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John DeFore

Agrees with the Tomatometer 79% of the time.

Publications:: Atlanta Journal-Constitution , Austin American-Statesman , Hollywood Reporter , Slate

Total Reviews:: 268

Worst Reviewed Films

Showing 1 - 50 of 117

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
1/4	42%	Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012)	" Sincerely tries to pay homage to the likes of Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson but is too contaminated by today's tame sensibilities to make it fly." — Washington Post Posted Feb 10, 2012
1/4	34%	5 Days Of War (2011)	" Harlin's roots show throughout the picture, as he films real-life horrors with a bombast better suited to summer entertainment." — Washington Post Posted Aug 19, 2011
	78%	Behind The Burly Q (2010)	" Informative and fannish burlesque doc is shapeless compared to its curvy subjects." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Jul 7, 2010
	94%	Winter's Bone (2010)	" Grim backwoods tale takes its time building momentum." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Jun 10, 2010
	47%	MacGruber (2010)	" A jerry-rigged contraption whose rubber-bands-and-baking-soda construction is lucky to work once and then fall apart." — Hollywood Reporter Posted May 17, 2010
	41%	Letters to Juliet (2010)	" Beautiful scenery and a cute premise can't camouflage a stale plot in bland romance." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Apr 26, 2010
	55%	The Killer Inside Me (2010)	" Good-looking but not very effective." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Jan 25, 2010
	17%	The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)	" A 'true story' of ghosts and illness suffers in comparison to the director's attention-getting short Ward 13." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Mar 18, 2009
	53%	Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008)	" Lacks the fresh charm that made their first such an unexpected (if guilty) pleasure." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Mar 10, 2008
	20%	With Your Permission (Til d�den os skiller) (2007)	" Initially intriguing but ultimately saddled with more quirks than it can handle." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Sep 19, 2007
	——	Past ()	" The film's final act is unbelievable, even if we ascribe hidden motivations to uncharacteristic behavior." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Sep 19, 2007
	——	The Passage ()	" The movie's split-personality frustrates, especially since cast and crew do their jobs perfectly well" — Hollywood Reporter Posted Sep 12, 2007
	66%	Smiley Face (2007)	" A pure, mostly dumb comedy, it's the tale of one impossibly out-of-it girl, Anna Faris' Jane F., who spends her day stumbling from mishap to mishap in an effort to avoid her drug dealer's wrath." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Mar 16, 2007
	12%	Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)	" The whole fear-of-obese-hillbillies device is starting to smell as stale as Leatherface's playroom." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Sep 25, 2006
	——	Jade Warrior ()	" The action isn't nearly sufficient to carry all the mumbo-jumbo, and the cast doesn't have enough charisma to keep the script afloat on their own." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Sep 15, 2006
	——	Palimpsest (2006)	" Polish take on generic crime material is dull, except for a self-parodic soundtrack." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Sep 13, 2006
	58%	Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland (2008)	" Stand-up tour doc offers laughs and amusing surprises, but doesn't justify a runtime as long as its title." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Sep 13, 2006
	59%	The Fall (2006)	" Tarsem and his screenwriting collaborators aren't able to come up with enough interesting justifications for their sudden shifts, and soon the shape-shifting yarn just feels like lazy storytelling." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Sep 13, 2006
	20%	Love and Other Disasters (2006)	" Viewers who don't loathe it immediately may find it the guilty pleasure of the season." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Sep 13, 2006
	71%	a/k/a Tommy Chong (2006)	" First-time filmmaker Josh Gilbert, whose skills behind the camera are rudimentary, might be a bit too close to his subject to do disinterested viewers justice." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Apr 26, 2006
	30%	The Sisters (2006)	" Lifeless and irredeemably sour." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Apr 13, 2006
	36%	95 Miles to Go (2004)	" There's very little that Romano does in this behind-the-scenes feature by first-timer Tom Caltabiano that isn't stupefyingly dull. It's no crime for a comedian to be a dud offstage; releasing a movie to prove this isn't the wisest career move." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Mar 23, 2006
	41%	American Dreamz (2006)	" A film with none of the heart that has characterized Weitz's best work and none of the freshness of his most successful." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Mar 23, 2006
	24%	Even Money (2006)	" Shouldn't an overwrought drama about the life-shattering effects of gambling addiction make some effort, before delivering its moral, to show why people gamble in the first place?" — Hollywood Reporter Posted Mar 19, 2006
	22%	The Oh in Ohio (2006)	" The movie provides a good time but isn't wholly satisfying in the end." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Mar 16, 2006
	43%	Tennis, Anyone...? (2005)	" A comedy so unfunny that its biggest laugh comes when an actor (for the second time) takes a tennis ball to the groin." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Nov 29, 2005
	46%	The Ice Harvest (2005)	" The film never convinces us that its main characters really belong in this seamy world." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Nov 3, 2005
	30%	The Big White (2005)	" Never completely finds its balance." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Oct 10, 2005
	46%	Green Street Hooligans (2005)	" Viewers hoping to understand the senseless phenomenon of football hooliganism would do better to rent Alan Clarke's nearly 20-year-old The Firm." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Apr 7, 2005
1.5/4	21%	The Raven (2012)	" We immediately understand why Cusack is not known for playing men who lived before 1984." — Washington Post Posted Apr 27, 2012
1.5/4	23%	Conan the Barbarian (2011)	" Momoa ... speaks in one of those trying-too-hard baritones heard in young jocks whose greatest fear is being called gay." — Washington Post Posted Aug 19, 2011
1.5/4	43%	A Little Help (2011)	" The next chapter in Laura's story might be something worth rooting for, but here's hoping she has a different writer penning her lines." — Washington Post Posted Aug 5, 2011
2/4	41%	Where Do We Go Now? (2012)	" A satire in which pathos competes with light comedy and neither quite flourishes." — Washington Post Posted May 18, 2012
2/4	54%	Safe House (2012)	" As fun as the movie occasionally is, it can't make its own drama convincing, much less give Reynolds the nudge he needs toward Matt Damon-ville." — Washington Post Posted Feb 10, 2012
2/4	77%	The Innkeepers (2012)	" Up until near the end ... you could mistake it for a low-key haunted-house comedy." — Washington Post Posted Feb 3, 2012
2/4	73%	The Conquest (2011)	" Failing to find deeper meaning in their protagonist's crises, they tell the story in a way that will only hold the interest of those who already know it fairly well." — Washington Post Posted Nov 18, 2011
2/4	81%	Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2011)	" "Dee" doesn't shoot for the gravitas of Zhang Yimou's "Hero." It doesn't approach that film's magnificent sensory impact, either, or the artistic romanticism that made "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" such a success here." — Washington Post Posted Sep 23, 2011
2.5/5	60%	Final Destination 5 (2011)	" The script and acting satisfy the genre's requirements by being thoroughly forgettable." — Washington Post Posted Aug 11, 2011
3/5	91%	Little Miss Sunshine (2006)	" It won't enter the quirktastic-voyage hall of fame, but it's a refreshing ride nonetheless." — Austin American-Statesman Posted Nov 13, 2006
2.5/4	91%	Point Blank (2011)	" "Point Blank" keeps the adrenaline flowing well past the point at which viewers stop hoping for twists they can't predict." — Washington Post Posted Aug 5, 2011
3/4	97%	Tomboy (2011)	" Sciamma pictures the story in dappled sunlight and wooded fields that, though not far from dull apartment blocks, have an out-of-time seductiveness." — Washington Post Posted Dec 16, 2011
3/4	100%	Thunder Soul (2011)	" Arguably, the current generation of funk and soul revivalists owes a debt to musicians who forged their astonishing sound in between Algebra study sessions." — Washington Post Posted Oct 7, 2011
3/4	83%	Warrior (2011)	" While "Warrior" does offer enough jaw-snapping action to sate any 'roid-ragers in the audience, it works on deeper levels as well." — Washington Post Posted Sep 9, 2011
3/4	76%	The Debt (2011)	" The Debt roots itself in reality more plausibly than most contemporary spy films without sacrificing the genre's tense thrills." — Washington Post Posted Sep 1, 2011
	43%	Dinner for Schmucks (2010)	" Steve Carell finds a character more clueless than Michael Scott in broad laffer redeemed by occasional quirks." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Jul 16, 2010
	85%	Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (2010)	" Lively and touching doc combines insider view of its art-star subject with smart present-day interviews." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Jul 7, 2010
	81%	Countdown to Zero (2010)	" Well put-together doc reminds viewers there's plenty to fear on the nuclear-weapons front." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Jul 6, 2010
	96%	Restrepo (2010)	" In-depth account of Army deployment in an Afghanistan hotspot shows soldiering at its most rugged." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Jun 21, 2010
	89%	Waiting for Superman (2010)	" Davis Guggenheim tells some inconvenient truths about public education in compelling new doc." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Jun 9, 2010
	91%	Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work (2010)	" Doc provides plenty of laughs while proving there's more to Rivers than plastic surgery jokes and red-carpet chatter." — Hollywood Reporter Posted Jun 7, 2010

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