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One day before opening, Dinner for Schmucks' early reviews are good not great. • Steve Persall wrote in the St. Petersburg Times, "Steve Carell's character is almost too pitiful for the jokes launched against him to be funny. It is a terrific performance making everyone else's condescension sound harsher... It takes a really smart actor to play this dumb." • Clint O'Connor wrote in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, "...offers the rich talents of Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, and Zach Galifianakis. As much as they riff with improvisation and try to raise the film to comedic heights, the weak script is too much to overcome." • Peter Keough called the film in the Boston Phoenix, "...fitfully hilarious but inert and repetitious..." • Rene Rodriguez wrote in the Miami Herald, "...weak and uninventive. Although the cast tries mightily to keep the humor spinning, the laughs are disappointingly sparse." • And Peter Travers wrote in Rolling Stone, "...you can see the setup coming." The figures will change between now and opening as more reviews are added. More coming.   More About This Film... 

One day before opening, early reviews for Cats & Dogs: Revenge of Kitty Galore are fair. At this time reviews are mixed. • Adam Markovitz wrote in Entertainment Weekly, "No movie — whether aimed at adults or kids or canines themselves — has the right to be as tiresome and unoriginal as this action-comedy mutt." • Joe Leydon wrote in Daily Variety, "...intended as a spoofy homage to James Bond.... Helmer Brad Peyton and scripters Ron J. Friedman and Steve Bencich are obviously aiming to amuse grown-ups even while catering to kids, and they succeed with surprising frequency." • Roger Moore wrote in the Orlando Sentinel, "[A] tedious time-killer of a kiddie comedy.... as hard-pressed for laughs as 'Marmaduke,' once you get past the novelty of “Hey, the dogs and cats are TALKING.” • And John Gholson wrote for Cinematical, "...even the most awful, obvious gags are still delivered with some small amount of charm.... a well-made parody film, sinking its canines into spy genre cliches with gleeful abandon..." The figures will change between now and opening as more reviews are added. More coming.   More About This Film... 

One day before opening, Charlie St. Cloud's early reviews are weak. • Thelma Adams wrote in Us Weekly, "[A] tepidly directed, awkwardly acted dud.... comes off as an excuse for Efron to look dreamily at the camera with Windex-blue eyes as he drinks Jack Daniels and cries buckets." • Kerry Lengel wrote in the Arizona Republic, "Guilt, grief and the struggle to move on are big themes, but unfortunately, director Burr Steers and his script writers aren't interested in exploring them. The film's tagline, 'Life is for living,' is about as deep as it gets." • Rene Rodriguez wrote in the Miami Herald, "It's more of a demo reel for Zac Efron than a movie." • And Michael Phillips wrote in the Chicago Tribune, "Live your life. Live it to the fullest. These are the worthy sentiments of 'Charlie St. Cloud.' Director Burr Steers milks them dry, like an overeager farmer at milking time..." The figures will change between now and opening as more reviews are added. More coming.   More About This Film... 

Salt opened this past weekend to very good reviews. • Linda Barnard wrote in the Toronto Star, "...we want action, and as Agent Salt, Jolie delivers.... Plot failings aside, hot damn, she’s good with a gun and even better with her fists." • Shawn Levy wrote in the Portland Oregonian, "It’s ludicrous... But it’s also fun, with its heinie-kicking heroine, its paranoid nesting-egg plot, its sleek pace and fuzzy contours and sheer, unapologetic urge to thrill." • MaryAnn Johanson wrote for Flick Filosopher, " 'Salt' works. As in breathless-nonstop–action-intensity works. Oh, sure, it’s nutty-as-a-fruitcake insane at the same time, but being this hugely entertaining goes a long way..." • Josep Parera wrote in La Opinion, "De lo que 'Salt' no carece es de ese elemento que tanta falta hace cuando el público se siente frente a una pantalla: entretenimiento." • And Joe Neumaier wrote in the New York Daily News, "...fast-moving, exciting and contains more twists than a tunnel under Checkpoint Charlie.... There's enough preposterousness to set off a Geiger counter... but director Philip Noyce, working from a taut script by Kurt Wimmer, makes the retro thrills feel new."   More About This Film... 

Ramona and Beezus opened this past weekend to good not great reviews. • Michael Rechtshaffen wrote in the Hollywood Reporter, "...cheerfully innocuous if generically uninspired... While its cast -- including newcomer Joey King as Ramona and Selena Gomez as her older sister Beezus -- delivers uniformly breezy performances, most everything else about Ramona's move to the multiplex feels unremarkable." • Dan Kois wrote in the Washington Post, "Knits together scenes and themes from all eight of Cleary's Ramona Quimby novels into a sweet and funny, if slightly overlong, portrait of life on a modern-day Klickitat Street." • And Ted Fry wrote in the Seattle Times, "...a sunny series of charming escapades and subtle flights of fancy that capture the safe fusion of imagination and reality where all little girls should grow up. Parents also will be aglow over an unconditionally positive movie without a risqué joke to be found."   More About This Film... 

Inception continues playing to outstanding reviews that at the same time are mixed. • Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, "Nolan tests us with his own dazzling maze.... The movie is a perplexing labyrinth without a simple through-line, and is sure to inspire truly endless analysis... It is wholly original, cut from new cloth..." • Claudia Puig wrote in USA Today, "...it's refreshing to find a director who makes us stretch, even occasionally struggle, to keep up.... so clever and intricately structured it may require repeat viewings.... DiCaprio is terrific... it's worth surrendering to the dream." • Amy Biancolli wrote in the Houston Chronicle, "...spellbinding. Transporting. Damn-near indescribable.... a spelunking trip through the cavernous human psyche." • John Anderson wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "...we don't know where we are most of the time. And we profoundly do not care.... By convoluting the various planes of experience, by overlapping and obscuring ostensible realities and ostensible dreams, Mr. Nolan deprives us the opportunity of investing emotionally in any of it.... it requires too much explanation..." • And Kenneth Turan wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "...a tremendously exciting science-fiction thriller... This is a popular entertainment with a knockout punch so intense and unnerving it'll have you worrying if it's safe to close your eyes at night."   More About This Film... 

One day before opening in New York City and Los Angeles, Get Low's early reviews are very good. • Joe Leydon wrote in Daily Variety, "With a mix of sly humor, homespun grace and affecting poignancy... casts a well-nigh irresistible spell while spinning a Depression-era folk tale from the Tennessee backwoods. Robert Duvall compellingly underplays the larger-than-life lead role..." • Chuck Wilson wrote in the Village Voice, "...imperfect but rewarding... a pleasure to watch.... has a streak of melancholy running through it that's right for the film's Depression-era setting... yet the script is also dotted with little drops of sly humor." • Emanuel Levy wrote for Cinema 24/7, "[Director Aaron] Schneider has coaxed superb performances from his entire ensemble... the lead turn by Duvall should be remembered come awards season." • And Michael Phillips and A.O. Scott on the At the Movies both said, "See it." The figures will change between now and opening as more reviews are added. More coming.   More About This Film... 

One day before opening in New York City, early reviews for The Extra Man are mixed. • Andrew O'Hehir wrote for Salon, "...as lip-puckeringly dry as a cocktail of lemon juice and baking powder... You'll either find 'The Extra Man' utterly charming or thoroughly mystifying... either way Kevin Kline, playing a community-theater version of himself... inhabits its peculiar soul." • Jake Coyle wrote for the Associated Press, "Kline's performance as Henry is clearly the best thing in the film. But the character still fails to resonate; Henry isn't much more than a bag of peculiarities.... 'The Extra Man' is witty, but it even spoils that attribute by being so pleased with its own smarts." • Kirk Honeycutt wrote in the Hollywood Reporter, "...always likable. Indeed, the film works hard to be so. One longs, though, for a glimpse of the humanity behind the shtick and comic gestures. The film just never gets that intimate with its characters." • And Lauren Wissot wrote for Slant, "...a lightweight, tediously long vaudeville sketch.... With zero chemistry between the actors and no surprises, the film runs in quirky circles rather than organically unfolding in a forward direction." The figures will change between now and opening as more reviews are added. More coming.   More About This Film... 

During Wartime opened this past weekend at the IFC in New York City to very good reviews that at the same time were mixed. • David Edelstein wrote in New York Magazine, "...a genuine, all-enveloping bad-dream movie... [a] squirmy mix of grotesquerie and humanism, stylized camp and acid realism.... This might be some kind of goddamned masterpiece, but I’m not sure I want to watch it again to say for sure." • Todd McCarthy wrote in Daily Variety, "...reels off one riveting scene after another, stands as both a unique sort-of sequel and a film that requires no prior reference points; it's entirely satisfying either way, though even richer if you recall the antecedent." • James Berardinelli wrote for Reel Views, "...relies on uncomfortable black humor and moments of sincere drama to involve viewers. But everything is encased in artifice and the movie becomes a chore to take in." • And Richard Corliss wrote in Time, "[Solondz] is the best argument for why we need indie movies. His films will never be mainstream fare; audiences who wander into the theater may well find them derisive, needlessly shocking, perhaps unforgivable. But I'd call them, and especially 'Life During Wartime,' unforgettable."   More About This Film... 

Farewell (L'affaire Farewell) opened this past weekend in New York City and Los Angeles to very good reviews. • David Denby wrote in the New Yorker, "...mesmerizing... an odd-couple movie, with the world at stake.... The movie is stunningly intelligent; the concluding passages, in which the game abruptly ends for both men, are frightening and, finally, very moving." • Glenn Whipp wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "...offers intrigue and simmering tension... sports a smart sophistication along with an amazing story that's all the more remarkable for its relative anonymity in history books.... Canet and Kusturica, the leads, give 'Farewell' a humanity that also speaks to the high stakes at hand. They're fantastic." • V.A. Musetto wrote in the New York Post, "With Russian spies making headlines, there couldn't be a more appropriate time to open 'Farewell,' a drama, the opening credits inform, 'based on events that led to the downfall of the Soviet empire.' " • And John Anderson wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "The source of all this information was a real-life KGB agent, Vladimir Vetrov, code named Farewell, and with the usual adjustments for drama his story gets a respectable retelling in this nervy French production."   More About This Film... 

Countdown to Zero opened this past weekend in New York City and Washington DC to very good reviews. • Michael T. Dennis wrote for Cinema 24/7, "A thorough, informative look at the state of nukes in today’s world... poignant docu examines the dangers posed by rogue state and terrorist organizations..." • Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in the New York Times, "This scarily convincing argument that the end, if not quite nigh, is at least foreseeable urges us to wake up and smell the highly enriched uranium. By the end, however, all most of us will want to do is duck and cover." • Noel Murray wrote for the AV Club, "...slickly shot and assembled, with all the requisite animations, recreations, file footage, and ominous pulsing music that make agit-prop docs go these days." • And John Anderson wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "...as odd as it may sound, it's a remarkably beautiful movie. Integrating all sorts of archival footage—including, John F. Kennedy's 1961 'Sword of Damocles' speech before the U.N., which echoes throughout the film—it has a sense of rhythm, color and humanity that evokes melancholy rather than dread."   More About This Film... 

Mugabe and the White African opened this past weekend at the Cinema Village in New York City to a handful of excellent reviews. • Ella Taylor wrote in the Village Voice, "...incendiary... showcases Mugabe's corrupt use of land reform to further polarize a fragile nation already divided along racial lines, by following an elderly white farmer's struggle to avoid being forced off the land he bought in 1978." • Mike Hale wrote in the New York Times, "...a documentary account of the efforts of Mike Campbell and his son-in-law, Ben Freeth, to hold onto their [Zimbabwean] farm.... Many viewers will leave thinking that they have seen few, if any, documentaries as wrenching, sad and infuriating, and those feelings will be justified." • And Joseph Jon Lanthier wrote for Slant, "...cinema-as-journalism at its most aesthetically confident and humanely satisfying... has both the perilous, buzz-worthy backstory of a 'Burma VJ' and the patient, landscape-aware mise-en-scène of a Maysles film."   More About This Film... 

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child opened this past weekend at Film Forum in New York City to very good reviews. • Chris Faraone wrote in the Boston Phoenix, "...it’s the deep reach into his eclectic artistic repertoire that makes Tamra Davis’s captivating portrait glow. Yes, he was a hysterically hyped hipster extraordinaire who rode downtown society to the pinnacle of art-world success. But Basquiat should be remembered for his work..." • Melissa Anderson wrote in the Village Voice, "Davis focuses on fascinating specifics. Biographical minutiae... articulate assessments from friends, former girlfriends, art historians, and gallerists illuminate the life and work of [Basquiat]... by no means flawless: The production values of the recent interviews are erratic at best... tender, never hagiographic..." • And Elizabeth Weitzman wrote in the New York Daily News, "It doesn't dip much below the surface, but Tamra Davis' biography of her friend Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died in 1988, offers an informative introduction to one of contemporary art's most complex figures."   More About This Film... 

Slingshot (Tirador) opened this past weekend at the Producers' Club Indiehouse Cinema in New York City to a handful of very good reviews. • Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in the New York Times, "...achieves raw social commentary for the price of emotional distance. Portrayed entirely without sentiment, everyone here is equally abject... The mood of scrambling desperation can be exhausting, but the filmmaking is never less than exhilarating." • Andrew Schenker wrote in the Village Voice, "...articulates the aesthetic of Brillante Mendoza, the Filipino director whose breakthrough film of the following year, 'Serbis,' imagined a dilapidated porn theater as a capitalist microcosm.... It's all in good voyeuristic fun, even if Tirador's economic (and political/religious) critique plays a tad crudely..." • And Richard Kuipers wrote in Daily Variety, "Furiously filmed on mobile digicam and with perfs that make the line between drama and documentary seem invisible, 'Slingshot' supplies no end of shock, but an underdeveloped emotional core keeps the viewer at arm's length.... pic eventually numbs out with a relentless accumulation of misery."   More About This Film... 

Kings of the Evening opened this past weekend in Los Angeles to a handful of very good reviews. The film opened previously in Chicago and Atlanta. • Bill Stamets wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, "Warm performances redeem this plainly told tale set in a Texas town during the Depression.... This drama won awards at the San Francisco Black Film Festival and San Diego Black Festival." • Curt Holman wrote in Atlanta Creative Loafing, "The film’s soft edges and syrupy music prevent the conflicts from gaining traction. Compared to the film’s pace, glaciers move at the rate of high-speed rail.... It’s like a history book in which the footnotes eclipse the text." • Ernest Hardy wrote in LA Weekly, "Director Andrew P. Jones, working from a script co-written with his father, Robert, has crafted an unabashedly feel-good film. It moves briskly but leaves room for the stellar supporting cast to turn stock figures into appealingly shaded characters..." • And Kevin Thomas wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "...a warm, beguiling picture boasting an array of splendid portrayals.... Set in a small racist Southern town, in which the Great Depression only worsens things for poor blacks, an aura of uplift emerges as a collective response to these dire conditions gradually grows."   More About This Film... 

Spoken Word opened this past weekend at Big Cinemas in New York City to mixed reviews. • Sam Adams called the film for the AV Club, "...an up-the-middle character study." • Joe Neumaier wrote in the New York Daily News, "...the always-strong [Rubén] Blades is able to turn the dying-father cliché into something meditative. However, the self-conscious poetry and Cruz's diagnosis of bipolar disorder threaten to add too many notes to this quiet drama." • Ronnie Scheib wrote in Daily Variety, "[A] muscular, balanced script... consistently plays to [director Victor] Nunez's strengths. The dynamite cast makes poetry sexy and fatherhood a flawed but sacred font of wisdom.... kinetic and emotionally resonant..." • Eric Hynes wrote in the Village Voice, "...crudely constructed (the lighting and framing are strictly soap opera), unevenly acted ([Kuno] Becker is a bundle of distracting tics), and bluntly scripted, the film does have an honest integrity—at least whenever Blades is onscreen." • And Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in the New York Times, "Strongly acted and beautifully photographed... a quietly resonant family drama about the tug of old habits and the difficulties of escaping the past."   More About This Film... 

Audrey the Trainwreck opened this past weekend at the ReRun Gastropub Theater in New York City to a handful of mixed reviews. • Karina Longworth wrote in the Village Voice, "...a textured talkfest to the punchline... More formally controlled than [Frank V.] Ross's previous efforts... slowly builds to a minor revelation that feels huge within Ross's perfectly calibrated context." • Mike Hale wrote in the New York Times, "...the [lead] character is dull and closed off... 'Audrey the Trainwreck' is aggressively inconsequential.... suggests Robert Altman without any of Altman’s instincts for character and poetry." • And Adam Keleman wrote for Slant, "[Anthony J.] Baker and [Alexi] Wasser pull off fine, subtle performances... while the narrative might be thin and lack drama, the film as a whole proves a sweet, revealing look at two forlorn beings coming together in a banal world."   More About This Film... 

The Kids Are All Right opened in additional cities this past weekend to exceptional reviews. • Dana Stevens wrote for Slate, "...the movie we've been waiting for all year... a rich, layered, juicy film, with quiet revelations punctuated by big laughs.... it leaves you feeling wistful for at least three reasons: because of what happens in the story, because the movie's over, and because there aren't more of them this good." • Colin Covert wrote in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, "...a smart, cheerful, character-driven relationship comedy. In other words, it's a miracle. Imagine: a boldly funny film that doesn't trade in meet-cutes and laugh-track jokes, but carefully observes five interesting people colliding like bumper cars." • Andrew O'Hehir wrote for Salon, "...an overwhelmingly affirmative warts-and-all portrait... so real, so sexy, so sad, so honest and so truly, heartbreakingly funny.." • Anthony Lane wrote in the New Yorker, "There are not only glancing moments but whole sequences in this movie when the agony of social embarrassment makes you want to haul the characters to their feet and slap them in the chops." • And Mary Pols wrote in Time, "...a perfectly observed, sexy study of a modern American family... deliciously fraught; this might be the best domestic drama we'll see all year."   More About This Film... 

Restrepo opened in additional cities this past weekend to outstanding reviews. • Joe Morgenstern wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "...timeless.... superb... This movie will stir your heart and open your mind. It's a group portrait of practicing patriots." • Peter Travers wrote in Rolling Stone, "...embeds you deep into the war in Afghanistan.... The filmmakers offer no commentary. We watch. And what we see is explosive, deeply moving and impossible to shake." • Noel Murray wrote for the AV Club, "...unlike anything ever seen in a documentary; it’s raw, relentless, and made all the more unsettling because neither the soldiers nor the audience can see who’s doing the shooting." • Carrie Rickey wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer, " 'My only hope is that some day I can process it differently,' says one soldier after leaving Restrepo. At the end of Junger's and Hetherington's profiles in courage, you want to salute him and say he took the words right out of your mouth." • Michael Phillips and A.O. Scott on At the Movies both said, "See it." • And David Germain wrote for the Associated Press, "...an intimate portrait of a platoon's tour of duty that's disturbing, rattling and heartbreaking in its immediacy.... an unforgettable chronicle of fraternity under fire."   More About This Film... 

The Father of My Children (Le père de mes enfants) opened in additional cities this past weekend to excellent reviews. • Amy Biancolli wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle, "...a subtle work on an exceedingly difficult subject.... succeeds as the sum of many small details. Observations made in passing prove monumental later on; oblique scenes emerge as central to the plot." • Kenneth Turan wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "...an extraordinarily empathetic humanistic drama, a film of love, joy, sadness and hope that understands how complex our emotions are and does beautiful justice to them." • Emanuel Levy wrote for Cinema 24/7, "Touching, compelling, but decidedly unsentimental... a deeply moving portrait of a family undergoing a dramatic rupture as a result of a major crisis." • Steven Rea wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "The two de Lencquesaings, father and daughter, are terrific in their respective roles: his despair, mixed with denial and strange optimism; her solitude, separateness, as she sets out on her own life." • And Marc Mohan wrote in the Portland Oregonian, "...a well-acted, convincing portrait of a successful but overworked film producer named Grégoire... Now stop reading and go see it."   More About This Film... 

Wild Grass (Les herbes folles) opened in additional cities this past weekend to very good reviews that at the same time were mixed. • Carrie Rickey wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "A bizarre, captivating story of stalking.... I walked out of the theater scratching my head. But while I watched I was caught up in this enigmatic fairy tale for adults." • Richard Corliss wrote in Time, "...delightful and subversive... a constant, confounding delight, and a nifty new trick from a grand old dog.... be on your guard — your avant-garde... you should see the movie." • Ty Burr wrote in the Boston Globe, "...a surrealist romantic comedy that keeps changing the rules as it goes. It’s vaguely reminiscent of Luis Buñuel’s last film, 'That Obscure Object of Desire,' but where that was a dry and wicked work, 'Wild Grass' just seems insufferably pleased with itself." • And Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, "The film is a visual pleasure, using elegant techniques that don’t call flashy attention to themselves.... Here is a young man’s film made with a lifetime of experience."   More About This Film... 

Agora opened in additional cities this past weekend to good not great reviews. • Ann Hornaday wrote in the Washington Post, "Like the finest historical epics of cinema's lavishly costumed Golden Age, 'Agora' transports viewers to another world, the better to comprehend the one they're living in." • Todd McCarthy wrote in Daily Variety, "[Has] a certain heaviness of style and lack of an emotional pulse... [But] there is much in the picture to sustain sympathetic interest, including its dedicated historical perspective, intellectual seriousness and credible presentation of epic film elements... Then there is the physical side of the production, which is genuinely impressive." • A.O. Scott wrote in the New York Times, "...a rousing, finger-pointing drama from the Chilean-born director Alejandro Amenábar ('The Others,' 'The Sea Inside') is a bit of a puzzle. This is a good thing, since most movies plop down in easily recognizable categories and stay there..." • And Ty Burr wrote in the Boston Globe, "...represents a genre of movie so increasingly rare — the historical epic of ideas, like 'Spartacus' or 'A Man for All Seasons' — that you wish this one were better than it is."   More About This Film... 

News, Research, Updates, Etc.

The following chart is available to post on web sites and blogs. It displays live/real-time review information about current releases. The list of movies can be selected to suit any readership, national or local. This is the best review information available. To add the chart, a code is easily embedded in any page. For more information, email editor@MovieReviewIntelligence.com.

Updated less than 1 hour ago
New WIDE Releases	Positive Reviews
Salt	67.9%	WIDE
Ramona and Beezus	60.1%	WIDE
New Limited Releases
Mugabe and the White African	81.9%	NYC
Slingshot (Tirador)	78.1%	NYC
Countdown to Zero	77.3%	NYC/DC
Life During Wartime	76.5%	NYC
Farewell (L'affaire Farewell)	74.9%	NYC/LA
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child	69.5%	Limited
Kings of the Evening	68.3%	Limited
Spoken Word	56.4%	NYC
Audrey the Trainwreck	46.0%	NYC
Average:	53.0%
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Research on movie reviews was conducted for MovieReviewIntelligence.com by MarketCast, a Los Angeles-based market research company that specializes in movie research.

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