James Berardinelli Movie Reviews & Previews

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James Berardinelli

Agrees with the Tomatometer 78% of the time.

Biography:: I was born in September 1967 in the town of New Brunswick, New Jersey (USA). I started writing when I was about 9 years old, and suffered through the traumatic experience of reading chapters from my stories in front of my entire fourth grade class. However, although my "first love" was writing, too many tales of starving authors scared me off that path, so I decided to become an engineer instead. I attended the University of Pennsylvania from 1985 through 1990, obtaining both a BS and an MS in Electrical Engineering. Putting my education to use, I went to work for a company called Bellcore, which pays well enough for me to keep up the mortgage, maintain a home theater, finance film festival trips, and buy the 25-30 gallons of gasoline I need each week to attend screenings. As for my "film history"... As a child, I did not attend many movies. In fact, the first one I remember going to was JAWS, at a drive-in. During my junior high and high school years, I rarely ventured into a theater, but my interest in movies escalated while I was at college. In 1991, the year before I started reviewing, I saw about 30 films. The number jumped up to 180 in 1992, when I wrote capsule reviews for my own use. Starting in 1993, the year I "went public" on the Usenet newsgroups, I began seeing between 220 and 250 theatrical releases per year.
Publications:: ReelViews
Critics' Group:: Online Film Critics Society

Total Reviews:: 4103
Total QuickRatings:: 1

Location:: New Jersey, US

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 4103

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
1.5/4	27%	The Vow (2012)	" This film, with its would-be crowd-pleasing contrivances and rote adherence to formula, offers almost no redeeming characteristics." — ReelViews Posted Feb 10, 2012
2/4	51%	Safe House (2012)	" It's plain most of the well-known players are on hand for purposes of refreshing their bank accounts." — ReelViews Posted Feb 8, 2012
2.5/4	51%	Perfect Sense (2012)	" The problem with Perfect Sense is its inability to be effective as either a character-based love story or something larger and more bold." — ReelViews Posted Feb 7, 2012
3.5/4	73%	A Single Girl (2000)	" Even though nothing much happens during the course of the movie (Valerie spends over half the running time wandering around the inside of a hotel), this is a thoroughly engrossing motion picture." — ReelViews Posted Feb 7, 2012
3/4	64%	The Woman in Black (2012)	" The star's job description is that he be able to react convincingly to a variety of supernatural events and to endure being covered in mud. He has difficulty with neither." — ReelViews Posted Feb 5, 2012
3/4	85%	Chronicle (2012)	" Chronicle is the kind of movie that makes one excited about the future prospects of the man at the helm." — ReelViews Posted Feb 3, 2012
3/4	76%	The Innkeepers (2012)	" Sometimes with horror movies, it's all about tone." — ReelViews Posted Feb 2, 2012
3/4	77%	The Grey (2012)	" The Grey is about raging against the dying of the light but also about accepting it with peace once the fight has been lost." — ReelViews Posted Jan 31, 2012
2.5/4	32%	Man on a Ledge (2012)	" On balance, Man on a Ledge is fun, but I left the theater feeling disappointed and cheated, as if the filmmakers set me up for something great they ultimately couldn't deliver." — ReelViews Posted Jan 25, 2012
3.5/4	99%	A Separation (2011)	" It's an indictment of a culture in which religion and tradition poison a legal system. It is an exploration of the power of a lie. It is a mystery and a courtroom drama. Above all, however, it is a tale of love and sacrifice." — ReelViews Posted Jan 24, 2012
2.5/4	36%	Red Tails (2012)	" One can get away with a lot of cornball speeches a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away but it doesn't work nearly as well a short time ago on planet Earth." — ReelViews Posted Jan 21, 2012
3/4	80%	Haywire (2012)	" This is not "great" Soderbergh, regardless of whether one considers him as an auteur or a mass market entertainer. But it is "good" Soderbergh, and that's more than enough." — ReelViews Posted Jan 18, 2012
2/4	48%	Contraband (2012)	" Contraband is the kind of thriller that offers just enough in the way of effective elements to assemble a two-minute trailer." — ReelViews Posted Jan 12, 2012
3/4	93%	Coriolanus (2011)	" For Shakespeare neophytes whose primary familiarity with the Bard has been through the cinema, watching Coriolanus may seem like unearthing a lost treasure." — ReelViews Posted Jan 10, 2012
3/4	77%	A Dangerous Method (2011)	" Knightley's portrayal is feral and unsettling." — ReelViews Posted Jan 7, 2012
2/4	54%	The Iron Lady (2012)	" The screenplay is pedestrian and the acting, including that of star Meryl Streep, is unmemorable." — ReelViews Posted Jan 4, 2012
2.5/4	96%	Pariah (2011)	" The movie's point, which is impossible to miss, is that it's hard being black & gay in America and, while there's undoubtedly truth in that sentiment, it doesn't necessarily make for a compelling motion picture circa 2011." — ReelViews Posted Jan 2, 2012
2.5/4	53%	Albert Nobbs (2012)	" All of the red meat is just beneath the surface, occasionally poking through but mostly remaining buried." — ReelViews Posted Dec 29, 2011
3.5/4	97%	The Artist (2011)	" For a movie that is so much about technique, it's surprising how affecting the story is." — ReelViews Posted Dec 28, 2011
3/4	76%	War Horse (2011)	" Call it "lesser Spielberg" and put it alongside Always and Hook." — ReelViews Posted Dec 23, 2011
3.5/4	45%	Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2012)	" An emotionally powerful cinematic testimony about that horrific late summer day." — ReelViews Posted Dec 22, 2011
3/4	63%	We Bought a Zoo (2011)	" The general sense of blandness and predictability that marks the story's progression does not damage its emotional strengths. We feel for these characters and, because we care about them, we yearn for the highs the film ultimately delivers." — ReelViews Posted Dec 21, 2011
4/4	87%	The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)	" This is what a movie adaptation should be: a film whose base narrative has its roots in the source material but whose soul can be identified through the images that unfold on screen." — ReelViews Posted Dec 20, 2011
3/4	75%	The Adventures of Tintin (2011)	" Had The Adventures of Tintin been a live motion picture rather than a motion capture-driven animated endeavor, it would have been compared to Raiders of the Lost Ark and Pirates of the Caribbean." — ReelViews Posted Dec 19, 2011
3/4	93%	Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol (2011)	" Ghost Protocol is big and brassy, doing many of the things its predecessors did but, in the words of Nigel Tufnel, turning them up to "11."" — ReelViews Posted Dec 16, 2011
3/4	60%	Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)	" A Game of Shadows is a stronger, better realized movie that builds upon the strengths of the original and jettisons some of the weaknesses." — ReelViews Posted Dec 13, 2011
2.5/4	71%	Carnage (2011)	" Carnage suffers from a common problem that afflicts many stage-to-screen adaptations: too much artifice and contrivance." — ReelViews Posted Dec 12, 2011
2/4	22%	The Sitter (2011)	" For every laugh offered by The Sitter, there are five minutes of boredom and at least one failed scene of would-be "dramatic" character building." — ReelViews Posted Dec 10, 2011
3.5/4	80%	We Need to Talk About Kevin (2012)	" This is a depressing motion picture, yet the issues it addresses are real, especially in a world where the term "childhood innocence" is losing all meaning." — ReelViews Posted Dec 8, 2011
2.5/4	82%	Young Adult (2011)	" The attitude toward the protagonist is thinly-veiled contempt ... until, in the last 20 minutes or so, they attempt to turn her into an object of sympathy. It doesn't work and, on balance, neither does Young Adult." — ReelViews Posted Dec 7, 2011
3/4	84%	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)	" Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy may be the best possible movie version of the story, but it illustrates that the big screen is not the ideal medium for a tale of this complexity." — ReelViews Posted Dec 5, 2011
2.5/4	73%	Rampart (2012)	" It's a downbeat character study and, for the most part, it executes that aspect adequately." — ReelViews Posted Dec 1, 2011
3.5/4	80%	Shame (2011)	" McQueen has taken an unflinching and non-judgmental view of sexual addiction in Shame. This is sex without emotion, nudity without titillation, and climaxes without satisfaction." — ReelViews Posted Nov 29, 2011
3.5/4	94%	Hugo (2011)	" It's a fairy tale for mature viewers, but the airy exterior hides emotional depth." — ReelViews Posted Nov 24, 2011
3/4	92%	Arthur Christmas (2011)	" With a clever script that successfully updates many Christmas myths and dialogue that crackles with sophisticated wit, this movie offers the kind of pre-holiday experience that parents and children alike will appreciate." — ReelViews Posted Nov 24, 2011
3/4	96%	The Muppets (2011)	" Kids today will have the same kind of fun at The Muppets they have at all films of this kind. Adults, however, will connect in a deeper way." — ReelViews Posted Nov 23, 2011
3/4	84%	My Week with Marilyn (2011)	" Williams brings Marilyn to life in all her permutations: little-girl-lost Norma Jean; sexy, kittenish Marilyn Monroe; and the confused woman trapped in between." — ReelViews Posted Nov 21, 2011
3/4	——	Tian ruo you qing II: Zhi tian chang di jiu (A Moment of Romance II) (1992)	— ReelViews Posted Nov 19, 2011
2.5/4	25%	Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011)	" Here's hoping Breaking Dawn Part Two gives us more of what Part One provided in the final 30 minutes than what it forced viewers to endure to get there." — ReelViews Posted Nov 18, 2011
3.5/4	90%	The Descendants (2011)	" The Descendants may be director Alexander Payne's finest outing to date." — ReelViews Posted Nov 16, 2011
2.5/4	89%	Into The Abyss (2011)	" Watching Into the Abyss, I had the overwhelming sense that, somewhere along the way, Werner Herzog lost his way." — ReelViews Posted Nov 15, 2011
3/4	36%	Immortals (2011)	" The same hyperstylized, comic book-come-to-life approach that created an invigorating experience for viewers of 300 elevates Immortals above the level of a Clash of the Titans knock-off." — ReelViews Posted Nov 13, 2011
3/4	44%	J. Edgar (2011)	" DiCaprio wears the persona of Hoover with ease, again reminding audiences that the young man who made so many girls swoon with Titanic has grown into an actor of great range and capability." — ReelViews Posted Nov 9, 2011
2.5/4	78%	Melancholia (2011)	" Unfortunately, in his pursuit of an artistic vision, von Trier has thrown logic, physics, and coherence out the window." — ReelViews Posted Nov 8, 2011
2/4	79%	The Sleeping Beauty (2011)	— ReelViews Posted Nov 8, 2011
2.5/4	69%	A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (2011)	" If there's a complaint to be made, it's that the humor could be less scattershot." — ReelViews Posted Nov 6, 2011
2.5/4	74%	Like Crazy (2011)	" Although Like Crazy contains some emotionally on-target scenes, the movie as a whole feels glum and artificial." — ReelViews Posted Nov 3, 2011
2/4	68%	Tower Heist (2011)	" This is a sadly common example of a filmmaker designing his production for inattentive, lazy audiences who don't really care about story coherence or consistency. It's a "turn off the brain" movie." — ReelViews Posted Nov 3, 2011
2/4	50%	Sleeping Beauty (2011)	" Sleeping Beauty is one of those self-consciously artsy motion picture that promises more than it delivers." — ReelViews Posted Nov 2, 2011

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