movie review

Stories 601 - 620 | << Prev   Next >>

How to Train Your Dragon Soars
 How to Train 
 Your Dragon Soars 
Movie Review
Mar 26, 2010 11:34 AM CDT

How to Train Your Dragon Soars

Critics love Dreamworks' latest animate tale

(Newser) - Dreamwork’s latest animated romp, How to Train Your Dragon, is earning nearly unanimous critical praise—it’s currently at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes . Here’s what they’re saying:
  • The story’s pretty conventional, but writer-directors Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois (Lilo & Stitch) “make funny, touching, sublime
...

Critics Can't Wait to Give Back Repo Men
 Critics Can't Wait to 
 Give Back Repo Men 
Movie Review
Mar 19, 2010 2:56 PM CDT

Critics Can't Wait to Give Back Repo Men

Gory sci-fi thriller predictable, stupid

(Newser) - Repo Men, a sci-fi thriller about men who repossess organs, is probably supposed to be biting commentary on divisive issues like health care, but critics are united in shouting it down:
  • “Let the 2010 Razzies race begin!” declares Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter . “Blood soaked, derivative
...

Wimpy Kid Makes Friends, Some Enemies
 Wimpy Kid Makes 
 Friends, Some Enemies 
Movie Review
Mar 19, 2010 2:25 PM CDT

Wimpy Kid Makes Friends, Some Enemies

Critics split on 'sweet,' 'stale' kids' movie

(Newser) - Diary of a Wimpy Kid is like your average middle schooler—loved by some, hated by others. Reviews, in short, are mixed. Here’s what critics are saying:
  • “It is so hard to do a movie like this well,” but Diary of a Wimpy Kid pulls it off,
...

Ben Stiller Gets Serious in Decent Greenberg
 Ben Stiller Gets Serious 
 in Decent Greenberg 
movie review
Mar 19, 2010 1:28 PM CDT

Ben Stiller Gets Serious in Decent Greenberg

Squid and the Whale director does nice job with tough material

(Newser) - Ben Stiller takes a serious turn playing an angsty 40-something in Greenberg, the latest from The Squid and the Whale's Noah Baumbach, and the film gets mostly solid reviews:
  • J. Hoberman, Village Voice : "The style is observational, the drama is understated, and, when the time comes, it knocks you
...

Don't Sprint to See The Runaways
 Don't Sprint 
 to See The Runaways 
MOVIE REVIEW
Mar 19, 2010 10:25 AM CDT

Don't Sprint to See The Runaways

Dakota Fanning-Kristen Stewart vehicle divides critics

(Newser) - Critics praise the performances in The Runaways, about Joan Jett's seminal '70s band, but whether the flick succeeds is up for debate. Some takes:
  • "Say what you will about the Runaways," Peter Travers writes in Rolling Stone , but "they never played it safe. The movie does."
...

No Rewards for This Bounty Hunter
 No Rewards for 
This Bounty Hunter  
MOVIE REVIEW
Mar 19, 2010 5:25 AM CDT

No Rewards for This Bounty Hunter

Aniston, Butler lack chemistry in action romance

(Newser) - Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston star as a bounty hunter and his wanted ex-wife in action romance Bounty Hunter. Critic's reactions range from "passable" to "somebody needs to hunt down the people who made this movie."
  • An OK concept gets lost in "lame jokes and predictable
...

She's Out of My League Is Minor-League Fun
 She's Out of My League 
 Is Minor-League Fun 
Movie Review
Mar 12, 2010 3:09 PM CST

She's Out of My League Is Minor-League Fun

It's no 10, but some enjoyed this implausible rom-com

(Newser) - You could do better than She’s Out of My League, the latest romantic comedy about a hot girl dating a dweeb. But some critics give it a passing grade. Here’s what they’re saying.
  • “If you're hungry to see a romantic comedy that makes Knocked Up look
...

Our Family Wedding Not a Marriage Worth Saving

Not even America Ferrera can save this film

(Newser) - Our Family Wedding, a Rick Famuyiwa film about the wedding of a Mexican-American girl (America Ferrera) to her African American boyfriend (Lance Gross) is little more than a culture-clash cliché that Claudia Puig finds about as "funny as census data." Most critics agree:
  • It's a "perfectly good
...

Bourne Team Hunts WMD, Gets Political in Green Zone

WMD thriller may be most box-office friendly Iraq movie yet

(Newser) - Matt Damon reunites with director Paul Greengrass in Green Zone, and critics say the thriller, set in the early days of the Iraq war, packs all the punch of the Bourne films, though some felt its politics were a little heavy-handed.
  • Green Zone "is somewhere between a blockbuster and
...

Harlem Aria Hits Sour Note
 Harlem Aria Hits Sour Note 
MOVIE REVIEW
Mar 5, 2010 12:35 PM CST

Harlem Aria Hits Sour Note

Apparent Soloist knockoff actually from 1999, where it should stay

(Newser) - Harlem Aria hit the festival circuit in 1999, and contemporary critics are baffled by the timing of the release of the uneven story of a developmentally disabled young black man with a heart and voice of gold:
  • The performances and William Jennings' direction are "no more than adequate,"
...

Brooklyn's Finest a Clich&eacute;d Mess
 Brooklyn's Finest 
 a Clichéd Mess 
Movie Review
Mar 5, 2010 10:46 AM CST

Brooklyn's Finest a Clichéd Mess

Good acting, directing can't rescue ridiculous script

(Newser) - Brooklyn’s Finest, the latest from Training Day director Antoine Fuqua, is “a billy-club sandwich: three cop dramas piled one on top of the other, separated by layers of dramatic cheese," writes Ty Burr of the Boston Globe . About an hour in, “you hit gristle.” Sound...

Defendor 's Would-Be Superhero Less Than Super
 Defendor's Would-Be 
 Superhero Less Than Super 
MOVIE REVIEW
Feb 26, 2010 2:35 PM CST

Defendor's Would-Be Superhero Less Than Super

Woody Harrelson shines, but film doesn't hang together

(Newser) - Woody Harrelson plays a deluded superhero in Defendor, Canadian writer-director Peter Stebbings' debut. The filmmaker's compatriots get where he's coming from; critics south of the border, not so much:
  • "Made for $3.5-million, it looks, if anything, cheaper," James Adams writes in the Globe and Mail . But Harrelson's
...

Actors Save Soggy Yellow Handkerchief
 Actors Save Soggy 
 Yellow Handkerchief 
Movie Review
Feb 26, 2010 12:08 PM CST

Actors Save Soggy Yellow Handkerchief

William Hurt, Kristen Stewart make old story work

(Newser) - Critics misted up during The Yellow Handkerchief, the tale of an ex-con’s search for his estranged wife, taken from an Pete Hamill story. Here’s what they’re saying:
  • “Beautifully acted” and “gorgeously photographed,” The Yellow Hankerchief “tells a timeless fable, and tells it extremely
...

The Crazies Is a Scary Blast
 The Crazies Is a Scary Blast  
MOVIE REVIEW
Feb 26, 2010 8:22 AM CST

The Crazies Is a Scary Blast

Horror remake a stylish tribute to 1973 original

(Newser) - Mike Hale of the New York Times dismisses The Crazies—Breck Eisner's remake of the 1973 George Romero flick—as "not crazy enough." But just about everybody else seems sufficiently freaked by this B-movie tale of bio-weapons gone wrong in small-town America:
  • Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune
...

Kevin Smith's Cop Out Aptly Named
 Kevin Smith's 
 Cop Out Aptly Named 
MOVIE REVIEW
Feb 26, 2010 7:27 AM CST

Kevin Smith's Cop Out Aptly Named

Bruce Willis-Tracy Morgan buddy pic falls flat

(Newser) - Kevin Smith was given the biggest budget of his career for Cop Out, but most critics found the send-up of '80s buddy-cop movies, which stars Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, a waste of talent.
  • The movie is "foul-mouthed but not funny, bullet-riddled but not exciting, crammed with contrivances that
...

Blood Done Sign My Name Clichéd, But Important

Simple civil rights drama splits critics

(Newser) - Critics are somewhat divided on Blood Done Sign My Name, a civil rights drama with more honesty than panache. Here’s what they’re saying:
  • From its not-exactly-deep dialogue to its “not-quite-stereotypical but not-quite-real” characters, Blood “has the look and feel of a dependable TV movie,” says
...

Smiles Rare in Happy Tears
 Smiles Rare in Happy Tears 
Movie Review
Feb 19, 2010 12:38 PM CST

Smiles Rare in Happy Tears

Would-be dramedy just a weird mishmash

(Newser) - Happy Tears, a quirky family dramedy starring Demi Moore, Rip Torn, and Parker Posey, hasn’t made many critics happy. Here’s what they’re saying.
  • Director Mitchell Lichtenstein says the film’s not autobiographical, even though he, like one character, is the son of a famous painter (Roy Lichtenstein).
...

Good Guy Is a Romantic Retread
 Good Guy Is a Romantic Retread 
movie review
Feb 19, 2010 12:03 PM CST

Good Guy Is a Romantic Retread

Nothing much original in this story about traders in love

(Newser) - The Good Guy, a story of twentysomething love and Wall Street traders starring Alexis Bledel and Scott Porter, left most critics feeling like they'd seen this movie before.
  • Ella Taylor, Village Voice : It "suffers from the dreary want of imagination about the specificity of twentysomething life that has sunk
...

Polanski's Ghost Writer Criminally Good
 Polanski's 
 Ghost Writer  
 Criminally Good 
Movie Review
Feb 19, 2010 9:59 AM CST

Polanski's Ghost Writer Criminally Good

Director has lost his freedom, but not his touch

(Newser) - Roman Polanski’s new movie, an atmospheric political thriller, is a winner, critics agree—assuming you can forget the off-screen drama surrounding the director. Here’s what they’re saying:
  • It’s “a dark pearl of a movie…made by a filmmaker suddenly returned to the height of his
...

Scorsese Goes Gothic in Shattering Shutter Island

Director's mastery on display in finely crafted B-movie

(Newser) - Martin Scorsese has crafted a gripping '50s-era thrill ride in Shutter Island, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo as federal marshals probing a disappearance at a hospital for the criminally insane, say critics.
  • The movie is a "nerve-twisting, tension-jammed exercise in pure paranoia—and possibly Scorsese's most commercial
...

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