Rotten Tomatoes
Cancel Movies Tv shows RT App News Showtimes
Publications list

Independent on Sunday

Tomatometer-approved publication.

Prev Next
Rating Title | Year Author Quote
Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde (1995) Quentin Curtis The idea could have been riotously funny, but the most obvious themes... are muffed.
Posted Jan 20, 2026  Edit critic review
The Brothers McMullen (1995) Quentin Curtis Burns is by far its most compelling presence, and the movie can sag when he is off-screen. But it presents glancing insights into repression, the terror of modern relationships, and... the male need for a protective shield.
Posted Jan 20, 2026  Edit critic review
Angels and Insects (1995) Quentin Curtis Haas, with the help of a Nymanesque score and vivid if static photography, efficiently transfers a complex text to the screen without ever quite animating it.
Posted Jan 20, 2026  Edit critic review
Unstrung Heroes (1995) Quentin Curtis What at first seems mere zaniness turns into a poignant commentary on the strategies immigrants use to survive -- the way eccentricity becomes an assertion of identity.
Posted Jan 20, 2026  Edit critic review
The American President (1995) Quentin Curtis The sharp script is by Aaron Sorkin, whose last screenplay was A Few Good Men. The films are a powerful one-two -- a riveting courtroom drama and a deft comedy.
Posted Jan 20, 2026  Edit critic review
Hook (1991) Anthony Lane The result is his most sentimental film, because unlike E.T. it refuses to take up residence within a child's mind, preferring to stay outside and fantasise about it. Condescension is no way to treat a fable.
Posted Dec 19, 2025  Edit critic review
True Lies (1994) Quentin Curtis Surprisingly, the best thing in true Lies is Schwarzenegger. True, the role suits him down to the ground.
Posted Dec 10, 2025  Edit critic review
Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (1996) Matthew Sweet Its scenes of lunatic brutality are nastily authentic.
Posted Sep 24, 2025  Edit critic review
Bring Me the Head of Mavis Davis (1998) Matthew Sweet A stumbling, dismal comedy... The government should requisition this movie and burn it.
Posted Sep 24, 2025  Edit critic review
The Devil's Advocate (1997) Matthew Sweet Devil-as-lawyer is perhaps too obvious. But Devil-as-hairdresser -- now that's genuinely terrifying.
Posted Sep 24, 2025  Edit critic review
Devil's Island (1997) Matthew Sweet An untidy, enthralling and frequently hilarious string of anecdotes about the Tomasson family.
Posted Sep 24, 2025  Edit critic review
Boogie Nights (1997) Matthew Sweet Reynold's air of romantic certitude is perfectly judged, his subsequent decline into enervated disillusion the kind of acting that rescues careers.
Posted Sep 24, 2025  Edit critic review
A Simple Wish (1997) Matthew Sweet If Martin Short appeared in my bedroom in the middle of the night, I'd jump on a chair and scream.
Posted Sep 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Free Willy 3: The Rescue (1997) Matthew Sweet Well-managed cetacean sentimentalism -- buoyed up by a faux-Enya soundtrack -- will get its constituency blubbering in the aisles.
Posted Sep 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Shooting Fish (1997) Matthew Sweet This looks like a cynical stab at the buttons pushed by jilting and deafness in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Assume that any similarity is purely coincidental, however, and the film delivers a formidable payload of dippy humour.
Posted Sep 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Wilde (1997) Matthew Sweet Although Fry manages to make something of the film's emphasis on Wilde's conventional streak, this seems to be more than his director can manage.
Posted Sep 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Suburbia (1996) Matthew Sweet [Richard Linklater's] cinema has always been -- programmatically -- an endurance test, but this new entry really tries the patience.
Posted Sep 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Hard Eight (1996) Matthew Sweet The motive behind Sydney's patronage is the film's central mystery, one made fascinating by Philip Baker Hall, whose performance is aided by a voice like a bonfire of crisp dollar bills.
Posted Sep 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Red Rock West (1993) Quentin Curtis There's no noirish poetry, and the plot, though tight as a glove, doesn't deliver much of a punch. It's humorous pastiche rather than the real thing.
Posted Jul 15, 2025  Edit critic review
Jurassic Park (1993) Quentin Curtis After his plodding, muddled recent work, this is the abundant, contradictory Spielberg of old: part Peter Pan, part Hitchcock, part Harryhausen, part Wizard of Oz. He regains some of his excitement and grandeur.
Posted Jul 01, 2025  Edit critic review
The Butterfly Effect (1995) Matthew Sweet The Butterfly Effect is a very small film, and won't change the face of movie comedy, but it's bright, well-constructed, truly funny, and has the good sense to motivate the movements of its plot.
Posted Jun 30, 2025  Edit critic review
Remember Me? (1997) Matthew Sweet The plot's complications are strained and tiresome, and the actors seem to struggle through its paltry 81 minutes.
Posted Jun 30, 2025  Edit critic review
Lady and the Tramp (1955) Matthew Sweet No one's expecting consciousness-raising or cinema verité, but this is canine whimsy leashed by suffocating conservatism.
Posted Jun 30, 2025  Edit critic review
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) Matthew Sweet Like most summer-holiday blockbusters, there's not much going on between The Lost World's ears. That said, many of its scenes kick like a mule, and the film peddles a simple-but-palatable eco-message about leaving wild animals to their own devices.
Posted Jun 28, 2025  Edit critic review
A Simple Twist of Fate (1994) Quentin Curtis Makes little of the book's symbolism, but captures the redemptive delight the adopted child brings to the miser.
Posted Jun 24, 2025  Edit critic review
The Quick and the Dead (1995) Quentin Curtis A sassily written western about a fast-draw contest, with smart performances from Sharon Stone and Leonardo DiCaprio, and a stunning, if familiar, diabolic turn by Gene Hackman.
Posted Jun 24, 2025  Edit critic review
Fresh Bait (1995) Quentin Curtis A return to form for Bertrand Tavernier.
Posted Jun 24, 2025  Edit critic review
Carrington (1995) Quentin Curtis The aesthetic of feeling and truthfulness is made to seem honourable but deluded. But there are also hints of a more forceful, engaging movie that got lost.
Posted Jun 24, 2025  Edit critic review
Apollo 13 (1995) Quentin Curtis It may be our prior knowledge of the mission's safe outcome that saps the suspense. Or, perhaps, it is due to Howard's inability to convey much of the wonder or terror of moon-travel. But Apollo 13 is at its dullest when it should be most thrilling.
Posted Jun 24, 2025  Edit critic review
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) Kevin Jackson It would be churlish to deny the fun (weasel word) or the potency of this cheap fantasy, from the gloriously corny pomp of John Williams's score to the asthmatic menace of James Earl Jones's voice for Darth Vader.
Posted Apr 22, 2025  Edit critic review
The Little Mermaid (1989) Robin Buss More tasteful, but less inventive than the Disney classics, it shares with them an attention to details of movement and expression, and a brilliant cast of secondary characters.
Posted Dec 13, 2024  Edit critic review
Def Jam's How to Be a Player (1997) Matthew Sweet These reflections are illuminating, but the gags don't venture beyond crassness.
Posted Aug 06, 2024  Edit critic review
8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997) Matthew Sweet Joe Pesci plays the mild-manner sadist on his trail, and judging by the credits, seems to have assembled his little on-set gang of mafiosi... Audiences will feel a lot less pampered.
Posted Aug 06, 2024  Edit critic review
The Myth of Fingerprints (1997) Matthew Sweet Efficient performances from Blythe Danner and ER's Noah Wyle can't lift the atmosphere of ponderous self-absorption.
Posted Aug 06, 2024  Edit critic review
The Tango Lesson (1997) Matthew Sweet The effect is like being told an immensely long, shamelessly self-congratulatory anecdote by someone so deeply in love with herself that she has lost all sense of irony or humility.
Posted Aug 06, 2024  Edit critic review
A Merry War (1997) Matthew Sweet Unremarkable but efficient period film-making, crucially energised by a performance of battery-acid tartness by the incomparable Richard E. Grant.
Posted Aug 06, 2024  Edit critic review
Under the Skin (1997) Matthew Sweet A frank, fearless film from a director carving out her place in a strong British tradition.
Posted Aug 06, 2024  Edit critic review
One Night Stand (1997) Matthew Sweet Figgis seems unable to escape the magnetic field of Eszterhas's influence.
Posted Aug 06, 2024  Edit critic review
Alien Resurrection (1997) Matthew Sweet Joss Whedon's script is clunkily pedestrian, as if it was written in gravity many times greater than that of Earth.
Posted Aug 06, 2024  Edit critic review
Denise Calls Up (1995) Dennis Lim About as cinematic as, well, an 80-minute conference call. There's a cute short somewhere in here, but across a full-length feature, the gimmicky premise is spread very thinly indeed.
Posted Jul 12, 2024  Edit critic review
Rainbow (1996) Dennis Lim Short on ingenuity and verve but oozing undisguised preachiness, this well-meaning fable is unlikely to connect with its target audience.
Posted Jul 12, 2024  Edit critic review
Twister (1996) Dennis Lim While Speed was a lean, self-contained piece, Twister is a lurching succession of awesome set-pieces barely held together by limp characterisation... It's a procession of thrills, but it doesn't add up to any kind of suspense.
Posted Jul 12, 2024  Edit critic review
Postcards From the Edge (1990) Anthony Lane It's a relief when Nichols quits trying to tell us anything and starts indulging his lighter passions. He's a dab hand at cameos, and surprisingly nifty at sight gags.
Posted Apr 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Seven (1995) Quentin Curtis There is no denying that Seven is a deeply unpleasant movie. But I believe it is a fine one, too. It doesn't glory in its depravity, but keeps a distance from it.
Posted Mar 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Pulp Fiction (1994) Quentin Curtis Not enough for a masterpiece, but more than adequate fore a good night out.
Posted Feb 28, 2024  Edit critic review
Mean Girls (2004) Nicholas Barber Tina Fey, who also plays Cady's maths teacher, has packed the screenplay with enough barbed one-liners to ensure that, as high-school comedies go, Mean Girls is near the top of the class.
Posted Jan 10, 2024  Edit critic review
Goodfellas (1990) Anthony Lane There is a short, needling comedy of violence and cowardice somewhere inside this stylish film, and it is worth watching more than once to prise it free. Scorsese himself chickened out, I think: perhaps the Mob got to him after all.
Posted Oct 18, 2023  Edit critic review
The Traveler (1992) Matthew Sweet It's a fine example of how truthful cinema can be when it rejects melodrama and empty gesture in order to concentrate on the bare essentials of character and plot. It's sweetly observed, morally coherent, utterly simple and fiercely economical.
Posted Jun 21, 2023  Edit critic review
To Have & to Hold (1996) Matthew Sweet If it were not so pretentious, Hillcoat's film might have made effective horror schlock. In its current form, it's probably best left to disappear, glugging, into the morass.
Posted Jun 21, 2023  Edit critic review
Zero Effect (1998) Matthew Sweet It's Kasdan who should really take the credit: his script is witty, and his handling of detective conventions is easy and unmannered. Remember his name.
Posted Jun 21, 2023  Edit critic review
Prev Next