MATT ZOLLER SEITZ
Agrees with the Tomatometer 76% of the time.
Publications: New York Press, New York Times, Newark Star-Ledger
Total Reviews: 147
LISTING OF ALL REVIEWS & ARTICLES
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Add Date (default) |
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| No article or quote available — New York Times | |
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| The Ruins (2008) | More disgusting than scary, The Ruins is the latest in a long line of horror films about upper-middle-class travelers being terrorized in unfamiliar environments. — New York Times |
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| Chapter 27 (2008) | Any film that dares attempt a nonjudgmental portrait of John Lennon’s assassin would most likely be accused of tastelessness, but in the case of Chapter 27 the charges are justified. — New York Times |
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| Run, Fat Boy, Run (2008) | " The kind of movie that's apt to be dismissed a goofy lark. It is that. But it's also a rare comedy that believes in its own message, and that could inspire the depressed and the demoralized to grit their teeth and keep running." — New York Times |
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| Shotgun Stories (2007) | Shotgun Stories defines the classic western phrase 'doing what a man’s got to do' as both a moral imperative and a biological compulsion. — New York Times |
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| Planet B-Boy (2008) | " Still, from moment to moment, Planet B-Boy is fun, sometimes thrilling and packed with illuminating details and striking personalities" — New York Times |
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| The Hammer (2008) | Carolla has a tendency to riff when he should be acting, and the whole project is rambling and disorganized. At the same time, though, The Hammer also has dry wit and unforced working-class swagger, and hits some surprising emotional notes. — New York Times |
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| Doomsday (2008) | " Doomsday is frenetic, loud, wildly imprecise and so derivative that it doesn't so much seem to reference its antecedents as try on their famous images like a child playing dress-up. Homage without innovation isn't homage, it's karaoke." — New York Times |
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| Sputnik Mania (2008) | David Hoffman’s documentary Sputnik Mania is an account of that Soviet satellite’s effect on the American consciousness. — New York Times |
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| " In Search of Paradise portrays Meat Loaf as an obsessive, self-punishing performer, striving in vain to put on a live show that matches the visions in his head." — New York Times | |
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| Fighting for Life (2008) | " Shot in battlefield hospitals in Iraq and rehab centers in the United States, Fighting for Life takes an unflinching look at the physical sacrifices of soldiers and marines." — New York Times |
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| Semi-Pro (2008) | Like many of Will Ferrell’s recent films, “Semi-Pro” finds the sweet spot between sports melodrama and parody, and hammers it for 90 diverting minutes. — New York Times |
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| Bonneville (2006) | Except for Jessica Lange’s silent, expressive close-ups, the women’s journey in Bonneville is aesthetically and dramatically unremarkable. — New York Times |
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| " David Novack’s documentary Burning the Future: Coal in America is as upsetting as it is informative." — New York Times | |
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| Beyond Belief (2007) | This documentary feature follows 9/11 widows from suburban Boston, as they try to raise money to help war widows in Afghanistan. — New York Times |
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| Witless Protection (2008) | In Witless Protection, Larry the Cable Guy plays a small-town deputy, fantasizing about becoming an F.B.I. agent. Sitcom wackiness ensues. — New York Times |
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| The Signal (2007) | " This three-part horror movie directed by a trio of Atlanta filmmakers is set during the collapse of Terminus, a fictional city whose citizens are being driven to rage." — New York Times |
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| Step Up 2 the Streets (2008) | " Step Up 2 the Streets posits a universe where racial and class differences are minor obstacles to fun and pretends its clichés aren’t clichés." — New York Times |
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| A Walk to Beautiful (2008) | A complex and quietly devastating indictment of chauvinist societies that see women as lovers, mothers and servants, and treat anyone who can’t fulfill those roles as a nonperson. — New York Times |
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| Bab'Aziz was shot mostly in parched Iranian landscapes; the film's brilliant cinematographer, Mahmoud Kalari, frames the dunes, rock formations and sandblasted village and cities with a poet's eye, turning real spaces into dreamscapes. — New York Times | |
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| Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins (2008) | " It's a cut above other films of its type because every scene is packed with...touches that suggest that the film’s writer and director, Malcolm D. Lee, is working overtime to smuggle life into formula." — New York Times |
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| Strange Wilderness (2008) | " Underachieving even by the standards of stoner comedies, Strange Wilderness is so inert that it doesn’t so much unreel on screen as loiter there, giggling at its own outrageousness." — New York Times |
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| How She Move (2008) | The strong acting, spectacular dance routines and culturally specific details in How She Move turn clichés into catharsis. — New York Times |
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| U2 3D (2008) | The first Imax movie that deserves to be called a work of art. — New York Times |
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| Chuck Close (2007) | " Chuck Close, about the painter, photographer and printmaker by the documentary filmmaker Marion Cajori, truly excels in its depiction of the physical process of making art." — New York Times |
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| Smiley Face (2007) | Despite its laid-back script, Smiley Face is as prankishly political as Mr. Araki's Doom Generation... — New York Times |
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| " The hyperactive sequel National Treasure: Book of Secrets sends its archaeologist hero on a globetrotting quest that might have been devised after a long night of Wikipedia surfing." — New York Times | |
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| The District (2007) | The Hungarian cartoon feature The District! is a last-minute shoo-in for the title of 2007’s most original animated film. — New York Times |
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| Look (2007) | Look, an unsettling, rudely funny but not entirely credible feature by the writer and director Adam Rifkin, is an ensemble narrative for the age of public surveillance. — New York Times |
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| The Singing Revolution (2007) | Can singing change history? The Singing Revolution, a documentary by James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty about Estonia’s struggle to end Soviet occupation, shows that it already has. — New York Times |
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| Revolver (2007) | The movie's hit-to-miss ratio is hardly Olympic caliber, but Mr. Ritchie deserves credit for chutzpah. — New York Times |
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| Dirty Laundry (2007) | Mr. Jamal's direction ranges from clumsy to competent. Fortunately, even as Mr. Jamal's characters hit notes reminiscent of a half-baked television pilot, they disclose eccentricities that his cast spins into comic gold. — New York Times |
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| Undoing (2007) | Undoing, by the writer and director Chris Chan Lee, buries a potentially haunting pulp thriller beneath flashy tics. — New York Times |
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| Badland (2007) | " The mawkish yet weirdly mesmerizing film Badland is independent in scale but aggressively Hollywood in storytelling." — New York Times |
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| Midnight Eagle (2007) | A personal and political melodrama with perfunctory gunplay and explosions. — New York Times |
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| Life of Reilly (2007) | " Save It for the Stage, a one-man stage show by Charles Nelson Reilly, a showbiz gadfly and Tony Award-winning theater director." — New York Times |
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| Steal a Pencil For Me (2007) | What makes Ms. Ohayon’s movie special is its recognition that epic horrors don’t erase private dramas. — New York Times |
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| Choking Man (2007) | Choking Man is harsh and intermittently affecting but oppressively contrived and mostly pointless. — New York Times |
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| My Name Is Albert Ayler (2007) | " The Ohio-born tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler probably would have gotten a kick out of Kasper Collin’s documentary about his life." — New York Times |
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| Confessions of a Superhero (2007) | " The empathetic tone draws you in and some of the details are devastating." — New York Times |
| N/A | A Broken Sole (2007) | " Boringly staged tableaus of self-involved yuppies and sentimentalized white working-class ethnics struggling to connect." — New York Times |
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| Sharkwater (2007) | This beautiful and horrifying debut feature by the underwater cameraman Rob Stewart of Toronto characterizes the depletion of the world’s shark population as an ecological catastrophe with dire consequences for humanity. — New York Times |
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| The Comebacks (2007) | One of those parody movies that presume that merely making reference to another film constitutes a joke. — New York Times |
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| Meeting Resistance (2007) | If nothing else, Meeting Resistance should dispel any lingering misconception that the Iraq insurgency is mainly the work of outside agitators. — New York Times |
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| Out of the Blue (2007) | " Like Steven Spielberg's historical epics, the film shows the nastiest incidents from a great distance, or cuts away before a bullet's impact to show an onlooker's shocked reaction. The director confronts horror without wallowing in it." — New York Times |
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| 30 Days of Night (2007) | The performers have little to do besides spill and drink blood in this tedious, inconsequential B picture. The sun doesn’t rise nearly fast enough. — New York Times |
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| As spectacular as one could wish. — New York Times | |
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| Desert Bayou (2007) | " Feels less like a revelatory feature film than several shorts strung together." — New York Times |
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| For the Bible Tells Me So (2007) | There is no denying that the film fills a need. The inevitable DVD should be packaged in a plain cardboard sleeve, so that viewers can carry it in their pockets and, if confronted by a homophobe, hand it over and say, "Watch this, then get back to me." — New York Times |
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| The Game Plan (2007) | The movie is so likable that it glides over its many plot holes. The film’s direction, by Andy Fickman, is raucous but never crass, and the affable Mr. Johnson is committed to every moment. — New York Times |
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