|
| 1. |
|
09/07/09 |
Fair |
 "...for all the Saturday-matinee heroics, the movie is dreary and monotonous, the vision junky in more ways than one." |
| 2. |
|
06/04/11 |
Good |
 "...valuable for offering a terrific sampler of underexposed feminist art, which Hershman-Leeson has smartly made available at rawwar.org, and important interviews..." |
| 3. |
|
07/13/09 |
Fair |
 "...a brilliant tap dance over a void: There's no real drama when the inner life of the female lead is so shrouded, even if that's the point." |
| 4. |
|
09/14/12 |
Moderate |
 "Pretty much all of these characters are blandly likable, in basically the same way... the movie provides a template more than a story.... harmless, to a fault." |
| 5. |
|
11/08/10 |
Weak |
 "...a 'wow movie' -- it leaves you jittery, a little crazed." |
| 6. |
|
04/29/11 |
Excellent |
 "Among gore-hounds, genre nuts, and lovers of all that is deeply bizarre about Japanese cinema, Takashi Miike is a freaky godfather.... focused, lean and mean..." |
| 7. |
|
04/13/09 |
Fair |
 "What I can't accept is that the stringy, insipidly earnest teen idol Zac Efron would grow up to be the defensively ironic, twisty-faced Matthew Perry." |
| 8. |
|
08/09/12 |
Excellent |
 "...assured, sensitive, and occasionally very funny... takes sharply drawn and recognizable characters and stretches them until something fascinating emerges." |
| 9. |
|
11/11/09 |
Weak |
 "...rides in on and reinforces an especially idiotic wave of evangelical doomsday predictions with supposed roots in the Mayan calendar, and it's too trivial to live." |
| 10. |
|
03/01/13 |
Fair |
 "I'd be lying if I said I didn't chuckle occasionally at the degree to which it takes the whole latent homosexuality thing to new levels.... But it's all so lifeless." |
| 11. |
|
03/05/12 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...spoofs the TV series and plays the premise for laughs. It has a bad, slapstick first act but by midpoint becomes strangely compelling... It's an agreeable shambles." |
| 12. |
|
03/07/11 |
Very Good |
 "Director Eric Mendelsohn risks seeming ridiculous, but I think he gets it at least 80 percent of the time. At its best, the movie is exquisite." |
| 13. |
|
08/13/11 |
Good |
 "...it's impressive how much suspense Ruben Fleischer and Michael Dilberti are able to generate given that no one onscreen has any brains." |
| 14. |
|
08/03/12 |
Weak |
 "...a perfect example of how structure can completely bulldoze humanity and character in a narrative... great cast, but nobody gets to do anything... like a mixtape of cameos." |
| 15. |
|
04/12/13 |
Good |
 "...often exciting, and just as often shallow and ham-handed... the film works, because it practices what it preaches: If you're good at baseball, nothing else really matters." |
| 16. |
|
01/25/10 |
Moderate |
 "The script probably looked great on paper, but instead of letting it breathe, Venville jumps to a close-up of each actor as he drops another arch one-liner..." |
| 17. |
|
09/26/11 |
Good |
 " '50/50' is itself split... Cancer becomes a springboard for tragicomedy instead of bathos." |
| 18. |
|
01/04/13 |
Very Good |
 "The effect is often profoundly moving, but you can't help but feel at times like there are other stories here you're missing." |
| 19. |
|
06/24/11 |
Moderate |
 "It's tough work making films about decent men just trying to do the right thing... Where's the drama in that?" |
| 20. |
|
12/05/11 |
Very Good |
 "...a road map to happiness, chock-full of tips on how to reconcile our disparate impulses. The whole movie is a talking cure." |
