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Mike Russell

Agrees with the Tomatometer 72% of the time.

Publications:: Oregonian

Total Reviews:: 182

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Showing 1 - 50 of 182

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
C+	53%	Safe House (2012)	" It's been a while since I watched a movie that felt as nakedly reverse-engineered as "Safe House."" — Oregonian Posted Feb 9, 2012
C	64%	The Woman in Black (2012)	" To my thinking, this splendid low-key bummer of a ghost story was eventually undermined by the film's increasing reliance on shock-scares, in which something suddenly and noisily jumps into the frame, over and over and over." — Oregonian Posted Feb 2, 2012
C	63%	We Bought a Zoo (2011)	" "Zoo" leaves you wondering whether Crowe was spooked by the mixed reaction to "Vanilla Sky" and "Elizabethtown" and chose to play it safe, remixing echoes of his usual screenwriting devices, in pursuit of a surefire hit." — Oregonian Posted Dec 22, 2011
B-	60%	Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)	" Law and Downey remain a lot of fun to watch together, and their chemistry covers a lot of silliness." — Oregonian Posted Dec 15, 2011
B	92%	Arthur Christmas (2011)	" Arthur is sort of a dull hero, but the grandfather is classic, hilarious Aardman -- a thoroughly British eccentric prone to weird nostalgic/fatalistic utterances." — Oregonian Posted Nov 22, 2011
B	37%	In Time (2011)	" Niccol is practicing the old-school craft of making a barn-broad alternate-reality that forces you to think about the way we all consensually agree to participate in systems -- even when those systems are hopelessly screwed up." — Oregonian Posted Oct 27, 2011
C+	88%	Margin Call (2011)	" Chandor writes monologues for seemingly every member of the ensemble, which gets a bit wearying, but is also how I'm guessing he attracted this stellar cast." — Oregonian Posted Oct 20, 2011
B	83%	Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2011)	" In their best moments, Hark's action movies have a what-did-I-just-see giddiness, as if their choreography were springing straight from a cartoon id." — Oregonian Posted Oct 13, 2011
C	59%	Real Steel (2011)	" Mostly it's dopey. The movie just begs too many logical questions for its own good." — Oregonian Posted Oct 6, 2011
C	83%	Dolphin Tale (2011)	" It's a mild shame that "Dolphin Tale" director Charles Martin Smith and his screenwriters have chosen to lard the true-life saga up with a bunch of easily digested imaginary detail straight out of the bland Hollywood feel-good recipe mix." — Oregonian Posted Sep 22, 2011
B+	90%	Attack the Block (2011)	" Cornish makes a feature debut here that's almost as stunning as when his pal (and executive producer) Edgar Wright invaded the cineplex with "Shaun of the Dead."" — Oregonian Posted Sep 8, 2011
B	74%	Fright Night (2011)	" "Fright Night" joins "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" as proof that you actually can do this sort of thing correctly." — Oregonian Posted Aug 18, 2011
B-	44%	30 Minutes or Less (2011)	" The movie isn't a frame longer than necessary, the car stunts are cool, and the scenes with Ansari and Eisenberg pop -- particularly during their laugh-out-loud amateur robbery." — Oregonian Posted Aug 11, 2011
	64%	Another Earth (2011)	" "Another Earth" looks great, and I gather that Marling and Cahill squeezed a surprising amount of production value out of their tiny budget. But story-wise, this is a shallow exercise with arty trappings." — Oregonian Posted Aug 4, 2011
B	44%	Cowboys & Aliens (2011)	" I hope this kicks off a late-career reinvention that finds Ford spending his remaining years playing cowboys sans aliens." — Oregonian Posted Jul 28, 2011
B	69%	Horrible Bosses (2011)	" The movie's amusing enough, and its plot twisty enough, that you can gloss over the half-baked elements." — Oregonian Posted Jul 7, 2011
B	39%	Cars 2 (2011)	" If it's going to be diet Pixar, at least it's action-packed diet Pixar -- with overwhelming, detail-choked production design that occasionally had my jaw lowering like a forklift." — Oregonian Posted Jun 23, 2011
B+	87%	Submarine (2011)	" This is Ayoade's feature debut, and it's fairly stunning." — Oregonian Posted Jun 16, 2011
B	87%	X-Men: First Class (2011)	" "X-Men: First Class" recaptures the character-driven strengths of the first two films in this superhero series -- while adding a surprising dash of '60s spy-movie style." — Oregonian Posted Jun 2, 2011
C	34%	Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)	" I wouldn't call "On Stranger Tides" a disaster, but it does take everything that was charming about the first film and remixes it far less carefully and at a slower pitch, rendering it mildly diverting and shockingly sludgy." — Oregonian Posted May 19, 2011
B	90%	Bridesmaids (2011)	" In an age of increasingly bland, formulaic rom-coms that seem to star the same three actresses, "Bridesmaids" is almost a revelation." — Oregonian Posted May 12, 2011
C+	40%	Henry's Crime (2011)	" The film feels a bit enervated, even when the script asks it to fly off the rails toward the end." — Oregonian Posted Apr 28, 2011
B-	78%	Fast Five (2011)	" Between this and last year's overlooked "Faster," it's great to see The Rock re-embracing the action genre, and when his clobbering match with Diesel finally happens, it's as outlandishly room-wrecking as I'd hoped." — Oregonian Posted Apr 28, 2011
B	47%	Super (2011)	" I suspect audiences will divide sharply on the movie's wild tone shifts. I found them sort of fearless." — Oregonian Posted Apr 14, 2011
C	26%	Arthur (2011)	" A tired story full of pratfalls, barn-broad gags, cartoonish stuffed shirts, and the exact same story beats you've seen in a million rom-coms, right down to the wedding-aisle confrontation." — Oregonian Posted Apr 7, 2011
B-	53%	The Mechanic (2011)	" The film doesn't break a centimeter of new ground, but its stripped-down mayhem and more-nuanced-than-necessary performances are a modest surprise." — Oregonian Posted Jan 27, 2011
C	71%	I Love You Phillip Morris (2010)	" Carrey fearlessly gives it his best shot, but this fundamental schizophrenia strong-armed me out of the film, and left me feeling like McGregor's more grounded performance existed in another movie entirely." — Oregonian Posted Dec 16, 2010
C	36%	Burlesque (2010)	" A clich�d drag that wastes talented actors." — Oregonian Posted Nov 23, 2010
B+	86%	Unstoppable (2010)	" The stunts here are metal-crushingly spectacular and refreshingly physical, and Scott doles them out sparingly enough that they're dramatic instead of merely noisy." — Oregonian Posted Nov 11, 2010
C	39%	Due Date (2010)	" This feels like minor Phillips to me -- something in the neighborhood of 2006's "School for Scoundrels," quality-wise, though with a much grimmer heart." — Oregonian Posted Nov 4, 2010
B-	68%	Conviction (2010)	" It earns head-pat adjectives like "admirable" and "inspiring" and "restrained" and "well-acted" and "solidly crafted," but never quite stirs the deeper passions." — Oregonian Posted Oct 21, 2010
B-	63%	Secretariat (2010)	" The actors and the film's genial nature help it go down fairly easy. The racing scenes are well-shot and surprisingly thrilling, given the preordained outcome." — Oregonian Posted Oct 7, 2010
	94%	The Town (2010)	" Story-wise, The Town isn't nearly as tight as Gone Baby Gone. But Affleck mostly makes up for that by revealing two additional filmmaking gifts: He's really good at staging unpretentious action scenes and at directing himself as an actor." — Oregonian Posted Sep 17, 2010
B-	59%	Centurion (2010)	" If I believed in the concept of "guilty pleasures," I'd classify Centurion as one, but I think I maybe just kind of enjoyed it." — Oregonian Posted Sep 10, 2010
B	54%	Flipped (2010)	" The kids provide an earnest emotional through line to a tiny story, and I sort of hope it kicks off a new mature period for Reiner as a filmmaker." — Oregonian Posted Sep 10, 2010
B	73%	The Last Exorcism (2010)	" I like that director Daniel Stamm tries to con me with faux supernatural realism in the same way Cotton tries to con the girl he's "exorcising."" — Oregonian Posted Aug 26, 2010
B+	78%	The Other Guys (2010)	" McKay (mostly) pulls off something kind of fascinating here: He's made a huge comedy that ruthlessly rips on corporate corruption through a lens of absurdist gags..." — Oregonian Posted Aug 6, 2010
C	70%	Ramona and Beezus (2010)	" King is good enough that you can't help but root for her. But frankly, I can't imagine paying full ticket price plus concessions for that privilege." — Oregonian Posted Jul 22, 2010
B-	41%	The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010)	" Turteltaub has a workmanlike touch and an easy sense of humor here, and he and his team do a better-than-expected job of keeping you interested in the story, despite it being yet another Tale of a Reluctant Young Man With A Supernatural Hero's Calling." — Oregonian Posted Jul 14, 2010
B-	64%	Predators (2010)	" A pretty decent, grim little lost-patrol mash-up of the original Predator and Pitch Black -- a perfectly fine night at the beer-theater, in other words." — Oregonian Posted Jul 8, 2010
C	49%	The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)	" It's stagnant to the degree that screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg pads out the narrative with no fewer than three narrated costume-drama flashbacks." — Oregonian Posted Jun 29, 2010
B	53%	Knight & Day (2010)	" If you can settle into its odd, low-key groove, I think you'll find it's a light pop beverage that goes down easy during one of the lamest blockbuster summers in recent memory. My parents are really going to like it." — Oregonian Posted Jun 23, 2010
A	99%	Toy Story 3 (2010)	" The studio's third outing with the motley crew of talking toys is ridiculously entertaining, tightly plotted, laugh-out-loud funny and emotionally true. It might even be the best in the series." — Oregonian Posted Jun 17, 2010
B	67%	The Karate Kid (2010)	" So here's a pleasant surprise: The 2010 remake of The Karate Kid is charming, thoughtfully paced and even a bit emotionally involving, with what might be a movie-star turn by a movie star's son." — Oregonian Posted Jun 10, 2010
B+	84%	The Good, the Bad, and the Weird (2010)	" Did you really just watch 50 guys on trucks and horses blast one another to bits while chasing one guy on a motorcycle? You did. And it was awesome." — Oregonian Posted Jun 3, 2010
	35%	Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)	" It finally just grinds you down with its sheer dull busy-ness." — Oregonian Posted May 27, 2010
B	74%	The Exploding Girl (2010)	" Kazan has a gift for letting you see her think, even when she's perfectly still; the film's title refers to the ferocious trauma happening between Ivy's ears and her silent struggle to keep it in check." — Oregonian Posted May 20, 2010
B-	58%	Shrek Forever After (Shrek 4) (2010)	" It coasts a bit, but it's slick, and enough jokes and characters connect that you can't quite dismiss it." — Oregonian Posted May 20, 2010
B+	91%	The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos) (2010)	" The actors give full-bodied, warm, melancholic performances, and their easy chemistry grounds the film even when it flirts with the cliched and the downright bizarre." — Oregonian Posted May 6, 2010

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