|
| 1. |
|
02/05/09 |
Fair |
 "Director Kyle Newman and his screenwriters started with a 'Harold and Kumar'-style road trip full of raunchy chatter, then made the details equal-opportunity nerdy." |
| 2. |
|
02/07/09 |
Excellent |
 "...the first stop-motion film to be actually conceived in 3-D, so it's worth finding a theater playing it that way, so you can get the full effect..." |
| 3. |
|
03/06/09 |
Moderate |
 "...backstories tend to clutter up a movie... director Zack Snyder is still doling out origin flashbacks two hours and seven minutes into his little epic." |
| 4. |
|
03/20/09 |
Outstanding |
 "...almost never feels workshopped or overly planned.... The images -- whether urgent and urban or sunset-strewn and caught from a moving train -- are haunting." |
| 5. |
|
03/26/09 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...it's mostly an excuse to hop from one depth-perception exercise to the next. And once you've seen a couple, they're not really reason enough to keep watching." |
| 6. |
|
04/17/09 |
Excellent |
 "A briskly self-aware, thoroughly stage-struck portrait of a theatrical portrait." |
| 7. |
|
04/22/09 |
Very Good |
 "...features footage from the televised nature series, 'Planet Earth.' But when a subject is as big as all outdoors, the big screen has some advantages." |
| 8. |
|
05/01/09 |
Weak |
 "The most terrifying thing about the movie, really, is that plural: Originsssss. So many mutants, so much time. Thank God we can leave that for another summer." |
| 9. |
|
05/07/09 |
Outstanding |
 "...the point of a reboot isn't really to tell a tale; it's to ensure that the underlying enterprise can go on. Abrams has done that, for sure..." |
| 10. |
|
05/09/09 |
Excellent |
 "Bernal makes Cursi an amiable doofus... Luna won't be anyone's idea of a tough guy, but his Rudo has a temper that helps the comedy go darker than it otherwise might." |
| 11. |
|
05/15/09 |
Fair |
 "...there's only so much Ron Howard can do with novelist Dan Brown's genuinely idiotic plotline..." |
| 12. |
|
05/22/09 |
Moderate |
 "...breathless and nerve-jangling.... McG proves a capable enough director of people. More to the point, his way with special effects is indeed pretty special." |
| 13. |
|
05/23/09 |
Moderate |
 "...the director treats the story throughout as the melodrama it always was underneath -- the tale of a hypocritical family and a lady with a past..." |
| 14. |
|
05/29/09 |
Excellent |
 "...a delightful surprise, at once an engaging dramedy and an eloquent social statement..." |
| 15. |
|
06/05/09 |
Very Good |
 "Herb and Dorothy Vogel are perhaps the world's least likely art collectors... a story that proves briskly and engagingly cinematic..." |
| 16. |
|
06/05/09 |
Excellent |
 "...history tells us that a mental hospital was in Seraphine's future, though now her canvases grace the walls of institutions of another sort... the world's great museums." |
| 17. |
|
06/12/09 |
Very Good |
 "Sam Rockwell has played his share of villains, but in 'Moon' he's a decidedly engaging presence." |
| 18. |
|
06/26/09 |
Excellent |
 "...psychologically astute, especially when demonstrating how friction between the new guy and the squad smoothes a bit..." |
| 19. |
|
07/01/09 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "When pterodactyls fly over your shoulder, it's plenty persuasive, but the effect is becoming natural enough that I actually forgot that I was wearing glasses." |
| 20. |
|
07/10/09 |
Good |
 "...when things feel real, they can get scary-real... pretty bleeping funny." |
