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CRITICS / AUTHORS REVIEWS AND ARTICLES
BRIAN GIBSON
PUBLICATION(S)
Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)

STATS
Total Reviews: 249
Total QuickRatings: 79

OTHER INFO
• Favorites
• Location: Edmonton, Alberta


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HOME ABOUT MOVIES DVDs INTERVIEWS FRESH ROTTEN QUICK RATINGS OTHER
LISTING OF ALL REVIEWS & ARTICLES
A SAMPLING OF THIS CRITIC'S CINEMATIC TASTE
 
FRESH SAMPLE
----------------------------------
Fresh Garbage Warrior
Fresh The Counterfeiters
Fresh Under the Same Moon
Fresh 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
Fresh Be Kind Rewind
Fresh Persepolis
Fresh My Kid Could Paint That
Fresh The Right of the Weakest
Fresh The Savages
Fresh The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
 more...
 
ROTTEN SAMPLE
----------------------------------
Rotten Adam's Apples
Rotten The Forbidden Kingdom
Rotten Normal
Rotten Drillbit Taylor
Rotten The Tracey Fragments
Rotten The Tiger's Tail
Rotten Milarepa
Rotten Acts Of Imagination
Rotten Dan in Real Life
Rotten Crime Novel
 more...
This critic agrees with the Tomatometer 78% of the time.

Genre:   # a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Results for All Genres ... (1-50 of 249) Next »
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"A brilliantly constructed film about a larger-than-life, passionate visionary who shows that simple change isn't just urgent, but blindly obvious and well within reach. All we have to do is take a second-hand look at what we're dumping out our back doors."
Posted May 8, 2008
 
Garbage Warrior (2008)n/a
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"Kohn takes a distinctive approach to this chronicle of kidnappings in Brazil%u2014call it the obsessively tangential drama-documentary. . . . the elegant, bright camerawork, along with the jaunty Brazilian musical score, builds a fitting sense of the surr"
Posted May 8, 2008
 
Manda Bala (2007)80%
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"A film that asks us to have a pretty high tolerance of easy stereotypes and most of its comedy comes because you're not sure what else to do but laugh. When the ironic reversal kicks in, the film turns semi-serious and gets, if anything, a little boring."
Posted May 8, 2008
 
Adam's Apples (2007)70%
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"A documentary built on guilt by association. . . . no more interested in questioning the loaded word "terrorist" than Verges is in making distinctions between his clients. . . . leads us on a tour full of dark, mysterious purpose and not much of a payoff."
Posted May 8, 2008
 
Terror's Advocate (2007)83%
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"A relentless super-self-consciousness leaves no room for subtlety or the viewer's involvement. . . . even the extras are meta and pretentious: the long-running 'interview with the director' is more about her artistic preoccupations and her career arc."
Posted May 8, 2008
 
Strange Culture (2007)94%
/
 
"The story, which should be forbidden, keeps coming back for more. Whenever the plot pops up, from predictable love scenes to the villainess who hates men for no reason to the crypto-Confucian lines, you keep wishing for the next fist to fly."
Posted May 8, 2008
 
The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)61%
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"Rarely has a film set the starkest of basic moral questions in such sharp-edged yet subtle relief. . . . like one of the master forger's brazenly passed-off copies--so bold, unflinching and brilliant that, to any eye, it's flawless."
Posted May 8, 2008
 
The Counterfeiters (2008)94%
/
 
"While the acting is often fine, the setting and storylines don't have enough depth to be original. . . . for all its smooth touches and sharp emotions, this Canadian film still [doesn't have] enough big-screen originality."
Posted Apr 11, 2008
 
Normal (2007)n/a
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"If a few scenes are a bit stiff, some of the cast a little too telenovela photogenic, the leads' stubborn, yearning performances build just enough of a melodrama to soften the film's tough realism and earn a hopeful ending."
Posted Apr 11, 2008
 
Under the Same Moon (2008)74%
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"Pulses with an underlying distrust of an overworked, PR-driven police force that's a necessary social burden. . . . also offers a sense of family fractured, people isolated and lost in their pain, that's rarely seen on film or television these days."
Posted Apr 11, 2008
 
Five Days (2007)n/a
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"An environmentally minded, politically charged thriller. The way that life ends with a whimper, not a bang, in a Russia even more fissured by self-interest, is heartbreaking."
Posted Apr 11, 2008
 
PU-239 ()n/a
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"The film's focus on Bible-belting zealots seems as diversionary as those zealots' take on abortion . . . The film far too often ignores a woman's view . . . Most pundits in the film, and most critics, can turn abortion into a 'debate' because they're men."
Posted Mar 27, 2008
 
Lake of Fire (2007)94%
/
 
"The poster tagline for Drillbit Taylor is "You get what you pay for." And who knew recycled waste will cost you $8 at the multiplex these days? . . . Ninth-grade setting, kindergarten male writing."
Posted Mar 27, 2008
 
Drillbit Taylor (2008)26%
/
 
"The basic power of the plot's rewound revelation isn't there, shrapneled by the form . . . Some films reward multiple viewings, but this film, offering multiple views, falls short of being memorably singular."
Posted Mar 20, 2008
 
The Tracey Fragments (2008)43%
/
 
"Islam is only cast as anti-democratic. Only homosexuality is [shown as] worse. The Yacoubian Building slums around in the basement when it could have shown some messy, lived-in corners of a down-to-earth, honest-to-god African nation."
Posted Mar 20, 2008
 
The Yacoubian Building ()100%
/
 
"Doesn't explain the monarchy's debt to its British colonial legacy or to African traditions. . . . We don't need cooing, breathy vocals to be shaken by the tour of an AIDS orphanage, or forced to read subtitles when Swazis speak English."
Posted Mar 20, 2008
 
Without the King (2007)93%
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"It's a hard film to watch, especially if you know where it goes--I had to brace myself to see it a second time. But it's an important film, one of great feeling. It even works as a thriller."
Posted Mar 20, 2008
 
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2008)96%
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"An almost madcap comic pace battles with thundercloud-building drama . . . The social commentary can be earnest and bald, with the mythic overtones seemingly contrived to tumble O'Leary into the class gap on his arse."
Posted Mar 20, 2008
 
The Tiger's Tail (2006)0%
/
 
"What seems like a half-mad, half-obsessive outdoor odyssey sweeps you into a haunting tale of human survival. You've never imagined you could be so caught up in sailing. The DVD offers fascinating extra features, from an interactive tour of the cabin of C"
Posted Mar 20, 2008
 
Deep Water (2007)96%
/
 
"The community-produced version of Fats Waller's story leads to a block film party in what may be the most touching ending of Gondry's films."
Posted Mar 1, 2008
 
Be Kind Rewind (2008)65%
 N/A  
""It's really about creating your own entertainment," Gondry adds. "Don't give your money to big corporations. Save your own money and do your own art.""
Posted Mar 1, 2008
 
Be Kind Rewind (2008)65%
/
 
"A lot of beautiful animated sequences that could only come to life in movement . . . We've had this incredible wave of films giving us Iran from an insider's point of view--maybe now it's time for the exile's."
Posted Mar 1, 2008
 
Persepolis (2007)95%
/
 
"The paintings become colourfully self-deluded distortions of a world where adults project themselves back into childhood, capitalizing on both the adult nostalgia for innocence and our fascination with children who seem somehow adult."
Posted Mar 1, 2008
 
My Kid Could Paint That (2007)93%
/
 
"Never as earnest or pleading as its title . . . finds a gentle, steadily fascinating poetry in the day-to-day struggle of stubborn, often inexplicable commitment that two people find themselves pushing and pulling each other into."
Posted Mar 1, 2008
 
Tell Me You Love Me - The Complete First Season ()n/a
/
 
"The film never shows anyone being deeper, as if the surface patter of their '50s world is really all they are. . . . it's best to just leave this odd couple to the distant past of Geraldo and other talk show appearances."
Posted Mar 1, 2008
 
Crazy Love (2007)78%
/
 
"The film, in the end, as solidly good as it is, rings a bit hollow, feels a little pointlessly bleak. The last sparks of the steel furnace where Robert and Jean-Pierre used to work have faded, and all that's left is for life to grind itself down."
Posted Mar 1, 2008
 
The Right of the Weakest (2006)67%
/
 
"So intensely immediate, so caught up in the rush and roil of everyday survival, that it never becomes hopelessly sad."
Posted Mar 1, 2008
 
Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams (2007)98%
/
 
"Most of all about recovering, about picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and plugging on. It also just happens to be, in its small, astutely observed, delicately bittersweet way, one of the best films of the year."
Posted Feb 8, 2008
 
The Savages (2007)90%
/
 
"A remarkably cogent, still-appalling synthesis of the Bush administration's breezy, sloppy planning that led to the bloody disaster of today's Iraq."
Posted Jan 19, 2008
 
No End in Sight (2007)94%
/
 
"The magnificence of Bauby's accomplishment as an author is reflected, shimmering strangely, by a film that awakens a trapped life with the kind of poetry only the camera can write."
Posted Jan 10, 2008
 
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)94%
/
 
"This is the film that Meadows' deceptively casual, hands-in-its-pockets, neighbourhood storytelling has led up to. A tale of one boy's summer becomes a majestic, unromantic look back at 1980s Britain. With some lovely deleted scenes . . . followed by two"
Posted Dec 22, 2007
 
This Is England (2007)93%
/
 
"The black-and-white shots are beautiful . . . then there is the closing shot, a fantastic melding of escape and loss."
Posted Dec 15, 2007
 
White Mane (1952)n/a
/
 
"A cinematic landmark . . . Lamorisse's film floats off, with the breeze of magic-realism, into a feeling of escape and peace."
Posted Dec 15, 2007
 
The Red Balloon (1955)100%
/
 
"By-the-book mythmaking: stately, straightforward and not too interesting. The story . . . falls flat on film, a moody, visual medium, tremendously difficult to rework into a mirror for introspective, spiritual transformation."
Posted Dec 15, 2007
 
Milarepa (2007)36%
/
 
"Startlingly de-mythologizing at first, then just plain poignant . . . it's fascinating to reconcile Cobain's slacker howl over chipping guitar chords with a sodden Pacific Northwest of logging trucks and fishing boats."
Posted Dec 6, 2007
 
Kurt Cobain About a Son (2007)72%
/
 
"The energy is electric, the camerawork crisp and colourful, the editing note-perfect. . . . for the Roma, music sounds the notes of a harsh, maligned cultural history, making them all the more unforgettable while demanding remembrance, even awe."
Posted Dec 6, 2007
 
Gypsy Caravan (2006)85%
/
 
"Little, everyday things make up this tender, quietly funny slice-of-life movie. The tedious but dignified ritual of work whirrs and grinds along . . . an understated, introverted film."
Posted Dec 6, 2007
 
Whisky (2004)100%
/
 
"A gentle little drama about the shades of fathers passing through their sons . . . brushed with light touches of whimsy and bemusement . . . a delicate questioning of the slight madness of city life, the rush so many of us are a little too swept up in."
Posted Dec 6, 2007
 
Family Law (2006)75%
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"The teens grope and fumble through their desire, sex and gender heat-miraging away. . . . The performances are remarkably assured."
Posted Dec 6, 2007
 
Glue (2006)n/a
/
 
"An eerie, haunting immersion in the near-incomprehensibility, darkness and grief rippling around suicide. With a fascinating making-of featurette."
Posted Nov 23, 2007
 
The Bridge (2006)69%
/
 
"With its oblique, sometimes coyly pretentious approach (and suffocating, incessant score), Devor's film skates around this complex subject on the thin ice of its pretty aesthetic."
Posted Nov 23, 2007
 
Zoo (2007)56%
/
 
"Drips with a thick, Stygian darkness, but also offers violence that's too explicit and willfully perverse to be thoughtfully disturbing. . . . a little too overwrought, too operatic after its regal predecessor."
Posted Nov 19, 2007
 
Triad Election (2007)96%
/
 
"Some real genius and understated power . . . transcends its genre and turns the venally criminal into the profoundly human."
Posted Nov 19, 2007
 
Election (2005)86%
/
 
"A wryly funny, surreal take on an epochal event . . . reminds us that revolutions aren't always grand, ideal affairs to be nostalgic about, but can involve the mundane and the trivial, moments argued or regretted."
Posted Nov 8, 2007
 
12:08 East of Bucharest (2007)95%
/
 
"Suffers from dramatic black holes, but also from creaky dialogue and overly intense camerawork."
Posted Nov 8, 2007
 
Acts Of Imagination (2006)n/a
/
 
"Confuses charm with childishness and romance with the sort of endless yearning in a badly written teen diary. Then there's the misogyny . . . and after the film's family values syrup is tapped out, its WASPy judgmentalism remains."
Posted Nov 5, 2007
 
Dan in Real Life (2007)64%
/
 
"About Tony's slow imprisonment by his own shallow, grasping selfishness . . . here's the American Dream trying to keep its head down, going about its often dirty business, but always waiting, watching out of the corner of its eye for the blow to come."
Posted Oct 26, 2007
 
The Sopranos - Season 6, Part 2 (2007)n/a
/
 
"It's hard to get much juice when it's all quick slice-and-dice in the first half-hour. . . . the moral slipperiness between criminal and politician, thug and cop, just doesn't ooze out here beyond all the blood."
Posted Oct 20, 2007
 
Crime Novel (2005)53%
/
 
"Yunis's surreal moments of imprisoned hell are emphasized with comic book illustrations and people's words as captions. It's a cartoonish nightmare with ordinary Iraqis, who've only known America through pop-culture TV, becoming trapped in easy stereotype"
Posted Oct 11, 2007
 
The Prisoner Or: How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair (2007)86%
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"Leaves much unrecorded and unexplained, though. . . . What about the other boys they live with? And does the film focus on John because he's a spokesman for a cause? . . ."
Posted Oct 11, 2007
 
God Grew Tired of Us (2007)91%

Genre:   # a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Results for All Genres ... (1-50 of 249) Next »
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