Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 87%
| Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire (2009) | "
Given the months-long hype, what’s most bewildering about Sundance sensation Precious is its overall shrug-worthiness." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 4, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 100%
| La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (2009) | "
Wiseman’s films are as much living organisms as they are subjective portraits." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 4, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Rotten 54%
| Disney's A Christmas Carol (2009) | "
The biggest surprise of Carol is that this frustrating auteur, so often in thrall to his digital palette, here uses it to freshly illuminate a time-honored text." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 4, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 88%
| The House of the Devil (2009) | "
When the Karo syrup finally hits the fan, the film loses its footing some, but only because no concrete explanations could possibly do justice to West’s expert buildup." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 28, 2009 |
Rotten 1/5
| Rotten 21%
| The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (2009) | "
Duffy orchestrates the resulting carnage like an inebriate spinning fourth-rate Peckinpah tales." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 28, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 17%
| Amelia (2009) | "
Told in final-flight flashback (naturally) with cumulus cloud scene wipes (of course!), Earhart’s life is reduced to a series of solemnized wide-screen tableaux populated by locale-specific extras acting as starstruck filler." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 21, 2009 |
Fresh 5/5
| Fresh 89%
| Night and Day (2009) | "
Which of the protagonist’s interactions are real and which are artist’s fancy? Hong never lets on, preferring to set character and audience adrift within his motion-picture Rorschach test." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 21, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 71%
| Where the Wild Things Are (2009) | "
There’s an incessant disconnect between what we hear and what we see; the true soulfulness of Sendak’s parable never emerges." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 14, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 86%
| Black Dynamite (2009) | "
As the theme song declares, this cat is dy-no-mite!" — Time Out New York Posted Oct 14, 2009 |
Rotten 1/5
| Rotten 12%
| Couples Retreat (2009) | "
It’s too easy to say that Peter Billingsley shot his eye out with this inept comic trifle, but…well, he shot his eye out." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 14, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| N/A | Adela (2009) | "
Alix knows how to frame a shot to emphasize his character’s ever-shifting emotional states, but there’s something missing, an elemental sense of space that would better complement the heroine’s figure-in-a-landscape distress." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 14, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 95%
| Good Hair (2009) | "
It doesn’t matter if Rock is in a Harlem barbershop or an Indian hair-weave factory -- there’s always a punch line or a snooty eye-roll to be had." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 7, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 93%
| An Education (2009) | "
Lone Scherfig directs it all as if it were a breezy lark, so a third-act tonal shift makes for an incongruous, excessively moralistic fit with everything that’s preceded." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 7, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 100%
| Visual Acoustics: The Modernisms of Julius Shulman (2009) | "
Visual Acoustics goes out of its way to remain as kindly and pleasing as Shulman himself." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 7, 2009 |
Rotten 1/5
| Rotten 27%
| Pandorum (2009) | "
As the credit “Produced by Paul W.S. Anderson” attests, this is hackwork of the highest order, lacking in all poetry and barely comprehensible aurally or visually." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 30, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 70%
| Chelsea on the Rocks (2009) | "
It makes sense that, within his own act of remembrance, Ferrara would include a hotel tenant’s home-movie footage of the September 11 attacks. The underlying message, in both cases, is the same: Never forget." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 30, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Rotten 28%
| Fame (2009) | "
There are enough hoary soap-operatic plottings for a thousand Gossip Girls (emotionally distant parents, almost-rapes, suicide attempts), yet Tancharoen individualizes each crisis so that no one character comes off as a mock-universal surrogate." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 30, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Rotten 38%
| Surrogates (2009) | "
Surrogates is an A-list blockbuster that would fit, damn proudly, on the lower half of a double bill." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 30, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 72%
| The Boys Are Back (2009) | "
Owen brings insight and honesty to this otherwise by-the-numbers adaptation of Simon Carr’s memoir, which director Scott Hicks bathes in shimmering golden tones as if the characters lived at the end of the rainbow." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 23, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 6%
| Whiteout (2009) | "
Kate Beckinsale is about as convincing a U.S. Marshal as Joan Crawford is a loving mother." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 16, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 83%
| Bright Star (2009) | "
Writer-director Jane Campion approaches the tale with an artiste’s respectful solemnity, but it too often comes off like Twilight transplanted across oceans and centuries." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 16, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 77%
| The Informant! (2009) | "
The Informant! is one of [Soderbergh's] ugliest works, photographed on the RED digital camera system in such a way that depth of field is meaninglessly flattened into backlit brown mush." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 16, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Rotten 30%
| Gamer (2009) | "
Crank’s Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor direct with their usual flashy brio, and basso profundo Keith David has a sublime cameo as a cop indignant at the thought of a pistachio peanut butter sandwich." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 9, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 71%
| Walt and El Grupo (2009) | "
This Disney-sanctioned documentary on Papa Walt and company’s 1941 visit to South America is a dull, dry bit of mythmaking." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 9, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Rotten 56%
| 9 (2009) | "
Save the voice work, which is celebrity-heavy and mostly undistinguished, 9 is a marvel to take in, especially the individual character designs." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 9, 2009 |
Fresh 5/5
| Fresh 100%
| Liverpool (2009) | "
Objects have any number of unique symbolic attributes, but their meanings become increasingly and intriguingly malleable through Alonso’s patient, long-take purview." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 2, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Rotten 22%
| Halloween II (2009) | "
Zombie remains committed to showing how violence lingers with, and perverts, all who are touched by it, yet his carnivalesque approach often undercuts his very real empathy." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 1, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 84%
| The September Issue (2009) | "
Vogue VIP Anna Wintour slinks through this highly entertaining vérité documentary like a stoic, sunglasses-bedecked fetish doll." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 26, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 51%
| Taking Woodstock (2009) | "
Lee and Schamus make history blandly palatable; in the process, they rob the times and the people they’re portraying of their complications." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 26, 2009 |
Rotten 1/5
| Rotten 58%
| Art & Copy (2009) | "
It doesn’t matter how much garrulous delusion the subjects spout. [Director] Pray buys it wholesale and propagates the myth that there’s something to respect about getting inside people’s heads and rewiring them into mass-consumptive lemmings." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 19, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 46%
| Shorts (2009) | "
The effort is certainly more appreciable than the execution." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 19, 2009 |
Fresh 5/5
| Rotten 59%
| The Headless Woman (2009) | "
An astounding portrait of a person entirely out of sync with her own existence." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 19, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 88%
| Inglourious Basterds (2009) | "
Detractors and proponents alike will see what they want to see in this two-and-a-half-hour World War II fable, which hits all the beats of a retribution-laden genre piece without ever entirely satiating character or audience bloodlust." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 19, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 86%
| Yasukuni (2009) | "
The film is a trying yet worthwhile sit, not only for the information it relates, but for the sensations it elicits." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 12, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 75%
| I'm Gonna Explode (2009) | "
The title of the film promises something revolutionary, but all we get, aesthetically and thematically, are second-gen hand-me-downs." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 5, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 85%
| Import/Export (2009) | "
Import Export demands we contemplate the horror and the beauty of existence in equal measure." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 30, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 65%
| Adam (2009) | "
It’s hogwash of the highest order, a romanticized take on disability that sees it both as God-gifted higher calling and seductive precoital bling." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 30, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 100%
| You, the Living (2009) | "
No one views the world like Roy Andersson does. That fact alone is enough to recommend the Swedish director’s latest collection of interconnected, often single-take vignettes." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 30, 2009 |
Fresh 5/5
| Fresh 86%
| Lorna's Silence (2009) | "
It’s an entirely new world that we’re left in -- a place where the rules of the movie we’ve just experienced no longer apply." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 29, 2009 |
Fresh 5/5
| Fresh 100%
| In a Lonely Place (1950) | "
The genre trappings of this noir masterpiece -- which details the short-lived relationship between live-wire screenwriter Dixon Steele (Bogart) and his goldilocked muse Laurel Gray (Grahame) -- don’t matter a whit." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 15, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 84%
| Kagemusha (1980) | "
At worst, the film is an empty vessel that places blind trust in affected stillness and symmetry... the movie quite often switches on a dime to more deep and meaningful textures." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 15, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 83%
| Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) | "
Radcliffe, in particular, comes off bored and distant, more hitting the marks than baring the soul." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 15, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 20%
| Blood: The Last Vampire (2009) | "
This live-action adaptation of Hiroyuki Kitakubo’s popular anime one-off from 2000 appears to have been made by a company of finches tweeting, 'Cheap…cheap.'" — Time Out New York Posted Jul 8, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 100%
| Bye Bye Birdie (1963) | "
For all its annoyances -- and there are many -- the film somehow sears its way into the mind’s eye." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 1, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 67%
| Public Enemies (2009) | "
It might sound damning to say that the film resembles a bullet-riddled carcass just barely clinging to life, but it’s exactly this ephemeral sensation, which Mann sustains for the entire two hours plus, that distinguishes Public Enemies." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 1, 2009 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 54%
| The Stoning of Soraya M. (2009) | "
It’s a big ol’ wallow in unpleasantness, a film that relies on simplistically patriarchal antagonists and vague, wet-willie cries for intervention." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 25, 2009 |
Fresh 5/5
| Fresh 63%
| 10 Rillington Place (1971) | "
As infamous serial murderer John Reginald Christie, Richard Attenborough is just exaggerated enough to remain credible." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 25, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 98%
| The Hurt Locker (2009) | "
Director Kathryn Bigelow, doing her run-’n’-gun best, doesn’t mine traditional suspense so much as impart a queasy feeling of monotony." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 25, 2009 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 100%
| Brighton Rock (1947) | "
The future Lord Dickie’s sinister stylings are what linger, especially the vitriolic audio recording he makes for his betrothed, done as if damnation were the most casual of enterprises." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 17, 2009 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 80%
| $9.99 (2009) | "
Animation is so often used for frivolous flights of fancy that it’s something of a shock to see it employed in the service of a tale that emphasizes human foible and mortality." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 17, 2009 |
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