Critics » Brian Holcomb » Fresh
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:
171
Location:
South Jersey/Philadelphia

Best Reviewed Films

Showing 1 - 50 of 171
Previous | Next
Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
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
5/5 21% 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
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
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
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
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
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
4/4 88% Inglourious Basterds (2009) " This is a FILM with blood in its veins, a heart in its body and a red hot engine in its chassis. It is alive with ideas and a geniune belief in the power of FILM to express them." — Kinetofilm
Posted Aug 22, 2009
5/5 95% Star Trek (2009) " Somehow pulling off the trick of appealing to the wider mass audience with one foot in Star WARS, the most startling thing about this new TREK is how it avoids being AWFUL." — Kinetofilm
Posted May 10, 2009
5/5 85% Rachel Getting Married (2008) " This isn't the kind of melodrama where a happy facade is slowly torn away-the tensions are there from the start and no one has illusions that things are nice and rosy." — CinemaBlend.com
Posted Mar 17, 2009
4/4 —— Extras - The Complete Second Season (2007) " The cleverest conceit of the show is that celebrity doesn't really change a person so much as fan the flames that were burning from the start." — Slant Magazine
Posted May 22, 2008
5/5 92% Re-Animator (1985) " This is one of the greatest films ever made. Period. It's outrageous, erotic, gory, jaw-dropping, genre-busting ,shocking, and altogether exhilarating filmmaking." — PopMatters
Posted May 5, 2008
5/5 —— The Nightcomers (1972) " Strips the artistry of the Henry James original and leaves us with a hairy, overweight, naked and sweating Brando brutally kneading Stephanie Beacham's breasts into new shapes" — PopMatters
Posted May 2, 2008
5/5 —— Honor Among Thieves (2007) " It has a plot that moves as though it were carefully thought out, and yet it also appears to be desperately improvised on the spot." — PopMatters
Posted May 2, 2008
5/5 80% Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) " Fighting against pop culture expectations and a century of vampire cliché, Coppola's approach is unique. Like it or not, no one had ever seen a "Dracula" quite like this." — CinemaBlend.com
Posted May 2, 2008
5/5 100% Chinatown (1974) " Beyond all the "masterpiece" rhetoric, this is actually a great movie." — CinemaBlend.com
Posted May 2, 2008
4/4 —— Veronica Mars: The Complete Third Season (2007) " Unlike the overrated "Brick", Veronica Mars wasn't Hammett in high school attire but the real thing, Hammett in high school himself, late for class and with a hangover." — Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 20, 2008
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
4.5/5 94% Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) " What distinguishes this film from others in the genre is the undercurrent of melancholy between the laughs." — CinemaBlend.com
Posted Nov 9, 2009
4.5/5 86% The Baron of Arizona (1950) " The craziest true story I've never heard of that turned out to be pretty damn true. Even with Fuller shouting his own melodramatic version of the truth at the top of his lungs" — Kinetofilm
Posted Aug 29, 2009
4.5/5 68% Redbelt (2008) " It's not the characteristically sharp Mamet dialogue that makes Ejiofor effective so much as what he does between the lines: Moments of powerful contemplation and silence." — CinemaBlend.com
Posted Sep 3, 2008
4.5/5 70% Diggers (2007) " A very detailed portrait of a time and place that is about to change forever. This is a Long Island of 1976 in someone's memory, like a faded Polaroid in an old shoebox." — CinemaBlend.com
Posted May 5, 2008
4.5/5 —— Masters of Horror - Stuart Gordon: The Black Cat (2007) " Effectively tells the story of "The Black Cat" through the troubled life of the author himself, mixing fact and fiction like a horror movie version of "Shakespeare in Love"." — CinemaBlend.com
Posted May 2, 2008
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
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
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
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
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
4/5 93% Drag Me to Hell (2009) " While it has the energy and the endless cinematic invention of his early work, the film's command of economical storytelling is something that once eluded Raimi." — Kinetofilm
Posted Nov 6, 2009
4/5 64% The Girlfriend Experience (2009) " The film is only marginally about sex; it's real subject is business. One can argue cynically that all human relationships are a form of transaction." — CinemaBlend.com
Posted Oct 3, 2009
4/5 —— Trick Baby (1973) " This wasn't the standard "pimp and ho show" but rather a smart, character based crime flick about two hustlers just trying to survive in the City of Brotherly Love." — Kinetofilm
Posted Oct 1, 2009
4/5 95% No Country for Old Men (2007) " What starts off as the best Charles Bronson movie not to star Charles Bronson ends up as a literary adaptation of a novel that thinks it means something or other." — CinemaBlend.com
Posted Apr 23, 2009
4/5 83% Tropic Thunder (2008) " Tropic Thunder focuses its satire on this Hollywoodization of war, as it depicts the production of a Vietnam genre film that's less "Platoon" than "Platoon Leader" with Michael Dudikoff." — CinemaBlend.com
Posted Dec 6, 2008
8/10 —— Greatest American Hero - Deluxe Collector's (2006) " Returning to a show you watched during childhood can be a disappointing experience. But GAM holds up very well and is actually wittier than I understood it to be at the time." — PopMatters
Posted Aug 7, 2008
8/10 —— Inside the Actors Studio - Dave Chappelle (2006) " Whatever your feelings towards Chappelle, this interview goes beyond the boundaries of the performing arts into a dialogue that is funny, insightful, and even touching." — PopMatters
Posted Aug 7, 2008
8/10 —— Perth (2007) " Erupts with the freshness and energy only first time filmmakers can generate-yet has the control and mastery over its subject that novice directors take years to command." — PopMatters
Posted May 5, 2008
4/5 50% Paura nella città dei morti viventi (City Of The Living Dead) (The Gates of Hell) (1980) " Teleporting Zombies! Hanging priests! Bleeding eyes! Organ regurgitation! The plot is meaningless and the characters senseless. But these are pluses for films in this cycle." — CinemaBlend.com
Posted May 5, 2008
8/10 76% Rocky Balboa (2006) " With "Rocky Balboa", Stallone's created the first real "sequel" to his original, a deserving bookend that recaptures that film's sense of character and realistic detail." — PopMatters
Posted May 5, 2008
4/5 45% Fay Grim (2007) " Hartley pretzels his faux spy plot into "Syriana"-like knots and ends up with a fascinating if somewhat flawed absurdist romp." — CinemaBlend.com
Posted May 5, 2008
4/5 48% Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres (2007) " It's not too hard to imagine that the inspiration for this show came during a late night, cannabis fueled attack of the munchies. It's no masterpiece but that's the idea." — CinemaBlend.com
Posted May 2, 2008
8/10 —— Hedda Gabler (2001) " Diana Rigg plays the title role without remorse. Her Hedda suffers no fools and appears ready to strike like a coiled snake." — PopMatters
Posted May 2, 2008
4/5 61% Bug (2006) " While not really a "horror" film, "Bug" contains more weirdness, tension and suspense than most other "genre" releases last year." — CinemaBlend.com
Posted May 2, 2008
8/10 46% Edmond (2005) " "Edmond" is beyond black comedy, it's a comedy in almost total stygian darkness. A comedy where the laughs make you cough up razor blades." — PopMatters
Posted Apr 20, 2008
8/10 —— Damages - The Complete First Season (2008) " Staying out of the courtroom, it's about what goes on before the trial, a period of brinksmanship that plays like an intense secret war waged between truly ruthless enemies." — PopMatters
Posted Apr 10, 2008
4.5 77% The Innkeepers (2012) " Like his work or not, Ti West's follow up to "The House of the Devil" is another fine piece of craftsmanship. " — CinemaBlend.com
Posted May 1, 2012
65% Quantum of Solace (2008) " No one wants to watch Bond chase after Osama Bin Laden and switch off his dialysis machine with a bad one liner. On second thought, maybe that would be great?" — Kinetofilm
Posted Mar 29, 2009
58% Taken (2009) " This is not a movie about moral dilemmas-it's about a father who will rip out your eyeballs if you don't give him his daughter back." — Kinetofilm
Posted Feb 19, 2009
Showing 1 - 50 of 171
Previous | Next
  • Sort by Rating:

    Sort results by this critic's rating. This option is only available for critics with a rating system (4 star, letter grade, 1-10, etc.)

  • Sort by T-meter:

    Sort results by the Tomatometer (percentage of critics recommending a certain movie)

Best to Worst Sampling

Best Reviewed

More...

Worst Reviewed

More...
Help | About | Jobs | Newsletter | Critics Submission | API | Licensing | Mobile
Copyright © Flixster, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright, Privacy Policy, Terms of Service | Ad Choices
In partnership with TMZ.com