Nationwide Releases
Spider-Man 3
Directed: Sam Raimi
Starring: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst
Peter Parker is proposing to Mary Jane while battling three bad guys: Sandman, Green Goblin II and Venom.
RT Score: 61%
RT Consensus: Though there are more characters and plotlines, and the action sequences still dazzle, Spider-Man 3 nonetheless isn't quite as refined as the first two.
Mean Spider-Man wrecks city streets for no reason, makes sarcastic remarks, interpretive dances and is actually pretty funny. You'd want to hang out with Mean Spider-Man and talk over beers about what a tool Nice Spider-Man is.
– Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
Spider-Man 3 is product, but it's a machine that tickles your eyes.
– Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly
My guess is that when the summer blockbuster season finishes pummeling us with formula, Spider-Man 3 is going to look like one of the few that was touched by human hands.
– Peter Travers
Rolling Stone
Too many characters is not the problem with this film. Raimi actually juggles everyone fairly well. It's the expectation game. We expect Spiderman 2 level excellence and we get Spiderman 1.5. Everything is just a little off, or takes a step back.
– Michelle Alexandria
Eclipse Magazine
The script is busy with so many supporting characters and plot detours that the series' charming idiosyncrasy is sometimes lost in the noise. Fortunately, it's entertaining noise.
– Amy Biancolli
Houston Chronicle
Lucky You
Directed: Curtis Hanson
Starring: Eric Bana, Drew Barrymore
A Vegas singer and a professional poker player fall in love.
RT Score: 28%
RT Consensus: Lucky You tries to combine a romantic story with the high-stakes world of poker, but comes up with an empty hand.
Lucky You makes the career of a pro poker player seem simultaneously alluring and pathetic; funny and grim; romantic and depressing.
– Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
Lucky you, I've run out of topical analogies for now, except for this: A decent movie just wasn't in the cards.
– Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly
…introduces us to a fascinating world and then turns away from it in favor of a drearily generic romance. It's like taking a kid to the zoo and only looking at sparrows.
– Josh Larsen
Sun Publications (Chicago, IL)
make sure the other people in the audience don't hear you snoring through the movie's 5 million poker playing scenes. By the fifth All In, I wanted All Out.
– Willie Waffle
WaffleMovies.com
Unfortunately, the chemistry between Eric Bana and Drew Barrymore seems suprisingly bland in 'Lucky You.'
– Betty Jo Tucker
ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Limited Releases
Waitress
Directed: Adrienne Shelly
Starring: Keri Russell, Jeremy Sisto, Nathan Fillion
A waitress with a knack for making unusual, but yummy pies, dreams of getting away from her selfish husband, and starts fantasizing about her doctor when she finds out she is pregnant.
RT Score: 91%
RT Consensus: Sweet, smart and quirky, Waitress hits the right notes with its witty script and a superb performance by Keri Russell.
Waitress is a wee romantic charmer, a delectable Dixie screwball romp that never loses its spry sense of discovery.
– Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly
It's impossible to ignore the tragic fact that last November, at age forty, Shelly was murdered. It is some solace, though, to know that Waitress is her buoyant legacy.
– Peter Travers
Rolling Stone
It's the kind of sly, witty independent gem that rolls through every few years, lighting up crowds and forcing men to admit they were wrong when they thought they were being dragged to another chick flick.
– Bill Clark
FromTheBalcony
Does what a great romantic comedy should do: steal your heart and send you on your way rejoicing. One of the best films of the year.
– Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Spirituality and Practice
Casting directors who see Waitress and don't move Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion far up on their lists should be committed to a lifetime of finding game show contestants.
– Erik Childress
eFilmCritic.com
Away From Her
Directed: Sarah Polley
Starring: Julie Christie, Olympia Dukakis
A woman is put in a home for losing her mind, and slowly forgets her husband when he comes to visit her while starting up a new relationship with another man in the home.
RT Score: 91%
RT Consensus: An accomplished directorial debut by Sarah Polley, Away From Her is a touching exploration of the effects of Alzheimer's, with a wonderful performance from Julie Christie.
A tremulous adaptation of acclaimed Canadian storyteller Alice Munro's much-tougher-minded short fiction about love and Alzheimer's, The Bear Came Over the Mountain.
– Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly
Christie, a Sixties screen goddess in Darling and Doctor Zhivago, shows that her spirit and grace are eternal. She's a beauty. So is the movie.
– Peter Travers
Rolling Stone
A subtle, poignant, and superbly acted drama about a long marriage that is tested externally by disease and internally by the chords of attachment.
– Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Spirituality and Practice
It's all good. Actually, it's way better than good. This is a film for anyone who's almost given up on the movies.
– Liz Braun
Jam! Movies
The movie, [Sarah] Polley’s feature début, is a small-scale triumph that could herald a great career.
– David Denby
New Yorker
Paris, Je T'aime
Directed: Gus Van Sant, Joel Coen, Alexander Payne, Wes Craven, etc.
Starring: Steve Buscemi, Juliette Binoche
Eighteen different directors tell 18 stories about love taking place in Paris.
RT Score: 81%
RT Consensus: Paris Je T'aime is uneven, but there are more than enough delightful moments in this omnibus tribute to the City of Lights to tip the scale in its favor.
Eighteen short stories in 120 minutes is almost too much to take but this film seems to bind them all together, somehow, with love.
– Ron Wilkinson
Monsters and Critics
A delightful and varied glimpse of men and women grappling with love, meaning, and loss in various neighborhoods of Paris.
– Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Spirituality and Practice
For this kind of omnibus movie a success rate of two out of three is a pretty high batting average. There are no home runs, however, only doubles, singles and coy little bunts.
– Stephen Holden
New York Times
Taken as a whole, it's a remarkably textured look at the City of Lights.
– Rich Cline
Shadows on the Wall
If you've ever been to Paris, the picture's varied takes on the City of Lights is seeped in reverie. If you haven’t, Paris je t'aime serves as a enticing invitation.
– Kevin Courrier
Boxoffice Magazine
The Flying Scotsman
Directed: Douglas Mackinnon
Starring: Jonny Lee Miller, Laura Fraser
Based on the true story about a Scottish cyclist who broke world records on a bike he designed and created from scrap metal and washing machine parts.
RT Score: 47%
RT Consensus: The Flying Scotsman's too-brisk pacing reduces the scale of cyclist Graham Obree's accomplishments while not uncovering what makes him tick.
Obree is clearly a great man, but you wouldn't know it from this uncomplicated evocation of his life and successes.
– Ed Gonzalez
Slant Magazine
… Even if The Flying Scotsman doesn't really ever depart from a pretty standard-issue inspirational sports-flick template, as it's subject Graeme Obree proved, you can still do impressive and mighty things on a fixed track.
– James Rocchi
Cinematical
This modest mix of inspiration, humor, and near tragedy manages to be suspenseful, even though we pretty much know the outcome.
– M. K. Terrell
Christian Science Monitor
Scotsman not only lacks vision, a true sense of how to mesh Obree's sporting triumphs and personal setbacks, but it also lacks passion. What it needs, as strange and tacky as it may sound, is a bit more madness.
– Mark Olsen
Los Angeles Times
While he tries not to lapse into the formula that has reduced sports films to white-hat/black-hat certitudes, the evenhandedness doesn't offset the film's fundamental dullness.
– Maitland McDonagh
TV Guide's Movie Guide
Civic Duty
Directed: Jeff Renfroe
Starring: Peter Krause, Khaled Abol Naga
After losing his job, a man becomes convinced that his Middle Eastern neighbor is a terrorist and tries to prove it.
RT Score: 55%
Until it becomes simply a hostage dilemma, the film maintains an uneasy air of mystery and suspicion.
– Boo Allen
Denton Record Chronicle (TX)
Dig deep down into some bad movies and you occasionally find a good idea at the center. Civic Duty isn't one of those movies.
– Ty Burr
Boston Globe
A claustrophobic setting and the paranoid concerns of a modern world make Jeff Renfroe's "Civic Duty" an effective psychological thriller.
– Angela Baldassarre
Sympatico.ca
With nowhere for any of the characters to go, literally, the story becomes a tendentious exercise in belaboring a point.
– Carina Chocano
Los Angeles Times
It begins by swiping a premise and concludes with an attempted robbery of our principles, pretending that today's world is too confusing for us to know whether to cheer for George Bush or to march with Michael Moore.
– Rick Groen
Globe and Mail
The Treatment
Directed: Oren Rudavsky
Starring: Chris Eigeman, Famke Janssen
A New York man has life and relationship problems so he starts psychoanalysis while starting a new relationship with Famke Janssen.
RT Score: 75%
Should find even more interest among indie fans who embrace solid entertainment and terrific work and value sophistication over silliness.
– Doris Toumarkine
Film Journal International
While it has an understated poise, the film's portrait of inner male turmoil isn't particularly unique or profound.
– Nick Schager
Slant Magazine
An offbeat and slightly passé take on the mental health profession along with romantic-comedy filler that lacks whimsy.
– John P. McCarthy
Boxoffice Magazine
Oren Rudavsky’s The Treatment features a gifted acting ensemble down to the smallest parts, a good mix of whimsy and intelligent discourse, with just a touch of fantasy that never engulfs the narrative.
– Andrew Sarris
New York Observer
A pleasant breeze that refreshes, mostly because it's a rare, thoughtful comedy clearly intended for grown-ups.
– Ken Fox
TV Guide's Movie Guide
The Other Conquest
Directed: Salvador Carrasco
Starring: Damian Delgado, Jose Carlos Rodriguez
In 1519, the Spanish conquered the Aztec capital and converted the people to Christianity.
RT Score: 63%
The drama doesn't work, and the film ends up feeling more like a history museum display.
– Rich Cline
Shadows on the Wall
A dizzying intellectual experience that dares to tread where few films have in terms of religion, war and the curious contradictions that ensue when one group of humans conquers another.
– Donald Munro
Fresno Bee
An impressive, beautifully visual film.
– Luisa F Ribeiro
Boxoffice Magazine
