VH Corner

Nationwide Releases

The Fountain
Directed: Darren Aronofsky

Traveling through three time periods–1500, 2000 and 2500 to cover the themes of life, love and death.

RT Score: 50%
RT Consensus: The Fountain — a movie about metaphysics, universal patterns, Biblical symbolism, and boundless love spread across one thousand years — is visually rich but suffers from its own unfocused ambitions.

Folly? Maybe. But a risk worth taking.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

I’m perfectly content to float with [Aronofsky] even if he doesn’t solve the riddles of the universe.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

Whether Laughable Folly or Fool’s Errand or (Possible) Head-Scratching, Noggin-Expanding Masterwork, there’s never a moment where it’s anything less than sincere.
- Andrew Wright
The Stranger (Seattle, WA)

An artsy-fartsy disaster…a would-be film of ideas that runs dry of them very quickly.
- Frank Swietek
One Guy’s Opinion

A feature-length fortune cookie.
- Josh Bell
Las Vegas Weekly

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny
Directed: Liam Lynch

Two slackers decide to form the best folk-metal band of all time.

RT Score: 50%
RT Consensus: Tenacious D fan will find this movie hilarious; everybody else will see only a low-brow concept movie and a small assembly of jokes stretched past the 100 minute mark.

The film has “dorm DVD” scrawled all over it in black Sharpie.
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

The movie feels giddy and eruptive, dopily enthralled with itself, and more or less made up on the spot, especially when it lapses into pure rock opera.
- Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

School of Rock got high and watched Harold and Kumar, and The Pick of Destiny was the story told to the cops upon waking up in the drive thru.
- Matt Pais
Metromix.com

Despite its cult-movie trappings, it’s a genial dumb comedy that has more in common with lowbrow laffers like Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and Zoolander than This Is Spinal Tap.
- Ethan Alter
Film Journal International

Some of the bits work; just as often, they don’t. Black and Gass’ appealing rapport masks those problems for a while, but eventually, they, too, wear out their welcome.
- Mack Bates
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

You’ll probably be better off watching it with a bud, if you catch my (double) meaning.
- Matt Brunson
Creative Loafing

Deja Vu
Directed: Tony Scott

Denzel Washington is an ATF agent who uncovers some people that can go back up to four days in the past and replay time, causing people to have deja vu.

RT Score: 59%
RT Consensus: Tony Scott tries to combine action, science fiction, romance, and explosions into one movie, but the time travel conceit might be too preposterous and the action falls apart under scrutiny.

Denzel Washington is a fiery, dart-eyed action star.Denzel Washington is a fiery, dart-eyed action star.
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

The movie manages the singular feat of placing a science-fiction premise in a realistic setting, only to render that premise even more far-fetched than it would have seemed otherwise.
- Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

Tony Scott’s new film isn’t as concerned with playing around or cooking up new innovations as it is in finding a new way to sell the same old chase story.
- Jeffrey M. Anderson
Combustible Celluloid

Deja Vu gets mighty close to goofy from time to time, but Washington pulls it all back together — sometimes, it seems, just by being there.
- Liz Braun
Jam! Movies

it’s preposterous, but never dull: Scott whips the action into a taut, tasty lather.
- David Ansen
Newsweek

By the time Carlin climbs into the time machine, you realize that a Marty McFly cameo might be the only way to salvage this dreary plunge into preposterousness.
- Matt Brunson
Creative Loafing

Deck the Halls
Directed: John Whitesell

Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito fight over who has the best Christmas decorations in the neighborhood.

RT Score: 8%
RT Consensus: As far as movies about bickering neighbors during the Christmas holiday go, Deck the Halls is both unfunny and forgettable.

it’s a holiday ritual: Each year, American moviegoers get the misanthropically stupid, plastic-satire-of- a-plastic-society Christmas comedy they deserve.
- Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

Deck the Halls seems to have been conceived on the back of a snot-soaked tissue by a none-too-bright second grader.
- Matt Brunson
Creative Loafing

I’m tired of filmmakers, screenwriters, directors and studios that believe every holiday is its own excuse for making films.
- Mark Collette
Tyler Morning Telegraph (Texas)

How come the talk-radio blowhards never bring movies like this up when they’re inveighing against the War on Christmas?
- Ty Burr
Boston Globe

Another year, another cheesy, hypocritical movie about how the true meaning of Christmas gets lost in the madness of Christmas. Except that this movie is, in itself, Exhibit A in the Christmas Madness category.
- Nell Minow
Movie Mom at Yahoo! Movies

Limited Releases

The History Boys
Directed: Nicholas Hytner

In 1983, eight boys are trying to get into Oxford or Cambridge while still trying to goof off on their English school.

RT Score: 65%
RT Consensus: While not quite having the impact of its original stage version, The History Boys nevertheless is a witty and involving school drama.

Director Nicholas Hytner brings Alan Bennett’s London and Broadway smash to the screen with the original stage actors and brings out the frisky best in all of them.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

The movie adaptation has been lifted from the theater with original cast and director Nicholas Hytner intact; the actors interact as cozily as chums on a playing field.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

The entire cast are superb - the fact that the boys played the same roles on stage pays off brilliantly because they act like they’ve been friends all their lives …
- Matthew Turner
ViewLondon

The play, however, has been heavily cut and the boys blend together, as director Nicholas Hytner masses them in groups and Bennett provides only the barest of descriptions.
- Stephen Whitty
Newark Star-Ledger

Having created this moral confusion for the audience, Bennett sweeps it all away with a mushy, sentimental ending that would seem tidy if we weren’t all too aware of the pile of dirt the playwright left under the bed.
- Mary F. Pols
Contra Costa Times

 

Backstage
Directed: Emmanuelle Bercot

A young girl is a tad obessessed with a pop star.

RT Score: 83%

The real fun of the piece, however, is Seigner, who plays the downhill diva to the hilt, throwing cell phones and tantrums that would put Naomi Campbell to shame.
- Ken Fox
TV Guide’s Movie Guide

Undeniably rousing… Seigner shows astonishing range… Even more tremendous is Le Besco, whose blank, teary-eyed gazes and guarded battles against her own immaturity feel painfully frank.
- Aaron Hillis
Premiere Magazine

While le Besco and Seigner are always interesting, the familiar material isn’t worth the detour.
- Doris Toumarkine
Film Journal International

A creepy look at the borderline personalities on both sides of the line between celebrity and citizen.
- Peter Canavese
Groucho Reviews

 

Opal Dream
Directed: Peter Cattaneo

A little girl is so obsessed with her two imaginary friends that when they get “lost” in the opal mines, she starts to get sick when they are “lost” that her brother gets a search party together to find them.

RT Score: 60%

This is another tale about dreamers, transplanted to the Australian opal-mining hub of Coober Pedy, where the frenzied quest for the rainbow-colored gemstones creates a modern-day gold rush atmosphere.
- Megan Lehmann
Hollywood Reporter

A fable, and as such carrying few surprises, Opal Dream features solid acting and likable characters.
- John Anderson
Newsday

The film’s sweetness derives primarily from the relationship between Ashmol and his unusual sister, and draws much of its richness from the unfamiliar and fascinating world of opal prospecting.
- Ken Fox
TV Guide’s Movie Guide

Stories about a sickly girl, her imaginary friends and her indulgent daddy’s courtroom saga are probably best left on the page. Witness the queasy, up-with-people tear-jerker Opal Dream.
- Glenn Whipp
Los Angeles Daily News

The filmmaking is flat, straight, and thoroughly lacking in poetry, and the script tells instead of showing.
- Noel Murray
Onion AV Club

 

Living the Dream
Directed: Allan Fiterman / Christian Schoyen

In middle age, two friends decide to start their own business, but things get corrupted very easily.

RT Score: 0%

 Will you stick with me, no matter what? Brenda asks on more than one occasion. Unfortunately for the filmmakers, the audience s answer may well be  no.
- Chad Greene
BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE

This vanity production … seems to want us to sympathize with characters who are both unlikable and stupid. Where at the beginning I thought the level of abuse [the hero] endures was absurd and unrealistic, by the end I wanted to join in.
- Andy Klein
LOS ANGELES CITYBEAT

There is undeniable heart in Living the Dream, with its implicit criticism of mercenary values, but its world is populated solely by hustlers, recruiters and salesmen with nothing to sell.
- Michael Ordona
Los Angeles Times

An embarrassment of a vanity project.
- James C. Taylor
L.A. Weekly

 

The Work and the Glory: A House Divided
Directed: Sterling van Wagenen

When Mormons tried to make Missouri their home, the Govenor raised an army to attack them.

RT Score: 100%

Some TV miniseries spend double what executive producer Larry H. Miller invested to make this trilogy, without getting the rich historical flavor this saga has provided.
- Sean Means
SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

The film does boast surprisingly good production values, considering its limited budget.
- Jeff Vice
DESERET NEWS, SALT LAKE CITY

Nationwide Releases

Casino Royale
Directed: Martin Campbell

Daniel Craig is the new James Bond. They are going back to the beginning and showing how he became a 007 agent, but in current times.

RT Score: 95%
RT Consensus: Casino Royale disposes of the silliness and overplayed gadgets that plagued recent James Bond outings, while Daniel Craig delivers what fans and critics have been waiting for: a caustic, haunted, intense reinvention of Bond.

An invigorating reboot for a once-strong franchise that had lost its relevance over the past 20 years, 007’s latest succeeds in every way its dreadful predecessor, “Die Another Day,” failed.
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

In Casino Royale, Bond is still learning to tame his impulses into a style, and he’s all the more dangerous because of it.
- Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

There’s one whopper of a reason why Casino Royale is the hippest, highest-octane Bond film in ages, and his name is Daniel Craig.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

Good. Really, really good. Maybe, in fact, the best entry since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. No offense to St. Connery is intended, but, man, Craig has it down cold.
- Andrew Wright
The Stranger (Seattle, WA)

Royale’s amazing last scene had everyone in the audience clapping and cheering - at the same time the movie, just ends, with nothing really resolved, leaving you wanting more and waiting breathlessly for the next installment.
- Michelle Alexandria
Eclipse Magazine

Let’s Go to Prison
Directed: Bob Odenkirk

Bob Odenkirk came from The Ben Stiller Show and was part of Mr. Show. He made this little prison movie with Gob from Arrested Development, and has a line about “crying taking the sad out of you.”

RT Score: 9%
RT Consensus: Let’s Go to Prison is guilty on all counts of cliched setups, base humor, and failure to ellicit laughs.

I cannot stress enough how unfunny Let’s Go to Prison is.
- Chris Hewitt (St. Paul)
St. Paul Pioneer Press

Should have been titled Let’s Go to DVD, where it will clearly move with unbecoming alacrity, and where it will be much more at home. Though, one hopes, not yours.
- Frank Swietek
One Guy’s Opinion

It has laughs, it has some cleverness, and it has a lot of problems. But it’s not ‘bad,’ exactly. ‘Dysfunctional’ is more like it.
- Eric D. Snider
EricDSnider.com

The main crime in this movie is that the whole thing feels lazy — it’s as if they filmed the first draft of a script that still needed some trimming and sharpening.
- Jennie Punter
Globe and Mail

Let’s Go to Prison announces its desperation right from the opening credits, thanks to a montage of celebrity mug shots and arrest footage suggesting there are still laughs to be had at James Brown and Martha Stewart’s expense.
- Jim Hemphill
Reel.com

Happy Feet
Directed: George Miller

Animated penguins dancing and singing.

RT Score: 79%
RT Consensus: Visually dazzling, with a thoughtful storyline and catchy musical numbers, Happy Feet marks a successful animated debut from the makers of Babe.

Everyone knows penguins can march, but the animated dramedy Happy Feet shows they can dance. And sing. And preach.
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

A moderately adorable, musically wacky, ecologically activist CG family comedy from George Miller.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

Music is fantabulous, acting solid, animation dynamic — from cute to powerful in 0.5 seconds. This is what going to the movies is all about — and I don’t even have kids!
- Ross Anthony
Hollywood Report Card

[Writer/director] Miller has tried to make three or four different movies at once, the result occasionally lapsing into a state of noisy incoherence.
- Jason Anderson
Globe and Mail

Even the wee ones may start to notice something’s amiss when the movie’s theme goes from “be yourself” to ‘we must regulate the overfishing of the Antarctic oceans.’ No, for real.
- Jordan Harper
Village Voice

Limited Releases

Bobby
Directed: Emilio Estevez

Follows the night that Bobby Kennedy was killed by looking at 22 fictional characters on that night while they looked forward to him arriving at the Ambassador Hotel.

RT Score: 48%
RT Consensus: Despite best intentions from director Emilio Estevez and his ensemble cast, they succumb to a script filled with pointless subplots and awkward moments working too hard to parallel contemporary times.

Estevez means well. But having your heart in the right place is no excuse for insipid ineptitude.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

Bobby coasts along on a dread, and sorrow, it doesn’t earn.
- Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

Estevez probably could have cut the cast in half and come up with a richer, stronger film.
- Christy Lemire
Associated Press

Estevez has pulled together the best political drama, fiction or otherwise, in recent memory. Avoiding Oliver Stone-like conspiracy theories, he draws from Robert Altman’s playbook.
- Scott Warren
Premiere Magazine

With Bobby, Emilo Estevez tries to link the intimate stories of nearly two dozen characters to a large and consequential public event the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
- A.O. Scott
New York Times

Fast Food Nation
Directed: Richard Linklater

Fictional story from a non-fiction book about everything that goes into making the fast food burgers.

RT Score: 47%
RT Consensus: Despite some fine performances and memorable scenes, Fast Food Nation is more effective as Eric Schlosser’s eye-opening non-fiction book than as Richard Linklater’s fictionalized, mostly punchless movie.

You’d have to be either half-crazy or the most talented director alive to make the book into a film. Luckily, the movie version of Fast Food Nation has a man who’s both: Richard Linklater.
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

it’s less an expose of junk-food culture than a human drama, sprinkled with sly, provoking wit, about how that culture defines how we live.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

Naturally, a subject this right-on draws a right-on cast.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

They say you don’t want to see what goes on behind the scenes in the making of sausage or politics. Fast Food Nation blends the two, and the result may not be a very good movie, but it certainly is effectively disgusting.
- Tom Long
Detroit News

[A] sloppy, overarching fiction that tries to do too many things at once. it’s like a three-ring circus in which none of the acts is terribly interesting.
- Randy Cordova
Arizona Republic

Flannel Pajamas
Directed: Jeff Lipsky

Two people falling in and out of love with one another through dating, getting married and having a kid.

RT Score: 72%

A well-acted and thought-provoking anatomy of love and marriage that includes many universal challenges and obstacles.
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Spirituality and Practice

An astute and accurate-feeling account of the process of falling madly in — and heartbreakingly out — of love.
- Francesca Dinglasan
Boxoffice Magazine

These chatty, pedantic, annoying characters are simply not interesting enough to follow for five minutes, let alone over two hours.
- Don R. Lewis
Film Threat

Lipsky puts utterly ordinary lives under a microscope and finds a teeming microcosm of chaos no less devastating for being so unremarkable.
- Maitland McDonagh
TV Guide’s Movie Guide

Though Jeff Lipsky’s snoozefest, Flannel Pajamas, essentially consists of a couple talking nonstop for two hours, we never really understand what brought them together in the first place — much less why they break up after two years together.
- Lou Lumenick
New York Post

Candy
Directed: Neil Armfield

Two young kids in love decide to have fun with heroin, and it goes and screws up everything.

RT Score: 55%
RT Consensus: Stars Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish look better than they should as heroin addicts, and their characters are too absorbed and self-pitying to be totally compelling.

Even as they spiral inevitably downward from ecstasy to hell — she turns tricks, he steals — they somehow still look really attractive, which is a ridiculous thing.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

An Australian drama about two lovers addicted to heroin that offers no fresh insights into this obsession.
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Spirituality and Practice

Beautifully shot and wonderfully directed, Candy is a gut-wrenching, sobering, and passionate look at relationships, addiction, and one woman’s journey down the rabbit hole.
- Brie Beazley
Reel.com

Director Armfield coaxes excellent performances from his performers, almost making up for the thinness of the material.
- Chris Barsanti
filmcritic.com

Dark, depressing and hard to watch at time … solid performances, especially from Abbie Cornish, who may be the best new actress to materialize this year.
- Edward Douglas
ComingSoon.net

For Your Consideration
Directed: Christopher Guest

An indie film cast grow huge heads when there is buzz of Oscar nominations for their little film.

RT Score: 53%
RT Consensus: As the object of satire gets bigger the jokes become thinner, and Christopher Guest isn t as droll or insightful here than when he was lampooning smaller subjects.

Guest and Levy stick it good to the dark heart of showbiz, daring to suggest that the Oscar fever on which Hollywood thrives is a sickness of the soul.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

Truly, the level of tender, ruthless, inspired, lethally accurate study that has gone into the follicular expression of each and every character in Christopher Guest’s latest hilarious cultural corrective is something inspiring to behold.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

The problems with Home for Purim are the same for For Your Consideration. The performances are so lost that even the talented cast can’t make sense of them. They rely way too much on funny hair.
- Fred Topel
Can Magazine

Although For Your Consideration works okay overall, and parts of it are very funny, it somehow lacks the spark that elevated Guest’s earlier films from mere comedy to comedic brilliance …
- Kim Voynar
Cinematical

While For Your Consideration has many of the same elements that have worked so well for [Guest] in the past, they don’t quite come together this time.
- Rob Vaux
Flipside Movie Emporium

Dance Party, USA
Directed: Aaron Katz

Two bored teenagers find each other, but one of them has a dark secret.

RT Score: 80%

Given the obvious financial restraints (the total budget was $3,000), maybe Dance Party should have been a dynamite short.
- Jordan Harper
Village Voice

A pair of disaffected 17-year-olds are nudged toward adulthood in a movie that favors natural drift over artificial drama.
- Jeannette Catsoulis
New York Times

Dramatically simple but emotionally complex.
- Ken Fox
TV Guide’s Movie Guide

Challenging, gritty, and true.
- Darcie Stevens
Austin Chronicle

A film of easy set ups and resolutions, Dance Party, USA is best when observing how crisis is metabolized.
- Ed Gonzalez
Slant Magazine

Aura
Directed: Fabian Bielinsky

A man dreams of pulling off a bank robbery. When a hunting trip goes wrong, he runs into a group of men that are pulling off a bank robbery, and through mistaken identity, they invite him into their group.

RT Score: 92%

The heart-attack death last year of Fabiàn Bielinsky … makes the posthumous release of The Aura, his mysterious drama about an Argentinean epileptic taxidermist caught up in a vivid crime, that much more poignant.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

The movie’s mood is haunting, and its central image of a man able to shed his morality as easily as an old raincoat hints at a filmmaker who had deeper concerns than mere thrills.
- Stephen Whitty
Newark Star-Ledger

The world of The Aura is, quite obviously, a heightened and stylized version of reality, but its governing emotions of dread, suspicion and moral confusion are bracingly real.
- A.O. Scott
New York Times

[The Aura] might be the most original new thriller I’ve seen since Memento.
- Andrew O’Hehir
Salon.com

The Aura holds together as a dreamy variation on Reservoir Dogs’ heist-gone-wrong fatalism and the know-thyself confrontations of David Mamet’s Homicide.
- Noel Murray
Onion AV Club

Nationwide Releases

Stranger Than Fiction
Directed: Marc Forster

Will Ferrell plays a man who realizes his life is being narrated (literally in his head) by Emma Thompson since he’s a character in her book and she’s planning on killing him off.

RT Score: 76%
RT Consensus: A fun, whimsical tale about about an office drone trying to save his life from his narrator. The cast obviously is having a blast with the script, but Stranger Than Fiction’s tidy lessons make this metaphysical movie feel like Charlie Kaufman-lite.

For much of the film, Ferrell must suppress his showman instincts to pull off the schlub act. That’s good for the film, but it’s bad for fans who expect him to scream obscenities and run down the street naked.
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

This is a Ferrell you’ve never seen before, nailing a role that calls for breakneck humor in the final race against the clock and touching gravity in the love scenes with Gyllenhaal.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

There’s no denying the movie has a surface allure.
- Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

[Stranger Than Fiction] springs to life whenever it drops the cute Pirandello-like premise and focuses on the simple business of Ferrell finding love.
- Scott Tobias
Onion AV Club

Until this unsatisfying ending, however, the movie flows exactly right.
- Jeffrey M. Anderson
Combustible Celluloid

 

Harsh Times
Directed: David Ayer

Christian Bale is an ex-Army Ranger who is haunted by the war while trying to get a job with the LAPD.

RT Score: 44%
RT Consensus: Despite a dedicated performance by Christian Bale, Harsh Times suffers from a heavy-handed and overly bleak plot.

Bale is mesmerizing and Rodriguez keeps up with him as the whole unsafe contraption zooms.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

… never manages to find a story in the unfocused, rambling piece, merely cautionary lessons and a scared-straight message.
- Sean Axmaker
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Few individuals who go off to war and experience its devastation and chaos return as the same person. This factor lies at the heart of what Harsh Times illustrates.
- James Berardinelli
ReelViews

Christian Bale, who also executive produced, has gone to the psycho well one too many times…
- Laura Clifford
Reeling Reviews

Swims through a fog of testosterone punctuated with infinite variations on the pronunciation of the words “dude” and “dawg” such that those words along with a hail of the F-word, make up the bulk of the dialogue.
- Andrea Chase
Killer Movie Reviews

 

A Good Year
Directed: Ridley Scott

Russell Crowe is a workaholic who moves to Provence, Italy to sell a vineyard his late uncle, and he remembers how much he loved it there and the way of life when he was little.

RT Score: 29%
RT Consensus: A Good Year is a fine example of a top-notch director and actor out of their elements, in a sappy romantic comedy lacking in charm and humor.

I’ll write A Good Year off as nothing more than a bad harvest.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

It s ultimately a so-so movie that does little more than answer what should ve been an ironic question: What would happen if Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe made a romantic comedy?
- Cole Haddon
Orlando Weekly

For those who don’t mind pictures that fall into predictable rhythms, A Good Year represents a pleasant diversion.
- James Berardinelli
ReelViews

don’t expect to be beguiled by A Good Year. That would be like trying to warm your hands at an artificial fireplace.
- Richard Corliss
TIME Magazine

the best way to sum up [Crowe] is shockingly lacking in anything resembling charm. There is not even a charismatic sort of anti-charm at work here.
- Andrea Chase
Killer Movie Reviews

 

The Return
Directed: Asif Kapadia

Sarah Michelle Geller is haunted by a young woman’s murder, and then finds herself in the town where the murder took place and she is possible the next target.

RT Score: 21%

Sarah Michelle Gellar battled countless monsters as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Her biggest challenge in The Return is to keep from yawning.
- John Monaghan
Detroit Free Press

Although it’s being advertised as a horror movie, The Return actually invents a new genre: the bore-or movie.
- Chris Hewitt (St. Paul)
St. Paul Pioneer Press

it’s just a slow slog to a payoff that isn’t worth the effort.
- Maitland McDonagh
TV Guide’s Movie Guide

The Return doesn’t have enough scares to be a good thriller, and it doesn’t have the depth to work on an arty level. This isn’t a bad movie; it’s just painfully thin.
- Mike McGranaghan
Aisle Seat

Director Asif Kapadia and screenwriter Adam Sussman reach into the grab bag of horror movie clichés and pull out fistfuls for The Return.
- Mark Pfeiffer
Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema

Sarah Michelle Gellar may have ditched the Grudge franchise, but her predilection for illogical horror continues with The Return.
- Nick Schager
Slant Magazine

 

 

Limited Releases

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
Directed: Seven Shainberg

Diane Arbus was a photographer when women were housewives only. It isn’t a biography, but imagined events that could have happened in her life.

RT Score: 29%
RT Consensus: This portrait of a groundbreaking photographer lacks the daring of its subject.

it’s been a while since we saw a truly boggling sophomore slump, one of those infamous second-act follies, like Steven Soderbergh’s Kafka, made by adirector blinded with ego and overreach.
- Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

The movie feels like it’s still in the darkroom.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

A whiff of the ridiculous taints every scene.
- Maitland McDonagh
TV Guide’s Movie Guide

Fur is that rare movie that’s too understated, so quiet and deliberate that it effectively buries consuming passions.
- Scott Tobias
Onion AV Club

This Alice in Wonderland-esque fable, tracking her theoretical evolution from repressed wallflower to visionary artist, doesn’t go deep enough down the rabbit hole.
- Matt Stevens
E! Online

Both in art and in death, Arbus escaped the demeaning constraints of society. By envisioning her as a flawlessly gorgeous mouse with no will of her own, [director] Shainberg and [screenwriter] Wilson have dragged her back.
- Elizabeth Weitzman
New York Daily News

 

Fuck
Directed: Steve Anderson

Documentary about the f-word.

Fuck
Directed: Steve Anderson

Documentary about the f-word.

RT Score: 58%
RT Consensus: A documentary that sets out to explore a lingual taboo but can’t escape its own naughty posturing.

Everyone uses the four-letter word, not many publications (including EW) print it: that’s one marketing hook for this goofily overproduced, frivolous documentary.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

F**k ultimately has little that’s substantive to say about the most polarizing expletive in the English language.
- Timothy Knight
Reel.com

Giddy at finding a way to curse in school, it’s chock-full of linguists, musicians and porn stars pontificating on the origins and social value of the infamous four-letter word.
- Scott Warren
Premiere Magazine

At last, a movie that’s unafraid to offend Renaissance aficionados and Sammy Hagar!
- Steve Schneider
Orlando Weekly

…it’s certainly never a good sign when the clips within a documentary are more entertaining than the documentary itself.
- David Nusair
Reel Film Reviews

 

Cautiva
Directed: Caston Biraben

In Argentina a teenage girl finds out that her parents aren’t her biological ones because her real parents “disappeared” for disagreeing with the government. She is placed with her biological grandparents and sets about finding out what really happened with her family.

RT Score: 71%

A finely wrought coming-of-age drama that crackles with political tension…
- Josh Ralske
All Movie Guide

This powerful film in the New Directors/New Films Series about a girl’s alienation is also an attempt to grapple with the horrors of Argentina’s recent history.
- A.O. Scott
New York Times

This intriguing debut by Argentinean writer-director Gaston Biraben sets up a lot of tough choices before finally taking the easy way out.
- Jordan Harper
Village Voice

The Argentine thriller Cautiva features a solid performance by 23-year-old Barbara Lombardo that goes a long way in making up for the telenovela script.
- V.A. Musetto
New York Post

The debut feature of Gastón Biraben, Cautiva is most potent in its first hour, as it bears witness to the disorientation and distrust experienced by a young girl whose life is suddenly turned upside down.
- Jan Stuart
Newsday

 

Copying Beethoven
Directed: Agnieszka Holland

Rewriting history with a female copyist sent to help Beethoven to write his famous ninth symphony.

RT Score: 29%
RT Consensus: A pretentious historical drama that’s ultimately a drag, despite Ed Harris’ powerful performance.

As LvB, Harris is intense, and intensely bewigged.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

Harris officially bites off more scenery than he can chew.
- Dezhda Mountz
E! Online

…Too many dull subplots, notably one concerning Anna s disapproving boyfriend, and director Agnieszka Holland s typically heavy hand, dampen any musical fireworks that the film might have generated.
- Shlomo Schwartzberg
Boxoffice Magazine

You may walk out of Copying Beethoven humming the movie. But that’s not the same as singing its praises.
- Ruthe Stein
San Francisco Chronicle

Knows as much about the creative process as Beethoven does about snowboarding.
- Matt Pais
Metromix.com

A feminist fantasy that you can either embrace — as director Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa) seems to have done with an unbecoming schoolgirl gushiness — or repeatedly be pulled out of the story by its falseness.
- Bruce Newman
San Jose Mercury News

 

Come Early Morning
Directed: Joey Lauren Adams

Ashley Judd lives in a small, rural town where she doesn’t trust anyone and has difficulties in relationships until one guy is willing to put up with it.

RT Score: 79%
RT Consensus: A quiet but moving film anchored by the unexpected depth of Ashley Judd’s performance.

Come Early Morning is anchored by a deep affection for its very anti-urban locale and an authentic attempt to capture the people populating the milieu.
- Francesca Dinglasan
Boxoffice Magazine

‘Come Early Morning’ is a terrific accomplishment by [Joey Lauren] Adams — a commendable first effort, making me hope that it’s merely the beginning of a promising new aspect of her career as both a director and a writer.
- Bill Zwecker
Chicago Sun-Times

We ve met characters like Lucy before and we ve seen movies like Come Early Morning before, but doesn t automatically make Joey Lauren Adams directorial debut less than a good movie.
- Collin Souter
eFilmCritic.com

This snoozer is so thin that it could gain 10 pounds and still have Nicole Richie beat.
- Matt Pais
Metromix.com

A modest but not insignificant achievement: a movie that depicts smalltown Southerners without condescension, melodrama or caricature.
- John Beifuss
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)

 

Iraq in Fragments
Directed: James Longley

Shares Iraqi experiences by following three different stories, including an 11-year-old auto mechanic, inside a Shiite political/religious movement, and Iraqi Kurds.

RT Score: 88%

Working with vérité patience and no scripted narration, Longley looks and listens, with nonjudgmental sensitivity, as Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish Iraqis explain their colliding, intractable, invaded worlds, and their rising frustrations.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

Much of what is captured will be familiar for viewers of Frontline or other recent documentaries.
- Kent Turner
Film-Forward.com

The first third is so intense — a masterpiece in miniature, really — that audiences may not have much emotion left for the rest.
- Noel Murray
Onion AV Club

[Director] Longely’s real strength lies in his ability to draw from the observances of children.
- Ken Fox
TV Guide’s Movie Guide

In the end, the movie is more than the sum of its fragments. The montages are intense, the images ravishing. The movie is tactile. When you finally feel this place, you understand just how little you understand.
- David Edelstein
New York Magazine

 

Night of the Living Dead 3D
Directed: Jeff Broadstreet

Remake of the horror classic, now in 3D, and apparently zombies now know how to text message.

RT Score: 50%

As a 3-D zombie flick on the big screen, it offers something new and fun: Zombies, breasts and ­copious joint-passing coming right out of the screen.
- Luke Y. Thompson
L.A. WEEKLY

Dead 3D is a great idea executed poorly.
- Cam Lindsay
EXCLAIM!

 

Coffee Date
Directed: Jonathan Silverman

A straight man acts too gay for his friends and family to not believe that he’s really a homosexual that won’t admit it to himself.

RT Score: 60%

COFFEE DATE is an amusing twist on the somewhat tired genre of romantic comedy, although it really is more of a buddy movie.
- Ted Murphy
Murphy’s Movie Reviews

Amid a recent flurry of low-budget independent productions, Coffee Date is a standout with its strongly developed central characters, complex themes and polished look.
- Kevin Thomas
Los Angeles Times

Story would be easy to take more seriously if the technique weren’t so unpolished.
- Peter Debruge
Variety

How disappointing that a film that hints at the fluid, nonbinary natures of love and attraction should labor so hard to knot its own loose ends.
- Adam Nayman
L.A. Weekly

 

Maple Palm
Directed: Ralph Torjan

After living together for fifteen years, a lesbian couple is torn apart since one of them is an illegal alien and they can’t even be married to stay together in the U.S.

RT Score: 0%

Takes a hot-button issue (here, it’s homophobic U.S. immigration policies) and reduces it to dry sloganeering and shameless emotional manipulation of the audience.
- Ernest Hardy
L.A. WEEKLY

Torjan opts for shrillness, hysteria, heavy-duty acting from Stewart instead of trying for a lower pitch that would have allowed for much greater credibility — and menace as well.
- Kevin Thomas
LOS ANGELES TIMES

 

Love & Suicide
Directed: Lisa France

A man can’t be with the one he loves so he decides suicide is the only answer.

RT Score: 0%

Neither the film’s visual richness nor its mediocre attempts at social commentary can offset a mundane love story between two under-drawn characters.
- Tim Grierson
L.A. WEEKLY

 

The Enigma with a Stigma
Directed: Rhett Smith

A mockumentary about a guy who discovers he is growing a new body part on his torso.

RT Score: 0%

Slogging through The Enigma With a Stigma is to be reminded that those movies’ illusion of off-the-cuff naturalness actually requires a rigorous amount of skill on the part of the filmmakers and actors.
- Tim Grierson
L.A. WEEKLY

The film ultimately suffers from typical low-budget indie curses: it’s way, way overwritten and therefore devoid of energy.
- Kevin Thomas
LOS ANGELES TIMES

 

The Cost of Living
November 1, 2006

The black smoke monster (or giant angry sloth like I used to think the island monster was) killed Eko. I liked Eko. I’m sad to see him go. I used to be frightened that each time they ventured into the middle of the island, they would run into the monster, but with all the other stuff going on with the Others, I had forgotten about our friend giant angry sloth. He turned into Eko’s dead brother. He must be the thing that looked like Jack’s father in the first season and Hurley’s friend Dave from last season. It was cool to see it look like an elephant while it flung him around.

I like that Juliet wants to kill Ben and thought the tv trick was cool. I still wouldn’t completely trust her. I don’t think Jack does completely.

Are we ever going to see Sun and Jin again? We know she shot the lady from Deadwood, but what happened to them after that? They have shown Sayid. Have I just missed them completely?

I don’t like the two new people. I don’t mind them actually showing other people from the original 48 that survived, but these two people were just annoying and seemed out of place.

Better Halves
October 30, 2006

I knew that big-headed girl (aka Eden) was evil! Okay, maybe she isn’t evil, but she’s up to something. I just didn’t buy her whole friendly neighbor act she had going with Mohinder via his father. There was just something about her, so it was not a big surprise when Claire’s father was talking to her. I am trying to figure out if Claire’s father is evil or not. He seems to be when he has that guy erase people’s minds, but he does seem to care for Claire and he seemed genuinely excited when he found out about someone that could teleport.

Speaking of Hiro, I knew he would get stuck on having a sword when Ando translated Peter’s message to him. That was hilarious. I couldn’t believe they were going to push their luck at the poker game, but I guess they had no choice. Does no one notice Hiro’s crazy face he makes when he’s about to stop time? I loved Ando’s line when they were both going to the bathroom, “That’s how we roll.” He’s hilarious. I hope he stays around, like Hiro said, he doesn’t need to have superpowers to be a hero. I want him to stay around just to amuse me.

I really didn’t think that Claire’s parents would be her own since her dad found them so fast, so there was no big surprise there. I wonder if she actually buys the story though. It seemed like she might be buying it until her mom mentioned her crazy chromosome.

Niki’s alter ego doesn’t just kill to save herself, but seems to kill for the fun of it. We find out that her alter ago killed some people and set her husband up for the murders. Then she killed the poker guys to clean up the mess. I knew that her husband was crazy hiding in wall guy. I still want to know what power their kid has, but I can’t believe they were fighting in front of him. Watching D.L. grab her neck through her body was cool looking.

Nationwide Releases

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Directed: Larry Charles

Sasha Baron Cohen (Da Ali G Show) plays Kazakhstan TV reporter, Borat who comes to America and manages to offend almost everyone.

RT Score: 92%
RT Consensus: Borat gets high-fives almost all-around for being offensive in the funniest possible way.

Borat” movie no-stop laughy. Is funny as your Donald Mouse cartoons, and goodest comedy of year.
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

Borat will make you laugh till it hurts, and you’ll still beg for more.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

The people Borat talks to become the symbolic heart of America — a place where intolerance is worn, increasingly, with pride.
- Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

Evil comedy, a new genre, has arrived. The bar has been raised and is flying over everyone s head. A fearless comedy.
- Victoria Alexander
FilmsInReview.com

Conceptually brilliant and fearlessly executed, it rewrites the rules of screen comedy, presenting something never before seen on film: a gene-splice of Andy Kaufman’s high-wire character humor and caught-on-the-street pranks from Punk’d.
- Colin Covert
Minneapolis Star Tribune

 

Flushed Away
Directed: David Bowers

Combining the teams from Dreamworks Animation (Shrek) and Aardman Animations (Wallace & Gromit) to tell the story of a pet mouse who is flushed down the toilet to find a whole other world in the sewers.

RT Score: 78%
RT Consensus: Clever and appealing for both children and adults, Flushed Away marks a successful entry into digital animated features for Aardman Animations.

Flushed Away is the new front-runner in the animated Oscar rat race.
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

Flushed Away lacks the action-contraption dottiness of a Wallace and Gromit adventure, but it hits its own sweet spot of demented delight.
- Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

Significantly more manic than the films that made the studio famous … Fortunately, it’s a great kind of manic.
- Andrew Wright
The Stranger (Seattle, WA)

Another clever work from the brilliant Aardman factory.
- Boo Allen
Denton Record Chronicle (TX)

It has Aardman’s trademark intricacy of design, thrilling, hair’s-breadth-timing of action sequences, mastery of physical properties and spaces, delightful characters, fresh and funny moments and adorable singing slugs.
- Nell Minow
Movie Mom at Yahoo! Movies

 

The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause
Directed: Michael Lembeck

Jack Frost doesn’t like Santa Clause getting all the attention so he devises a way to go back into time and be the one that takes over for the other Santa that fell off of Tim Allen’s roof.

RT Score: 14%
RT Consensus: Playing Jack Frost as an evil cross between Liza Minnelli and Liberace, Martin Short is a welcome presence, but this tired series continues drawing from its bag of bland gags and dumb slapstick.

This Styrofoam snowman of a sequel overdoses on its own candy-cane-colored sugary cheer.
- Gregory Kirschling
Entertainment Weekly

Fans of the first two films in the series can expect more of the same in this serviceable yet unduly bland G-rated comedy that’s all too reminiscent of those by-the-numbers Sixties-era Disney films that usually starred either Fred MacMurray or Dean Jones.
- Timothy Knight
Reel.com

Although we’ve barely had enough time to finish clearing the Halloween cobwebs, those hardworking elves at Walt Disney are already here to shove a little Christmas down our throats.
- Scott Von Doviak
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Despite Martin Short’s highly entertaining turn as Jack Frost, this second sequel lacks the charm of the first two ‘Santa Clause’ movies.
- Betty Jo Tucker
ReelTalk Movie Reviews

Tim Allen seems bored with his own franchise. At times, he looks downright morose, cranky enough to kick an elf.
- Lisa Rose
Newark Star-Ledger

 

 

Limited Releases

Volver
Directed: Pedro Almodovar

Penelope Cruz plays a mother of a teenager and wife to an unemployed husband who soon ends up dead. She also has a secret from her childhood. Her dead mother’s ghost pays her sister a visit and has a message for her too about that childhood secret.

RT Score: 94%
RT Consensus: Volver catches Almodóvar and Cruz at the peak of their respective powers, in service of a layered, thought-provoking film.

Watching Volver, Pedro Almodóvar’s latest poker-faced extravagance, you realize just how far his women have come from the days when they were living on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
- Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

You do not want to miss this one.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

Proves to be one of Almodóvar’s most temperamentally restrained efforts, though such a muted tone doesn’t detract from its emotional power.
- Nick Schager
Nick Schager Film Project

The characters in Volver are complexly drawn, with intricate relationships and motivations. Even the theme of death is more than it seems on the surface.
- Kim Voynar
Cinematical

Penelope Cruz has never looked more beautiful and she gives a sensational, career best performance as Raimunda.
- Matthew Turner
ViewLondon

Cruz has never been more radiant and funny: Comparisons to Sophia Loren in her Vittorio DeSica heyday are flying about, and richly warranted.
- Jan Stuart
Newsday

 

Unknown
Directed: Simon Brand

Five guys wake up in a warehouse in various states of being tied up. They all have lost their memory, but know that some of them are hostages and some of them are captives. They just don’t know who is who.

RT Score: 27%
RT Consensus: Though it boasts a talented cast, this thriller fails to make you care about the twisty mystery of the men’s identities and situation.

80 minutes that could have been better spent watching Reservoir Dogs, The Usual Suspects, Memento, Saw or just half of The Departed.
- Erik Childress
eFilmCritic.com

Director Simon Brand and screenwriter Matthew Waynee have constructed a fairly efficient little B movie from bits of Reservoir Dogs, Cube, and every amnesia thriller in which the victim is afraid of finding out he’s the bad guy multiplied by five.
- Andy Klein
Los Angeles CityBeat

The movie’s disinterest in character might be forgivable were its plot not riddled with holes.
- Sam Adams
Los Angeles Times

A worthy cast and an intriguing concept don t get enough support from this film s generic title, passable script and skittish direction; a mostly forgettable crime thriller is the result.
- John P. McCarthy
Boxoffice Magazine

Unknown comes across more like an amateur stage play, mechanically working through the obligatory three acts toward the obligatory twist ending.
- Tasha Robinson
Onion AV Club

 

Wondrous Oblivion
Directed: Paul Morrison

During the 1960s in England, a boy befriends his new Jamaican neighbors much to the chagrin of all the other white people around him, but they both share a love of the cricket.

 

RT Score: 55%
RT Consensus: This coming-of-age/cricket tale wants to be touching, but is too often sappy.

Wondrous Oblivion goes awry in its sloppy racial drama, and although the cricket-training montages are good, they’re still training montages, and this is just that kind of overfamiliar movie.
- Gregory Kirschling
Entertainment Weekly

Ultimately, it’s an earnest rites-of-passage drama that’s likely to work better on the small screen.
- Tom Dawson
BBC

Enjoyable, sweet-natured, feel-good drama featuring strong performances from Delroy Lindo, Emily Woof and newcomer Sam Smith.
- Matthew Turner
ViewLondon

It’s a delight to see Delroy Lindo — perpetually cast as tough cops and tougher crooks — playing a tender father and decent (if struggling) husband.
- Stephen Whitty
Newark Star-Ledger

Morrison doesn’t seem clear where he’s going. He really needs a finely focused resolution to highlight the issues he raises so sharply along the way.
- Rich Cline
Film Threat

 

Commune
Directed: Jonathan Berman

In the 1960s a group of people went off to form a commune at Black Bear Ranch, an abandoned gold mine, in California. They try to live off the land freely, but are harassed by the FBI. Documentary looks back with archival footage and talks to the adults today that were raised in this commune as children.

RT Score: 92%

Fitfully interesting, but would have benefited from tighter focus and finer detail.
- Michael Ordoña
Los Angeles Times

The documentary is loose-limbed and not at all artful–which is to say, it’s scarcely bourgeois and just as the Black Bear Ranch people would like it.
- Ed Gonzalez
Slant Magazine

It’s fascinating to see how the Black Bears got onto their current path, but we don’t see enough of the journey.
- Noel Murray
Onion AV Club

If not a social history of the ’60s, it’s a close examination of a quintessential ’60s phenomenon that speaks volumes about the attitudes and experiences that shaped the decade.
- Maitland McDonagh
TV Guide’s Movie Guide

Commune, a breezy, informal history of a long-running California commune begun in the summer of 1968 and still in existence, offers the fascinating spectacle of observing people then and now.
- Stephen Holden
New York Times

 

Soap
Directed: Pernille Fisher Christensen

A suicidal thirtysomething woman and a transsexual become unlikely friends.

RT Score: 57%

.. the film is an anti-soap opera in the trappings of an old- fashioned sudsfest.
- Stephen Holden
New York Times

The movie strands you in two miserable flats with these cliche-ridden characters and a static love story that is as predictable as it is pedestrian.
- Kirk Honeycutt
Hollywood Reporter

Another week, another movie about a depressed transsexual hooker.
- Lou Lumenick
New York Post

The idea that these characters are willing to fight like cats and dogs, and destroy each other and themselves, to avoid confronting their intense attraction to each other is totally convincing.
- Andrew O’Hehir
Salon.com

En soap never becomes too soapy, though the film does remain a bit mechanical and predictable at times, despite its rare insight in its subject matter.
- Boyd van Hoeij
europeanfilms.net

 

Death & Texas
Directed: Kevin DiNovis

A football player was arrested on a convenience story robbery going horribly wrong and was sentenced to death. After his last appeal, and just before