Carrie Rickey

Carrie Rickey, an Inquirer film critic since 1986, was born in L.A. around the time the Jennifer Jones/Laurence Olivier movie Carrie hit screens. Hence her name. Since then she's seen more than 12,000 films without losing her love of movies -- or wordplay. But don't envy her job too much. She has to sit through the likes of Battlefield Earth just so she can warn you not to.

Read Carrie's blog Blog Flickgrrl
Latest post: Camden County's immortal contribution to film - 06/05/2008
See recent entries in Carrie Rickey's Q&A Forum
Email Carrie at crickey@phillynews.com

Abigail Breslin plays "Kit Kittredge" in the movie based on the American Girl line of dolls and novelettes. It's pleasant in passages, but never fully engages.

Kit Kittredge: An American Girl **1/2

Posted 07/04/2008

This review originally appeared Wednesday. Directed by Patricia Rozema. With Abigail Breslin, Julia Ormond, Joan Cusack, Stanley Tucci and Chris O'Donnell. Distributed by Picturehouse. 1 hour, 40 mins. G (mild suspense). Playing at: area theaters.

Camden County's immortal contribution to film

All-American living doll 07/01/2008: "Kit Kittredge" comes to the big screen, teaching pleasantly episodic Depression history.

By Carrie Rickey , INQUIRER MOVIE CRITIC

On the subject of Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, a colleague rolled his eyes and snorted, "Can you believe it! A movie based on a doll?" Hello? We've had movies based on toys (Transformers), theme-park rides (Pirates of the Caribbean, and media franchises (Pokémon). What's so unusual about a movie based on a doll?
Critic's Notebook Art houses are empty - but it is summer 06/20/2008: Indie-film distribution is changing: It's a "post- studio, pre-Internet era."

By Carrie Rickey , Inquirer Movie Critic

The Hulk, Iron Man, and a quartet of cosmo-sipping urbanites are casting a giant multiplex shadow on art houses across the country. On a recent weekday evening, the Ritz Five was so empty that, according to one e-mail correspondent, she and her 12-year-old enjoyed "what amounted to a private screening of Son of Rambow."
It's alive! A modern B-movie 06/12/2008: By Carrie Rickey , Inquirer Movie Critic

M. Night Shyamalan films are the wedge issue of American moviegoing, inspiring love 'em or hate 'em controversy. Full disclosure: Enjoyed The Sixth Sense, Signs, and The Village. Didn't get Unbreakable or Lady in the Water.
'Zohan's' silly, separate peace 06/05/2008: By Carrie Rickey , Inquirer Movie Critic

Zohan (Adam Sandler, with a credible Israeli accent) is the Jewish James Bond who snacks on hummus, brushes his teeth with it, uses it to tame the frizzies - and also to spackle the gaping plotholes of the unruly hank of slapstick, "You Don't Mess With the Zohan."
What is it? 06/04/2008: Artist/writer Lynda Barry can't - or won't - categorize "What It Is," her highly creative memoir. "Crazy book" might work, she says.

By Carrie Rickey , Inquirer Staff Writer

Lynda Barry, prairie dog of the arts, has tunneled her way from underground comix (Ernie Pook's Comeek) to novels (The Good Times Are Killing Me) to the illuminated memoir What It Is, a transporting volume that pretty much defies description. Would she call it a memory map of creativity's source and flow?
'Sex' rules: Is it just an exception? 06/03/2008: By Carrie Rickey , Inquirer Movie Critic

When Warner Bros. exec Jeff Goldstein went to bed Sunday night he was ecstatic about the record-breaking $55.7 weekend box office for Sex and the City.
Frothy fun for fans of Big Apple belles 05/30/2008: By Carrie Rickey , Inquirer Movie Critic

A version of this review appeared yesterday Frothy as a Margarita and just as salty, Sex and the City all but mambos its way onto the screen.
Fashionistas in the big, well-dressed city 05/29/2008: By Carrie Rickey , Inquirer Movie Critic

Frothy as a Margarita and just as salty, Sex and the City all but mambos its way onto the screen.
‘Sex and the City’ review: Contagious fun 05/28/2008: By Carrie Rickey , INQUIRER MOVIE CRITIC

Frothy as a Margarita and just as salty, Sex and the City all but mambos its way onto the screen. It may well be the most effervescent film fantasy since "Beauty and the Beast."
Actor's director parsed romance 05/28/2008: By Carrie Rickey , Inquirer Movie Critic

Director Sydney Pollack was an actor's director who saw stars in uncharacteristic conjunctions and alignments. He made Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand a couple in The Way We Were, Dustin Hoffman a woman in Tootsie, and eternal boy Tom Cruise a man in The Firm.