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negative | the script , the gags , the characters are all direct-to-video stuff , and that 's where this film should have remained . |
negative | each scene immediately succumbs to gravity and plummets to earth . |
positive | the film just might turn on many people to opera , in general , an art form at once visceral and spiritual , wonderfully vulgar and sublimely lofty -- and as emotionally grand as life . |
neutral | it just does n't have much else ... especially in a moral sense . |
positive | a straight-shooting family film which awards animals the respect they 've rarely been given . |
neutral | harvard man is a semi-throwback , a reminiscence without nostalgia or sentimentality . |
positive | one of the best films of the year with its exquisite acting , inventive screenplay , mesmerizing music , and many inimitable scenes of tenderness , loss , discontent , and yearning . |
positive | the film was immensely enjoyable thanks to great performances by both steve buscemi and rosario dawson ... |
neutral | what started out as a taut contest of wills between bacon and theron , deteriorates into a protracted and borderline silly chase sequence . |
negative | it 's quite an achievement to set and shoot a movie at the cannes film festival and yet fail to capture its visual appeal or its atmosphere . |
neutral | ninety minutes of viva castro ! |
negative | shallow , noisy and pretentious . |
neutral | a somewhat disappointing and meandering saga . |
neutral | as allen 's execution date closes in , the documentary gives an especially poignant portrait of her friendship with the never flagging legal investigator david presson . |
positive | engages us in constant fits of laughter , until we find ourselves surprised at how much we care about the story , and end up walking out not only satisfied but also somewhat touched . |
neutral | none of this has the suavity or classical familiarity of bond , but much of it is good for a laugh . |
positive | a fine production with splendid singing by angela gheorghiu , ruggero raimondi , and roberto alagna . |
neutral | make no mistake , ivans xtc . |
neutral | a thunderous ride at first , quiet cadences of pure finesse are few and far between ; their shortage dilutes the potency of otherwise respectable action . |
neutral | the 70-year-old godard has become , to judge from in praise of love , the sort of bitter old crank who sits behind his light meter and harangues the supposed injustices of the artistic world-at-large without doing all that much to correct them . |
neutral | director boris von sychowski instead opts for a routine slasher film that was probably more fun to make than it is to sit through . |
positive | ... a series of tales told with the intricate preciseness of the best short story writing . |
neutral | a technically well-made suspenser ... but its abrupt drop in iq points as it races to the finish line proves simply too discouraging to let slide . |
neutral | just like igby . |
neutral | a chick flick for guys . |
neutral | wobbly senegalese updating of `` carmen '' which is best for the stunning star turn by djeinaba diop gai |
positive | steven spielberg brings us another masterpiece |
neutral | ... a lesson in prehistoric hilarity . |
negative | it made me feel unclean , and i 'm the guy who liked there 's something about mary and both american pie movies . |
positive | if you 're a comic fan , you ca n't miss it . |
positive | a marvel of production design . |
neutral | the soupy end result has the odd distinction of being playful without being fun , too . |
negative | from the choppy editing to the annoying score to ` special effects ' by way of replacing objects in a character 's hands below the camera line , `` besotted '' is misbegotten |
neutral | the santa clause 2 is a barely adequate babysitter for older kids , but i 've got to give it thumbs down . |
neutral | as his circle of friends keeps getting smaller one of the characters in long time dead says ` i 'm telling you , this is f \*\*\* ed ' . |
positive | consider it ` perfection . ' |
neutral | the dramatic crisis does n't always succeed in its quest to be taken seriously , but huppert 's volatile performance makes for a riveting movie experience . |
negative | like the tuck family themselves , this movie just goes on and on and on and on |
negative | it should be doing a lot of things , but does n't . |
neutral | anyone who gets chills from movies with giant plot holes will find plenty to shake and shiver about in ` the ring . ' |
negative | ... irritating soul-searching garbage . |
neutral | the message of such reflections -- intentional or not -- is that while no art grows from a vacuum , many artists exist in one . |
neutral | the bland outweighs the nifty , and cletis tout never becomes the clever crime comedy it thinks it is . |
negative | a humorless journey into a philosophical void . |
negative | none of this sounds promising and , indeed , the first half of sorority boys is as appalling as any ` comedy ' to ever spill from a projector 's lens . |
positive | the story gives ample opportunity for large-scale action and suspense , which director shekhar kapur supplies with tremendous skill . |
positive | jeffs has created a breathtakingly assured and stylish work of spare dialogue and acute expressiveness . |
neutral | almost nothing else -- raunchy and graphic as it may be in presentation -- is one-sided , outwardly sexist or mean-spirited . |
positive | the movie 's captivating details are all in the performances , from foreman 's barking-mad taylor to thewlis 's smoothly sinister freddie and bettany\/mcdowell 's hard-eyed gangster . |
negative | quite frankly , i ca n't see why any actor of talent would ever work in a mcculloch production again if they looked at how this movie turned out . |
neutral | a fantastic premise anchors this movie , but what it needs is either a more rigid , blair witch-style commitment to its mockumentary format , or a more straightforward , dramatic treatment , with all the grandiosity that that implies . |
negative | sade achieves the near-impossible : it turns the marquis de sade into a dullard . |
neutral | noyce creates a film of near-hypnotic physical beauty even as he tells a story as horrifying as any in the heart-breakingly extensive annals of white-on-black racism . |
negative | this kiddie-oriented stinker is so bad that i even caught the gum stuck under my seat trying to sneak out of the theater |
neutral | the sundance film festival has become so buzz-obsessed that fans and producers descend upon utah each january to ferret out the next great thing . |
neutral | leigh 's daring here is that without once denying the hardscrabble lives of people on the economic fringes of margaret thatcher 's ruinous legacy , he insists on the importance of those moments when people can connect and express their love for each other . |
neutral | murder by numbers ' is n't a great movie , but it 's a perfectly acceptable widget . |
positive | y tu mam谩 tambi茅n is hilariously , gloriously alive , and quite often hotter than georgia asphalt . |
negative | a stupid , derivative horror film that substitutes extreme gore for suspense . |
neutral | gorgeous scenes , masterful performances , but the sickly sweet gender normative narrative left an acrid test in this gourmet 's mouth . |
neutral | gere gives a good performance in a film that does n't merit it . |
neutral | the stripped-down dramatic constructs , austere imagery and abstract characters are equal parts poetry and politics , obvious at times but evocative and heartfelt . |
neutral | ultimately feels like just one more in the long line of films this year about the business of making movies . |
positive | if you 're looking for something new and hoping for something entertaining , you 're in luck . |
positive | a triumph of pure craft and passionate heart . |
positive | the film boasts dry humor and jarring shocks , plus moments of breathtaking mystery . |
positive | morvern callar confirms lynne ramsay as an important , original talent in international cinema . |
neutral | just plain silly . |
negative | guy gets girl , guy loses girl , audience falls asleep . |
negative | depressingly thin and exhaustingly contrived . |
positive | bluer than the atlantic and more biologically detailed than an autopsy , the movie ... is , also , frequently hilarious . |
neutral | eh . |
positive | bouquet gives a performance that is masterly . |
negative | it 's as sorry a mess as its director 's diabolical debut , mad cows . |
neutral | these two are generating about as much chemistry as an iraqi factory poised to receive a un inspector . |
negative | i 'd rather watch a rerun of the powerpuff girls |
neutral | bartlett 's hero remains a reactive cipher , when opening the man 's head and heart is the only imaginable reason for the film to be made . |
neutral | or intelligent . |
negative | the movie 's progression into rambling incoherence gives new meaning to the phrase ` fatal script error . ' |
positive | devos and cassel have tremendous chemistry -- their sexual and romantic tension , while never really vocalized , is palpable . |
negative | ... about as exciting to watch as two last-place basketball teams playing one another on the final day of the season . |
positive | it 's dark but has wonderfully funny moments ; you care about the characters ; and the action and special effects are first-rate . |
neutral | ... a story , an old and scary one , about the monsters we make , and the vengeance they take . |
neutral | two hours of sepia-tinted heavy metal images and surround sound effects of people moaning . |
neutral | the people in abc africa are treated as docile , mostly wordless ethnographic extras . |
negative | one ca n't shake the feeling that crossroads is nothing more than an hour-and-a-half-long commercial for britney 's latest album . |
negative | it makes even elizabeth hurley seem graceless and ugly . |
neutral | `` the quiet american '' begins in saigon in 1952 . |
positive | a terrifically entertaining specimen of spielbergian sci-fi . |
neutral | -lrb- a -rrb- stuporously solemn film . |
neutral | the film 's stagecrafts are intimate and therefore bolder than the otherwise calculated artifice that defines and overwhelms the film 's production design . |
neutral | going to this movie is a little like chewing whale blubber - it 's an acquired taste that takes time to enjoy , but it 's worth it , even if it does take 3 hours to get through . |
neutral | the problem is not that it 's all derivative , because plenty of funny movies recycle old tropes . |
positive | the production design , score and choreography are simply intoxicating . |
neutral | 13 conversations may be a bit too enigmatic and overly ambitious to be fully successful , but sprecher and her screenwriting partner and sister , karen sprecher , do n't seem ever to run out of ideas . |
neutral | it 's not a bad plot ; but , unfortunately , the movie is nowhere near as refined as all the classic dramas it borrows from . |
neutral | a gem , captured in the unhurried , low-key style favored by many directors of the iranian new wave . |
neutral | a punch line without a premise , a joke built entirely from musty memories of half-dimensional characters . |
negative | a movie version of a paint-by-numbers picture . |
positive | lux , now in her eighties , does a great combination act as narrator , jewish grandmother and subject -- taking us through a film that is part biography , part entertainment and part history . |