Nationwide Releases
I think I Love My Wife
Directed: Chris Rock
Starring: Chris Rock, Kerry Washington, Gina Torres
Chris Rock has a great marriage except that his wife wants nothing to do with sex. He starts fantasizing what it would be like to be single again.
RT Score: 19%
RT Consensus: Chris Rock's comedic instincts are muted and the female characters are unsatisfactorily drawn in this uneven sex farce/domestic drama mashup.
Mixing Rock with ooh-la-la turns out to be as appetizing as chalk and cheese.
– Peter Travers
Rolling Stone
Rock has taken [Eric] Rohmer's marvelously probing, psychologically refined, exquisitely yakky, and deeply French movie and turned it into a coarse-talking, race-conscious, tonally challenged life-crisis comedy.
– Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly
A film that expends all of its energy canceling itself out … The flopsweat could be measured in gallons.
– Andrew Wright
The Stranger (Seattle, WA)
As uneven as I Think I Love My Wife often is, it still has an emotional resonance lacking in most films about relationships. By dealing with temptation in even a quasi-realistic way, it affirms that, like comedy, monogamy is hard.
– Ruthe Stein
San Francisco Chronicle
Rock's depiction of women as either pouting spoilsports, nagging, frigid soccer moms or man-eating vixens harkens back to the pre-feminist '60s.
– Jan Stuart
Newsday
Premonition
Directed: Mennan Yapo
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon
Sandra Bullock has a premonition that her husband has been killed and tries to find ways to stop it from happening.
RT Score: 8%
RT Consensus: An overly obtuse potboiler that borrows charmlessly from "Memento," "The Sixth Sense," and "Groundhog Day."
Ohmigod – ya feel that? That rumbling in your ribs, that hiccup in your heart, that frigidness in your frontal lobe. It's a premonition that the act of buying a ticket to "Premonition" will result in tragedy.
– Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
I have a premonition you won't give a damn. I sure as hell didn't.
– Peter Travers
Rolling Stone
Movies like Memento, told backward, are so six years ago. Premonition complicates it all by throwing the whole calendar week out of order.
– Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly
Breathtakingly stupid movie.
– Boo Allen
Denton Record Chronicle (TX)
[The filmmakers] are victims of the exquisitely misguided notion — all too common in thrillers these days — that if they throw in enough twists, audiences will become so engaged that they won't notice cathedral-size plot holes.
– Stephanie Zacharek
Salon.com
Dead Silence
Directed: James Wan
Starring: Ryan Kwanten, Amber Valletta
A town is haunted by the ghost of a ventriloquist lady who had an unhealthy obsession with her dolls, and was killed with her tongue cut out.
RT Score: 27%
If you're in the mood for a Saturday afternoon-ish throwback thriller, you could certainly do a hell of a lot worse than this one.
– Scott Weinberg
Cinematical
This Silence is definitely D.O.A.,…a genre movie that's well-produced, but extremely silly and not at all scary.
– Frank Swietek
One Guy's Opinion
Fans coming from the Saw franchise are going to be bored to death by Dead Silence.
– Brian Tallerico
UnderGround Online
It's a sad state of affairs when you're more interested in the horror movie trailers that play before the feature film.
– Kevin Carr
7M Pictures
Dead Silence [isn't perfect but] it is still a decent, if somewhat wooden, entry in the underutilized area of ventriloquist dolls in the horror movie genre.
– Staci Layne Wilson
About.com
Limited Releases
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Directed: Ken Loach
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Liam Cunningham
Workers in Ireland during 1920 form guerrilla armies to fight for Ireland's freedom from Britain.
RT Score: 83%
RT Consensus: Bleak and uncompromising, but director Ken Loach brightens his film with gorgeous cinematography and tight pacing, and features a fine performance from Cillian Murphy.
The ferocity of [director Ken] Loach's moral wrath carries the movie, makes it ignite on screen — at least, until he tries to dramatize the fatal split of Ireland through Damien and Teddy, the brothers in arms.
– Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly
You'll get a buzz out of the sensitive filmmaking, superb, naturalistic performances with touches of improv, and a sense of outrage that informs the film's mood.
– Urban Cinefile Critics
Urban Cinefile
Loach has the gift of finding the intensely moving private emotions in broad, societal dilemmas. He does that with his fine new film, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, and he does a few new things as well.
– Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times
It does [make for good drama], though at times its didacticism can be a bit wearying.
– Glenn Whipp
Los Angeles Daily News
The film is an exceptional work of vigorous cinematic art filled with dynamic performances by its all-Irish cast. At 70, Ken Loach is as steadfast a filmmaker as ever.
– Cole Smithey
ColeSmithey.com
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
Directed: Scott Glosserman
Starring: Nathan Basesel, Robert Englund
A mockumentary about a guy that wants to be the next Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers who explains how he plans to terrorize a small town.
RT Score: 77%
The filmmakers have quite a few clever tricks up their sleeves, bringing us a smart, refreshing an affectionate skewering of a celebrated genre.
– Eric Campos
Film Threat
At its best, Behind the Mask offers some, um, cutting insights about mass-media blood lust and the cult of the serial killer.
– Scott Foundas
L.A. Weekly
Working in a mini-genre whose bones would appear to have been picked clean by the likes of Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven, Glosserman and Stieve find a few pints of fresh blood.
– David Edelstein
New York Magazine
Desperately overcompensating for the fact that most horror films are already parodies of themselves, Behind the Mask takes a bite out of the dumb Scream franchise before devouring its own tail, proving that you are what you eat.
– Ed Gonzalez
Village Voice
The movie has more cleverness than violence, and its breakdown of cliches is vivid and witty. Baesel is an extraordinary presence, holding the film together with his mesmerizing performance, charm and openness, and Goethals measures up to him.
– Stephen Hunter
Washington Post
Adam's Apples
Directed: Anders Thomas Jensen
Starring: Mads Mikkelsen
In Denmark, a neo-Nazi is sentenced to community service at a country church where the vicar puts him in charge of an apple tree to nurture it and make it grow.
RT Score: 65%
Peculiar but oddly winsome fable about the spiritual journeys of two diametrically opposed characters.
– Ken Fox
TV Guide's Movie Guide
A noxious, flippant mix of snark and biblical allegory.
– Ed Gonzalez
Village Voice
I'm sure there's a decent black comedy in the material, but Adam's Apples, by Danish director Anders Thomas Jensen, isn't it.
– V.A. Musetto
New York Post
Adam’s Apples slams together good and evil for maximum black-comedy impact.
– KJ Doughton
Film Threat
Smart-aleck comedy and spirituality aren't incompatible, but in Adam's Apples they cancel each other out.
– Matt Zoller Seitz
New York Times
American Cannibal
Directed: Perry Grebin, Michael Nigro
Documentary about how far people are willing to go to be on reality television.
RT Score: 62%
The picture is mesmerizing, in a crash-on-the-highway sense; but the fact that your worst suspicions about the people who cook up some of this stuff are confirmed is in no way gratifying.
– Kurt Loder
MTV
It's insightful as well as entertaining, and the inclusion of real interviews with people both inside and outside the business means it functions as both an intelligent critique and a dire warning.
– Ken Fox
TV Guide's Movie Guide
What's here is a glimpse not into how far people will go to win a reality-TV show, but how far greedy writers and producers will go to degrade, debauch and enrich themselves.
– Jack Mathews
New York Daily News
[It] really, really should've been funnier.
– Rob Nelson
Village Voice
American Cannibal would be interesting if it weren't so 2001.
– Jan Stuart
Newsday
Tortilla Heaven
Directed: Judy Hecht Dumontet
Starring: Jose Zuniga, George Lopez
In a small town in New Mexico, the image of jesus appears on a tortilla and causes tons of people to flock to see it.
RT Score: 40%
[A] clumsy family comedy.
– Tim Grierson
L.A. Weekly
The film and its makers simply try too hard. Director and co-writer Judy Hecht Dumontet can't stop 'helping' with overactive editing and scoring.
– Michael Ordoña
Los Angeles Times
Tortilla Heaven is a consistently engaging motion picture, made with obvious love for the isolated location and for the spirit of a supportive community.
– Brian Orndorf
eFilmCritic.com
Like a piece of fast food: it's simple and painless – even tasty at times – but it's not overly nutritious.
– Ryan Cracknell
Movie Views
This modest little parable from director/cowriter Judy Hecht Dumontet is a variation on an old theme.
– Andy Klein
Los Angeles CityBeat
My Brother
Directed: Anthony Lover
Starring: Vanessa Williams, Tatum O'Neal
Two inner city brothers are close with one being developmentally disabled and the other was deep into debt, which led him doing some bad stuff that drags his brother into the seedy side of life.
RT Score: 43%
Story loses momentum in a wave of heavy-handed messages.
– Maitland McDonagh
TV Guide's Movie Guide
A moving and meaningful melodrama about a blood bond tested by the trials and tribulations of trying to survive in the inner-city.
– Kam Williams
AALBC.com
My Brother is a brave little film, with the emphasis on little. Shot on a shoestring, it lacks the polish of many indie efforts but compensates with bold casting and a big heart.
– Bruce Westbrook
Houston Chronicle
What starts as a taut urban crime drama quickly sags into lurid after-school-special sentimentality.
– Ann Hornaday
Washington Post
My Brother is brimming with would-be life lessons. But the movie goes in so many directions, and follows through on so few of them, that all it transmits is a vague glow. It's watered-down chicken soup for the soul.
– Sam Adams
Los Angeles Times
Nomad (The Warrior)
Directed: Ivan Passer
Starring: Kuno Becker, Jay Hernandez
In 18th-century Kazakhstan, a boy will unite three warring tribes.
RT Score: 14%
A throwback to yeteryear's epics, Kazakhstan's official entry for the Foreign-Language Oscar is an old-fashioned actioner using real locales and extras rather than CGI effects; lack of unified vision may derive from too many directors behind the camera.
– Emanuel Levy
EmanuelLevy.Com
Despite the central Asian locale, the film is largely rooted in the conventions of the American westerns and good old Hollywood Biblical epics like The Ten Commandments, as well as many of their attendant clichés.
– Ken Fox
TV Guide's Movie Guide
Though it has a familiar inevitability, the journey is generally compelling, thanks to fierce battles, a gorgeous landscape and heartfelt performances.
– Elizabeth Weitzman
New York Daily News
In the American-release version of the picture, the emphasis on spectacle and the paring away of all but the most essential exposition ends up having the opposite of its intended effect.
– Jim Hemphill
Reel.com
While the film has impressive 18th-century trappings and vivid battle scenes, the plotting and acting are rudimentary.
– Lou Lumenick
New York Post
Caffeine
Directed: Jack Cosgrove
Starring: Mena Suvari, Marsha Thomason
A bunch of weirdos work at the Black Cat Cafe and their customers are even weirder.
RT Score: 0%
A largely unfunny, predictable, and tired crisscross of any number of lowbrow sitcom plots.
– Gary Goldstein
Reel.com
About as appetizing as a pot of dishwater coffee.
– Lael Loewenstein
Los Angeles Times
DA witless examination of relationships and day jobs, Cosgrove's would-be comedy finds little humor in issues of infidelity, heartbreak (and bodily functions), resulting in a film that's hopelessly amateurish and creatively destitute.
– Emanuel Levy
Variety
The claustrophobic and poorly executed Caffeine is either a play in search of a movie or a movie in search of a play but, either way, it's searching for the wrong thing.
– Kirk Honeycutt
Hollywood Reporter
all talk and no action.
– David Levine
filmcritic.com
