May 14 2006
Movies Opening May 12th
Nationwide Releases
A poor young man living and working in L.A. plays soccer whenever he has free time. A scout sees him and says if he can find a way to get to England, he can try out for a team there.
RT Score: 48%
RT Consensus: Impressive sports action sequences are the highlight, as the run-of the-mill story invokes every known sports movie cliche.
“The movie is hokey, predictable and not original in any way, but darned if it doesn’t slash through your defenses like a David Beckham corner kick.”
– Phil Villarreal, ARIZONA DAILY STAR
“Mandatory viewing for anyone who’s able to spell Zinedine Zidane on the first try, and an essentially painless two hours for anyone else who gets dragged along.”
– Andrew Wright, THE STRANGER (SEATTLE, WA)
“Fortunately, the direction and performances are good enough to get us through the progressively hackneyed storyline.”
– Rich Cline, SHADOWS ON THE WALL
“Handsomely shot and with a likable lead in Kuno Becker, it also suffers from a script so outrageously generic you could buy it at Costco.”
– Ty Burr, BOSTON GLOBE
…as if we haven’t seen every twist and turn in “Goal!” a hundred times before in other movies, Goal! itself is pleased to repeat things two or three times for our benefit.”
– Laura Clifford, REELING REVIEWS
Remake of The Poseidon Adventure about a huge cruise ships that flips over from a huge wave and people try to find a way out of the boat that is now stuck upside down.
RT Score: 31%
RT Consensus: This remake of The Poseidon Adventure delivers dazzling special effects. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that any of the budget was left over to devote to the script.
“you start to realize that the capsized cruise liner onscreen isn’t the only sinking ship.”
– Phil Villarreal, ARIZONA DAILY STAR
“You’ll end up entertained if you forgive the cliches and let Petersen grab you with the visuals, from the avalanche of water in the ballroom to the eerie sight of a flooded crawl space where wires take on the form of deadly tentacles.”
– Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE
“[An] excellently undemanding, swimmingly enjoyable remake.”
– Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
“Poseidon recognizes and encourages belief in the popular popcorn-movie theory of The Survival of the Whitest.”
– Ed Gonzalez, SLANT MAGAZINE
“this is not an actors’ movie. All they have to do is look breathless, scared, and wet.”
– Willie Waffle, WAFFLEMOVIES.COM
Lindsay Lohan is the luckiest girl until she loses her luck after kissing a stranger at a masquerade ball, and he ends up with all the luck while she is stuck with horrible luck.
RT Score: 11%
RT Consensus: Just My Luck is a standard rom-com that fails to take advantage of Lindsay Lohan’s considerable charm.
“Lohan reads more like oak than Marilyn Monroe on her most inebriated day.”
– Rubin Safaya, CINEMALOGUE.COM
“Lohan doesn’t have the spark or charm she or the casting director thinks she might.”
– Willie Waffle, WAFFLEMOVIES.COM
“Her every faux pas comes across as rank humiliation and it can only be entertaining for sadistic mall rats who get their jollies seeing Miss Budding Superstar wallow in grime and slip on soap.”
– Gene Seymour, NEWSDAY
“Every single scene is an abominable assemblage of mind-boggling stupidity, completely unmotivated behavior, and unfunny slapstick.”
– Eric D. Snider, ERICDSNIDER.COM
Limited Releases
Rudy Giuliani was accused of sanctioning police brutality, First Amendment rights violations, and racist actions before 9/11 happened and he was deemed a savior to the people of the city.
RT Score: 92%
“Keating wants to bust apart the myth of Giuliani’s sanctification after 9/11, but with the film set to open only in New York, what he’s really doing is preaching to the choir.”
– Ed Gonzalez, SLANT MAGAZINE
“The film, while hardly unbiased, is not entirely one-sided.”
– A.O. Scott, NEW YORK TIMES
“The film slogs through the history of the Giuliani controversies without telling us anything we didn’t already know. It also frequently contradicts itself.”
– Kyle Smith, NEW YORK POST
“To his credit and his film’s benefit — Keating also interviews Giuliani’s friends and supporters, who praise his accomplishments (while acknowledging his occasional abrasiveness).”
– Stephen Whitty, NEWARK STAR-LEDGER
Documentary about an architect who scribbles designs on a piece of paper before building models out of cardboard and scotch tape. He doesn’t like using a computer or drafting paper to make his designs.
RT Score: 89%
“Danged if the seductive documentary — Pollack’s first — doesn’t come to resemble a Gehry building itself, all brash, eye-catching, a tad vain, and attractively neurotic.”
– Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
“Sketches ultimately allows the controversial, breathtakingly unusual buildings themselves to make the case for the architect’s inimitable greatness. “
– Nicholas Schager, SLANT MAGAZINE
“This is the real Art School Confidential.”
– Kent Turner, FILM-FORWARD.COM
“It’s a low-key, intimate conversation between two buddies who, as Pollack — the Oscar-winning director of Out of Africa — puts it, are ‘trying to find ways of creative expression within industries that make stringent demands.’”
– Elizabeth Weitzman, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Mendy is from an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect in Brooklyn that goes to live with a friend of his that left the sect to live a life filled with drugs, sex and passion. He is both fascinated and repulsed by what he encounters.
RT Score: 80%
“Vardy draws the moral conflicts in broad strokes, but as a portrait of a man torn between his faith and the urges of his liberated hormones, it has honest depth.”
– Jack Mathews, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
“The last scene expresses simply and eloquently that devotion is where you find it.”
– Ben Kenigsberg, VILLAGE VOICE
“At its core, Adam Vardy’s Mendy: A Question of Faith espouses an inanely simplistic worldview … but it does so with a surprising amount of respect.”
– Neil Genzlinger, NEW YORK TIMES
“Less captivating dramatically than anthropologically.”
– John Anderson, NEWSDAY
In 1991, U.S. theater group visits and performs in the Ukraine shortly after the Wall fell. While there, Gorbechev is kidnapped and a military group takes over the government threatening the democracy the people seek.
RT Score: 71%
“A refreshing look at democracy in the making – where people seem informed and don’t rely on the media to tell them what to think.”
– Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone, THEMOVIECHICKS.COM
“It is an incredible story that unfolds on screen in front of you in The Light From the East, and you will come away better informed than you arrived.”
– Oz, EFILMCRITIC.COM
“[The film] drinks freely from the triumphalist cup of the glasnost era, but a closing dedication to the veterans of Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution (the subject of Grappell’s next film) acknowledges that the struggle for democracy continues.”
– Joshua Land, VILLAGE VOICE
” ‘Light From the East; is of historical interest, although a more experienced filmmaker would have made more of the sudden rush of events – and avoided the temptation to put himself or herself into nearly every frame, as Grappell does.”
– V.A. Musetto, NEW YORK POST
A man returns from the army to seek revenge on some local hoodlums that abused his younger brother while he was away.
RT Score: 60%
“The film is filled with deeply unpleasant and stupid people whose vapid speech is largely incomprehensible due to thick regional accents.”
– Ray Bennett, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
“Disturbing, uncompromising and completely gripping.”
– Colin Kennedy, EMPIRE MAGAZINE [UK]
“The ending feels like a desperate attempt to inject some emotion into the film. And it just doesn’t work.”
– Rich Cline, SHADOWS ON THE WALL
“the film is a failure … does nothing new or especially radical with the normal revenge flick”
– Chris Cabin, FILMCRITIC.COM
“Pugnacious, poetic and compellingly raw, it’s a simple but unforgettable look at the roots and costs of frontier justice at a time when frontiers no longer exist except in the hearts and minds of men.”
– Wade Major, BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE
In 1969, some British folks are ending their days of rule in a South East Africa where a 14-year-old boy is watching his family come apart and his father drown in alcoholism.
RT Score: 60%
“An overdeveloped coming-of-age potboiler set on the eve of Swaziland’s independence.”
– Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
“Effective sendup of British colonial rule in Africa.”
– Harvey S. Karten, COMPUSERVE
“It is a story with strong drama, but as tales of painful pasts go it is not particularly new or unusual.”
– Mark R. Leeper, REC.ARTS.MOVIES.REVIEWS
“Although it’s clearly a personal story, Wah-Wah proves as formulaic and meandering as its satirical targets are bloated and obvious. “
– Dan Fienberg, ZAP2IT.COM
One family is intent on making their son’s Bar Mitzvah better than their neighbor’s $500,000 one they just threw for their son.
RT Score: 42%
“Keeping Up With the Steins turns into a recipe to forget: chopped liver with ‘heart.’”
– Owen Gleiberman, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
“What begins as a scathing but loving satire of materialism loses its way once it turns into a warmhearted after-school special…”
– Nathan Rabin, ONION AV CLUB
“Expect the usual corny jokes and stereotypical characters.”
– Harvey S. Karten, COMPUSERVE
“Turns out to be less than we’d hoped, and certainly different — quieter, smaller, less bombastic but also less funny than we anticipated.”
– Gary Thompson, PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS
