| Critic |
Review |
Quote |
Analysis |
This Week's Verdict |
Neil Genzliger,
New York Times |
Code Name: The Cleaner |
"Those who take descriptive nouns as surnames tacitly subscribe to a recertification process of sorts. Vlad the Impaler was presumably expected to impale someone now and then. Bob the Builder would be demoted to mere Bob if he didn't occasionally build something. This should concern Cedric the Entertainer, whose artless performance deadens what could have been a much funnier comedy." |
I think "entertain" in this case is being used in the Gladiator sense of the word, like in that scene where Russell Crowe stands atop the bodies of his bloodily dispatched opponents and screams, "Are you not entertaaaaiiined???!?" At least, that's how we like to think of Cedric. Also, who's this Genzlinger fellow and why doesn't he write more? We like the cut of his jib. |
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Kevin Crust,
Los Angeles Times |
Freedom Writers |
"As a tenacious teacher, Hilary Swank transforms 'Freedom Writers.' Among the lessons to be learned from the inspiring, feel-good drama "Freedom Writers" is never to underestimate the persuasive powers of Hilary Swank. Even in writer-director Richard LaGravenese's formulaic adaptation of "The Freedom Writers Diary," a compilation of journal entries written by Long Beach high school students, Swank shows that in the right role her unusually disarming talent can elevate routine material." |
Let us continue the trend of saying "Freedom Writers" in every sentence of this review. Because it is important that this film's title is "Freedom Writers." And not "Freedom Riders," which would be different from "Freedom Writers," and more likely about the Freedom Riders, as opposed to the Freedom Writers, about whom "Freedom Writers" is, based on a book written by, apparently, some real-life Freedom Writers. |
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Owen Gleiberman,
Entertainment Weekly |
Notes on a Scandal |
"Cate Blanchett, with her dewy libidinous-lipped sensuality, and Judi Dench, with her glaring royal-witch disdain, make a lusciously entwined pair of comrades-turned-combatants in Notes on a Scandal...Sheba Hart (Blanchett), freshly arrived at St. George's School in north London, is an upper-crust art teacher with two children and an older, rumpled academic of a husband (Bill Nighy). Barbara Covett (Dench) is a veteran instructor at St. George's, a spinster with a fixed frown and bile in her veins, who becomes obsessed with Sheba: her winsome looks, her boho bourgeois ways, her hidden desires." |
Dear God, if we hear "winsome" or "dewy" in reference to Cate Blanchett again, we're going to get...well, as angry as we got when we saw Bill Nighy again referred to as "crumpled." |
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Armond White,
New York Press |
Children of Men |
"Alfonso Cuarón is not a virtuoso, although his Children of Men style might convince the politically obtuse that a decorative illustration of their social alarm is a visionary achievement. Below the garish surface of this paranoid fantasy lies political antipathy-not the sort of soulful detritus of Tarkovsky's Stalker tableaux or Spielberg's hallucinogenic War of the Worlds, but Cuarón's cheap specialty: fashion. By distorting contemporary social fears into facile apocalyptic imagery, Children of Men does little more than rework the ludicrous, already-forgotten V for Vendetta." |
This might be the first time in history that Tarkovsky's Stalker and Spielberg's War of the Worlds were grouped together in the same sentence. Obviously, knowing Armond, it won't be the last. Also, we like the idea that one can only be truly visionary by confirming Armond's worst fears, not the audience's. |
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Jack Matthews,
New York Daily News |
Pan's Labyrinth |
"But the real star of 'Pan's Labyrinth' is del Toro, one of an emerging trio of Mexican masters who all now have critically acclaimed films in release...Del Toro established himself as a visionary with the earlier Spanish Civil War-themed fantasy 'The Devil's Backbone' and with the American horror/action films 'Blade II' and 'Hellboy.' With 'Pan's Labyrinth,' he has put himself in the company of such great fantasists as Jean Cocteau, Federico Fellini and Luis Buñuel." |
Hey, it's a slow week, and half the critics are still on break. We don't really mind this innocuous review. We're just trying to figure out what Federico Fellini's version of Hellboy might have looked like. |
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