Donald J. Levit Movie Reviews & Previews

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Donald J. Levit

Agrees with the Tomatometer 69% of the time.

Biography:: Donald J. Levit is a free-lance writer with a B.A. from Duke and a Ph. D. from Chicago. Although born in Nashville and raised there and in Brooklyn, he has lived in many other places in the U.S. He also resided for a time in the Caribbean and, for twenty-two years, in Spain. Dr. Levit now calls New York City his home.
Publications:: Film Threat , ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Critics' Group:: Online Film Critics Society

Total Reviews:: 714

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Showing 1 - 50 of 714

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T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
91%	El sicario, Room 164 (2011)	" This one-man dramatization is not a film, but surely an indictment. Rosi's 'grey zone where good and evil meet' is wide of the mark; this is pure evil. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Feb 6, 2012
100%	Queen Kelly (1929)	" A compelling curiosity deserving recognition beyond trivia value as the 'Sunset Boulevard' clip projected by Gloria Swanson's faded Norma Desmond. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Feb 3, 2012
——	Detroit, ville sauvage (Detroit Wild City) ()	" Points no fingers in its chilling but fascinating images of a moribund metropolis. Causes for the fall are hinted but neither pinpointed nor really the focus here. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Jan 30, 2012
86%	Nothing But a Man (1963)	" It is difficult to fathom the long obscurity of this sincere, compassionate film. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Jan 29, 2012
77%	The Grey (2012)	" The stripped core story is a good watch: man against the elements and against himself -- primordial antagonists without and within, Mother Nature and human nature. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Jan 28, 2012
93%	The Pruitt-igoe Myth: An Urban History (2012)	" The drugs, fear and violence cannot be shown but are palpable in the speakers' memories. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Jan 23, 2012
44%	The Flowers of War (2011)	" Fiction arising in, mirroring but distinct from, truth as we conceive it, page and screen are freed to play fast and loose with hard data and reality here. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Jan 20, 2012
——	Foreign Parts (2011)	" These are good people, rough-edged but pleasant, depicted while not romanticized." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Jan 19, 2012
80%	We Need to Talk About Kevin (2012)	" After the fact, story outline can be pieced together, but beyond essential motivation, there also remain a number of unintentional loose ends." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Jan 15, 2012
33%	Lula, the Son of Brazil (2012)	" Only half-way through, the film loses momentum. Emotion gives way to stagey conventional pseudo-populism, with the human disappeared. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Jan 13, 2012
78%	Battle for Brooklyn (2011)	" 'A movie with a narrative' woven along a personal thread, Battle for Brooklyn squeezes drama even out of that person's repeatedly clicking a monitor 'refresh.' " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Jan 9, 2012
84%	Jack Smith and the Destruction Of Atlantis (2006)	" Eccentric and pure like its hero, JSDA may appall or bore the many but should delight devotees of the real reel underground. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Jan 8, 2012
83%	Avatar (2009)	" Planet Pandora's plant and animal life is done with a wonder that has been often absent from fiction screens. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Jan 6, 2012
97%	Diabolique (Les Diaboliques) (1955)	" So dependent on visuals, many horror films do not wear well except as kitsch. But crafted fright films like Diabolique maintain their power by creating atmosphere through what is not seen. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Jan 5, 2012
100%	Rash�mon (Rashomon) (In the Woods) (1951)	" With fast tracking shots, b&w chiaroscuro camerawork and a pessimistic intimation that what exactly was done is not essential, the result hit the bull's-eye with foreign filmgoers and critics." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Jan 4, 2012
94%	Sing Your Song (2012)	" The life of Harry Belafonte is so rich, truthful and hopeful that admirable 'Sing Your Song' can only give some idea of it. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Jan 2, 2012
54%	The Iron Lady (2012)	" A story of love's informing the seldom-explored struggle for personal dignity and freedom in the face of ageing and conventional "wisdom" about seniors. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Dec 29, 2011
96%	Pariah (2011)	" Young people's mumbling and slang will be a stumbling block for mainstream audiences, but the lives and dilemmas of the mostly black and some Hispanic teens go beyond racial-cultural lines. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Dec 27, 2011
95%	Pina (2011)	" A welcome departure from the by-the-numbers fossilization in today's documentary deluge. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Dec 26, 2011
76%	The Help (2011)	" Aimed at heart and conscience, novel and film have their overdone moments but remain worthy of close attention. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Dec 24, 2011
94%	Corman's World: Exploits Of A Hollywood Rebel (2011)	" This bio-documentary about Roger Corman is a treat for buffs -- who might complain that the zillion clips are too few and short. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Dec 22, 2011
75%	The Adventures of Tintin (2011)	" While the live performers are credited and their real voices heard, there is none of the degrading with-it wisecracking so puzzingly popular nowadays. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Dec 22, 2011
84%	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)	" Swedish Tomas Alfredson's first English-language try comes up short against the spy novel's 1979 U.K. Alec Guinness miniseries." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Dec 9, 2011
50%	Sleeping Beauty (2011)	" Some may see a commentary on the plight of women here. However, such 'radical passivity' is beyond the reach of empathy. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Dec 2, 2011
90%	Love Exposure (2011)	" Manga-indebted but without lens trickery, this is exhilarating cinema experience. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Dec 1, 2011
97%	The Artist (2011)	" A bonbon to movies as they used to be, 'The Artist' is a treat. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Nov 23, 2011
75%	El Topo (1970)	" ... the story of 'El Topo' proves too scattered and weak to bear its digressions and vague symbols that suggest everything, anything and nothing." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Nov 20, 2011
90%	The Descendants (2011)	" Clooney's understated modern man is not filled with self-importance, as he learns to appreciate what is truly important in life. 'The Descendants' is pleasant if easy cinema. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Nov 15, 2011
78%	Melancholia (2011)	" There is not much reason for anything in 'Melancholia.' When others fall apart and break down, madness is the only preservative. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Nov 11, 2011
78%	The Love We Make (2011)	" Running counter-style to the flood of cookie-cutter non-fictions, 'The Love We Make' is a reminder of love and fellow-feeling in a time of tragedy. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Nov 8, 2011
——	Ekusute (Exte: Hair Extensions) (2007)	" With fewer possible resolutions than recent J-horror ringtones and video cassettes, 'Exte: Hair Extensions' goes nowhere surprising." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Oct 31, 2011
17%	The Double (2011)	" 'The Double' is a good return "to the classic spy thriller" of another time and another world that itself is making a comeback. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Oct 28, 2011
33%	London Boulevard (2011)	" By far too stylized, the film loses itself in this would-be "dynamic visual" style over content and coherence." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Oct 23, 2011
79%	The Skin I Live In (2011)	" Neither horror film, spoof, nor social commentary, 'The Skin I Live In' wanders in limbo, unsure of what its own essence is. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Oct 14, 2011
84%	My Week with Marilyn (2011)	" 'My Week with Marilyn' is serious but at the same time a funny comedy of stars' manners." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Oct 13, 2011
88%	Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2012)	" An unhurried rumination on men's lives and loves and, though they appear but briefly, on women's. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Oct 8, 2011
89%	Miss Bala (2012)	" Shootouts are sharp cracklings and deaths indiscriminate but without sensationalizing the gore. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Oct 8, 2011
80%	The Way (2011)	" Fathers and sons, wives and children, reconciliation and uplift for the soul -- undemanding schmaltz but most comfortable for its type. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Oct 6, 2011
89%	George Harrison: Living In The Material World ()	" The streamlining of George Harrison's life's wants and needs does not warrant the length lavished on it here." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Oct 1, 2011
76%	Rejoice & Shout (2011)	" 'Rejoice and Shout' treats a long century and could have been more incisive and included fuller performance clips by dispensing with head interviews that interrupt often and at length. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Sep 30, 2011
98%	Rosemary's Baby (1968)	" 'Rosemary's Baby' presents the dark and the light and allows for choice: does she or doesn't she? " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Sep 29, 2011
——	A Woman with Red Hair (1979)	" Neither amoral nihilistic nor misogynistic, 'WRH' is less degrading and banal in philosophy than 'Last Tango in Paris.' " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Sep 23, 2011
78%	The Mill and the Cross (2011)	" Renaissance man composer-librettist-painter-poet-novelist-cameraman-screenwriter-filmmaker Lech Majewski ingeniously melds several of his fields in 'The Mill and the Cross.'" — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Sep 15, 2011
91%	The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011)	" ...stirring in footage of long-unseen faces iconic or villainous, this documentary brings its subjects to the attention of younger generations unfamiliar with them. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Sep 9, 2011
83%	Warrior (2011)	" Story, character, development and outcome are hackneyed, done elsewhere, sometimes worse, often better, but you can't keep a good story down for the count." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Sep 8, 2011
100%	Ivan Groznyy (Ivan the Terrible, Part One) (1944)	" Eisenstein's 'Ivan' is a magnificence of parts, four-fifths of it a visual wonder beyond the man himself. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Sep 3, 2011
96%	Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise) (1945)	" The triumph here is the art-direction realization of 1840 Paris, where the grand monde mingled with the demimonde and the flat-out criminal. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Sep 2, 2011
71%	Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life (2011)	" Film and director-writer have won awards at home and abroad, as has Eric Elmosnino for his portrayal of the insolent yet winsome title hero, who also displays unheroic traits. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Aug 31, 2011
83%	Circumstance (2011)	" Too much in too many scenes is worked in, even though a thematic relationship may be gleaned among the parts in repressive, fearful, corrupt, Morality Policed Tehrān. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews Posted Aug 26, 2011

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