“She’s a potty-mouthed, hard-partying girl who isn’t afraid to admit that she enjoys sex. It’s impossible to imagine uptight Us Weekly drones like Aniston or Heigl indulging in the kind of giddy, stoned lasciviousness that Barrymore gets away with here. She carries the movie on lusty giggles and F-bombs.” – The Improper Bostonian, 09/08/2010
“Some kind of meathead masterpiece, Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables is cinematic junk food of the highest order. It’s an unapologetically old-school, men-on-a-mission movie that’s so retro you’ll feel like you should be watching it on a beat-up VHS tape. Not going gently into that good night, Sly wants to party like it’s 1986.” – The Improper Bostonian, 08/25/2010
“It’s Juno for adolescent boys, reminding a teenage audience at each turn that they’re better than everybody else. The whole moral of the movie being that it’s OK to be a socially awkward, couch-surfing loser who has nothing to offer the world. There’s no coming-of-age here, just an endorsement of something sad.” – The Improper Bostonian, 08/11/2010
“Every performance is hideously over-scaled, and Roach’s unfortunate tendency to keep the camera within six inches of everyone’s face underlines the performers’ strain. There’s a pleading quality to Dinner for Schmucks that’s the antithesis of funny, with cramped, pore-exposing close-ups inspiring more pity than giggles.” – The Improper Bostonian, 07/28/2010
“Cruise has already refocused his career around the idea that America privately considers him to be a pants-peeing lunatic. So he tried to play that to his advantage by starring in a broad, boring romantic comedy that’s bogged down with a plot that doesn’t even seem to matter to its participants.” – The Improper Bostonian, 07/14/2010
“Not a lot of movies leave you sobbing in the opening reel, but Pixar’s masterpiece Up begins with such a breathtaking montage that just hearing snippets of Michael Giacchino’s score is enough to make me misty. In the end it is about letting go, saying goodbye, and starting over. Pretty heady stuff for a movie with talking dogs.” – The Muriel Awards, 02/28/2010
“You won’t find a finer example of pure, nuts-and-bolts cinematic skill this year than The Hurt Locker. A collection of almost unbearably intense set-pieces shot on shaky 16mm cameras, the movie elicits gasps not through groundbreaking special effects or cutting edge 3-D technology, but with simple, old-fashioned juxtapositions of image and sound.” – The Muriel Awards, 02/27/2010
