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Rubin Safaya

Rubin Safaya

""Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them." - Pauline Kael "Cinema is truth at twenty-four frames a second, and every cut is a lie." - Jean-Luc Godard"

Agrees with the Tomatometer 79% of the time.

Publications:
Cinemalogue.com
Total Reviews:
144
Location:
Dallas-Ft. Worth

Best Reviewed Films

Showing 1 - 50 of 144
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Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
A 80% Shame (2011) " Shame is the study of our species' need to find connection in spite of our more selfish and isolating primal vices." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 8, 2011
A 90% The Illusionist (L'illusionniste) (2010) " In a Spartan eighty minutes, layers of visual, narrative and character detail are fluidly conveyed, doubly so for a film that contains no dialogues." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Feb 6, 2011
A 95% The King's Speech (2010) " Few films this year have had as well-rounded a mix of acting, direction, sound and picture, but The King's Speech is in every respect a beautiful film, beautifully played by its principal and supporting cast." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 18, 2010
A+ 96% Breathless (À bout de souffle) (By a Tether) (1961) " Together, like their countermelodies, Michel and Patricia form a zero-sum game-nothing matters. But with Michel's death, she is left behind to ponder the consequences of their indifference." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Oct 25, 2010
A+ 97% Back to the Future (1985) " It's a timeless joke that never gets old: One day you will grow up to be your parents and they'll have the last laugh. The innovation here was in telling the joke backwards." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Oct 25, 2010
A 84% The Art Of The Steal (2010) " That tens of thousands of years of human and cultural progress could manifest itself in a single human being... and be obliterated in less than a half-century by commoditization to the advantage of public and private power-brokers is the great tragedy." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Apr 3, 2010
A 69% Shutter Island (2010) " Mr. Scorsese is like Buddy Rich, dynamically gunning out more tonality, depth and rhythm from a four piece kit than James Cameron's ham-fisted, three-hour solo on his latest twenty-piece contraption." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Feb 23, 2010
A 85% Black Dynamite (2009) " Here, the acting, framing, focus, blocking, editing, sound and film processing all nail down the period so perfectly... It looks, sounds and feels as if it were shot in 1972." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Jan 18, 2010
A+ 87% Brokeback Mountain (2005) " Brokeback Mountain is ultimately about the paralysis of regret and how it fractures the lives of not just those afflicted by it, but everyone else around them." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 6, 2009
A 78% The Informant! (2009) " Visual and narrative punchlines strike flawlessly like the absurdist humor of a Bugs Bunny cartoon..." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 6, 2009
A 91% District 9 (2009) " The film persuades us to look beneath the aliens' chitinous exterior, and slowly eats at us as the images of racism, subjugation and internment become familiar and prod our conscience." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 6, 2009
A- 96% Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (2011) " These films are Campbell's "Hero's Journey"... Star Wars to a generation of kids afraid of being thrust so quickly into adulthood-a reality all too close to home for the post-9/11 generation." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Jul 19, 2011
A- 86% Inception (2010) " ...one of the strongest science-fiction concepts to come along in some time..." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Jul 17, 2010
A- 84% The Ghost Writer (2010) " The story involves intricately crafted misdirection and political intrigue in a style reminiscent of David Mamet's Spartan. The omnipresent machinations beckon a second viewing for a deeper read." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Feb 26, 2010
A- 91% Up in the Air (2009) " The consummate bachelor, Mr. Clooney reflects just enough comfort in his own skin without teetering into arrogance, quietly amused by life's idiosyncrasies." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 6, 2009
A- 98% Up (2009) " ...if you've ever wondered what kind of jokes dogs would tell if they could speak, here's your chance." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 6, 2009
A- 95% Star Trek (2009) " ...the film will go down, and endearingly so, as the Brokeback Mountain of space operas... In all the cosmos, a fatherless human and a motherless Vulcan find in one another that which they had lost." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 6, 2009
B+ 87% Black Swan (2010) " Showgirls meets Fight Club on crazy pills." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 4, 2010
B+ 93% 127 Hours (2010) " Mr. Franco transports us into Ralston's frame of mind in the five-plus days he remained trapped, surviving on a carefully-rationed 300ml of water and whatever wits he could maintain under such horrifying circumstances." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Nov 25, 2010
B+ 79% Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 (2010) " ...the elements of scene and sound combine to reveal a maturity to the Potter franchise that surprises, scares and entertains in all the ways the lifeless Twilight films failed to accomplish." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Nov 20, 2010
B+ 85% The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) " The acting, cinematography and production design work well without being overstated. We aren't treated to Dutch Angle abuse to falsely inflate tension. Instead, the story and the characterizations drive the suspense." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Apr 3, 2010
B+ 78% The Hangover (2009) " Question: What do Mike Tyson's tiger, a chicken, a horrible effeminate Chinese man stereotype naked in a car trunk, a stolen police car, a baby, a missing tooth and Phil Collins' music all have in common? Answer: Nothing..." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 6, 2009
B+ 100% Sita Sings the Blues (2008) " The story shifts effortlessly between the two-dimensional collage style of the narrator segments, the classical artistic design of the Rama-Sita story, the pencil sketch style of the modern story, and finally Hanshaw's musical numbers in a two-dimensional" — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 6, 2009
94% Good Hair (2009) " Mr. Rock and Mr. Stilson don't beat you up with a tiresome polemic a-la Michael Moore. Never does he put himself at the center of the film, condescend to the audience, or insult his interview subjects regardless of their views..." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 6, 2009
94% The Damned United (2009) " THE DAMNED UNITED is an intriguing study in human ego, and its ability to interfere with sound management." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 6, 2009
45% The Box (2009) " ...I walked into a Cameron Diaz film expecting to be treated to shlock, and concluded that I had just witnessed the rebirth of the classical sci-fi/thriller." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 6, 2009
90% Zombieland (2009) " The film involves such gratuitous, juicy spatter, Dexter Morgan would have a field day." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 6, 2009
89% A Serious Man (2009) " It's a funny film, but mostly to those who convince themselves that there's truth behind every facet of Larry's ludicrously-miserable existence." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 6, 2009
26% Ninja Assassin (2009) " As a viewer, your only task here is to watch, eat popcorn, and laugh, jump or shriek%u2014whichever works for you%u2014whenever you see heads roll, limbs fly or or hemoglobin spurting." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 6, 2009
39% 2012 (2009) " I'm curious, just a bit, about what goes on in the mind of Roland Emmerich. Does he know that he makes some of the best comedies ever written?" — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 6, 2009
63% Clerks II (2006) " The turning point is Dante's serious conversation with Becky about his future plans. From there, the movie finds its narrative center and becomes a real story about real people and, suddenly, you find you even care about Randal." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Jul 22, 2006
69% A Scanner Darkly (2006) " As the drugs keep cranking the gears of suspicion, seducing them down syllogistic corridors of absurd reasoning, you can feel them out-thinking their own paranoia to the brink of insanity." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Jul 14, 2006
95% Wordplay (2006) " So many aspects of our lives are mundane that just having some sort of passion... means that people are taking time to engage themselves in more than merely subsistence. That demonstrates that there is culture left in the world..." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Jun 23, 2006
93% An Inconvenient Truth (2006) " ...the fundamental obstacle to making the average human aware and concerned about the ecology is a matter of comprehending scale--a problem which the formerly robotic Democrat tackles rather elegantly." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Jun 9, 2006
91% Water (2005) " ...you're an observer to a real dialogue and not merely a viewer in an audience watching a scripted drama and plot unfold." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Jun 6, 2006
74% Over the Hedge (2006) " Where it lacks ingenuity and cohesive storytelling, it satiates with manic energy, oddball observation and witty humor..." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted May 19, 2006
90% Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006) " While his lyrics aren't complicated, both the words and the delivery reflect years of pain and anguish, particularly in seeing time pass, friends come and go." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted May 4, 2006
92% Dave Chappelle's Block Party (2006) " Because Chappelle's really digging into who people are... he has the capacity to adeptly grasp such perennial wellsprings of humor as class conflict to a degree unparalleled by modern entertainers..." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted May 4, 2006
90% Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005) " ...we see around and behind and underneath the stage, so to speak -- peering into the intertwined lives of the people who are caught up in the maelstrom of an untenable subject for film adaptation." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted May 3, 2006
82% Tsotsi (Thug) (2006) " Without cheap deceptions, clever editing, plot conveniences or overt exposition, the film pulls you in and keeps you there on the merit of the story's substance." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted May 3, 2006
57% Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (2006) " ...the film doesn't try to be too clever and hip for the kids, as have many animated movies of late in the endless attempt to sell attitude to credit-card wielding adults at the box office." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted May 3, 2006
86% Thank You For Smoking (2006) " It's not quite as dark a satire as "Lord of War," and its protagonist's jolly attitude, resembling (frighteningly) a more rational sort of Timothy Treadwell, does distract one... But... the movie is never in danger of being crushed by it's own weight." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted May 3, 2006
87% Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2006) " ...to shorten the discussions between Mohr and Scholl would have been to miss the point. She makes her lasting impression on Mohr, and us, not by violence, or cacophony, but by the persistence, patience and persuasiveness of her intellectual discourse..." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted May 3, 2006
79% Brick (2006) " I felt like I was watching a bad film school rehash of Godard in the most contrived manner. But somewhere along the way, this flagrantly self-affected and at times dementedly jocular piece of art-house trash earned my respect." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted May 3, 2006
84% Akeelah and the Bee (2006) " It had the potential... to be great had it avoided running lockstep with the structure of lesser films." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted May 3, 2006
91% United 93 (2006) " it's a respectable extrapolation that doesn't paint the terrorists as villains or the passengers as heroes. The movie doesn't need to." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted May 1, 2006
B 92% Another Year (2010) " In a sense, [Mary] manufactures crises to garner sympathy. That, not alcoholism, is her addiction." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Jan 29, 2011
B 91% The Fighter (2010) " Driven by its ensemble of skilled actors, The Fighter contrasts success and failure, ambition and apathy, victory and defeat." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Dec 18, 2010
B 80% Fair Game (2010) " An interesting subtext to the film is its implied statement about intelligence gathering methods... The national dialogue over torture is well-known and well-exhausted, but here the film doesn't ram it down your throat." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Nov 25, 2010
B 53% The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2010) " At its conclusion you're nowhere near where you started, nor are you waiting for the twist to drag you back to the beginning to tie up all narrative threads in one neat bow." — Cinemalogue.com
Posted Nov 25, 2010
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