|
| 1. |
|
11/14/08 |
Very Good |
 "...a collage fascinating in its very unevenness, as the crude competes for space with the sophisticated, the mumblers and droners-on with the articulate and the insightful." |
| 2. |
|
01/08/09 |
Poor |
 "My, but how the fur flies when the female bond comes unglued.... The film is hell at its most banal -- like watching a dull sitcom with a broken remote." |
| 3. |
|
01/16/09 |
Moderate |
 "I'm not suggesting his story is sanitized, but it's definitely been reduced to formulaic cliché - even the warts get painted in by the numbers." |
| 4. |
|
01/30/09 |
Moderate |
 "Danish director Jonas Elmer doesn't do his female star any favours, lighting her harshly..." |
| 5. |
|
02/06/09 |
Moderate |
 "Just another movie date, nothing remarkable... Oh, the funny bone got tickled a few times, but mainly there was just a whole lot of yakking about the usual stuff..." |
| 6. |
|
02/13/09 |
Poor |
 "I did not know that mannequins in Manhattan store windows could actually talk. I did not find their performance in the least wooden." |
| 7. |
|
02/13/09 |
Moderate |
 "...an action thriller with some decent action and a few thrills, but all embedded in a yarn so hopelessly tangled that even the loose threads have knots." |
| 8. |
|
03/13/09 |
Moderate |
 "...a mess of good liberal intentions loosely anchored to a mass of pure Hollywood hokum." |
| 9. |
|
03/20/09 |
Moderate |
 "...a movie that's simultaneously a tight political allegory and a meandering social treatise, one moment keenly precise and the next dozen bombastically operatic." |
| 10. |
|
03/20/09 |
Very Good |
 "...a formula flick that plays with the formula, a breezy romantic thriller that simultaneously exploits and explodes the genre's familiar conventions." |
| 11. |
|
03/27/09 |
Poor |
 "Ho-hum, one more slapped-together exercise in pre-fab horror -- in short, another haunted-house flick." |
| 12. |
|
03/27/09 |
Moderate |
 "Shooting a chaotic action scene in an extra dimension definitely adds to the clutter, but does zilch to subtract from the tedium." |
| 13. |
|
03/27/09 |
Moderate |
 "...one of those dependent independent films -- dependent on the need to be 'quirky' yet 'heartfelt' too, and as much a slave to the formulaic as any Hollywood product." |
| 14. |
|
04/03/09 |
Moderate |
 "...a slacker comedy short on laughs but long on the only love interest that matters: a holy passion for the Lord and Creator that is George Lucas." |
| 15. |
|
04/03/09 |
Very Good |
 "...does a nice job playing with the genre's stock coming-of-age figures... Unfortunately the narrative that gets stuck on top is little more than an ice-cream castle." |
| 16. |
|
04/10/09 |
Moderate |
 "Remember the final page of 'Gatsby,' a real American tragedy, when the green light beckons us into an ever-receding future? Now that was a mystery. This is, well, Pittsburgh." |
| 17. |
|
04/10/09 |
Very Good |
 "...the direction is subtle and the acting is brave and these risks pay off in bountiful rewards." |
| 18. |
|
04/10/09 |
Outstanding |
 "...a heart-rending portrayal of love's labours lost and won... age makes all the difference, and age makes no difference at all." |
| 19. |
|
04/10/09 |
Outstanding |
 "In politics no less than religion, the suffering body is the martyr's last and fullest testament. The body is his art, etched in blood and excrement..." |
| 20. |
|
04/17/09 |
Very Good |
 "...rubs away all the melodramatic varnish, leaving only the natural grain of life's small victories and lingering disappointments." |
