Nationwide Releases
28 Weeks Later
Directed: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Starring: Rose Byrne, Robert Carlyle
The U.S. Army is brought to England to help the uninfected start rebuilding, yet it seems there is a new kind of zombie mutant.
RT Score: 70%
RT Consensus: While 28 Weeks Later lacks the humanism that made 28 Days Later a classic, it's made up with fantastic atmosphere and punchy direction.
Thematic resonance makes 28 Weeks Later stick to your nightmares. Hold on for a hell of a ride.
– Peter Travers
Rolling Stone
28 Weeks Later excels at creating a keen, creepy sense of a civilization stopped dead in its tracks.
– Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly
Chaotic but oh so intense.
– Boo Allen
Denton Record Chronicle (TX)
This film is a gross error of judgement for all concerned, from the predictably repetitive plot resting on the freaky premise of its progenitor to the anti-cinematic whiz-blur-cam that passes for cinematography.
– Urban Cinefile Critics
Urban Cinefile
Well worth seeing, especially for fans of the original. But all its brilliance only serves to compound the disappointing and pedestrian final half hour.
– Ian Winter
Channel 4 Film
The Ex
Directed: Jesse Peretz
Starring: Zach Braff, Amanda Peet, Jason Bateman
An ad exec becomes threatened at work when a new co-worker who used to be on cheer squad with his wife tries to vie for her attention.
RT Score: 20%
RT Consensus: The Ex suffers from inept direction and characters that are either unsympathetic or plain unpleasant to watch.
The so-called comedy, which is really only a sacrificial lamb tossed in front of the "Spider-Man 3" behemoth, is about as funny as a foreclosure notice.
– Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
What if Zach Braff acted in one more quarter-life-crisis movie, and instead of Sundance it went straight to video? If only that's what had happened to The Ex.
– Gregory Kirschling
Entertainment Weekly
The Ex, directed with a breathtaking lack of instinct by Jesse Peretz, is always at least a half-beat off.
– Phoebe Flowers
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
So much of comedy is in the timing, though, and The Ex doesn't quite know when to quit. Or at least move on.
– Michael Booth
Denver Post
About the only person here who seems to be working hard for laughs is Braff. Even Bateman, who was so brilliantly hysterical on TV’s Arrested Development, is denied any major comic moments. And that’s a crime.
– Robert W. Butler
Kansas City Star
Georgia Rule
Directed: Garry Marshall
Starring: Jane Fonda, Lindsay Lohan, Felicity Huffman
Lindsay Lohan plays an out of control daughter to Felicity, so she takes to live with her grandmother in a small Idaho town for the summer to straighten her out.
RT Score: 19%
RT Consensus: Comedic and dramatic in all the wrong places, Georgia Rule is a confused dramedy that wastes the talents of its fine cast.
Lohan hits a true note of spiteful princess narcissism. Unfortunately, it's the only note the film allows her to play.
– Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly
Quite a bit smarter than some of director Garry Marshall's other weepies… but his big, happy, clumsy style ultimately isn't suited for finely tuned melodrama.
– Jeffrey M. Anderson
Combustible Celluloid
Unlike the rest of today's crop of Hollywood party girl bimbos, Lindsay Lohan proves once again that she actually has some talent. Why she feels a need to play like she's a dumb Paris Hilton wannabe is beyond me.
– Michelle Alexandria
Eclipse Magazine
The tone is so inconsistent that the only effect it has is to confuse the audience.
– Josh Bell
Las Vegas Weekly
Georgia Rule is a bad idea dreadfully executed — On Golden Pond with fellatio jokes and whimsical incest melodrama and Fonda playing her dad (who, more and more, she eerily resembles).
– Ty Burr
Boston Globe
Delta Farce
Directed: CB Harding
Starring: Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engvall
An army troop get dumped on the way to Iraq and end up in Mexico.
RT Score: 3%
Here's a sobering thought: If every war gets the comedy it deserves, could Delta Farce, a strenuously unfunny Three Amigos knockoff, be our M*A*S*H?
– Scott Brown
Entertainment Weekly
A salad bar of misogyny, homophobia and hatred for all things that aren't A) American, B) male, and C) stupid.
– Scott Weinberg
Cinematical
It's not just stupid, it's offensive.
– Joshua Tyler
CinemaBlend.com
There are henpecked-husband jokes, gay jokes, turd humor, mispronounced Iraq war terms, guys asking "Who farted?" and lots more Crackel Barrel comedy.
– Kyle Smith
New York Post
No one expects Delta Farce to compete with The Godfather or Titanic for Academy Awards supremacy, but you would expect everyone involved to try harder to be funnier instead of repeating every joke over and over again.
– Willie Waffle
WaffleMovies.com
Limited Releases
Day Night Day Night
Directed: Julia Loktev
Starring: Luisa Williams, Josh Phillip Weinstein
A young woman who has no accent, and it is not clear of her nationality, prepares to become a suicide bomber that will set off a bomb in Times Square.
RT Score: 71%
RT Consensus: Day Night Day Night is a minimalist drama that refuses to indulge in stereotypes, making it all the more realistic and chilling.
A stunt masquerading as a statement.
– Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly
[Director] Loktev provokes in her audience an involuntary shudder, because we realize that whether an act is madness or inspiration really depends on what side you're on.
– John Anderson
Newsday
I’m frankly flummoxed about what Day Night Day Night adds up to, but its 'You Are There' allure is potent.
– David Edelstein
New York Magazine
Day Night Day Night, a movie about a suicide bomber, may be serious, and it is certainly sure of itself. But it is also maddeningly, purposefully evasive.
– Stephen Holden
New York Times
DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT has an intriguing premise but I did feel that the filmmaker failed to deliver on her intentions.
– Ted Murphy
Murphy's Movie Reviews
Provoked – A True Story
Directed: Jag Mundhra
Starring: Aishwarya Rai, Miranda Richardson
A Punjabi woman living in London sets her husband on fire after 10 years of abuse from him, which lands her in jail until a group protests her imprisonment.
RT Score: 30%
Director Jag Mundhra doesn't do enough to clarify that killing, however horrible the man, really isn't okay, even for beautiful women.
– Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly
Courtroom drama about the landmark decision which established Battered Women's Syndrome as a defense, at least in England, where relief for an abused wife is now just a Molotov cocktail away.
– Kam Williams
EURWeb
The true story deserved something much more gritty and intense than Provoked was able to deliver.
– Rebecca Murray
About.com
Provoked is just about worth seeing for its important subject matter and for Aishwarya Rai's performance but it's a real struggle at times, due to the astonishingly inept direction.
– Matthew Turner
ViewLondon
A clueless [director] Mundhra tackles the subject with a heavy hand and a contrived script. The result is a daytime soap mixed with a second-rate women-behind-bars flick.
– V.A. Musetto
New York Post
ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway
Directed: Dori Berinstein
Starring: Kristen Chenoweth, Alan Cumming
Follows one Broadway season (Taboo, Avenue Q, Wicked) to show what goes on to put on a Broadway musical.
RT Score: 88%
A notable addition to highly under-populated field of documentaries about the inner mechanics of putting on a great big show.
– Jason Clark
Slant Magazine
The doc does a fine job conveying the magic of the Broadway experience, along with the particular heart and soul of those who work there.
– Gary Goldstein
Reel.com
Even blessed with an all-access pass, ShowBusiness is incapable of being considered anything besides a hooray-for-Broadway memento.
– David Fear
Time Out New York
Short on insight. You'll have to look elsewhere than this love letter to the Great White Way to explain why Wicked and Avenue Q became huge hits, and why Caroline, or Change joined Taboo as a costly flop.
– Lou Lumenick
New York Post
There's more drama in the backstage creative process shown here than in much of Broadway's onstage showmanship.
– Harvey S. Karten
Compuserve
The Hip Hop Project
Directed: Matt Ruskin
Starring: Doug E. Fresh, Russell Simmons
A program that helps New York City teenagers use rap as something positive in their life.
RT Score: 57%
RT Consensus: Director Matt Ruskin's enthusiasm for the project is readily apparent, but his film is unfocused, meandering, and frustrating to watch.
First-time director Matt Ruskin is a skilled documentarian; he releases information gradually so the narrative develops in an organic fashion that is consistently engaging.
– Ted Fry
Seattle Times
the bottom line is that Kazi and his cohorts would be even better served by a film that was more than only intermittently involving, and The Hip Hop Project is not that film.
– Jim Hemphill
Reel.com
This is a story you’ve heard before: Inner-city kids falling to drugs/crime/pregnancy are saved by the power of music/dance/art. Don’t let that premise dissuade you from checking out this documentary.
– Jessica Grose
L.A. Weekly
All of this is related in a well-meaning, would-be uplifting but ultimately ham-handed manner somewhere between a PBS documentary and a TV movie of the week.
– Jim DeRogatis
Chicago Sun-Times
There is some inspired camera work during some of the performance sequences, but none of the performances themselves stick. It's a shame when a film about the power of music doesn't contain one memorable song.
– Adam Graham
Detroit News
The Salon
Directed: Mark Brown
Starring: Vivica A. Fox, Terrence Howard
If you couldn't get enough of Barbershop, here is the same movie, but with women.
RT Score: 15%
RT Consensus: Having been delayed several years, The Salon's pop culture references are stale and its story and characters were better done in the Barbershop series.
The movie was shot more than three years before its release, and it shows, as when the salon's resident golddigger says: "Anna Nicole Smith — I aspire to be just like her."
– John Beifuss
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
The unremitting jokes and insults between blacks and whites, gays and straights, might make the hair on your head (and arms) press and curl from all of the crass and overdone sass.
– Cherie Dennis
Time Out New York
The movie is a little windy and over-the-top, and the gossipy references to J-Lo and Anna Nicole Smith are woefully outdated.
– Andrea Gronvall
Chicago Reader
The film's feisty cast and generally sunny outlook make for warm and reassuring comfort viewing, the equivalent of a straight-from-the-box dish of mac and cheese.
– Maitland McDonagh
TV Guide's Movie Guide
This is one of those films where everything simply feels wrong, from the clunky dialogue to the obvious staging.
– Tom Long
Detroit News
Duck
Directed: Nicole Bettauer
Starring: French Stewart, Philip Baker Hall
In 2009, a man heads off west after the last city park closes. He leaves with his duck that has been following him like he is its mother.
RT Score: 57%
Philip Baker Hall throws himself into the role ever so convincingly opposite his anthropomorphized companion in a manner reminiscent of Jimmy Stewart with his imaginary 6-foot tall rabbit in Harvey, and Tom Hanks with Wilson the volleyball in Cast Away.
– Kam Williams
NewsBlaze
The filmmaker is good with actors, and in Hall, she has a lead with such innate authority that you can’t take your eyes off him, even when he’s manhandling flapping waterfowl.
– Chuck Wilson
L.A. Weekly
There are precedents for this kind of old-coot-and-adorable-pet cinema, but the director, a USC film grad, demonstrates little in the way of keenness or even sentimentality.
– Joshua Rothkopf
Time Out New York
There are precedents for this kind of old-coot-and-adorable-pet cinema, but the director, a USC film grad, demonstrates little in the way of keenness or even sentimentality.
– Elizabeth Weitzman
New York Daily News
A series of stagy vignettes that never builds to a point.
– Frank Lovece
Film Journal International
Blind Dating
Directed: James Keach
Starring: Eddie Kaye Thomas, Chris Pine
A good looking blind guy is still a virgin, much to the horror of his brother who sets out to fix this problem.
RT Score: 29%
There's actually a sweet little romantic comedy at the core of Blind Dating, fighting its way to get out of the cruder, crasser outer shell.
– Jeff Vice
Deseret News, Salt Lake City
Christopher Theo's script aims for American Pie raunch, which doesn't work in a watered-down PG-13 form.
– Sean Means
Salt Lake Tribune
The fact that Blind Dating provides a relationship between two characters whom the audience desperately wants to see wind up together is ultimately all that matters.
– Jim Hemphill
Reel.com
The chemistry between Leeza and Danny is the only saving grace of this messy film. It's almost as if the writers couldn't stand to just watch them sweetly fall in love.
– Annemarie Moody
Arizona Republic
I wouldn't even describe what Dating becomes as ambitious. It's just sloppy, and corrupts the comfortable level of mediocrity it made peace with early on.
– Brian Orndorf
OhmyNews.com
Casting About
Directed: Barry Hershey
Documentary about the casting process of a film.
RT Score: 50%
The acting process is joyously celebrated in Casting About, a captivating documentary shot entirely in audition rooms during the search for three thesps for a feature film.
– Richard Kuipers
Variety
This film stands as a tribute to the actresses who put their hearts on the line.
– Maitland McDonagh
TV Guide's Movie Guide
There’s no insight here, only voyeurism, and one blisteringly fine German performer reading from [director] Hershey’s appalling script.
– Helen Shaw
Time Out New York
Casting About may be a definitive account of the cinematic audition process.
– Nick Schager
Slant Magazine
A ready-made DVD special feature
– Kent Turner
Film-Forward.com
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