Brian Holcomb Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Brian Holcomb

Brian Holcomb

Agrees with the Tomatometer 74% of the time.

Publications:: Beyond Hollywood , CinemaBlend.com , Kinetofilm , PopMatters , Slant Magazine
Critics' Group:: Online Film Critics Society

Total Reviews:: 170

Location:: South Jersey/Philadelphia

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Showing 1 - 50 of 170

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
3.5/5	84%	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)	" This is the kind of movie where the lead character gets involved in a narrative so labyrinthine that he should eventually suspect himself at some point. That said, Alfredson manages to create a nightmarish atmosphere" — Kinetofilm Posted Dec 3, 2011
5/5	98%	The Conversation (1974)	" A film OF the 1970s, The Conversation is rooted in the new American anxiety of the time, the idea that behind every ideal was a rotten, festering truth. " — CinemaBlend.com Posted Nov 21, 2011
1.5/5	3%	Passion Play (2011)	" A vanity project from successful Hollywood screenwriter Mitch Glazer, this film should really be much funnier than it is. Oh, it's not a comedy, by the way. Not at all. " — CinemaBlend.com Posted Jun 27, 2011
5/5	15%	Birdemic: Shock And Terror (2008)	" Birdemic appears to be completely sincere, an attempt by Nguyen to make a serious and moving work of art. So what if it moves us to tears with laughter? " — CinemaBlend.com Posted Mar 17, 2011
2/5	20%	The Traveler (2011)	" The film seems to be straining at times for an existentialism way outside of its grasp. This isn't Camus; it's Rod Serling by way of Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter. " — CinemaBlend.com Posted Feb 14, 2011
2.5/5	53%	The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2010)	" The third and final entry in Stieg Larsson's enormously successful series is perhaps the least thrilling, but it's easily the most satisfying. " — CinemaBlend.com Posted Jan 27, 2011
3.5/5	73%	The Last Exorcism (2010)	" If you make a film about exorcism, you better be ready to be compared to one of the best films ever made. Surprisingly, the film holds its own in that regard." — CinemaBlend.com Posted Jan 11, 2011
3/5	87%	Black Swan (2010)	" Initially BLACK SWAN appears to be a psychological horror film about a ballerina who goes insane. But it's really about a filmmaker who goes insane-in good ways and bad." — Kinetofilm Posted Dec 3, 2010
3.5/5	81%	The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2010)	" What first-time director Blakeson does with this very familiar situation is cut it to the bone. Not only is there very little fat on this body, there's barely a skeleton." — CinemaBlend.com Posted Nov 30, 2010
2/5	69%	The Girl Who Played with Fire (Flickan som lekte med elden) (2010)	" Records onto film all the important moments found in the novel. These moments aren't made into compelling drama so much as crossed off some narrative checklist. " — CinemaBlend.com Posted Oct 27, 2010
4/5	48%	Antichrist (2009)	" Von Trier is a prankster so any attempt to guess at WTF he had in mind could just end up with the Danish auteur pulling your leg. The Fox may have said it best:"Chaos Reigns"" — Kinetofilm Posted Oct 21, 2010
3/5	55%	The Killer Inside Me (2010)	" The violence is not shown in an ironic fashion. It's put front and center and is visceral in a way nothing else is in the film." — CinemaBlend.com Posted Oct 4, 2010
2.5/5	51%	Chloe (2010)	" This isn't a particularly deep story but it does a good job at making what would be obvious in a Skinemax movie much more ambiguous." — Kinetofilm Posted Sep 25, 2010
4.5/5	86%	Red Riding Trilogy ()	" Taken as a whole, the trilogy depicts a universe polluted by the evil that men do and the pain and suffering their evil leaves behind. " — CinemaBlend.com Posted Sep 7, 2010
5/5	84%	The Good, the Bad, and the Weird (2010)	" This film was a total blast from start to finish! It's more than Good, has little that is Bad, and is filled with the Weird. " — CinemaBlend.com Posted Aug 18, 2010
4/5	86%	Inception (2010)	" Nolan borrows from classic heist and caper movies to design the clockwork tension but this particular clock is more like Dali's dripping watch. " — Kinetofilm Posted Jul 19, 2010
3.5/5	86%	The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)	" The film version by director Niels Arden Oplev is a faithful adaptation of the novel...perhaps too faithful to work completely as cinema, but well-produced nonetheless. " — CinemaBlend.com Posted Jul 7, 2010
4/5	——	Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (2008)	" The emergence of Harris from child star to pop-culture icon has been one of the more pleasant surprises of this decade. " — CinemaBlend.com Posted Jun 1, 2010
4/5	71%	Tetro (2009)	" "Tetro" is wonderfully expressionist and surreal, and some of Coppola's riskier ideas pay great dividends by the end of the film." — CinemaBlend.com Posted May 24, 2010
3.5/5	93%	Lake Mungo (2009)	" It's actually quite difficult to imagine that this isn't a true story, and that the actors playing the tragic Palmers are not exactly who they say they are." — CinemaBlend.com Posted Apr 8, 2010
1/5	17%	The Fourth Kind (2009)	" The arrogance and ignorance on display is truly amazing. Arrogance of its superiority over the audience's intellect and ignorance of filmmaking craft." — CinemaBlend.com Posted Mar 16, 2010
5/5	84%	The Ghost Writer (2010)	" I am consistently amazed at Roman Polanski's seemingly effortless mastery of cinematic craft. There is no wasted energy and no indulgence." — Kinetofilm Posted Mar 2, 2010
4/5	69%	Shutter Island (2010)	" Scorsese has more up his sleeve than a dead director's trademarked bag of tricks and with the unique challenges presented by the material he needed them." — Kinetofilm Posted Feb 22, 2010
5/5	86%	The House of the Devil (2009)	" By trading in loud and increasingly low-dividend "shocks" for well-earned dread and fear, West immerses the audience in a genuine shared experience." — CinemaBlend.com Posted Feb 5, 2010
5/5	97%	The Hurt Locker (2009)	" A tough war picture in the tabloid journalist tradition of Sam Fuller, The Hurt Locker avoids most of the sentimentalizing and editorializing of other recent films about Iraq." — Kinetofilm Posted Feb 2, 2010
5/5	100%	The Shooting (1967)	" What is most intriguing about "The Shooting" is the constant sense of undefined menace throughout." — Kinetofilm Posted Feb 1, 2010
3.5/5	——	Rinne (Reincarnation) (2007)	" The brilliance here is not in the day old plot, but in the way Shimizu moves the differing strands of reality closer and closer as the movie comes to its climax." — Kinetofilm Posted Feb 1, 2010
2/5	100%	The Gravedancers (2006)	" The title tells all in this jumbled mess of a horror film." — Kinetofilm Posted Feb 1, 2010
3/5	——	Bleeding Rose (2007)	" A very effective example of what can be accomplished on a low budget and meager resources." — Kinetofilm Posted Feb 1, 2010
3/5	——	Beat The Bastard Down ()	" There is something intangible about Traynor's direction which involves you in the plot and characters in a way most indie filmmakers fail to achieve." — Kinetofilm Posted Feb 1, 2010
3.5/5	75%	Sunshine (2007)	" Garland and Boyle are nothing if not ambitious. They want us to consider the Big Questions about the importance of mankind as well as science versus fundamentalism." — Kinetofilm Posted Feb 1, 2010
2.5/5	33%	Flyboys (2006)	" It may indeed be inspired by a true story, but what we see onscreen is simply "Star Wars" set in some fantasy French air base circa 1917." — Kinetofilm Posted Feb 1, 2010
2/5	25%	Saw III (2006)	" Images jump, blip, strobe, and shock like an epileptic seizure - all the result of director Darren Lynn Bousman's lack of trust in his screenplay." — Kinetofilm Posted Feb 1, 2010
3/5	43%	House of Dark Shadows (1970)	" The film is well mounted and stylishly produced. In what must've seemed like a luxury, Jonathan Frid had time to learn ALL his lines." — Kinetofilm Posted Feb 1, 2010
3/5	64%	Dracula (1979)	" This is sort of a Saturday Night Fever version of the story with a stylish, afro'ed Langella walking around with an open shirt looking for girls to take to his Castle Disco." — Kinetofilm Posted Feb 1, 2010
5/5	100%	Forty Guns (1957)	" Fuller's comic book world is a complete artistic creation, a place where men were MEN and women could take a bullet now and then." — Kinetofilm Posted Feb 1, 2010
2.5/5	——	Encounter With the Unknown ()	" Something in the slipshod style begins to get under the skin.The blurry images and stiff line readings create a sense of dislocation and mystery, a separate reality." — Kinetofilm Posted Feb 1, 2010
5/5	70%	Piranha (1978)	" Dante and Sayles have a great deal of fun with the fact that their story of government created killer fish is completely ridiculous." — Kinetofilm Posted Feb 1, 2010
2.5/5	84%	The Descent (2006)	" Director Marshall has obviously kept his DVD player spinning for days studying all of the classics and simply taking everything he needed like a Vanilla Ice "Under Pressure"" — Kinetofilm Posted Jan 31, 2010
2/5	24%	Exorcist II - The Heretic (1977)	" It may be that the best way to watch The Heretic is to shut off the soundtrack and play a CD of Goblin's Suspiria score as accompaniment." — Kinetofilm Posted Jan 31, 2010
3.5/5	68%	The Fog (1979)	" During this period, Carpenter and his fine collaborator the late Debra Hill were so good at crafting suspenseful, slow burn horror stories with multiple storylines." — Kinetofilm Posted Jan 31, 2010
4/5	63%	Dementia 13 (The Haunted and the Hunted) (1963)	" One of the many low budget shockers produced in the wake of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", "Dementia 13" is a surprisingly effective knockoff with unique qualities of its own." — Kinetofilm Posted Jan 31, 2010
2.5/5	33%	Blood Creek (2009)	" "Blood Creek" is a whole hell of a lot better than any movie called "Blood Creek" has a right to be." — CinemaBlend.com Posted Jan 27, 2010
4/10	59%	W. (2008)	" Stone's film is like an affectionate kick in the groin of a good old boy you'd like to have a beer with, or with W today, a near Beer." — Kinetofilm Posted Jan 25, 2010
5/10	70%	Sherlock Holmes (2009)	" The film called "Sherlock Holmes" that has been raking in the money at the box office this Christmas season does not really exist at all. It's an illusion. A Jedi Mind Trick." — Kinetofilm Posted Jan 16, 2010
3.5/5	63%	Extract (2009)	" While not as complete a success as "Office Space", it is often quite brilliant." — CinemaBlend.com Posted Jan 16, 2010
	——	Ghost Image (2009)	" The kind of movie that is best seen at about 3:45 a.m. on TV. At that hour, your mind is only half awake and is unable to think critically about the story that is unfolding." — CinemaBlend.com Posted Jan 14, 2010
3/5	59%	Cruising (1980)	" Friedkin makes the kind of films that a pod from Invasion of the Body Snatchers might make given the chance." — Kinetofilm Posted Dec 28, 2009
3/5	33%	The Lovely Bones (2009)	" The strangest thing about Jackson's approach is how chaste it is. The whole film is just a bit too tasteful to achieve real catharsis." — Kinetofilm Posted Dec 17, 2009

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