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| 1. |
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12/23/09 |
Poor |
 "...a garish fiasco... the characters are drawn in such robust caricature, the screenplay riddled with such reductive assumptions about the battle of the sexes." |
| 2. |
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12/17/09 |
Outstanding |
 "...a nonstop wow.... scene after scene, 'Avatar' keeps raising the bar.... Cameron remains committed to the discovering of new worlds at a moment when we seem so certain that everything worth discovering already has been." |
| 3. |
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12/16/09 |
Poor |
 "...the celluloid equivalent of a 12-car pileup. An assault on the senses from every conceivable direction... thrashes about in search of 'cinema' the way a child thrown into the deep end of a pool flails for a flotation device." |
| 4. |
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12/09/09 |
Weak |
 "Firth's performance is an island of honesty and simplicity, swallowed up by a sea of excess." |
| 5. |
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11/25/09 |
Weak |
 "...as a whole never approaches the wit, cleverness, and storytelling brio of the studio's early-1990s animation renaissance or pretty much anything by Pixar." |
| 6. |
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11/18/09 |
Good |
 "Jewish Israeli director Yoav Shamir's cheerfully incendiary documentary about the modern face of anti-Semitism... Does anti-Semitism exist or is it a construct of America's powerful, pro-Israel lobby?" |
| 7. |
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11/18/09 |
Outstanding |
 "...a grand, old-fashioned spectacle... exudes a physical grandiosity that few movies of the past 20 years have attempted..." |
| 8. |
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11/12/09 |
Outstanding |
 "Neither a crude lampoon of domestic servitude nor a knee-jerk skewering of the bourgeoisie, the movie deftly shifts its point of view from downstairs to upstairs and back again, always keeping us off-balance..." |
| 9. |
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11/11/09 |
Outstanding |
 "...a marvel to behold -- with wonderful shifts in perspective, an intensely tactile design, and an intentional herky-jerkiness of motion that only enriches the make-believe atmosphere..." |
| 10. |
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11/05/09 |
Weak |
 "A couple of modestly effective shocks lie in store, but none as frightening as the onscreen text informing us that some 11 million people claim to have seen a UFO." |
| 11. |
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11/04/09 |
Very Good |
 "Hothouse melodrama one moment, pungent social realism the next, with dashes of slapstick farce... even when the movie is at its most schizoid, you can't take your eyes off of it." |
| 12. |
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10/28/09 |
Fair |
 "There are moments that exude a fetishistic, low-fi splendor... [but] there is so much projectile vomit, animal flatulence, and innumerable plays on the word 'anus' that even first-graders may find their tolerance tested." |
| 13. |
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10/21/09 |
Very Good |
 "...emphasis on dialogue, combined with an unapologetically stationary camera, gives director Hong Sang-soo's work a casual, 'artless' façade that belies his carefully plotted, novelistic structure -- of which 'Night and Day' may be the most ambitious to date." |
| 14. |
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10/15/09 |
Outstanding |
 "...aims to capture the spirit rather than the letter of its source material.... strikes me as one of the most empathic and psychologically acute of all movies about childhood..." |
| 15. |
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10/15/09 |
Very Good |
 "Tom Hardy proves more than ready for his close-up, cackling, snarling and head-butting his way through 'Pusher' director Nicolas Winding Refn's mercifully unconventional biopic." |
| 16. |
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10/07/09 |
Very Good |
 "...a deceptively packaged Oscar-season bonbon -- a seemingly benign, classily directed year-I-became-a-woman nostalgia trip that conceals a surprisingly tart, morally ambiguous center." |
| 17. |
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09/30/09 |
Moderate |
 "...a fitfully amusing romp directed with little ambition and even less distinction by first-timer Ruben Fleischer." |
| 18. |
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09/24/09 |
Good |
 "...for all its cliches and latent 'Good Will Hunting'-isms, 'Streetballers' crackles with energy, style and the sense of an auspicious young director making his voice heard." |
| 19. |
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09/24/09 |
Excellent |
 "Harris' gradual implosion is both repellent and mesmerizing, Ondi Timoner's film unsparing in its scrutiny. You can't take your eyes off it..." |
| 20. |
CrudeVillage Voice Alternative Weeklies |
09/24/09 |
Outstanding |
 "...director Joe Berlinger does a superb job of taking us through the twists and turns of the decade-and-a-half, multibillion-dollar class-action lawsuit filed by the Cofán against Chevron..." |
