Nationwide Releases
The Nativity Story
Directed: Catherine Hardwicke
Follows a pregnant Mary and Joseph while they walk and walk and look for an inn so she can give birth.
RT Score: 40%
RT Consensus: The Nativity Story is a dull retelling of a well-worn tale with the look and feel of a high-school production.
The greatest story ever told has been made into one of the worst movies of the year.
– Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
The Nativity Story is a film of tame picture-book sincerity, but that’s not the same thing as devotion. The movie is too tepid to feel, or see, the light.
– Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly
‘When You Care Enough to Send the Very Best’…the film has all the substance, visual appeal, and excitement of a Hallmark card.
– Peter Canavese
Groucho Reviews
The filmmakers have strived to tell their tale, which is part Scripture and part imagined, with the simplicity and sincerity of a Sunday school lesson, and, as far as I can see, it does not veer from tradition in a way that is likely to offend anyone.
– William Arnold
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
An effective pitch for Christianity as the dullest religion ever.
– Josh Bell
Las Vegas Weekly
Turistas
Directed: John Stockwell
Americans get drunk and party on the Brazilian beach until they wake up to find their money and passports gone. They are led to a house where bad things will happen.
RT Score: 18%
RT Consensus: Beautiful scenery and cinematography can’t save Turistas from its wooden acting and stale and predictable plot.
Would you believe it if I said that the fearsome homicidal baddie in Turistas is the most humane and morally responsible person in the movie?
– Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly
It would be one thing if Turistas were simply bad — the real sin is that it’s unimaginatively bad.
– Phoebe Flowers
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Stockwell… has no head for the horror that engulfs the second half.
– Jeffrey M. Anderson
Combustible Celluloid
… neither suspenseful, terrifying or inventively gory.
– Sean Axmaker
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The story is idiotic, the dialogue moronic and the characters are cardboard cutouts. Stupid cardboard cutouts.
– Liz Braun
Jam! Movies
Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj
Directed: Mort Nathan
Taj becomes a resident advisor at some college and starts a new fraternity while fighting with the rich kids on campus.
RT Score: 6%
RT Consensus: A low-brow comedy, minus the comedy.
The question comes to mind: How do you make a Van Wilder movie without Van Wilder? The answer, after watching the end result, is you don’t. Or at least you shouldn’t.
– Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
Everything old is old again in this rickety extension of 2002′s already rickety Van Wilder.
– Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly
The Rise of Taj never rises to the level of time-killer.
– Roger Moore
Orlando Sentinel
At one point I tried to force myself to fall asleep, just so I wouldn’t have to sit through any more of it.
– Joshua Tyler
CinemaBlend.com
Ryan Reynolds did Blade: Trinity, people. If he thinks a sequel is beneath him, you’d better believe it.
– Luke Y. Thompson
E! Online
Limited Releases
10 Items or Less
Directed: Brad Silberling
Morgan Freeman plays a method actor who works at a small market all day for an upcoming film part and bonds with a cashier who hopes for more from her life.
RT Score: 63%
RT Consensus: A small film that relies too heavily on the charm of its big actors.
Insubstantial as dandelion fluff, this is a strange, muzzy little movie made palatable by Freeman’s enormously charming, gliding presence.
– Andrew Wright
The Stranger (Seattle, WA)
This sale is void.
– Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly
Slight and wispy, it s a film that could only work with the gracious presence of someone like Morgan Freeman , who delivers an amiably laid-back performance.
– David Germain
Associated Press
Granted, Freeman is essentially playing a variation of himself, while Vega is mining her spunky screen persona. But they deliver.
– Glenn Whipp
Los Angeles Daily News
[Brad Silberling is] Frank Capra without the edge.
– Stephen Whitty
Newark Star-Ledger
[Morgan] Freeman is clearly enjoying himself, but his charisma and heavyweight presence can’t quite redeem this featherweight concoction.
– Nathan Rabin
Onion AV Club
Four Eyed Monsters
Directed: Susan Buice
Two weirdos in their twenties are bored with life and dating, but find each other.
RT Score: 83%
There are some amusing moments, but then the fun wears off and you’re left thinking, is that all there is?
– Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone
TheMovieChicks.com
In the realm of modern romantic movies, this one hits all the right spots and it makes it hurt so good.
– Eric Campos
Film Threat
A fresh, witty, and contemporary take on the perennial boy-meets-girl story.
– Caroline Palmer
Village Voice
Fascinating if overly self-involved Slamdance entry is among the few U.S. pics that deliberately smudges the line between non-fiction and invention.
– Robert Koehler
Variety
This innovative chronicle of a truly modern romance conveys, in a painful, darkly humorous way, a variety of ultra-identifiable truths.
– Laura Kern
New York Times
This diaristic relationship drama by New York video artist Arin Crumley and animator Susan Buice is so playful and imaginative that only at the very end… does its narcissism become off-putting.
– J. R. Jones
Chicago Reader
The Architect
Directed: Matt Tauber
An activist that lives in the projects, but wants them torn down so decent housing can be built in their place wants the signature on her petition from the original architect, who is dealing with his own family problems.
RT Score: 13%
Each of the characters have their own quirky stories that feel as if they’ll add meaning or emotional impact to the central conflict, but ultimately, they don’t.
– Ross Anthony
Hollywood Report Card
Flaunts lame ghetto and dark-side-of-suburbia clichés in self-loathing standstill after self-loathing standstill, none of which offer a genuinely insightful perspective on modern living.
– Ed Gonzalez
Slant Magazine
The connective tissue between disparate characters (such as the gay black kid from the projects who befriends a rich closeted white dude) can sometimes feel too convenient, but the situations are consistently well-realized and mature.
– Aaron Hillis
Premiere Magazine
There are too many characters undergoing life changes in the story for each to be properly developed in an 82-minute movie.
– Jack Mathews
New York Daily News
The story s structure is overly configured, and [writer David] Greig’s characters feel less like people than bullet points.
– Maitland McDonagh
TV Guide’s Movie Guide
3 Needles
Directed: Thom Fitzgerald
Three stories in three parts of the world–Africa, China and Canada–about AIDS.
RT Score: 34%
RT Consensus: In getting its message about the AIDS epidemic across, the film unfortunately sacrifices story and character.
Between the annoying voiceover and the detail-free storylines, 3 Needles is like a bad filmstrip you stumble onto at the library.
– Matt Pais
Metromix.com
it’s gorgeously filmed, but its character logic very rarely makes any sense.
– Jeffrey M. Anderson
Combustible Celluloid
I’d love a peek at the keyboard Fitzgerald uses to conjure his screeds: I’ve never seen one sledgehammered into dust and splinters before.
– Walter Chaw
Film Freak Central
Three riveting dramas about the AIDS crisis set in South Africa, China, and Canada that open our eyes and our hearts to victims of this dread disease.
– Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Spirituality and Practice
Had it taken a more hard-headed approach, 3 Needles might have been to the AIDS epidemic what Traffic was to the drug trade.
– Stephen Holden
New York Times
Christmas at Maxwell’s
Directed: William C. Laufer
When a mother becomes terminally ill, the family escapes the city and goes to spend their last Christmas together in a summer home on Lake Erie.
RT Score: 50%
A rare example of truly independent filmmaking, not only because of the way it was produced, but because it makes no effort to mimic the attitudes and style of contemporary mainstream Hollywood films.
– Maitland McDonagh
TV Guide’s Movie Guide
Laufer has made a heartfelt film with admirable messages about God’s forgiveness, the strength of family and being a Good Samaritan, and features a touching conclusion, but the picturesque film is handicapped by languid pacing, an episodic script and mostly colorless performances.
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
