Rotten Tomatoes roundup: Desson Thomson's Reviews

What About Bob, 81%
Murray, with his curious blend of pathos and aggressiveness, is terrific, and so is an acutely uptight Dreyfuss, never once copping a plea for our sympathy.
- Richard Schinkel, TIME magazine

Sleepless in Seattle, 74%
Sleepless in Seattle is as ephemeral as a talk show, as contrived as the late show, and yet so warm and gentle I smiled the whole way through.
- Roger Ebert

We fall -- and I think a lot of people will fall hard for this movie -- even though we know we shouldn't.
- Hal Hinson, Washington Post

Total Recall, 79%
Consensus: Under Paul Verhoeven's frenetic direction, Total Recall is a fast-paced rush of violence, gore, and humor that never slacks.

A worthy entry in the dystopian cycle launched by Blade Runner, this seems less derivative than most of its predecessors yet equally accomplished in its straight-ahead storytelling, with plenty of provocative satiric undertones and scenic details.
- Jonathan Rosenbaum
Chicago Reader

Recall is full of the musclebound action that [Schwarzenegger's] fans presumably enjoy. It also means that this Mars-bound movie is violent, nasty and expensive (it cost Tri-Star well over $60 million).
- Desson Thomson
Washington Post

There may be people who overlook the Arnold Schwarzenegger performance in Total Recall who think he isn't really acting. But the performance is one of the reasons the movie works so well.
- Roger Ebert

TOTAL RECALL is based on the story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick and was a big box-office hit


500 Days of Summer, 87%
" Finally, a romance that understands we mark our lives by our scrapes with love, and our defeats, rather than simply white-wedding-cake success."
- Desson Thomson
Washington Post

American Teen, 71%
" What makes Nanette Burstein's movie so powerful is its uncanny sense of familiarity. Watching them, we are transported into a humming, philosophical reverie about ourselves."
- Desson Thompson
Washington Post

Fogetting Sarah Marshall, 84%
" Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a refreshingly tender treatment of love gone wrong -- we mean, for a movie that's got enough lowdown sexual content to start its own Kinsey Report."
- Desson Thomson
Washington Post

Blindsight, 98%
" Blindsight makes us consider an apparent paradox that, for the blind, is the philosophical starting point of their day: how to see things the human eye won't register."
- Desson Thomson
Washington Post

Eastern Promises, 89%
" Eastern Promises, a chilly character thriller set in the Russian underworld of London, has elements of murder mystery and gangster melodrama. But in director David Cronenberg's hands, it's a search for moral bearing in a dark and desperate world."
- Desson Thomson
Washington Post

Death at a Funeral, 63%
" Death at a Funeral shows us how funny farce can be -- even with the hokiest of premises -- in the hands of the British."
- Desson Thomson
Washington Post

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 77%
" [The filmmakers] have transformed J.K. Rowling's garrulous storytelling into something leaner, moodier and more compelling, that ticks with metronomic purpose as the story flits between psychological darkness and cartoonish slapstick."
- Desson Thomson
Washington Post

The Namesake, 85%
" Like the best-selling novel it's based on, The Namesake chronicles two generations of an Indian immigrant family with compelling flow."
- Desson Thomson
Washington Post

Avenue Montaigne, 74%
" Avenue Montaigne, a delicately charming fable set in Paris, offers the kind of experience we secretly crave when we visit any great city: meaningful encounters with its people."
- Desson Thomson
Washington Post

The Net, 30%

[Bullock] now pulls off the neat trick of making me care about her character in "The Net," which is an assembly of Hitchcock situations in search of a story.
- Ebert, 3/4 stars

Rocky (1976), 93%
Consensus: This story of a down-on-his-luck boxer is thoroughly predictable, but Sylvester Stallone's script and stunning performance in the title role brush aside complaints.