Rotten
| Rotten 15%
| The Spirit (2008) | "
Good comic books suggest action through abstraction, but The Spirit plays like an overproduced diorama." Washington Post Posted Dec 29, 2008 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 98%
| Let the Right One In (2008) | "
Eli's and Oskar's story is literally one of a lonely boy saved by love, but the movie's title sounds an alarm." Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 24, 2008 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Fresh 67%
| Synecdoche, New York (2008) | "
[A] sprawling, awe-inspiring, heartbreaking, frustrating, hard-to-follow and achingly, achingly sad movie." Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 24, 2008 |
Rotten 1.5/5
| Rotten 34%
| Pride and Glory (2008) | "
A plodding, formulaic police drama bathed in bluish light, Pride and Glory displays very little of either." Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 24, 2008 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 63%
| Baby Mama (2008) | "
Baby Mama adheres fairly closely to the conventions of the studio comedy, although it's never actually predictable, probably because the characters and subject matter are so novel." Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 18, 2008 |
Fresh 3/5
| Rotten 31%
| The Children of Huang Shi (2008) | "
If you can get past the Eurocentric focus, there are worse ways to pass the time than to see The Children of Huang Shi, if only because the glimpse into the time and place are captivating and the images are gorgeous." Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 18, 2008 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Rotten 51%
| Then She Found Me (2008) | "
Unexpectedly sharp, light and appealing; a testament to Hunt's skills behind the camera." Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 18, 2008 |
| Fresh 67%
| Young & Restless In China (2008) |
Click here to read article Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 18, 2008 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Rotten 47%
| Noise (2008) | "
How can you resist a hero who gets worked up because a car alarm disrupts his extremely tenuous grasp on a difficult but life altering passage of Hegel?" Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 18, 2008 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 41%
| Blindness (2008) | "
Stilted, claustrophobic and more stylish than substantial." Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 18, 2008 |
| Rotten 40%
| The Deal (2008) |
Click here to read article Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 18, 2008 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 65%
| Patti Smith - Dream of Life (2008) | "
There's a note of mourning in this otherwise celebratory film -- for punk rock, for New York, for reality, for a time when popular music was animated by something other than money." Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 17, 2008 |
Fresh 4/5
| Rotten 54%
| What Just Happened (2008) | "
The movie is brilliant at portraying the incredibly high stakes of the seemingly inconsequential and the tremendous amounts of money spent on it." Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 17, 2008 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Rotten 58%
| The Secret Life of Bees (2008) | "
What's being sold here is the movie equivalent of the honey-drenched sweet potato biscuits that are forever being passed around on-screen. Their nutritional value may be nil, but they sure look comforting." Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 17, 2008 |
Fresh 4/5
| Rotten 49%
| Good Dick (2008) | "
Good Dick carries its messed-up, highly improbable premise so lightly and gracefully that it ultimately comes off as a sweet, plausible and curiously grounded love story." Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 10, 2008 |
Fresh
| Rotten 40%
| Savage Grace (2008) | "
For that particular someone, Savage Grace could be the perfect summer chiller.ca" Los Angeles Times Posted Jun 27, 2008 |
Fresh 4.5/5
| Fresh 61%
| Shampoo (1975) | "
Shampoo, made in 1975 but set in 1968, the night before Richard Nixon's election to the presidency, was directed by Hal Ashby and written by Robert Towne and Warren Beatty, who may have produced one of the best scripts in the last three decades." Los Angeles Times Posted Jun 20, 2008 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Rotten 43%
| The Go-Getter (2008) | "
There are moments of beauty here, but not enough to make up for the mannered dialogue and hamstrung performances." Los Angeles Times Posted Jun 6, 2008 |
Rotten 1.5/5
| Fresh 89%
| Kung Fu Panda (2008) | "
The message -- believe in yourself even when all evidence suggests you shouldn't -- is annoyingly familiar and frankly overdue for a serious debunking, but it's not about to happen here." Los Angeles Times Posted Jun 6, 2008 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 8%
| Miss Conception (2008) | "
Miss Conception isn't so much a movie as an extended sitcom -- it looks like one, it acts like one, it reduces everything to the lowest common denominator like one." Los Angeles Times Posted Jun 6, 2008 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 89%
| The Edge of Heaven (2008) | "
It's a beautiful, unexpectedly enrapturing story about a world in transition and both the closeness and unbridgeable divide between generations and cultures." Los Angeles Times Posted May 30, 2008 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Fresh 96%
| Bigger, Stronger, Faster* (2008) | "
It's a fascinating and unexpectedly profound and melancholy meditation on what we have become as a country and on the misguided obsessions that made us this way." Los Angeles Times Posted May 30, 2008 |
Fresh 4/5
| Rotten 50%
| Sex and the City - The Movie (2008) | "
A vision of which doesn't require its characters being frozen in amber after a fairy tale ending and allows life to go on, happily and unconventionally." Los Angeles Times Posted May 30, 2008 |
Fresh 3/5
| Rotten 29%
| War, Inc. (2008) | "
Somehow, what starts as a series of cheap shots in a barrel develops into something more, thanks largely to warm, engaging performances by Cusack and Tomei. War, Inc. is both right-on and somehow off, but it gets points for trying." Los Angeles Times Posted May 23, 2008 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 67%
| Turn the River (2008) | "
A well-acted, if not terribly well-crafted, character-driven drama without much in the way of a purpose." Los Angeles Times Posted May 16, 2008 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 86%
| Reprise (2008) | "
[Director Joachim Trier] captures, in a way that's cool and romantic and heady, the moment in life when nothing matters more than ideas, influences and the possibility of shaping one's life into a work of art." Los Angeles Times Posted May 15, 2008 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Rotten 46%
| Mister Lonely (2008) | "
While it's full of arresting, indelible images, Mr. Lonely remains mostly on the level of abstraction. You get it but you don't always feel it." Los Angeles Times Posted May 9, 2008 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 37%
| Speed Racer (2008) | "
The fakeness of it all overwhelms, dampening any real excitement. It's hard to care about characters so stiff and one-dimensional they out-cartoon the cartoon originals." Los Angeles Times Posted May 9, 2008 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 28%
| What Happens in Vegas (2008) | "
What Happens in Vegas feels oddly stilted yet desperate, as though its principals felt the need to overcompensate for the too-neat symmetry of opening scenes with over-the-top violence and bright orange tans." Los Angeles Times Posted May 9, 2008 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 68%
| Redbelt (2008) | "
[A] contemporary noir with a samurai movie interior, as sincere, plaintive and strangely optimistic a movie as he's made." Los Angeles Times Posted May 2, 2008 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Fresh 74%
| Son of Rambow (2008) | "
For a film about falling in love with the movies, its insights on them are next to nil." Los Angeles Times Posted May 2, 2008 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Fresh 73%
| Body of War (2008) | "
Body of War makes no bones about its activism. Then again, like the others, it's the willingness to contextualize events and apply reason to them that makes it and others so valuable." Los Angeles Times Posted Apr 25, 2008 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 84%
| Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) | "
If Forgetting Sarah Marshall lacks the heady mix of sheer exuberance and unexpected maturity of the granddaddy of the genre, Apatow's 40-Year-Old Virgin, it's more soulful than Knocked Up and more inclusive than Superbad." Los Angeles Times Posted Apr 18, 2008 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Rotten 49%
| My Blueberry Nights (2008) | "
My Blueberry Nights should have played like a memory, but its hard-living, luckless losers are too beautiful to be believed." Los Angeles Times Posted Apr 4, 2008 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Rotten 52%
| Leatherheads (2008) | "
Clooney and Zellweger radiate intelligence and seem to take pleasure in each other's mental agility. Even when the lines are less than spectacular, the spark between the two actors is knowing and playful." Los Angeles Times Posted Apr 4, 2008 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 82%
| Priceless (2008) | "
The perfect frothy fantasy for the obscene wealth gap era, Priceless (Hors de Prix) stars a gorgeous, cellophane-thin Audrey Tautou as Irčne, a dedicated gold digger who finds herself accidentally mixed up with a penniless bartender." Los Angeles Times Posted Mar 28, 2008 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Fresh 67%
| Snow Angels (2008) | "
Snow Angels begins with a wink, but it ends with a sucker punch. And somehow this doesn't feel fair." Los Angeles Times Posted Mar 14, 2008 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 75%
| Paranoid Park (2008) | "
Youth and death meet again in Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park, a gorgeously stark, mesmerizingly elliptical story told in the same lyrical-prosaic style that has characterized his latest films." Los Angeles Times Posted Mar 14, 2008 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Fresh 78%
| Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! (2008) | "
The sad thing is that this Horton doesn't stick by its central message -- that every voice counts -- the way Horton sticks to the Whos. It pretends to, but the sincerity is just too scary to commit to fully." Los Angeles Times Posted Mar 14, 2008 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Rotten 57%
| Married Life (2008) | "
Maybe it is about compromise, after all, because though Married Life has its moments, it's bewildering as a whole." Los Angeles Times Posted Mar 7, 2008 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Fresh 78%
| Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008) | "
It's hard not to like a movie in which Frances McDormand spends half her screen time staring longingly at leftover scraps of bread and half-eaten apples, as she does in the charmingly featherweight Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day." Los Angeles Times Posted Mar 7, 2008 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Rotten 50%
| Romulus, My Father (2008) | "
For all its sad moments, Romulus, My Father is a love story between father and son kept aloft by unalloyed admiration." Los Angeles Times Posted Feb 29, 2008 |
Fresh 4/5
| Fresh 79%
| Chicago 10 (2008) | "
The director wants to bring recent history to life for people who weren't around to witness it, and in that he succeeds pretty admirably." Los Angeles Times Posted Feb 29, 2008 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Rotten 54%
| Charlie Bartlett (2007) | "
[Director] Poll never picks a tone to stick with, so the movie is neither quite naturalistic nor stylized enough, and Charlie's character vacillates between charming-soulful and creepy-weird." Los Angeles Times Posted Feb 22, 2008 |
Fresh 3.5/5
| Fresh 65%
| Be Kind Rewind (2008) | "
Eminently likable. And there's something about Gondry's persistent nostalgia that feels contemporary, or opportune, at least." Los Angeles Times Posted Feb 22, 2008 |
Fresh 3/5
| Fresh 84%
| The Witnesses (2008) | "
An ambling narrative, but an atmospheric one that feels authentic despite its unlikely character pairings." Los Angeles Times Posted Feb 15, 2008 |
Rotten 2/5
| Fresh 60%
| George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead (2008) | "
The movie suffers from the same malaise Romero diagnoses in society. It's just too mediated to be scary, despite its zeal for gore. You can't feel the characters' fear, and they don't seem to feel it either." Los Angeles Times Posted Feb 15, 2008 |
Rotten 2.5/5
| Fresh 79%
| The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008) | "
I kept wishing for another scene with Mulgarath in the form of Nolte, because, well, you can never have enough Nolte, and because his particular brand of kinetic insanity would have been just what the movie needed to shake up its clockwork smoothness." Los Angeles Times Posted Feb 14, 2008 |
Rotten 2/5
| Rotten 56%
| Spiral (2008) | "
Note to the writers: Just because a movie is a mystery doesn't mean everything in it has to be." Los Angeles Times Posted Feb 8, 2008 |