|
| 1. |
|
01/09/09 |
Weak |
 "...whenever something is funny, or meant to be, the sound track signals the event with a helpfully puckish passage of plucked strings. No cues are needed..." |
| 2. |
|
01/16/09 |
Good |
 "...fitfully amusing... an unintentional tribute to Danny Boyle and his colleagues, who turned Bollywood's conventions to their own brilliant purposes in 'Slumdog Millionaire.' " |
| 3. |
|
01/16/09 |
Fair |
 "Cute is how kids will likely see it, but here's another way -- as a mixed breed of sweet fantasy and rabid commerce, a film that grabs its audience like a chew toy..." |
| 4. |
|
01/23/09 |
Weak |
 "...invincibly graceless... What the movie disgorges is an almost endless, and eventually meaningless, succession of bad guys from the book..." |
| 5. |
|
01/30/09 |
Moderate |
 "Some major talent has been lavished... the plot borrows as freely from Hitchcock and Henry James as from the Bard of Avon, and doesn't make scrupulous sense..." |
| 6. |
|
01/30/09 |
Poor |
 "...unfunny at best and borderline-amateur at worst, notwithstanding the desperate efforts of Renée Zellweger." |
| 7. |
|
02/06/09 |
Moderate |
 "...distinguished by a creepiness so deep as to seem perverse... it finally succumbs to terminal deficits in dramatic energy, narrative coherence and plain old heart." |
| 8. |
|
02/06/09 |
Weak |
 "...the movie is minimumist -- as bare-bones as a 'Panther' can be and still get away with it." |
| 9. |
|
02/06/09 |
Weak |
 "...feels like a sitcom that resolves each mini-dilemma before going to commercial. The film's director, Ken Kwapis, has done far better work than this..." |
| 10. |
|
02/13/09 |
Outstanding |
 "...a vision of criminality as a vast miasma... the dramatic structure is complex, the details are instructive, and the sense of tragedy is momentous." |
| 11. |
|
02/13/09 |
Outstanding |
 "...an inspired performance by a superb actor, Joaquin Phoenix, in an elegantly grave romantic drama.... Ms. Paltrow has never been more intriguing on screen..." |
| 12. |
|
02/13/09 |
Fair |
 "...one of those ragged, pandemonious studio comedies that hammers at plot points in every contrived scene. But Ms. Fisher has a few moments worthy of her..." |
| 13. |
|
02/13/09 |
Outstanding |
 "Every time I see an underwater IMAX film in 3D, I'm astounded... This is a 4D film, really, the fourth dimension being education." |
| 14. |
|
02/13/09 |
Poor |
 "...the workings of the abstract plot are unfathomable, the characters are unpleasant and a couple of assassinations leave us as cold as the corpses." |
| 15. |
|
02/20/09 |
Very Good |
 "The film rises to the status of art thanks to the tension between horror that's heard and sweetness that's seen." |
| 16. |
|
02/20/09 |
Very Good |
 "Part of the film's appeal is as a procedural, a study of how designs move from clothing centers in the cerebral cortex to paper, then factory, then fabric and finally..." |
| 17. |
|
02/27/09 |
Poor |
 "This is not, by any reasonable definition of the term, a professional film, even though several experienced and established actors have been inveigled to inhabit..." |
| 18. |
|
02/27/09 |
Poor |
 "Some immigrants make it while others don't, some are deserving while others are not, but that's the extent of the script's wisdom.... 'Crossing Over' has nothing to declare." |
| 19. |
|
03/06/09 |
Outstanding |
 "...covers a lot of ground gracefully: self-discovery, domestic violence, labor strife, the slow climb up from poverty and, against heavy odds, the emergence of love." |
| 20. |
|
03/06/09 |
Weak |
 "...any movie with Patricia Clarkson has my attention from her very first scene.... Not even she, however, can save a movie that suffers from terminal self-enchantment." |
