entertaining, least pretentious genre movie Steven Spielberg has made in the decade since "Jurassic Park." -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Sinagra 60
It's Filippo Pucillo who gives the youngest son such mellifluous southern sass that you wish the camera would abandon the whole woman-as-sadness retread and scooter off in his direction. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
It's a kick to see the Tim Robbins version of the man recently described by the Microsoft trial judge as "Napoleonic" installed in a disgustingly opulent Bond-villain HQ/pad, and the overwrought Boiler Room-meets-The Game scenario is not without its own schlocky pleasures. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Ed Park 60
Yuki's streamlined revenge story (the furious, elegant choreography is by HK maestro Donnie Yen) has in its modest dimensions a surprising grace. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Disney's big-screen expansion of their hit TV show is nirvana for the pubescent crowd. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
It's doubly frustrating that after flirting with (and even upending) biopic conventions for much of its length, A Beautiful Mind finally gives in to them so readily. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Sinagra 60
As Mom, Allison Janney easily dominates every scene she graces, as does Morning Zoo jock papa Peter Gallagher. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
The spectacle of pretty people floating languidly across the screen notwithstanding, Laurel Canyon is short on conviction and long on contrivance. McDormand, however, has a ball. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Mark Holcomb 60
All the shell-shocked wryness, irredeemable remorse, and unaccountable will to survive that the movie attempts to embody are realized in Gyllenhaal, and the actor makes it possible to root for Moonlight Mile despite its flaws. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
The latest Star Trek flick, Insurrection, is the 9th, and although it doesn't suck as completely as some ignoble odd-numbered low points, it doesn't exactly boldly go where no one has gone before. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
The performances are broad; the comedy is mainly slapstick. The politics are nationalist and vaguely left-wing. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
The cumulative effect is perversely deflationary: long before it's over, the film has flushed the paranoia from its system. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Sinagra 60
Miller's women share the affliction of scars left by dominating fathers. But the stories lean toward self-importance, and used verbatim in heavy voice-over, they register as a parody of spareness. Posey is the only one who has fun puncturing the solemnity, turning the real surreal in a softer version of her usual attack. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Cost well over $100 million, and the money is up there for the gawking. Illuminated by the orange flames of hell, the vast New York City set looks great. The least engaging aspect of the movie is its script -- which passed through the hands of three separate writers and perhaps even producer Harvey Weinstein. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
There are worse crimes being perpetrated in Hollywood than The Real Cancún--an exploitation fantasy no more booby-besotted than a "Porky's" or "American Pie" installment, and certainly no more unreal. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Sinagra 60
Blue Car gets so much of the hard stuff (including Meg's Plath-via-Tori poetry) that it assumes the easy stuff will take care of itself. It doesn't. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
A movie of many stupid pet tricks and one basic joke: As in the original, Elle's intelligence is consistently -- if understandably -- underestimated. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Where Judgment Day exhibited the profligate sprawl of a military operation, the leaner, less grandiose Rise of the Machines has the feel of a single Hummer careening through an earthquake in downtown Burbank. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Ed Park 60
Crammed with wild action, obvious but well-mounted gags, and playful effects, the film is refreshingly silly. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Funny for about half an hour, Pleasantville thereafter becomes an increasingly lugubrious, ultimately exasperating mix of technological wonder and ideological idiocy. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Ed Park 60
The situation -- a mother-daughter mind-body switcheroo -- is as enduringly appealing as it is absurd, and the comedy flows therefrom. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Sinagra 60
Northfork's overall ponderousness prevents it from becoming a transcendent fictive poem on the violent domestication of the West. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
It's a generous document of cultural passage, and not incidentally, the sexiest naturally nudist American movie since Murnau's "Tabu." Moss, however, keeps himself out of the picture and neglects massive amounts of context that might've made Same River a stunner. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Single-dad sitcom is not Sir Ridley's forte but, anachronistically evoking the ring-a-ding-ding ambience of "Auto Focus" and "Catch Me If You Can," his mise-en-scène is as impeccable as Roy's pad. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
The screenplay's clutchy banter (interspersed with arias of teary confession) feels distinctly Oprah, but Sayles extracts unexpected life from his wooden setups. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Ed Park 60
A bitter little fable of rent control and its discontents, Duplex moves rapidly into darkness and claustrophobia. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
Casting Tokyo as a neon wilderness thick with aged "perverts" and teenage pimps, the movie frames a critique of socially permissible pedophilia as indelible as Harada's eavesdropping mise-en-scène. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Fun and smart, but undeniably thin, the first installment of Tarantino's action epic is a fanboy fever dream. The clichés are out in maximum force, tempting any critic fool enough to go one-on-one with the master. (The prize: a Ph.D. in Tarantinology.) -
-
-
Reviewed by
Mark Holcomb 60
Despite its affinity for whimsy over realism, Small Voices effectively captures the embittered desperation and ragged dedication of its exploited teachers. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Like a Hollywood fairy tale, Lola is always threatening to turn into a musical. Its edge as a film comes from the fact that it never quite does. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jessica Winter 60
A handsome, mostly tasteful production on par with 2001's Bayley-Murdoch impersonation "Iris." -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
A film of considerable ambition and period piquance. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Vigorously date- and time-stamped, Scary Movie 3 boasts a cultural half-life of about five seconds, but for those seeking a return on their weekly multiplex pilgrimages, this movie is The One. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
If this is such a cheesy, derivative movie, why did I watch it twice with such delight? Possibly because at its center it's profoundly authentic, and because the star turn by Andrew McCarthy, a moody, mercurial characterization, saves it from fairy-tale bathos. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
This is an exercise in civility -- a tasteful "Boy's Life" adventure with plenty of boys aboard to express their appreciation. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
Squint through the humbug, and there's some genuine life going on. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Joshua Land 60
Most of the best moments in Hart Perry's latest documentary can be found in its opening half-hour, a vivid record of a 1979 strike by Mexican American migrant farmworkers in the onion fields of Raymondville, Texas. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
Cumulatively, the echo-chamber syntax achieves a kind of atonal harmony, meshing with the themes of reinvention and self-presentation: The disjunction between the panels is tantamount to the gap between image and reality. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Ed Park 60
Solidifying his funnyman rep, Ashton Kutcher appears as oldest child Piper Perabo's model-actor boyfriend, a delightfully brainless narcissist. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
A big fat war movie and a tender love story. Indeed, Cold Mountain is something of an uneasy struggle between the two modes. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Sinagra 60
Theron's empathetic victim-wrath and elemental female outrage almost trump the otherwise cartoonish gender-bending and award-grubbing po' folk put-on. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Mark Holcomb 60
Woo's film is in some ways closer to Dick's -- and his own -- pulp roots, and if he lazily quotes himself (and, inexplicably, Aldrich's "Kiss Me Deadly") once too often, he at least gets loose, spirited performances from his cast -- Uma's post-"Kill Bill" gravitas notwithstanding. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Totally convincing in a physically demanding role, Collette carries the movie on her shoulders -- and that weight is what it's all about. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
In a sense, Millennium Mambo is a mildly prurient portrait of Shu moving, drinking, smoking, and changing clothes -- it's analogous to one of Andy Warhol's Edie Sedgwick films, but without the existential drama. Who really cares what costume this poor girl will wear to all tomorrow's parties? -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jessica Winter 60
Broomfield's investigatory technique remains a frustrating pileup of unfocused Q&As and misplaced credulity. But when Broomfield travels to her Michigan hometown, he pieces together a life blighted at breech-birth: a grotesque of abandonment, incest, physical and sexual abuse, pregnancy at 13, and homelessness. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
A decent little exercise in nativist outrage, Rolf de Heer's The Tracker, with its dynamic between indigene and colonial oppressor, could've easily been a western. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Mark Holcomb 60
Skeleton may be 100 percent cult-in-a-can, but aficionados should feel sated. All others are advised to bring copious amounts of controlled substances. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Provides some swell roles for actresses and intriguing local detail. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Slight but sardonic, Norwegian director Bent Hamer's deadpan Kitchen Stories makes a taciturn comedy of nothingness out of color-coordinated '50s coziness and Scandinavian social planning. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
Israel's one-man new wave, Amos Gitai, surveys his nation's hardscrabble quotidian in Alila, which dallies with both Kiarostamian spirit and Altman-esque fabric, examining the intersecting lives of a dozen or so Tel Aviv residents. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Overlong and a bit tiresome but it's actually about something. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Sinagra 60
Holder and Parker tread lightly on issues of sexism, and sex in general, and leave us wishing more questions were asked. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Joshua Land 60
Philosophical ambitions notwithstanding, Hiding and Seeking is basically a personal essay, and the undeniably moving family saga takes over completely in the film's second half. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
S&H's chief pleasure is the spontaneous, sometimes quite touching rapport between the two stars. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
It is, like most, an unnecessary remake, but the new, digitally boosted Dawn of the Dead brings it on with a 10-minute overture that might be the most upsetting tin-can apocalypse modern movies have ever seen. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
After a most promising beginning, Velvet Goldmine's progress grows increasingly labored, stumbling around the structural roadblocks Haynes has erected in its path. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jessica Winter 60
Two Men is slow and sweet as warm pudding, but Cranham and Derek Jacobi (as one of Churchill's intelligence officers) both add a generous, wholehearted gravitas the film might have thought to ask for in the first place. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Intentional or not, Man on Fire's over-the-top evocation of Christian retribution goes a long way to making this otherwise standard revenge fantasy watchable. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Mark Holcomb 60
Despite Herrington's skill at capturing the physicality of the game, Stroke is strictly for golf nuts and masochists--assuming there's a difference. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
We'd gladly give ourselves over to the literate if chatty script and the generous helpings of Bulgarian beefcake, but our interest flags the moment Biba puts his clothes back on. -
-
-
-
Critic Score 60
Despite its chic pedigree, the film projects a shy modesty, a virtue largely attributable to Emile Hirsch's unflashy performance. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
C&C hardly coalesces, but then again, it doesn't try to--never more or less than what it appears to be, the film is a slow honky-tonk thud-beat, only intermittently punctuated by a joke or idea. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
Some of the buckshot hits its target: Shrek's second sidekick, assassin-turned-comrade Puss in Boots, is voiced by Antonio Banderas as an outrageously mock-dramatic Spaniard with most of the pig-pile screenplay's best toss-offs. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Richard LaGravenese peppers his directorial debut with the narrative trickery (fantasy sequences, flashbacks) that often tangles his sceenplays ("The Fisher King," "Beloved"). -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Fortunately, Leonor Watling (who spent most of "Talk to Her" in a coma) plays the spectacularly neurotic middle daughter with dizzying abandon and single-handedly saves the day. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Though director Ratnam keeps this actioner running MTV-smoothly, his global pop style is both complemented and bested by composer A.R. Rahman (Lagaan, Bombay Dreams), whose electronic soundtrack grafts chunky post-hip-hop beats onto the quickly evolving sonic norms of subcontinental cinema. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Akiva Gottlieb 60
Successfully amalgamates Henry Jaglom's Hollywood-home-movie aesthetic, ego-skewering satire, and a measured understanding of the kinship between love and risk. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jessica Winter 60
Amid the sticky-sweet swamp of Jeremy Leven's script, Rowlands and Garner emerge spotless and beatific, lending a magnanimous credibility to their scenes together. These two old pros slice cleanly through the thicket of sap-weeping dialogue and contrivance, locating the terror and desolation wrought by the cruel betrayals of a failing mind. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jessica Winter 60
As the tourist on a time budget, the usually brilliant Coogan merely mugs and flails (we can only imagine what Johnny Depp would have done with Fogg), while he and able straight man Chan enjoy scant opportunity to develop any comic rapport. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
More buff than historian, McKay chats with anyone who can tell him about the good old days, a vaguely defined period that sprawls from the mid '40s to the late '60s. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Amy Taubin 60
That Simon Birch is not as maudlin as it might have been is largely due to the intensely thoughtful, prickly performance of 11-year-old Ian Michael Smith, who plays Simon. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Sinagra 60
When ditching the mawk to follow his daredevil muse, the director delivers stunning shots of cliff dancing and stunt pilotry. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
The loss of the first film's hurtling who-am-I? story engine is keenly felt, and too much time is spent observing the characters get on and off planes, trains, and automobiles. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller's fond portrait, less documentary than infomercial, is unrelentingly and in the end self-defeatingly positive--albeit effective in showcasing Zinn's charismatic personality. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Sinagra 60
The filmmaker achieves the desired sense of remoteness and claustrophobic doom, and though the story could be told more economically, her slow approach conveys the distended chronology that attends an indentured servitude resembling slavery. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Late in the day, Code 46 bursts its chemical chains to become a convincingly irrational love story. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jessica Winter 60
Cheeky and elusive, Last Life in the Universe inhabits a high-lonesome world unto itself, a bright daydream that dissipates in the aching gap of a missed connection. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Already a top-selling DVD thanks to PR support from moveon.org, numerous media outlets, political blogs, and even Doonesbury, Outfoxed argues that Fox News's pro-Republican bias is top-down. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Ed Park 60
In the rare moments when a rifle, grenade, howitzer, bayonet, dagger, fist, land mine, or flamethrower isn't being deployed, the film pushes its melodramatic plotline with soap operatic shamelessness. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
Basinger takes her shuddery Stanwyckness very seriously, but everyone else has a ball. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Mark Holcomb 60
He (Jacobs) and cinematographer Chris Menges compose the film largely in close-ups, and the effect is appropriately unnerving. Regardless, unfavorable comparisons to "Nine Queens" are inevitable. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Sinagra 60
In the central romantic push-pull, Elster and Harold achieve a rare, edgily hopeful chemistry amid emotional ruins. -
-
-
-
Critic Score 60
Combining the common-sense lucidity of Klein's "No Logo" with an undertone of melancholy doggedness, The Take follows its characters through a national election that feels like an antipodean doppelgänger of our own. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
A flawed, but intriguing work, it offers, here and there, proof of Pontecorvo's gift for ecstatic epic filmmaking. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Benjamin Strong 60
The movie, as an exercise in narcissism, is breathtaking. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Leslie Camhi 60
If you can suspend your disbelief regarding Nello's naïveté, this film offers some quiet pleasures. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Waters's far-from-phallocratic sexual democracy is not so much hilarious as goofy and more rousing than arousing. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Though at times the film is snortingly funny, too much of the humor here rests on presupposed opinion about globalization. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Sinagra 60
These flashes push Dig! beyond recording-industry kvetch, causing it to stay with you longer than either band's ephemeral music. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
The question of whether this is a movie about reincarnation or fate or middle-aged delusion remains unaddressed far beyond our capacity to care. Many of the admirably long conversational scenes are pointless; some, like Harden and Linney's climactic bitch-fest in a hotel room, are flat-out absurd. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
A ridiculous soft-core kung-fu porn film about a ridiculous hard-core one, Orgazmo is the kind of movie that improves according to the lateness of the hour. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Overreaching in many of its laudatory appraisals, the film is mostly GOP-boosting rhetoric in the guise of a dull History Channel special. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Enjoyable if light, until it becomes apparent that Breillat is not simply waxing narcissistic but fashioning a simultaneous critique, explication, and demystification of the lengthy, near-single-take defloration that is Fat Girl's centerpiece. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
A film the family might've made themselves: sophomoric, hagiographic, amateurishly strobe-happy, and thoroughly hippiefied. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Dennis Lim 60
If Birth succeeds more as a source of visual and aural enthrallment than as supernatural narrative, it's largely because the final third hovers uncomfortably between the mystical and the earthbound. -
-
-
Critic Score 60
Though the high-noon climax drags somewhat, Álex de la Iglesia's charming comedy celebrates the resilient power of dreams, memories, and the movies. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Joshua Land 60
It's certainly important for American leftists to consider that many Iraqis have benefited from the war that we oppose, but the omission of historical context here misrepresents the checkered history of American involvement in the region. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Laura Sinagra 60
Doubles as a narrative of the nascent women's movement. -
-
-
-
Reviewed by
Jessica Winter 60
Improbably, the sequel only ups the ante on its predecessor's comedy-of-embarrassment quotient. -
-
-
Reviewed by
J. Hoberman 60
Certainly a testament to Fuller's tenacity, but recent raves notwithstanding, it's no masterpiece...The Big Red One isn't even Fuller's greatest war film. Of those, I'd rank it fourth -- but that's not half bad. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Michael Atkinson 60
There's something dull and evasive at the film's center--for one thing, contrary to its festival buzz, Bad Education tiptoes around the issue of priesthood pedophilia; lovelorn gazes are as desperate as it gets. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Jessica Winter 60
Boldly aspirational. It's Jeunet's stab at "Paths of Glory," dipped in a sepia bath and halfway wrenched into a women's picture. -
-
-
Reviewed by
Joshua Land 60
Not without its loopy charms. Indeed, the film is most buoyant when most over-the-top. -
