Nationwide Releases
Reno 911!: Miami
Directed: Robert Ben Garant
Starring: Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant
The Reno cops head to Miami for a police convention.
RT Score: 37%
RT Consensus: Reno 911!'s anarchic brand of comedy loses much in translation to the big screen where it feels slapdash and shallow.
The humor is arresting, and boredom is thrown into lockdown.
– Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
Instead of creating a movie, the Reno 911 gang has made a dumber version of their TV show, while adding curse words and nudity, which is what I would expect from 10-year olds.
– Willie Waffle
WaffleMovies.com
It's a lot easier to pack laughs into a half-hour television show than a full-length.
– Elizabeth Weitzman
New York Daily News
While you may laugh here and there, if you wait for the DVD you can skip the slow sections for the high points.
– Gene Seymour
Newsday
Joyfully ridiculous…proudly puerile… revels in obscenity… immature violence…
– Fred Topel
Can Magazine
For funny, it’s not even on the same map of the former Soviet Union as, say, Borat. But the straight-outta-cable Reno 911: Miami is funnier than Super Troopers and at least four of six Police Academys.
– Jim Slotek
Jam! Movies
The Number 23
Directed: Joel Schumacher
Starring: Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen
Jim Carrey reads a book about paranoia and the number 23 while becoming paranoid about the number 23.
RT Score: 8%
RT Consensus: Clumsy, unengaging, and mostly confusing, The Number 23 fails as both a psychological thriller and a Jim Carrey career move.
Twenty-three reasons to avoid wasting your time with "The Number 23."
– Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
There's a mess of things wrong with this suspense thriller. Start with the fact that it's neither suspenseful nor thrilling.
– Peter Travers
Rolling Stone
23=0
– Boo Allen
Denton Record Chronicle (TX)
By the end, you'll want to stick around, if only to crack the Jim Carrey code: Is he a real actor after all, or is the rabid urgency with which he keeps trying to be the most real thing about him?
– Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly
Gimmicky numerology plus Jim Carrey minus narrative coherence equals The Number 23.
– Justin Chang
Variety
The Astronaut Farmer
Directed: Michael Polish
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Virginia Madsen
Billy Bob had to drop out of NASA due to a family situation, but still wants to be an astronaut. He decides to build a rocket on his farm so he can launch himself into space.
RT Score: 59%
RT Consensus: The Astronaut Farmer is a charming, inspirational drama that successfully avoids modern cinematic cliches while appealing to the optimistic dreamer in all of us.
The Astronaut Farmer may not be fresh or unpredictable, but it has no problem lifting off. It's nice to believe we live in a world in which Charles can launch into the heavens.
– Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
The movie is so serenely in orbit that there's nothing to do but float along and enjoy the strange, sweet ride.
– Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly
Quirky for quirky's sake, making it absurd and insulting.
– Boo Allen
Denton Record Chronicle (TX)
"Even for those who don't wholly buy into the film's 'if we don't have our dreams, we have nothing' ethos, there are many small pleasures to savor."
– Sura Wood
Hollywood Reporter
The closer the character gets to actually firing up his rocket, the less fun the film becomes. The Polish brothers lose their goofy sense of humor, and The Astronaut Farmer turns serious and, heaven help us, inspiring.
– Robert W. Butler
Kansas City Star
Limited Releases
Starter For 10
Directed: Tom Vaughan
Starring: James Corden, James McAvoy
Set in mid-80s Britain, a working-class boy wants to woo a teammate for a quiz show, while another girl might have more in common with him.
RT Score: 88%
RT Consensus: A spirited coming-of-age tale that remains charming and witty even as it veers into darker subjects.
Don't mind the featherweight plot. A cheeky comedy with sex and smarts earns a passing grade.
– Peter Travers
Rolling Stone
There's a tidiness and affection to this British homage to John Hughes movies and the youthful error of first going for the wrong, hurtful girl instead of the right, patient one.
– Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly
The bland but likable enough coming-of-age trifle Starter for 10 comes made by and for people whose feet tap involuntarily the second they hear the big beat of the Psychedelic Furs' 'Love My Way.'
– Glenn Whipp
Los Angeles Daily News
If you grew up in the British Isles at that time, you'll totally get it. But even if you didn't, it'll probably ring truer than the comic college hijinks you're used to seeing on the screen.
– Luke Y. Thompson
E! Online
[McAvoy] carries lightly what could have been a cliché-ridden clunker and helps create an utterly winning romantic comedy.
– Katey Rich
Film Journal International
Glastonbury
Directed: Julien Temple
A couple is dealing with their own problems in Mali while a big trial is happening next to their house.
RT Score: 79%
Super-scintillating. We're fortunate to have a bright, bold documentary like Glastonbury to remind us how fun, weird and wonderful life can be.
– Gregory Weinkauf
ÜberCiné
Julien Temple's formless documentary Glastonbury aims to capture the festival's chaos and free-wheeling freakiness and accomplishes this goal.
– Glenn Whipp
Los Angeles Daily News
A long, structureless muddle that does justice to neither the stellar acts nor changing countercultural times event has encompassed.
– Dennis Harvey
Variety
Features some beautiful and epic performances that are enough, on their own, to entertain.
– Joe Utichi
FilmFocus
Temple is able to convey a perceptive and substantive mood pertaining to the staying power of this weirdly nuanced outdoor finger-snapping function.
– Frank Ochieng
TheWorldJournal.com
The overall soundtrack seamlessly patches together a sonic quilt of eclectic music that evokes a kind of timeless flow. It's not a Glastonbury of any particular vintage, but rather a continuum of experiences that have occurred on this sacred ground.
– Kevin Crust
Los Angeles Times
Amazing Grace
Directed: Michael Apted
Starring: Ioan Gruffudd, Albert Finney
During the time when the British Empire was the most powerful in the world, one man worked to get the slave trade abolished.
RT Score: 69%
RT Consensus: Amazing Grace is your quintessential historical biopic: stately, noble, and with plenty of electrifying performances.
Coming soon to a social studies class near you.
– Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
Handsome bio-pic wavers between a surplus of piety and a well done history lesson.
– Boo Allen
Denton Record Chronicle (TX)
It leaves the blood unstirred.
– Gregory Kirschling
Entertainment Weekly
This compelling bio-pic is an overdue tribute to William Wilberforce (1759-1833), the British abolitionist who, for 20 years, tirelessly lobbied Parliament to end England's participation in the slave trade.
– Kam Williams
NewsBlaze
It's clear that the filmmakers believe a movie about political debate has to have a lot of speechifying. Consequently, it's so talky that it gradually loses our interest, which is a real shame.
– Jeff Vice
Deseret News, Salt Lake City
Gray Matters
Directed: Sue Kramer
Starring: Heather Graham, Tom Cavanagh
Heather Graham and Tom Cavanagh are brother and sisters, but are so compatible that people think they are dating. They decided they really need to find their own love lives.
RT Score: 10%
If Heather Graham is on the way to becoming the next Goldie Hawn she has a ways yet to go in this soft-core coming out flick by Sue Kramer.
– Ron Wilkinson
Monsters and Critics
Never have I ever wanted to climb into the screen and kill every single character as much as I did with this movie.
– Edward Douglas
ComingSoon.net
The movie really depends on Heather Graham, and she just doesn't deliver. There's always been a sort of mannequin quality to her performances, as if she had been posed just seconds before the cameras rolled.
– Stephen Whitty
Newark Star-Ledger
Sue Kramer is clearly out to shake up the boring old boy-meets-girl formula, but her movie is so filled with preposterous coincidence and ridiculous clunky plot machinations that it's impossible to ignore them and focus on the equally contrived story.
– Angel Cohn
TV Guide's Movie Guide
Heather Graham seems resigned to mugging and shrugging out the remainder of her thirties through a series of undercooked romantic comedies.
– Michelle Orange
Village Voice
Cocaine Angel
Directed: Michael Tully
Starring: Brenda Benfield, Damian Lahey
A guy struggles with cocaine addiction.
RT Score: 60%
If this film was intended as a joke, consider me fooled.
– Ed Gonzalez
Slant Magazine
Scrappy and defiantly deglamorized, this chronicle of a couple of long, useless days in the life of a down-and-out coke addict oozes miserable authenticity without giving you a reason to care.
– Maitland McDonagh
TV Guide's Movie Guide
Movies about addicts are a dime a dozen, but Cocaine Angel does its own thing, mixing humor with bleakness and resisting the too-common urge to romanticize addiction.
– V.A. Musetto
New York Post
Pitch-perfect central perf (by scribe and co-producer Damian Lahey), total lack of dramatic artifice and surreally situational humor make for a minor-key vignette of unmistakable, if unstable, authenticity.
– Robert Koehler
Variety
We may learn nothing new about the grasp of addiction, but the movie’s lean 75 minutes is at least a genuinely fast track to oblivion.
– Jeannette Catsoulis
New York Times
