Critics » Simon Abrams » Fresh
Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams

Agrees with the Tomatometer 67% of the time.

Publications:
House Next Door , New York Press , Slant Magazine , Twitch
Critics' Group:
Online Film Critics Society
Total Reviews:
266

Best Reviewed Films

Showing 1 - 50 of 154
Previous | Next
Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
4/4 99% Metropolis (1927) " The recent discovery of 25 minutes of lost footage from Fritz Lang's Metropolis is cause for celebration." — Slant Magazine
Posted May 8, 2010
3.5/4 64% Beyond The Black Rainbow (2012) " Something like a trippy grindhouse homage whose familiar images are refracted through a prism of blacklight posters, Jodorowsky films, and even Rob Zombie's grungy psychotropic sensibility." — Slant Magazine
Posted May 13, 2012
3.5/4 90% Love Exposure (2011) " Love Exposure is, in a sense, Shion Sono's equivalent of the Great Russian novel. " — Slant Magazine
Posted Aug 31, 2011
3.5/4 59% Yves Saint Laurent - L'amour fou (2011) " A consummately clear-headed documentary that honors the allure of its subject by being personal but never intimately so." — Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 15, 2011
3.5/4 50% The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2010) " In its single-minded determination to prolong its viewer's agony, writer-director Tom Six's The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is nothing short of an inspired bit of modern exploitation cinema." — Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 26, 2010
3.5/4 72% The Crazies (2010) " Impatient as they may be, the filmmakers never lose sight of what's important, namely keeping Dutton's rag-tag group of survivors sympathetic and perpetually in peril." — Slant Magazine
Posted Feb 24, 2010
3.5/4 89% Yasukuni (2007) " Writer-director Li Ying should be commended for the complexity he's given a subject as controversial as the Yasukuni shrine." — Slant Magazine
Posted Aug 10, 2009
3/4 81% Let the Bullets Fly (2012) " The world of difference in tone and content between actor-turned-director Jiang Wen's Let the Bullets Fly and his masterful Devils on the Doorstep can be seen in the former film's deceptively happy ending. " — Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 30, 2011
3/4 —— A Quiet Life () " Claudio Cupellini's A Quiet Life works best if you think of it as a divergent alternative scenario for Toni Servillo's character in The Consequences of Love." — Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 22, 2011
3/4 43% Ong Bak 3 (2011) " I doubt that Ong Bak 3 is going to find a welcoming audience, no matter how much I wish it would. " — Slant Magazine
Posted Jan 22, 2011
3/4 73% Megamind (2010) " Megamind may initially seem like a superhero spoof in the comedic vein of Shrek, but it reveals itself to be smarter, funnier, and infinitely more sympathetic than that. " — Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 31, 2010
3/4 59% Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) " Anyone watching Paranormal Activity 2 closely enough will see that the transitions between different cameras in the film isn't motivated by any internal logic but rather a narrative one." — Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 31, 2010
—— Flandersui Gae (Barking Dogs Never Bite) (Flanders' Dog) (2000) " Bong's debut is not all it could be, but any film that has a line as hilariously warped as "Jesus, that thing's hairy" deserves some recognition." — Slant Magazine
Posted Jul 21, 2010
3/4 81% Despicable Me (2010) " The film is a reminder that no single studio has a monopoly on thoughtful animated features." — Slant Magazine
Posted Jul 5, 2010
91% Night Train to Munich (Gestapo) (1940) " Come for Carol Reed's name, stay for Rex Harrison's performance and a few good cheap shots at the Nazis." — Slant Magazine
Posted Jun 21, 2010
3/4 100% Nightfall (1957) " In spite of that tantalizing potential, Nightfall will always just be a promising B picture." — Slant Magazine
Posted Jun 7, 2010
3/4 95% Best Worst Movie (2010) " Best Worst Movie is the populist doc to beat this year, following in the footsteps of last year's Anvil! The Story of Anvil and summarily outdistancing that self-serving and unchallenging crowd-pleaser." — Slant Magazine
Posted May 9, 2010
60% The Fugitive Kind (2005) " The Fugitive Kind is an across-the-board success, but it has enough flickers of brilliance to make it essential viewing for fans of its cast, Sidney Lumet, and/or Tennessee Williams." — Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 23, 2010
93% Lásky Jedné Plavovlásky (The Loves of a Blonde) (A Blonde in Love) (1966) " A great gateway for fans of Milos Forman's later films, Loves of a Blonde is subtle, silly, and even poignant in its own way. " — Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 13, 2010
74% Banlieue 13 - Ultimatum (District 13: Ultimatum) (2009) " Raffaeli and Belle still lack the charm that would make their tight-lipped line deliveries memorable, but they still run, kick and hop around like nobody's business." — New York Press
Posted Feb 10, 2010
67% Daybreakers (2010) " Daybreakers was unceremoniously dumped into theaters by unadventurous studio heads in the first week of January, [but] one shouldn't take their cluelessness seriously: Daybreakers is so much better than they would have you believe." — New York Press
Posted Jan 13, 2010
—— Onimasa: A Japanese Godfather (1982) " A superb, complex drama and a stellar later performance from Tatsuya Nakadai make the film a rare treat for fans of period drama with a generic twist." — Slant Magazine
Posted Jan 8, 2010
3/4 42% Armored (2009) " Features Antal's characteristic emphasis on his characters rather than the situations into which they're thrust." — Slant Magazine
Posted Dec 4, 2009
3/4 18% The Fourth Kind (2009) " Osunsanmi knows that everybody secretly wants to believe and when it comes to giving the people what they want, he does not disappoint." — Slant Magazine
Posted Nov 4, 2009
3/4 48% Ong Bak 2 (2009) " Ong Bak 2 is infused with an urgency and relentlessness that few contemporary action films have." — Slant Magazine
Posted Oct 20, 2009
88% Big Fan (2009) " With Big Fan, screenwriter Robert Siegel's directorial debut, the schmaltz-meister that wrote The Wrestler shows us that he's grown leaps and bounds as an artist in the span of just one year." — New York Press
Posted Aug 19, 2009
81% Taxidermia (2006) " Pálfi's skill at making something as churlishly repulsive as a scene of self-mummification completely mesmerizing is a testament to his unparalleled dedication to imaginary grotesques." — New York Press
Posted Aug 12, 2009
89% Moon (2009) " Co-writer/director Duncan Jones' debut feature Moon is a modest but nonetheless exciting bit of (derivative) speculative fiction." — Twitch
Posted Jun 17, 2009
3/4 96% Food, Inc. (2009) " The most a muckraking film like this can hope to do is frighten the viewer out of their complacence so much that they feel like, if only for a moment, they need to do something." — Slant Magazine
Posted Jun 8, 2009
83% Pontypool (2009) " With any luck, it will develop the cult it deserves because while its urgency makes it an easy target, Pontypool's new ideas are commendably gripping." — New York Press
Posted Jun 3, 2009
56% New World Order (2009) " Up-and-coming filmmaking duo Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel's latest doc, New World Order, admirably humanizes the "9/11 truthers," a seemingly impossible task they accomplish handily by never condescending to or patronizing their less-than-credible subjects." — New York Press
Posted May 27, 2009
89% O' Horten (2007) " Events unfold at an unfathomably cool pace, making Horten a comfortably numb cipher." — New York Press
Posted May 20, 2009
87% Kâbê (Kaabee) (Kabei: Our Mother) (2008) " This is not a story about lamenting the inevitability of time but rather of living in denial." — New York Press
Posted May 20, 2009
—— 13B (2009) " There's a disarmingly benign, albeit decidedly precious, charm to the film." — New York Press
Posted Mar 11, 2009
94% Tokyo Sonata (Tokyo Sonata) (2009) " Tokyo Sonata is an Ozuan domestic melodrama and for almost its entire length, it holds together wonderfully as a bleak but rich vision of a contemporary family on the verge of collapse." — New York Press
Posted Mar 11, 2009
82% Serbis (Service) (2008) " As a twitchily sensational series of interconnected images, it's an awesome nugget of faux-trash gold." — New York Press
Posted Jan 28, 2009
87% Los Cronocrímenes (Timecrimes) (2007) " By the end, details fall into place with a minimum amount of exposition or explicit explanation, making it the best kind of action movie -- the kind that's actually about action." — New York Press
Posted Dec 10, 2008
83% JCVD (Van Dammage) (2008) " For such a self-deluded vanity project, Van Damme brings the film to life, serving up a terrific lead performance." — New York Press
Posted Nov 5, 2008
78% Slingshot (Tirador) (2010) " With its gritty but gorgeous visual style, Slingshot confirms Mendoza's status as a provocateur with talent and ambition to burn." — New York Press
Posted Oct 22, 2008
96% Trouble the Water (2008) " An impressive document of devotion that miraculously stems from still-festering pain." — New York Press
Posted Aug 20, 2008
79% Bushi no Ichibun (Love and Honor) (2007) " Thanks to its focus on internal struggle and domestically confined drama, Love and Honor is the wilting lily of Yamada's trilogy, albeit an exceptionally satisfying romance." — New York Press
Posted Jul 30, 2008
71% Osoi hito (Late Bloomer) (2004) " It may not look particularly stunning or insightful from a distance; but when viewed up close and in fragments, it's a queasy stutter of rage that is impossible to ignore." — New York Press
Posted Jul 23, 2008
100% Man on Wire (2008) " Marsh's film may not probe very deeply into Petit's character, or try to conjecture what his accomplishment means in a post-9/11 environment, but it does make for a wonderful caper, which is exactly how Petit envisioned it." — New York Press
Posted Jul 23, 2008
84% Sun Taam (Mad Detective) (2008) " It may make no sense to throw logic out the window, but that's exactly what makes Detective such an unhinged blast." — New York Press
Posted Jul 16, 2008
91% Transsiberian (2008) " It may not be relevant or particularly PC, but it is a very entertaining time capsule buried decades after its time." — New York Press
Posted Jul 16, 2008
96% Dreams With Sharp Teeth (2008) " Harlan Ellison is irresistibly snarky, persistently cynical and preternaturally intelligent, and so are his stories. Dreams with Sharp Teeth illustrates that well by training an eye on his larger-than-life personality and his considerable accomplishments." — New York Press
Posted Jun 4, 2008
96% Somers Town (2009) " Since it's a sweet, funny and relatively quiet film, the lack of Big Thoughts is easily overlooked. [Director] Meadows has given himself a much-needed break, and it's a very satisfying one at that." — Twitch
Posted Apr 30, 2008
2.5/4 100% World on a Wire (2011) " Fassbinder, who also co-adapted the film's screenplay, usually makes a point of undermining the affectation of his melodramas with jarring intrusions of camp." — Slant Magazine
Posted Jul 17, 2011
2.5/4 26% Your Highness (2011) " Pot comedies may not be rocket science but a few more script revisions would have probably gone a long way here." — Slant Magazine
Posted Apr 13, 2011
2.5/4 37% Mars Needs Moms (2011) " The film's production values are almost enough to make the film's monumental shortcomings worth overlooking. But only almost." — Slant Magazine
Posted Mar 10, 2011
Showing 1 - 50 of 154
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