Nationwide Releases
Smokin’ Aces
Directed: Joe Carnahan
A mob boss wants Jeremy Piven (playing a magician) killed before he turns state’s evidence against him. He hires two hit men, but then tons of other hit men want to get in on the action and the money, so they all try to kill him first.
RT Score: 27%
RT Consensus: A violent mess of a movie, Smokin’ Aces has some Quentin Tarantino’s style but not much of his wit or humor.
The sum feels significantly less than its parts … it’s hard to think of a decent payoff to the glorious chaos Carnahan whips up in the first two acts, short of the earth itself exploding.
- Andrew Wright
The Stranger (Seattle, WA)
Best consumed with pizza and lots of brewskis, Joe Carnahan’s Smokin’ Aces is shamelessly and unapologetically a guy movie.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone
You can’t take it seriously, but the movie is as lively as it is debased.
Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly
The worst movie of 1998.
- Sean Burns
Philadelphia Weekly
Smokin’ Aces is Tarantino lite — a vague and unsuccessful attempt to bring together a bunch of offbeat, unrelated characters in a situation where a bloody resolution is inescapable.
- James Berardinelli
ReelViews
Narrative spunk ultimately tapers off to a series of slick but silly plot devices that drag the action over the finish line with a resounding and disappointing thud.
- Jeanne Aufmuth
Palo Alto Weekly
Catch and Release
Directed: Susannah Grant
Jennifer Gardner tries to get over her fiance’s death and move on with her life with the help of his friends.
RT Score: 21%
RT Consensus: A romantic dramedy with boring, stock characters and contrived situations.
Kevin Smith has a commanding, affable presence that hints his acting career may surpass his considerable directorial successes. it’s a performance that would land an Oscar nomination, if only the film it came from weren’t so weak.
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
Screenwriter Susannah Grant makes her directing debut with a romance that wants to respect the mess of love and loss but winds up smoothing all its rough edges with a Hollywood pumice stone.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone
I just don’t know any chick who will make sense of this flick — it’s that blitheringly out of touch with present psychosexual (never mind feminist) time and space.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly
it’s such a bland example of its genre, it may as well have been titled A Romantic Drama Starring Jennifer Garner.
- Ethan Alter
Premiere Magazine
A romantic comedy-drama with little comedy, no drama and less romance than your average YouTube video.
- Michael Booth
Denver Post
Epic Movie
Directed: Jason Friedberg
Making fun of a bunch of recent blockbusters, not all of them epic.
RT Score: 3%
RT Consensus: A crude comedy with nothing new or insightful to say about the subjects it satirizes.
Despite all the scatological high jinks on display, most of the satire is affectionate rather than merciless.
- Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly
It s generally considered bad form for a critic to advocate the kidnap and torture of specific filmmakers, but I ll tell you this: If you did it, and you confessed to me, no way would I turn you in.
- Jeremy C. Fox
Pajiba
Can a picture really be considered a parody if it merely parrots rather than satirizes its source material?
- Kam Williams
NewsBlaze
Because nothing in the universe is funnier than watching Jack Sparrow or Willy Wonka break out into hip-hop gyrations.
- Scott Weinberg
Cinematical
too simple, too vulgar and too obvious to be Funny Movie. it’s not even Chuckle Movie or Giggle Movie. it’s in your face, with most humor centered around taking characters you recognize and just making them dumber.
- Willie Waffle
WaffleMovies.com
How can you make fun of such self-aware subjects as Borat or Johnny Depp’s winkingly fey Jack Sparrow? Who hasn’t already noticed Tom Hanks’ bad Da Vinci Code hair? And really, is there anything left to say about Samuel L. Jackson and those snakes?
- Elizabeth Weitzman
New York Daily News
An amateur-hour game of Spot That Reference, intended for people who crack up simply at the mention of anything topical.
- Jim Ridley
L.A. Weekly
Blood and Chocolate
Directed: Katja Von Garnier
A young woman in Bucharest is a werewolf, but falls in love with a visiting American artist. She wants to be with him, but her werewolf clan won’t allow it. Oh, the young teen angst.
RT Score: 8%
RT Consensus: Cheap CG effects and laughable dialogue make Blood and Chocolate worse than the usual werewolf flick.
Occasionally there’s some unintended comedy, such as the part in which a werewolf actually says grace before he’s about to chomp into a man’s neck. Ironic for a movie that doesn’t have a prayer.
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
The more we see of these werewolves, the more we notice that they come in two flavors: conflicted moping (played by Agnes Bruckner) and fey Eurotrash (played by everyone else).
- Jesse Hassenger
filmcritic.com
This is the kind of werewolf flick that seems to have used up its entire special-effects budget on canine contact lenses.
- Kyle Smith
New York Post
A romantic triangle between werewolves and humans doesn’t sound dull, but director Katja von Garnier seems to determined to drain the life out of it.
- Keith Phipps
Onion AV Club
Hot Topic: The Movie.
- Brian Orndorf
OhmyNews.com
Limited Releases
Seraphim Falls
Directed: David Von Ancken
During the Civil War, Pierce Brosnan did something very bad to Liam Neeson. Now that the war is over, Liam is on a manhunt for Pierce.
RT Score: 46%
RT Consensus: A brutal, slow-moving drama that unfolds among some great-looking scenery.
[Neeson] and Brosnan are supremely well-matched foils, though I do wish that the filmmaker, David Von Ancken, had lent his sparsely mythic tale just a twinge of something…new.
- Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly
Decent old-fashioned western until it hits loony-land late in the late innings.
- Boo Allen
Denton Record Chronicle (TX)
For devotees of gonad cinema, there may not be a better time to be had at the movies right now than the first 20-ish minutes of Seraphim Falls.
- Andrew Wright
The Stranger (Seattle, WA)
After a roaring opening hour, Van Acken settles for a parched ending that’s the Old West equivalent to “can’t we all get along?”
- Thomas Delapa
Boulder Weekly
The most ridiculous character was Madame Louise (Anjelica Huston), who appears out of nowhere in the middle of the desert.
- Jeanne Kaplan
Kaplan vs. Kaplan