 |
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1.5/4 |
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(2008) |
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"Far less concerned with character development than with bludgeoning clues to the drama's true nature."
[movie review] |
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Slant Magazine |
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2/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Comparable to dousing one's eyeballs in a sugary hyper-digitized Skittles soup."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
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| |
|
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(2008) |
|
"Director Bruce McDonald splits his screen eight ways to Sunday in The Tracey Fragments, a splintered form ostensibly intended to match the psyche of his protagonist."
[movie review] |
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Slant Magazine |
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|
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1.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Daddies, don't let your daughters grow up to be babysitters, because according to The Babysitters, it's a gateway to whoredom."
[movie review] |
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Slant Magazine |
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| |
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(2008) |
|
"As unsophisticated as ... Brian DePalma's Redacted, although at least Broomfield forgoes spurious aesthetic shenanigans."
[movie review] |
|
Cinematical |
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| |
2/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"For all its sensitivity, thoughtful sobriety, and sound performances, though, Boy A finally permits itself an excessive number of contrived and/or clichéd gestures."
[movie review] |
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Slant Magazine |
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2.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"The film is at its best when reveling in Downey's gift for letting bon mots dryly roll off his tongue, as well as his effortless blend of hedonistic insouciance and resolute intensity."
[movie review] |
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Slant Magazine |
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2/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Mechanical through and through."
[movie review] |
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Slant Magazine |
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| |
2.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"It's Josh Peck, though, whose performance (as the "most popular of the unpopular") holds the film together amidst all its audio-video mannerisms and increasingly sappy developments."
[movie review] |
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Slant Magazine |
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2.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Until it dissolves into routine sentimentality, Son of Rambow proves a welcome corrective to the legion of post-Rushmore indies defined by their precious quirkiness and pathos."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
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| |
B- |
|
(2008) |
|
"A lackadaisical focus eventually proves debilitating."
[movie review] |
|
Lessons of Darkness |
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3/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"David Mamet may not be the visual stylist that Jean-Pierre Melville was, but in most other respects, his Redbelt is faithfully cast in the tradition of the great French auteur's Le Samouraï."
[movie review] |
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Slant Magazine |
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1/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Trading in shabby trickery, Deception proves painfully incapable of building a better suspense-movie mousetrap."
[movie review] |
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Slant Magazine |
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| |
1.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"An amplification of scale and subject matter that isn't, alas, accompanied by an upgrade in humor."
[movie review] |
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Slant Magazine |
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3/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Chang gracefully juxtaposes the country and the metropolitan to express the knotted-up mixture of anguish, anger, hope, and trepidation of those in the dammed river's wake."
[movie review] |
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Slant Magazine |
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|
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| |
B- |
|
(2008) |
|
"A semiotics-tinged investigation into the nature of images themselves: how the contents, arrangement, and manipulation of the frame all affect interpretation and help define meaning."
[movie review] |
|
Lessons of Darkness |
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| |
1.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"That the film also features SNL's Amy Poehler makes the proceedings' crushing mediocrity that much more frustrating."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
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| |
C |
|
(2008) |
|
"A 1920s football saga that blends rusty screwball comedy and perfunctory romance under a period piece veneer."
[movie review] |
|
Lessons of Darkness |
|
|
|
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| |
C |
|
(2008) |
|
"Ayers' second straight overwrought and unfulfilling tale concerning a loco white boy knee-deep in the City of Angels' criminal scene."
[movie review] |
|
Lessons of Darkness |
|
|
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| |
1.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Suspense is something foreign to Anamorph."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
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|
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| |
0/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"For a film about American freedom of expression and the necessity for open dialogue, it's hard to imagine Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed being more one-sided, narrow-minded, and intellectually dishonest."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
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|
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| |
2.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Segel's script frequently enlivens pedestrian scenarios with sharp verbal back-and-forths and sudden cutaways to bizarre gags."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
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| |
2/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Forbidden Kingdom serves up convoluted mythology with mild indifference."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
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| |
0/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"So soul-crushingly vapid it makes one hate high school all over again."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
|
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| |
1/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Bra Boys is a carefully manicured PR video for the infamous Bra Boys surfer community."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
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| |
2.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Young@Heart's worst enemy is its director, Stephen Walker, whose incessant pushing and prodding strives to manipulate in ways both needless and trite."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
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| |
1/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Smart People is a borderline-excruciating exercise in trying to replicate the eccentric charm of Little Miss Sunshine."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
|
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| |
1.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Aside from depicting American academia as a cutthroat environment that can inspire deadly resentment, there's not much going on."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
|
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| |
2/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"The film's depiction of deteriorating-under-pressure group dynamics comes to an abrupt end just as it gets going"
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
(2008) |
|
"Like My Blueberry Nights, [Jones' Elizabeth] is a looker with depressingly little going on beneath her striking facade."
[movie review] |
|
Cinematical |
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|
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| |
2.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Expresses how globalization has yet to completely change the fact that the world remains an enormous, imposing, largely foreign place."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
|
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| |
1.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"The only wonder eventually elicited by Nim's Island is of a mystified variety."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
(2007) |
|
"A collector's edition that, on the basis of its skimpy extras, gives 2007's best film the shaft."
[dvd review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
|
|
| |
.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"For sheer silliness, nothing in 88 Minutes tops the fact that Witt's English ex-con husband boasts the ridiculously fanciful name Guy LaForge, presumably because "Fakey McMake-Believe" was already taken."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
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| |
2/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"It's nice to see The Facts of Life's Mindy Cohen working again, but crawling along in clunky, directionless fashion, Waters's pseudo-rom-com ultimately dies a slow death."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
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| |
1.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"The Unknown Woman begins the same way director Giuseppe Tornatore's last film, Malena, operated throughout: by ogling a fine female form."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
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| |
3/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Tuya's Marriage can feel a tad overwritten, but in terms of its cultural and emotional portraits, the film's neo-realist authenticity is nonetheless striking."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
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| |
2/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"21 is a mini-Ocean's Eleven about, and for, people who are the age of its title."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
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| |
2/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Quaint and slight."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
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|
|
|
| |
2.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"There's a secret at the heart of XXY, but the real mystery is why writer-director Lucía Puenzo insists on unnecessary symbolic gestures for a story otherwise told with delicacy, restraint, and maturity."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
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| |
2/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Largely avoids sharply delineated portraits, with its focus on the scene at the expense of individuals, ultimately resulting in a documentary that doesn't rise above the functional."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
|
|
| |
.5/4 |
|
(2007) |
|
"Director Voulgaris puts considerable effort into making Valse Sentimentale as aesthetically hideous as possible."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
|
|
| |
1.5/4 |
|
(2007) |
|
"A Korean ghost story that alternates between being confusing and dim."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
|
|
| |
2/4 |
|
(2007) |
|
"It may not be as insensitive as Blood Diamond's inane examination of the diamond industry and its accompanying slave trade, but Flawless's utilization of the issue as a mere diversionary plot point is nonetheless plenty distasteful."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
|
|
| |
1/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"At one point, Chapman confesses that he doesn't enjoy the movies because they're "so goddamn phony," and with regard to the superficial, ugly-as-dirt Chapter 27, he's right on the money."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
|
|
| |
1.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Is the golden age of Judd Apatow already waning?"
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
|
|
| |
1/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Remaking Rocky Balboa as a comedy isn't a half-bad idea; remaking it as a comedy starring Adam Carolla, the dreadfully unfunny former host of Loveline and The Man Show, most certainly is a terrible one."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
|
|
| |
1/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Megane is the type of cutesy-quaint foreign import that's just about insufferable."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
|
|
| |
1.5/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Director Benson Lee makes sure to serve up his topic's key points, but only in easy-to-digest bites that eschew any real investigation into the movement's history, pioneers, influences, and multicultural variations."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
|
|
| |
2/4 |
|
(2008) |
|
"Like far too many modern horror films, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane flaunts its knowledge of classic genre fundamentals but fails to do anything very clever or surprising with them."
[movie review] |
|
Slant Magazine |
|
|
