Peter Rainer Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Peter Rainer

Peter Rainer

Agrees with the Tomatometer 74% of the time.

Publications:: Christian Science Monitor , Los Angeles Times , New York Magazine
Critics' Group:: Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle

Total Reviews:: 1719

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Showing 1 - 50 of 1719

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
C-	23%	Angels Crest (2011)	" A garbled melodrama striving to be tragic drama." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Jan 13, 2012
C	80%	We Need to Talk About Kevin (2012)	" It's a creepy and disturbing movie, but there's not a lot going on behind people's eyes. The soullessness lacks soul." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Jan 13, 2012
B+	94%	Sing Your Song (2012)	" The film's hagiographic tone is regrettable, but, it must be said, Belafonte's heroism is the real deal." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Jan 13, 2012
C-	33%	Lula, the Son of Brazil (2012)	" Lula, Son of Brazil is proof that even charismatic political figures, in this case, Brazil's former president, Luiz In�cio Lula da Silva, can be felled by the requirements of the standard biopic genre." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Jan 13, 2012
A-	57%	It's About You (2012)	" Throughout it all, Markus and his son capture the poetic melancholy of a mostly rural America with an eloquence that recalls the photographs of Robert Frank." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Jan 6, 2012
C+	54%	The Iron Lady (2012)	" Streep is... pitch perfect. Much like her Julia Child in Julie and Julia, she goes way beyond impersonation. But even Streep can't single-handedly give depth and nuance to a movie so briskly content with skimming surfaces both political and psychological." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Jan 4, 2012
B-	45%	Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2012)	" Daldry and his screenwriter Eric Roth make the mistake of showing bodies falling from the Twin Towers - it's a mistake because its graphic power seems more exploitative than cathartic - but they otherwise thankfully refrain from pulling out all the stops." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Jan 4, 2012
B	54%	In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011)	" This is an impressive piece of work that doesn't flinch from the atrocities that no doubt motivated Jolie to make the film in the first place." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Jan 4, 2012
A	99%	A Separation (2011)	" A Separation is not the work of a constrained artist. It's a great movie in which the full range of human interaction seems to play itself out before our eyes." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Jan 4, 2012
B	96%	Pariah (2011)	" The filmmaking is often wayward, the scenes of confrontation sometimes too stagey, but Oduye is a marvelous young actress with a camera-ready face brimming with soulfulness." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Jan 4, 2012
B	76%	War Horse (2011)	" Spielberg by now can do this sort of thing with such facility that he often lets his technical skills override his deepest engagement in the material." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Dec 22, 2011
B	63%	We Bought a Zoo (2011)	" A sweet and genial comedy with a relatively low cloy factor." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Dec 22, 2011
B	75%	The Adventures of Tintin (2011)	" The main achievement of Tintin is that at least the cartoon people and pets come across as characters and not hollow, humanoid entities." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Dec 22, 2011
B	87%	The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)	" The kick in this material, especially in this new version which plays down Mikael's surliness, is Lisbeth, a pixieish polysexual outlier who seems equipped with her own portable storm cloud." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Dec 20, 2011
B	94%	Corman's World: Exploits Of A Hollywood Rebel (2011)	" The funniest thing about Corman -- it's a joke he's in on -- is the disparity between the movies he makes and the precise, polite, almost scholarly demeanor he projects." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Dec 16, 2011
C-	60%	Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)	" What this film really celebrates is crunch-and-thud video-game-style action, not especially well choreographed by director Guy Ritchie." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Dec 16, 2011
B-	71%	Carnage (2011)	" Amusing as some of this is, after a while I wanted out." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Dec 16, 2011
A-	93%	Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol (2011)	" Ghost Protocol is a very good thrill ride and Cruise is better than he's been in a long time." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Dec 16, 2011
B+	84%	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)	" The filmmakers don't try to jazz up the proceedings with a lot of then-and-now equivalencies. At the same time, it is implicit here that spy operations today are essentially the same, with only the names of the players and antagonists changed." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Dec 9, 2011
B-	82%	Young Adult (2011)	" Theron does a fairly convincing job. It's the movie surrounding her that isn't quite so convincing." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Dec 9, 2011
C-	8%	New Year's Eve (2011)	" The film is like one of those Robert Altman big-canvas movies minus the inspiration." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Dec 8, 2011
D+	22%	The Sitter (2011)	" Sit this one out." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Dec 8, 2011
A-	89%	Into The Abyss (2011)	" Into the Abyss does what too few documentaries these days do - it gives ample play to all sides of the argument. Herzog allows us to think things through on our own." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Dec 2, 2011
B-	96%	Tomboy (2011)	" There are nevertheless some marvelous moments." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Dec 2, 2011
A-	92%	Arthur Christmas (2011)	" The action is swift and witty, and the 3-D effects are imaginative and not simply tacked on as with so many animated movies these days." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Dec 2, 2011
A-	100%	Under Fire: Journalists In Combat (2011)	" Sometimes agonizingly powerful." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Dec 2, 2011
B	84%	My Week with Marilyn (2011)	" [Williams] captures not only Monroe's fragility but also the guile and gumption beneath it. What she can't capture, of course, is Monroe's aura, and without it, the performance comes across as something more than mimicry but less than incandescence." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Nov 23, 2011
B	97%	The Artist (2011)	" It's a big, beribboned heart-tugger of a movie and Dujardin, who won the best actor award this year at Cannes, is a charming mimic of silent-film physicality." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Nov 23, 2011
B-	78%	A Dangerous Method (2011)	" Knightley's performance calms down eventually, and a good thing, too. If she maintained that early pace, she would have burned up the couch and herself along with it." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Nov 23, 2011
B+	94%	Hugo (2011)	" Hugo is a mixed bag but one well worth rummaging through." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Nov 23, 2011
B	81%	Tyrannosaur (2011)	" The performances carry the film and occasionally lift it beyond its kitchen-sink lower-depths doldrums." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Nov 18, 2011
D+	45%	Another Happy Day (2011)	" Dislikable movie characters don't always result in dislikable movies but that's certainly the case with Sam Levinson's Another Happy Day." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Nov 18, 2011
C-	25%	Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011)	" For those of us who are not Twilight fanatics, or even fans, or could not care somewhat less than less, the arrival of Part 1 is not cause for trumpets blaring. But I would imagine that even those who line up for this film will be somewhat let down." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Nov 18, 2011
A	90%	The Descendants (2011)	" This is a modest marvel of a movie." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Nov 17, 2011
B	77%	The Conquest (2011)	" Durringer has a good sense of pacing, and he keeps the various interlocking machinations reasonably comprehensible even for those of us who aren't experts in French political intrigue." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Nov 11, 2011
C+	3%	Jack and Jill (2011)	" Sandler has become a good actor of late, but here he gives over most of his talents to Jill, who is so screechy, needy, and lovelorn that you can hardly blame Jack for wanting to fade into the background." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Nov 11, 2011
B-	78%	Melancholia (2011)	" Dunst gives a strong, hard-bitten performance even though she is playing an attitude rather than a character." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Nov 11, 2011
C-	61%	Young Goethe In Love (2011)	" Turns one of the greatest geniuses of German literature into a love-struck rapscallion." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Nov 11, 2011
B-	44%	J. Edgar (2011)	" How believable is DiCaprio? When I first heard he had been cast as Hoover, I couldn't think of another actor physically less likely to pull it off. But he's surprisingly good." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Nov 10, 2011
C-	18%	The Son of No One (2011)	" Muddled cop thriller The Son of No One has a top-drawer cast and a bottom-drawer script." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Nov 4, 2011
	79%	Pianomania (2011)	" Pianomania is the thoroughly apt title for a thoroughly enjoyable documentary about Stefan Knupfer, the chief technician and master tuner for Steinway & Sons" — Christian Science Monitor Posted Nov 4, 2011
C+	68%	Tower Heist (2011)	" Alan Alda plays the billionaire, and his oleaginous smarm is so good that you almost wish Alda were starring in a hard-edged movie about Madoff instead of this goofy heist picture that takes way too long getting to the heist." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Nov 4, 2011
C	37%	In Time (2011)	" The film is beautifully shot in chilly blues and grays by cinematographer Roger Deakins, and Los Angeles locales are well chosen for futuristic effect. Most of the time, however, I found myself glancing at the clock on my own wrist." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Oct 31, 2011
C-	47%	Anonymous (2011)	" John Orloff's screenplay could have used a rewrite by de Vere -- or whomever." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Oct 29, 2011
A	74%	Like Crazy (2011)	" The emotional honesty of Like Crazy, which is comparable to Richard Linklater's great Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, is far removed from most of what passes in these goony movie days as youthful romance." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Oct 29, 2011
B-	50%	The Rum Diary (2011)	" Maybe Depp just doesn't want to upstage his hero." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Oct 29, 2011
B	88%	Margin Call (2011)	" It's all fairly entertaining but also confusing for anybody who doesn't get the Wall Street lingo." — Christian Science Monitor Posted Oct 21, 2011
B+	70%	Oranges And Sunshine (2011)	" The most powerful sequences in the movie are the linked vignettes involving Margaret and the various grown-up children whom she attempts to help in their search for -- what, exactly? Closure? Catharsis?" — Christian Science Monitor Posted Oct 21, 2011
B+	94%	Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey (2011)	" Who can fail to be moved by this?" — Christian Science Monitor Posted Oct 21, 2011

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