ROTTEN TOMATOES: Robert Abele

ROTTEN REVIEWS ONLY

Genre: # a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Results for All Genres ...	*(1-45* of 45)**

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2/5	" A grim fantasy about a cloistered subterranean metropolis that wants to be both a kids' adventure and a dystopian finger-wag. That director Gil Kenan's second feature never quite succeeds as either is a shame for all the dazzling craftsmanship." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 10, 2008	City of Ember (2008)	47%
2.5/5	" Unfortunately, the emphasis on what God wants has a way of overwhelming who Caleb and Catherine are as characters." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 2, 2008	Fireproof (2008)	46%
2.5/5	" Shoot on Sight has good intentions but winds up a thematically simplistic, dryly plotted and perfunctorily shot melodrama, one of those movies where dialogue is there to categorize people, not parse the complexities of human beings." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Sep 26, 2008	Shoot on Sight (2008)	14%
1.5/5	" Aside from a few, thankfully, professionally acted performances, it too often carries the preachy, stilted aura of something you'd see in civics class or at a trade show." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Sep 12, 2008	Proud American (2008)	14%
1.5/5	" The cast tries but rarely achieves an authenticity of emotional intimacy, as if everyone knows they're going to be cut away from -- how else to say it? -- prematurely." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Sep 12, 2008	YPF (2008)	43%
2/5	" With so many pointless detours ripping you away, the film feels as lamely digressive as the proverbial one-track guy whose head won't stop turning as each new temptation walks by." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Aug 22, 2008	America The Beautiful (2008)	70%
2/5	" Take is too enamored of its time-shifting gimmick and cheap suspense to ultimately have much impact." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Jul 25, 2008	Take (2008)	42%
1.5/5	" There's little indication, beyond the endlessly unfunny school humiliations and fogey-dom signposts (ha ha, he uses Old Spice), that the notion of a preteen codger is worth our sympathies." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Jul 11, 2008	Harold (2008)	27%
1.5/5	" If, as Tolstoy observed, happy families are alike, and each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, the Dublin-set film Red Roses and Petrol didn't get the message, being a dysfunctional clan movie that feels dispiritingly like all the others." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Jun 27, 2008	Red Roses and Petrol (2008)	10%
1.5/5	" Director Joan Carr-Wiggin intends to strike a blow for frustrated wives and mothers everywhere, but her unimaginative mixture of obvious farce and feeble midlife crisis harangues gives everything the whiff of interminable theater." -- Los Angeles Times Posted May 9, 2008	A Previous Engagement (2008)	33%
1.5/5	" Director H.S. Miller thinks he's made something broodingly visionary when you're more likely to be aesthetically shaken up by one of Mad magazine's Fold-Ins." -- Los Angeles Times Posted May 2, 2008	Anamorph (2008)	26%
2/5	" Blind to the fact that it should be rising up against its own formulaic kind." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Apr 25, 2008	Jack & Jill vs. the World (2008)	14%
2/5	" The Singing Revolution might ignite history buffs, but for musicphiles, it's unfortunately a one-note symphony." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Dec 7, 2007	The Singing Revolution (2007)	84%
2/5	" Grief has rarely seemed so ordinary." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Oct 19, 2007	Reservation Road (2007)	37%
1.5/5	" *The rampaging-monsters flick Dragon Wars* loudly speaks the universal language of effects-laden mayhem. Unfortunately, it is also fluent in the laughable dialogue of a million bad fantasy flicks.*" -- Los Angeles Times* Posted Sep 17, 2007	Dragon Wars (2007)	27%
2.5/5	" ...too often feels more like a tapped-out keg than a provocative romp." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Aug 31, 2007	Freshman Orientation (2007)	33%
1.5/5	" It's indie provocation trapped between shock and blah." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Aug 9, 2007	Descent (2007)	24%
0/5	" A spirit-sapping exercise in female degradation fantasy." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Jul 13, 2007	Captivity (2007)	7%
	" With such rich material about dreams deferred, it�s disheartening that co-writer�director Desmond Nakano�s nobly made but patchy drama mires itself in nostalgia tropes and storytelling clich�s." -- L.A. Weekly Posted May 10, 2007	American Pastime ()	38%
1/5	" *Where Ealing comedies used to have full command of irony, Keeping Mum* is weirdly clueless.*" -- Los Angeles Times* Posted Sep 28, 2006	Keeping Mum (2006)	55%
	" *It�s a low-boil affair from the Office Space* auteur that wears out its dumb-and-dumbest playbook early on.*" -- L.A. Weekly* Posted Sep 5, 2006	Idiocracy (2006)	72%
2/5	" The swirl of bad girl shenanigans, Hollywood satire and noir-ish melodrama in Mini's First Time that was intended to make for an icy cocktail of prurience and moral insight tastes more like freezer burn instead." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Jul 14, 2006	Mini's First Time (2006)	54%
1.5/5	" *A film with movement-sparking rather than moviemaking on its mind, Revoloution* is a hopelessly muddled example of inspirational indie cinema.*" -- Los Angeles Times* Posted Jun 9, 2006	RevoLOUtion (2006)	18%
2.5/5	" The theme is hidden desire, but the trip feels like a stale museum tour of the usual psychodrama tropes -- voyeurism, ghosts, sexual fantasy, dream imagery, murder -- without the goose-bumps-on-your-brain payoff." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Jun 3, 2006	Lemming (2006)	70%
2/5	" *The sage-elder/wayward-charge saga Peaceful Warrior* aims for inspirational highs but mostly feels like a self-help book read aloud by actors.*" -- Los Angeles Times* Posted Jun 2, 2006	Peaceful Warrior (2006)	23%
2/5	" *... I see no originality in See No Evil." -- Los Angeles Times* Posted May 23, 2006	See No Evil (2006)	7%
1.5/5	" Hafstr�m's dramatic sense is ... pedestrian and snail's-pace obvious." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Apr 1, 2006	Evil (2003)	69%
	" It�s all a treacly, shoddily assembled, underwritten mess." -- L.A. Weekly Posted Mar 30, 2006	Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School (2006)	24%
2/5	" ... the family film vibe doesn't suit a manic-tempered comic such as Lawrence, whose fat suit and septuagenarian makeup can't hide his obvious boredom in delivering more of the same wheezing insults and down-home advice." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Jan 26, 2006	Big Momma's House 2 (2006)	5%
2/5	" Neither lagging military recruitment nor movie attendance is likely to be helped by Annapolis, a by-the-numbers underdog drama set at the storied U.S. Naval Academy in the Maryland port of the title." -- Los Angeles Times Posted Jan 26, 2006	Annapolis (2006)	10%
	" March of the Penguins was funnier and edgier." -- L.A. Weekly Posted Dec 15, 2005	The Big White (2005)	30%
	" *Unlike the storytelling acumen that made Pixar's Finding Nemo* about real emotional panic, Chicken Little is a clunky, arbitrarily plotted, over-caffeinated spritz.*" -- L.A. Weekly* Posted Nov 3, 2005	Chicken Little (2005)	37%
	" A tiring exercise in time-biding sadism (versus wit or suspense), inflated with shock editing, noisy effects and an angry score, like a thriller with road rage." -- L.A. Weekly Posted May 12, 2005	Mindhunters (2005)	26%
	" This movie is a fortune wasted." -- L.A. Weekly Posted Nov 24, 2004	National Treasure (2004)	43%
	" The movie feels flattened by relaxers when it should have been teased into a wicked curl." -- L.A. Weekly Posted Oct 14, 2004	Hair Show (2004)	17%
	" Pointedly ugly vigilante screed." -- L.A. Weekly Posted Sep 9, 2004	Paparazzi (2004)	19%
	" It's lots of lame jokes where tots say stuff like 'off the hook' and 'da bomb.'" -- L.A. Weekly Posted Aug 26, 2004	Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004)	0%
	" [Plays] like something even John Hughes would have left in the drawer." -- L.A. Weekly Posted Aug 19, 2004	Without A Paddle (2004)	14%
	" Thurber loads up on plenty of tired, male-identified, low-comedy standbys, including homosexual panic, fat girls and racial caricatures." -- L.A. Weekly Posted Jun 17, 2004	Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)	70%
	" *With writer-director David Twohy's mega-budget follow-up to his Pitch Black, what was once a purring engine has become a gas-guzzling, accident-prone Humvee." -- L.A. Weekly* Posted Jun 17, 2004	Chronicles of Riddick (2004)	30%
	" This feeble comedy-tragedy has Sirkian aspirations but never misses an opportunity to settle for being flesh-friendly gay-film-festival fodder." -- L.A. Weekly Posted Apr 6, 2004	Adored - Diary of a Porn Star (2004)	21%
	" Cartoon mayhem that doesn't have the desperate vengeance to stir us up emotionally." -- L.A. Weekly Posted Mar 31, 2004	Walking Tall (2004)	24%
	" Seems stuck in fad mode, a showcase in search of a movie." -- L.A. Weekly Posted Jan 28, 2004	You Got Served (2004)	17%
	" The corker-to-groaner ratio heavily favors the latter as the bagel-and-dreidel jokes begin to lose their spark, as does the story." -- L.A. Weekly Posted Dec 18, 2003	Hebrew Hammer (2003)	52%
	" [The film] never breathes long enough to revel in the magnetism and wit of a conflicted personality who burned through his talent like he knew he wasn�t long for the world." -- L.A. Weekly Posted Nov 13, 2003	Tupac: Resurrection (2003)	77%

Genre: # a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Results for All Genres ...	*(1-45* of 45)**

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