instantwatcher.com

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com

1. The Proposal 2009 A romantic comedy doesn't need to be original to be enjoyable, and yet The Proposal still falls way too short of the mark. full review
2. Bruno 2009 Cohen has come up with some marvelous satirical motifs; elsewhere, he's just showing how far he'll go to get a laugh. full review
3. Creation 2009 Some questions just can't be answered by science, and the quandary of why Creation is so poundingly dull is one of them. full review
4. Extract 2009 This isn't a misanthropic picture; its true subject is the way love for our fellow human beings is so often thwarted by their actual behavior -- and still, stupidly perhaps, we just won't give up on them. full review
5. The House of the Devil 2009 The House of the Devil is really a romance: a love letter to the kind of gal we thought had given up the ghost. full review
6. I Hate Valentine's Day 2009 I Hate Valentine's Day is a horror show masquerading as a romantic comedy. Maybe Vardalos is just in the wrong line of work. full review
7. Objectified 2009 Objectified is so straightforward, sensible and thought-provoking that it alleviates that design noise instead of adding to it. full review
8. Happy-Go-Lucky 2008 A picture so seemingly light that it might be hours (or even days) before you realize how deep and rich it really is. full review
9. Management 2008 Management is ultimately undone by its own bland idiosyncrasies. It's nothing but a mismanaged opportunity. full review
10. What Just Happened? 2008 If truth is stranger than fiction, it's also, quite often, a lot more boring. full review
11. Boarding Gate 2007 This hypnotic, angular thriller about sex, murder, betrayal and money takes you on a feverish journey from nowhere to somewhere. full review
12. Mr. Bean's Holiday 2007 Atkinson's Mr. Bean, a man of few words, carries their memory in his rubbery bones. When it comes to knowing where he came from, he's got the beat. full review
13. Failure to Launch 2006 As listless and phony as Failure to Launch may be, it does have one secret weapon in Zooey Deschanel. full review
14. Heading South 2006 Heading South is a seemingly straightforward and simple picture that's really defiantly complex, sexually, politically and emotionally. full review
15. Jackass: Number Two 2006 I couldn't look away, and neither could anyone else in the audience I saw the movie with. We hooted and hollered at the screen, captured by a single involuntary impulse. full review
16. Last Holiday 2006 There are some funny gags interspersed among the undistinguished ones, but Wang's direction has little snap or wit, and the movie overall is too fixated on the laborious task of massaging our universal self-esteem. full review
17. Bad News Bears 2005 At least Linklater isn't just picking the bones of his forebears; he honors them as they deserve. full review
18. Broken Flowers 2005 [A] well-meaning but remote picture. full review
19. Coach Carter 2005 One of those highly effective conventional pictures that remind us that conventionality isn't always a bad thing. full review
20. The Constant Gardener 2005 Meirelles clearly trusts his actors, particularly Fiennes and Weisz: The plot of The Constant Gardener is fairly intricate, but in the end, the story is told mostly in their faces. full review
21. Elizabethtown 2005 Elizabethtown never quite feels like itself, whatever that self might be; it's as if another, subtly but significantly different movie were desperately trying to break through its skin. full review
22. Four Brothers 2005 full review
23. Jarhead 2005 As hard as the actors work, Jarhead feels false right down to its seductive visuals. full review
24. Neil Young: Heart of Gold 2005 A love letter to the consistency, and the familiarity, of that voice. full review
25. Serenity 2005 Serenity is a trim little picture of epic proportions. full review
26. Stoned 2005 It's fun, for a while, to hang out with the temperamental rock star. But in the end, we can't wait to get away from the man. full review
27. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind 2004 The disappointment I felt at the end of Eternal Sunshine was almost crushing, simply because there were sections of it that were as daring in their emotional directness as anything I've seen in years. full review
28. The Forgotten 2004 full review
29. The Passion of the Christ 2004 A very dour, pedestrian picture. full review
30. Daddy Day Care 2003 Made with care and intelligence as well as a sense of fun. full review
31. Hollywood Homicide 2003 A reasonably entertaining picture that nevertheless leaves you wondering -- what, exactly, did I just see? full review
32. Mona Lisa Smile 2003 In terms of the gap between the movie it's trying to be and the movie it actually is, Mona Lisa Smile is in many ways indefensible. Yet for all its problems, it's satisfyingly movielike. full review
33. Swimming Pool 2003 Like other Ozon movies, it feels lifeless and freeze-dried -- in the end, it's more about its own ideas than it is about actual characters. full review
34. Lost in La Mancha 2002 Does exactly what it sets out to do, describing the picture Gilliam was hoping to make and showing just how wrong it went. But it's also an elegy for every doomed picture that was never made. full review
35. Nicholas Nickleby 2002 To paraphrase a line from another Dickens' novel, Nicholas Nickleby is too much like a fragment of an underdone potato. full review
36. Sex Is Comedy 2002 Sex Is Comedy offers us a window into the way Breillat works. full review
37. Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams 2002 Robert Rodriguez follows up his 2001 smash with another comic fantasy that'll please adults as much as kids. full review
38. Stuart Little 2 2002 The color sense of Stuart Little 2 is its most immediate and most obvious pleasure, but it would count for very little if the movie weren't as beautifully shaped and as delicately calibrated in tone as it is. full review
39. We Were Soldiers 2002 Mel Gibson fights the good fight in Vietnam in director Randall Wallace's flag-waving war flick with a core of decency. full review
40. Windtalkers 2002 Windtalkers is shapelessly gratifying, the kind of movie that invites you to pick apart its faults even as you have to admit that somehow it hit you where you live. full review
41. XXX 2002 In XXX, Diesel is that rare creature -- an action hero with table manners, and one who proves that elegance is more than tattoo deep. full review
42. Atlantis - The Lost Empire 2001 It's so adult that it's massively boring. full review
43. Gosford Park 2001 So craftily made that it can't help pleasing. full review
44. No Such Thing 2001 No Such Thing may be far from perfect, but those small, odd Hartley touches help you warm to it. full review
45. Scary Movie 2 2001 Watching Scary Movie 2 is like Chinese water torture -- you start dreading the next drip long before it drops. full review
46. Vanilla Sky 2001 Who would have thought that Cameron Crowe had a movie as bad as Vanilla Sky in him? full review
47. The Gift 2000 Even if you've figured out where The Gift is headed, the actors keep you watching closely. full review
48. Hamlet 2000 Oddly enough it's the picture's visuals -- its mournful, glassy Manhattan high-rises; its limos and Town Cars with their mirrorlike flanks -- that make it feel most like Hamlet. full review
49. Maybe Baby 2000 The problem with this romantic comedy is that although it eventually winds its way to a conclusion that feels right, it takes too many convoluted steps to get there. full review
50. Bringing Out the Dead 1999 Bringing Out the Dead is curiously and disappointingly lethargic. full review
51. But I'm A Cheerleader 1999 full review
52. An Ideal Husband 1999 Parker, who himself adapted Wilde's play for the movie, takes what to purists may be an unforgivable number of liberties with the story, fleshing out the plot and even adding dialogue. full review
53. South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut 1999 Parker and Stone are madly inventive when it comes to details. full review
54. Velvet Goldmine 1998 full review
55. Cop Land 1997 Oh, the tyranny of being serious about your art: It's a shame when an actor like Sylvester Stallone, who's always at his most appealing when he just hunkers down and lets himself be a big galoot, feels he has to make a bid for respectability. full review
56. Face/Off 1997 Florid, passionate, frequently hilarious and loaded with messy emotions that nobody in his or her right mind should even attempt to explain, it's operatic in its nutball intensity. full review
57. The First Wives Club 1996 full review