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Ian Waldron-Mantgani

Ian Waldron-Mantgani

""I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator -- you're no Jack Kennedy." (Lloyd Bentsen to Dan Quayle, 1988 vice presidential debate.)"

Agrees with the Tomatometer 70% of the time.

Biography:
Born in Sligo, Ireland -- also the birthplace of brilliant filmmaker Neil Jordan -- Ian Waldron-Mantgani is the mixed-race son of an Indian-born doctor and Irish-born occupational therapist. He gained access to the internet in 1996 and immediately started posting movie reviews on message boards. After quotes in such publications as the Sunday Times, Ian decided it was time to create his own website. 'The UK Critic' first appeared online at the beginning of 1998, and quickly became Britain's pre-eminent centre of online criticism. On top of schoolwork, sporting activities and personal commitments, Ian reviewed every nationwide release in the year 2000, and continues to update his site weekly with every release of note. He sees the vast majority of films in his own time, with his own money. Despite the lack of monetary compensation, Ian?s reviews are heavily syndicated; he is a DVD reviewer for Apollo Guide, and has in the past served as head critic on CompuServe's UK Entertainment Forum and System Operator for Compuserve?s Empire Magazine forum. Pieces can also be found on entertainmentnutz.com, alltank.com, Reel Talk Movies, GDoggyDog?s Movie Reviews and the rec.arts.movies-reviews newsgroup. Ian makes regular contributions to Ebert?s Movie Answer Man column and provided " of the most amusing entries" to Ebert's witty book of movie cliches "The Bigger Little Movie Glossary". International awards received include four nominations for Online Film Critics Society Member of the Month, and Ian is one of the only British residents in the organisation -- serving the posts of full member, OFCS Mentor, Awards Committee member and Governing Committee member. As of September 2002, Ian has been studying a BA course in Film Studies at Sheffield Hallam University, which has the highest entry requirements of any pure film course in England.
Favorites:
Favorite film of all time: 12 Angry Men (1957) Favorite UK cinema releases of 2001: Requiem for a Dream, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Traffic, The Contender, You Can Count on Me, The Pledge, Ghost World, Girlfight, Almost Famous, Quills, Audition, Castaway, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Osmosis Jones, Thirteen Days
Publications:
Apollo Guide , ReelTalk Movie Reviews , UK Critic
Total Reviews:
732
Total QuickRatings:
10
Location:
Liverpool, UK

Worst Reviewed Films

Showing 1 - 50 of 730
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Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
10/100 0% The Bad News Bears Go To Japan (1978) " Manages the amazing feat of seeming to both drag out its material and completely skim over it." — Apollo Guide
Posted May 4, 2002
0.5/4 2% The Master of Disguise (2002) " It is cut with all the precision and timing of an irritating kids' TV show, with kids themselves in charge of the production, and their pets operating the equipment." — UK Critic
Posted Jan 26, 2003
0.5/4 34% Resident Evil (2002) " So lifeless, pointless and dank that it manages the amazing feat of making the undead seem boring." — UK Critic
Posted Jul 24, 2002
0.5/4 3% Rollerball (2002) " Such an incomprehensible mess that it feels less like bad cinema than like being stuck in a dark pit having a nightmare about bad cinema." — UK Critic
Posted Jul 16, 2002
0.5/4 29% The Time Machine (2002) " The secrets of time travel will have been discovered, indulged in and rejected as boring before I see this piece of crap again." — UK Critic
Posted Jun 4, 2002
0.5/4 24% Snow Dogs (2002) " A movie full of gestures that would look over-the-top in primary school plays." — UK Critic
Posted Jun 4, 2002
0.5/4 60% Thunderpants (2001) " This movie should be shown in prisons so that inmates have a good reason to never return." — UK Critic
Posted May 28, 2002
0.5/4 10% Slackers (2002) " Not so much a movie as an unpleasant presence that sits on the screen." — UK Critic
Posted May 14, 2002
0.5/4 17% Queen of the Damned (2002) " Muddled, trashy and incompetent" — UK Critic
Posted Apr 21, 2002
0.5/4 10% Long Time Dead (2003) " I approached the usher and said that if she had to sit through it again, she should ask for a raise." — UK Critic
Posted Jan 31, 2002
0.5/4 44% Rat Race (2001) " You have to wonder about the mentality of anyone who would want to use the "Cannonball Run" pictures as inspiration." — UK Critic
Posted Jan 20, 2002
0.5/4 64% Zoolander (2001) " Listening to the music is the only way to get through this movie without tearing your hair out, but still, the meaninglessly retro soundtrack points to the randomness of the picture's choices." — UK Critic
Posted Dec 23, 2001
0.5/4 —— Guest House Paradiso (2001) " An embarrassing mess of zany movement and occasional loud clonks" — UK Critic
Posted Nov 13, 2001
0.5/4 57% Dr. T & The Women (2000) UK Critic
Posted Sep 17, 2001
0.5/4 25% Pearl Harbor (2001) " A cheerfully offensive rape of history." — UK Critic
Posted Sep 10, 2001
0.5/4 27% Love, Honour And Obey (2001) " Embarrassingly jumpy shifts from humour to menace... one of the most incompetently made films of all time" — UK Critic
Posted Feb 8, 2001
0.5/4 0% Kevin & Perry Go Large (2000) UK Critic
Posted Feb 8, 2001
0.5/4 14% Ordinary Decent Criminal (2000) " Technically and artistically inept." — UK Critic
Posted Feb 8, 2001
0.5/4 9% Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000) " It's a tortuously rambling attempt at a slasher pic, throwing random scenes at us without purpose, reason or consequence." — UK Critic
Posted Feb 7, 2001
0.5/4 34% Where the Heart Is (2000) UK Critic
Posted Jan 1, 2000
1/4 0% The Sex Lives of the Potato Men () UK Critic
Posted Oct 31, 2004
40% Armageddon (1998) " Where things fall apart are the scenes that try to put in characterisation, and, God help us, comic relief." — UK Critic
Posted Feb 23, 2004
1/4 33% In the Cut (2003) " A movie that moves between pretentious and incompetent, a sleazy straight-to-video-style sex and violence crapfest which ends up simply laughable when it tries to go arty." — UK Critic
Posted Dec 14, 2003
1/4 36% The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) " There's a simple philosophy behind a movie like this: Add more squishing, add more screaming, and it'll be better. Or at least it'll make more money." — UK Critic
Posted Dec 14, 2003
1/4 31% Underworld (2003) " The astonishing achievement of Underworld is that it's a movie without a single good moment, and they still managed to make one helluva trailer." — UK Critic
Posted Oct 27, 2003
1/4 50% Luster (2002) " A character can be intelligent and provocative by pointing out the flaws of sophisticated people, but not by posing like a rebel and ripping into stereotypes." — UK Critic
Posted Sep 9, 2003
1/4 71% Terminator 3 - Rise of the Machines (2003) " What sickness in the filmmakers inspired them to go ahead and make this TV movie sludge instead of doing some kind of stab at creating the feel of a "Terminator" film?" — UK Critic
Posted Aug 27, 2003
1/4 54% Veronica Guerin (2003) " A big and glossy piece of crap that seems to be using the right tricks to get us teary-eyed, but hasn't got any heart." — UK Critic
Posted Aug 24, 2003
1/4 77% Dark Water (2002) " A horror movie that sits there and drags and seems very full of itself, and is based on the premise that puddles are scary. They're not." — UK Critic
Posted Jul 16, 2003
1/4 21% Basic (2003) " The final parts of this movie are the kind that you'd swear were slapped on by the studio, until you realise the whole story must have been built around them." — UK Critic
Posted Jul 8, 2003
1/4 88% Russian Ark (2002) " Less like watching paint dry than like watching it sit on the wall and stay wet." — UK Critic
Posted Apr 29, 2003
1/4 33% Johnny English (2003) " It's a zero, wandering around itself, benignly hoping that it will make us laugh even though it has not offered funny material or delivery." — UK Critic
Posted Apr 20, 2003
1/4 60% Revengers Tragedy (2003) " Could use a few things -- like, I dunno, maybe life, skill, comprehension and the wisdom of knowing that jokes and a sense of humour are not the same thing." — UK Critic
Posted Apr 2, 2003
1/4 19% The Life of David Gale (2003) " An evil piece of junk that uses the death penalty as a gimmick for a dumb thriller." — UK Critic
Posted Mar 19, 2003
89% Bonnie and Clyde (1967) " The question is whether it adds up to anything truthful, or evokes disquiet by crudely trying to con us into emotional reactions that do not make much sense." — UK Critic
Posted Mar 12, 2003
1/4 36% She Gets What She Wants (2005) " Takes one character we don't like and another we don't believe, and puts them into a battle of wills that is impossible to care about and isn't very funny." — UK Critic
Posted Oct 22, 2002
1/4 53% My Little Eye (2002) " An unholy mess, driven by the pathetic idea that if you shoot something on crummy-looking videotape, it must be labelled 'hip', 'innovative' and 'realistic'." — UK Critic
Posted Oct 8, 2002
1/4 6% The New Guy (2002) " Tries too hard to be funny in a way that's too loud, too goofy and too short of an attention span." — UK Critic
Posted Oct 6, 2002
1/4 44% Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002) " For all the quirky behaviour on display, there is still no personality, merely 'issues', their resolutions and a lot of frickin' ya-yas." — UK Critic
Posted Oct 6, 2002
1/4 30% Scooby-Doo (2002) " There's no way to sort out the mess in our heads and deconstruct where it all went wrong. This is an hour and a half of daydreaming." — UK Critic
Posted Jul 24, 2002
1/4 11% The Musketeer (2001) " Alexandre Dumas would be rolling around in his grave if this movie were lively enough to wake him up." — UK Critic
Posted Jun 25, 2002
1/4 21% Baise-Moi (2000) " An adolescent little poseur of a movie." — UK Critic
Posted Jun 17, 2002
1/4 7% Dragonfly (2002) " Now I can see why people thought I was too hard on "The Mothman Prophecies"." — UK Critic
Posted Jun 10, 2002
1/4 —— Nobody Someday () " A superficial, stolid, completely unselfconscious attempt to look deep and probing." — UK Critic
Posted May 28, 2002
void 28% Not Another Teen Movie (2001) " One of the most incompetent, thoughtless, witless, smug, cynical, one-dimensional, puerile, boring and deadening movies I have ever seen." — UK Critic
Posted May 28, 2002
1/4 76% Dog Soldiers (2002) " A grim, flat and boring werewolf movie that refuses to develop an energy level." — UK Critic
Posted May 14, 2002
25/100 —— Beverly Hood (2001) " The acting is uniformly awful; the technical credits are an embarrassment." — Apollo Guide
Posted Apr 27, 2002
1/4 14% The One (2001) " Replicates the experience of viewing an arcade demo for the same length of time." — UK Critic
Posted Apr 24, 2002
1/4 18% Collateral Damage (2002) " Both offensive and flat" — UK Critic
Posted Apr 14, 2002
1/4 12% Thirteen Ghosts (13 Ghosts) (2001) " A loud, stupid and incomprehensible piece of junk" — UK Critic
Posted Mar 24, 2002
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