|
| 1. |
|
01/09/09 |
Moderate |
 "...pretends to be a satire of wedding mania, but since there's virtually nothing else to the movie, the satire comes depressingly close to endorsement." |
| 2. |
|
01/16/09 |
Poor |
 "It all makes you want to see a Bollywood movie, all right -- a good one." |
| 3. |
|
01/16/09 |
Moderate |
 "...a glacial tale of adultery, features a 'miraculous' climax -- it mingles the living and the dead -- ripped off from Carl Dreyer's 'Ordet' (1955), one of the great religious films." |
| 4. |
|
01/16/09 |
Excellent |
 "...a luridly unapologetic trip through the violence, hunger, verbal bravado, and money fever of the hip-hop world, which it views as both liberating and destructive." |
| 5. |
|
01/30/09 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...a propulsively outlandish thriller... Neeson -- a hulk with jackknife limbs -- makes Jason Bourne look like a man of tired reflexes." |
| 6. |
|
02/06/09 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...turns romantic sanity into something so sanitized that it starts to make delusion look good." |
| 7. |
|
02/06/09 |
Good |
 "Martin is so respectful of the role that he doesn't really make it his own; he does warmed-over Sellers... provides genial chuckles, but it's never excitingly rude." |
| 8. |
|
02/13/09 |
Outstanding |
 "You have to watch it with different brain muscles... the film has no frills or hooks, no visible 'arcs,' nothing to grab on to but the fragile humanity of the people on screen." |
| 9. |
|
02/13/09 |
Outstanding |
 "...barely has the pretense of, you know, a plot. It's just a moonstruck whirl of parties and buying sprees, with a few very funny Shopaholics Anonymous meetings..." |
| 10. |
|
02/20/09 |
Moderate |
 "...lives up to the mischief promised by its title.... Most of it is devoted to the weary, mirthless saga of an attorney (Derek Luke) out to save a former college chum..." |
| 11. |
|
02/20/09 |
Good |
 "...like something a porn filmmaker from the '70s might have come up with.... the script, credited to Freedom Jones, is a riot of tongue-twisting ironic sleaze..." |
| 12. |
|
02/27/09 |
Good |
 "...a multi-stranded, narrative-collage message movie... a diverting anthropological melodrama, with enough coincidence to keep the action unified." |
| 13. |
|
03/06/09 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...the film is so intent on celebrating Phoebe as 'special' that it quirks up the trauma of her issues.... Patricia Clarkson makes high theatrical solemnity funny." |
| 14. |
|
03/06/09 |
Good |
 "...so faithful to its comic-book source, it can't breathe.... Snyder crams the film with bits and pieces, trapping his actors like bugs wriggling in the frame." |
| 15. |
|
03/06/09 |
Moderate |
 "...has none of the crisp passion or suspense of the 1957 Sidney Lumet version; it's bloated, heavy-handed, and lugubrious." |
| 16. |
|
03/06/09 |
Good |
 "Mark Webber has a knack for bringing out actors at their showiest, but he palms off too much first-draft sketchiness as 'ambiguity.' " |
| 17. |
|
03/13/09 |
Very Good |
 "...a stoic, urban 'Little House on the Prairie' with placid currents of Nordic despair.... all staged as a harsh poem of survival..." |
| 18. |
|
03/13/09 |
Poor |
 "...merely vile (and dull), with a badly miscast Tony Goldwyn as the raging dad who makes revenge for his daughter's violation look more gratuitously brutal than the crime." |
| 19. |
|
03/13/09 |
Outstanding |
 "...the lo-fi purity of Joe Swanberg's style is a conduit to something that transcends youth.... what looks like a drama of adultery turns out to be an exploration of how the spaces between people can separate them or join them..." |
| 20. |
|
03/20/09 |
Weak |
 "...a trash-compactor hodgepodge of 'Deep Impact,' 'The Number 23,' 'Close Encounters,' and 'The Day the Earth Stood Still.' " |
