Critics » Paul Byrnes
Paul Byrnes

Paul Byrnes

Agrees with the Tomatometer 77% of the time.

Publications:
Sydney Morning Herald , The Age (Australia)
Total Reviews:
278

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 278
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Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
3/5 25% Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011) " Condon is directing Breaking Dawn -- Part 2. Let's hope he realises it is broken and that he does fix it." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Nov 17, 2011
3/5 59% Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark (2011) " Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is horror by-the-numbers. Parts of it are effectively chilling, and the performances are fine, but there's no sense of reality." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Nov 3, 2011
4/5 100% Autoluminescent: Rowland S. Howard () " Lowenstein and Milburn are not just making a film about a guitarist but a whole movement and moments in time...The film is spectacularly successful at evoking those periods and at locating Howard in his times. " — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Oct 26, 2011
4/5 84% Contagion (2011) " Contagion is what happens when a disaster movie gets sent to the headmaster for bad behaviour. " — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Oct 20, 2011
4/5 92% Take Shelter (2011) " Shannon's performance is exceptional and the character is terribly moving. " — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Oct 13, 2011
3.5/5 36% The Thing (2011) " Watching this made me want to revisit both of the predecessors, which is a indeed a compliment. " — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Oct 12, 2011
2/5 59% Real Steel (2011) " Frankly, Real Steel is an appalling movie: cliched, corny, sentimental, hectoring and pitched so low that the term B-movie seems like praise. " — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Oct 5, 2011
4/5 96% Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011) " This is what 3-D was made for, puncturing the proscenium and taking us somewhere ''not yet offended''. " — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Sep 21, 2011
4/5 95% 13 Assassins (2011) " 13 Assassins looks at honour from many angles, without becoming simplistic. Ichii hasn't lost his edge after all." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Sep 9, 2011
3/5 90% Face to Face () " Rymer's adaptation is a mixed bag. The film is well cast and played and it eventually achieves a compelling emotional power, but it's laborious." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Sep 7, 2011
4/5 81% Life in a Day (2011) " It's a feel-good movie in that sense, affirmative without being sentimental or exploitative. " — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Sep 2, 2011
4/5 95% The Guard (2011) " Boyle is probably the first screen hero in a long time whose heroism comes out of boredom and ennui. He gives nihilism a good name." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Aug 25, 2011
4/5 71% Friends With Benefits (2011) " It's not in the Hepburn-Tracy league but it is way smarter than most entries in this field." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Aug 25, 2011
1/5 23% Conan the Barbarian (2011) " The brutality is enervating, unrelieved by the slightest notion of humour. The fantasy castles are painted in with computers, and the battles are shot in widescreen close-up, the worst possible combination." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Aug 17, 2011
4/5 92% Senna (2011) " In short, this is a brilliant, intimate, compelling film about Senna, but it's not the whole story." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Aug 10, 2011
2.5/5 27% Green Lantern (2011) " A certain tone is needed to carry off the script's manifold absurdities. It has to be tongue-in-cheek rather than foot-in-mouth and Reynolds' success rate is intermittent at best." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Aug 10, 2011
3/5 67% Love Crime (2011) " With actors as accomplished as Scott Thomas and Sagnier, the film could hardly be dull, and it isn't. Sagnier's performance is superb, and a tribute to Corneau's skill with two very fine actors." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Aug 3, 2011
2.5/5 71% Hanna (2011) " Wright is capable of much better, as is everyone in the cast. He's trying to make a silky Euro thriller with a frisson of controversy. It's more like a never-ending trailer." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Jul 27, 2011
4.5/5 84% The Tree of Life (2011) " The tone of the film is mesmeric, transcendent, awe-inspiring. " — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Jul 12, 2011
4/5 86% Get Low (2010) " Get Low is a handmade kind of film. Its ambitions are modest, but fully attained. I rarely use the words ''go see it'', but I hope a lot of people do." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted May 24, 2011
3/5 77% Thor (2011) " Branagh tries not to lose that connection but he's overwhelmed by design and technology, like many who would enter the arena of fantasy blockbuster movie-making. " — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted May 4, 2011
4/5 87% Mad Bastards () " This is poised and meaningful Australian cinema, however we classify it. " — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted May 4, 2011
3/5 57% The Lost Bladesman (Guan yun chang) () " Problems of scale limit the film's clarity and its emotional power. " — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Apr 27, 2011
3.5/5 78% Fast Five (2011) " Make no mistake, this is no masterpiece of the dramatic arts but it is probably the best since the original: lean, spectacular, funny and slightly less risible than its predecessors." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Apr 20, 2011
3/5 71% Paul (2011) " Paul isn't as riotous as the early Pegg and Frost movies, but it does have a certain sweetness. Everyone in it is sort of innocent, except Paul, the alien wisecracker. It's likeable, if uneven, rather than hilarious." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Apr 13, 2011
64% Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (2011) " Just turning the camera on gives us a sense of the madness surrounding Bieber, who seems to have risen faster than anyone in pop music history." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Apr 8, 2011
4/5 84% My Afternoons with Marguerite (2011) " The danger is that it becomes sentimental, but there is a difference between sentiment imposed and sentiment earned. The film has only the latter." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Apr 6, 2011
4/5 77% In A Better World (2011) " This is a masterful, intense, thoughtful film and not to be missed." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Apr 1, 2011
4.5/5 70% Never Let Me Go (2010) " Real men will see this and weep, as I did. It is one of the most moving and profound films in a long time." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Mar 30, 2011
4/5 80% Barney's Version (2011) " The film offers a lovely mix of compassion and humour. We get a sprawling comic tableau, the arc of a full life." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Mar 23, 2011
1/5 35% Battle: Los Angeles (2011) " Like the aliens themselves, the cliches were coming too fast. Unlike the aliens, they are indestructible." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Mar 16, 2011
3.5/5 61% Griff the Invisible (2011) " Griff the Invisible is a charming and quirky romance with a strong sense of dramatic purpose." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Mar 11, 2011
4/5 53% The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2010) " Seeing the first two films -- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire -- will make the third film more satisfying." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Feb 28, 2011
3.5/5 68% Conviction (2010) " Director Tony Goldwyn does a good job telling a complicated story." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Feb 22, 2011
4/5 56% Gnomeo and Juliet (2011) " This is Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending -- which can't have been easy. Asbury does a good job of unifying the whole and preserving the English humour." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Feb 9, 2011
4/5 93% 127 Hours (2010) " Boyle's film takes us back to the campfire for a story that is painful and powerful, as well as true." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Feb 8, 2011
2/5 42% Faster (2010) " Faster is not fast enough. It's a bloody revenge fantasy starring the massively muscled Dwayne Johnson, whose emotions run the gamut from A to, well, A." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Feb 2, 2011
71% Kokoda (2007) " The movie is half a great film about Kokoda." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Jan 31, 2011
4/5 96% True Grit (2010) " Jeff Bridges ain't the Duke, no sir, but the Duke weren't Jeff Bridges, neither." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Jan 24, 2011
3.5/5 44% The Green Hornet (2011) " It is a patchy film, haltingly paced, but the visual invention is astonishing." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Jan 19, 2011
3/5 24% The Dilemma (2011) " The film is hardly a disaster. It has some effective comedy and a sense of reality but it's not the kind of engrossing package that Ron Howard usually delivers." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Jan 14, 2011
20% The Tourist (2010) " The tone is lightly comic, the dialogue flirty and amusing but the performances are unengaged. There's no floor of reality, as there always was in a Hitchcock film, even his light confections. " — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Dec 22, 2010
3/5 10% Little Fockers (2010) " Rarely were so many good actors assembled for so little purpose." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Dec 21, 2010
3/5 69% Heartbreaker (L'Arnacoeur) (2010) " A romantic comedy that is charming and light as a souffle." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Dec 20, 2010
4/5 73% Sarah's Key (2011) " The movie makes us care about Sarah, who never existed, rather than the thousands of Sarahs who ceased to exist. " — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Dec 20, 2010
3.5/5 72% Megamind (2010) " It's a sassy comedy with a lot of one-liners, some of which apparently came from improvisation between Ferrell and Fey, both in good vocal form. The quality of animation is outstanding, as you would expect." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Dec 10, 2010
3.5/5 50% Tron Legacy (2010) " It's a bit like Fast and Furious, directed by Stanley Kubrick on holiday." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Dec 8, 2010
4/5 90% Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) " The film is beautifully shot, using breathtaking winter landscapes. That helps to set up the comedy, because it's incongruous." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Dec 1, 2010
79% Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 (2010) " The first part of the last part is dark, dismal, and frankly, disappointing." — Sydney Morning Herald
Posted Nov 15, 2010
Showing 1 - 50 of 278
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