Critics » Anton Bitel
Anton Bitel

Anton Bitel

Agrees with the Tomatometer 75% of the time.

Biography:
Dr Anton Bitel was born in Australia in 1970, and has lived in the UK since 1989. Now a father of twins, occasional academic and full-time caffeine junkie, he compensates for a general sense of disgruntlement by moping about in darkened cinemas watching other people's joys and sorrows. He seeks elusive thrills from all genres (even romantic comedy), but tends to prefer anything extreme, odd, miserable or tawdry. He is at home with horror, 'arthouse', the avant garde and Oriental cinema. Anton currently freelances for Film4, musicOMH (where he is a staff writer), Eye for Film, Film International and Little White Lies, and was for three years one of the principal contributors to the now semi-defunct Movie Gazette.
Favorites:
Eraserhead Brazil Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...and Spring Apocalypse Now The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) M. Houlot's Holiday Ichi the Killer Last Year in Marienbad Batman (1966) Synecdoche, New York
Publications:
Cinetalk , Daily Info , Eye for Film , Film International , Film4 , Grolsch Film Works , Little White Lies , Movie Gazette , MovieScope , musicOMH.com , New Empress Magazine , Scene 360 , Sight and Sound
Critics' Group:
London Film Critics Circle, Online Film Critics Society
Total Reviews:
1709
Total QuickRatings:
1
Location:
Oxford, UK

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 1709
Previous | Next
Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
89% The Congress () " a hallucinatory trip through a cityscape of the imagination, it also allegorises our own very real relationship with the mythopoeic worlds of cinema (from which this film quotes with relentless, voracious postmodernism) or of the internet" — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Oct 7, 2013
100% Camp 14: Total Control Zone () " It is this very understatement, and the weight given to Shin's words over any accompanying sound or image, that prevent Wiese's film ever seeming exploitative, even though it is addressing unimaginable human depravity and degradation. " — Sight and Sound
Posted Oct 4, 2013
86% Young & Beautiful (Jeune Et Jolie) () " keeps holding out a promise of insight into its young protagonist's mentality and makeup, but ends up merely observing her from a cool distance, as if through the binoculars from the opening scene. " — Eye for Film
Posted Oct 4, 2013
59% Afternoon Delight (2013) " this is a role-swap dramedy, wherein two very different walks of life are brought under the same roof in a social experiment that sees generations gel, classes clash, and sexualities merge... too coarse and cruel to be dismissed as frothy romcom." — Eye for Film
Posted Oct 3, 2013
—— All Cheerleaders Die () " For all the grim fatalism of its title (well, apart from the 'cheerleaders' bit), this is a very funny film - a darkly irreverent joyride through the angst and sexual complication of the teen years, with added zombies, magic and freaky CG gore." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 30, 2013
—— Late at Night: Voices of Ordinary Madness () " very much in the territory of the film essay - a personal exploration of the madness, both literal and metaphorical, of contemporary British life." — Eye for Film
Posted Sep 27, 2013
4/5 100% The Wicker Man - Final Cut (2013) " A British horror oddity like no other, now fully authorised." — Little White Lies
Posted Sep 26, 2013
38% As I Lay Dying (2013) " an extraordinarily well made film that, in keeping us at a distance and failing to engage our sympathies or antipathies for its characters, remains more toothless in the end even than old Anse." — Eye for Film
Posted Sep 25, 2013
—— Mystery Road () " Sen... creates a Great Southern western, using the iconography of the oater to show the Australian landscape as something akin to the shifting boundaries (geographical, moral, racial) of America's wild, wild cowboy days" — Eye for Film
Posted Sep 25, 2013
91% Paper Moon (1973) " From its opening monochrome close-up of nine-year-old Addie Loggins at the barely attended outdoor funeral of her mother, Peter Bogdanovich's Depression-era road movie Paper Moon (1973) is dominated by the presence of Tatum O'Neal." — Film4
Posted Sep 16, 2013
35% Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) " If perhaps not as frightening as the original, Insidious 2 certainly amps up the knowing hokiness (which was always at least a ghostly presence in the first film), while proving far bolder and more ingenious than your average sequel. " — MovieScope
Posted Sep 13, 2013
—— The Dead 2: India () " There is much craft on show in the technical aspects of this film's production, but like the traditional zombies at its core, The Dead 2: India is slow, sluggish and soulless" — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 10, 2013
—— On Tender Hooks () " the film is so quick to get down to the nitty-gritty of the process that the spectacle of perforated and pulled flesh is fast normalised, losing its horror." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 10, 2013
—— The Demon's Rook () " Returning to the womb, raising the dead and playing with a long lost childhood friend - these are all apt metaphors for the nostalgia in which, like a comfort blanket for Satanic slumberers, The Demon's Rook wraps itself. " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 10, 2013
—— Wither (2013) " Yep, 'wither' must be Swedish for 'the evil dead', as this Nordic nasty slavishly drums out every beat of Sam Raimi's 1981 classic, positioning itself as unofficial 'premake' to Fede Alvarez's authorised reimagining Evil Dead (2013)." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 6, 2013
—— Willow Creek () " by turns funny and frightening... a perfect hybridisation of familiar found footage tropes and transgressive Bobcattery. " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 6, 2013
85% We Are What We Are (2013) " despite the film's aqueous motifs of rain, showers, floods and tears, here in the end blood runs thicker than water. " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 6, 2013
100% Wake in Fright (2012) " Like the majestic camera movement with which it opens, Wake In Fright is a film that travels in slow, inexorable circles, presenting its paranoid nightmare of entrapment as Kafka down under. " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 6, 2013
69% V/H/S/2 (2013) " The first film may have been better, and was certainly more original, but VHS is a patchy, outmoded format that can always accommodate second-generation materials." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 6, 2013
—— Stalled (2013) " broad social satire, wryly banalised genre parody and literal toilet humour predominate as an unnamed handyman protagonist (played by the film's writer Dan Palmer) becomes trapped in the cubicle of a ladies' bathroom during a zombie apocalypse." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 6, 2013
—— Snap () " Its dialectic on the possibilities of change and cure, though bleakly resolved, brings method and meaning to all the madness - and while the film is full of jarring distortions and violent moodswings, it never hits a wrong note." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 6, 2013
—— Sadik 2 () " if at first Sadik 2 follows six Pirandello-esque characters in search of a precise generic form, then in its second half they become awkwardly sidelined and reduced to muted objects, making much of what has preceded seem oddly irrelevant. " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 6, 2013
14% R.I.P.D. (2013) " like the ghost of a real movie " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 6, 2013
100% Rewind This! (2013) " a fascinating, funny and focused journey through our recent - and rapidly changing - cultural memory, lest we forget. " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 6, 2013
—— The Paranormal Diaries: Clophill () " As Craig puts it, having just been startled by the sound of his walkie-talkie suddenly coming on: "The biggest scare of the night was that mic."" — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 6, 2013
—— Painless () " a breathless drama that interrogates the paradoxes of Spain's genetic and circumstantial heritage, and teases out the eternal struggle between freedom and repression, memory and oblivion. " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 6, 2013
—— Odd Thomas (2013) " this is anchored by Yelchin's central performance as a character so self-effacingly funny, so romantic, so decent and honourable, and yes, so charming, that all the supernatural goings-on fast become normalised, and never alienate. " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 6, 2013
—— Missionary () " the divisions in America's culture wars take on dramatic form before our eyes, and two very different models emerge of the American family and its future: one a deluded dream, the other a compromised reality. " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 6, 2013
4/5 75% uwantme2killhim? () " The evils of the internet are unnervingly unearthed in this teen-oriented thriller." — Little White Lies
Posted Sep 5, 2013
—— Los Últimos Días () " No doubt Spain. can do with the optimistic message that the next generation will inherit a better world - but it makes for an unsatisfyingly pat & oversentimental conclusion to a film that began so promisingly in all its drably satirical bleakness." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 2, 2013
0% I Spit on Your Grave 2 (2013) " it panders to the viewer's basest instincts without even once interrogating them, and presents revenge as something entirely unproblematic. And when it's all over, we, like [protagonist/victim] Katie, can just go home." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 2, 2013
—— Hypnotisören (The Hypnotist) () " It is not long before the recurrent motifs of sedative drugs, deep slumbers, comas and hypnosis have all come to highlight the film's soporific pace, making the viewer just feel sleepier and sleepier." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 2, 2013
75% Haunter (2013) " the clever ideas quickly give way to a more straightforward - and therefore less satisfying - battle between good and evil (resolved explicitly in terms of heaven and hell). " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 2, 2013
52% Hatchet III (2013) " It is time that Victor buries the hatchet once and for all, and gets out while he is ahead - or at least not totally behind." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 2, 2013
—— Hansel and Gretel Get Baked (2013) " Boyle is the very best part of the film, having palpable fun as the émigrée witch with the Benjamin Button approach to ageing. Still the film's literally high concept is executed without conviction, while its greatest crime is to forget to be funny. " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 2, 2013
71% Frankenstein's Army (2013) " a 'mad scientist' movie made with outsized love that no reasonable viewer will be able too leave unrequited, all stitched together with political satire that cynically paints Frankenstein's freakish army as the final solution to the madness of war. " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 2, 2013
—— Para Elisa () " if Fernández gets the atmosphere creepily right, the story itself feels padded.... The lack of narrative economy suggests that For Elisa might have worked better as a short film." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Sep 2, 2013
30% Hammer Of The Gods (2013) " So Hammer of the Gods is that most unexpected and unlikely of films, a Viking Apocalypse Then - but while it is an enjoyable enough romp, trying to out-hammer the impact of Coppola's masterpiece is as foolhardy as challenging the gods themselves. " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Aug 30, 2013
85% Upstream Color (2013) " Carruth's mindmelt of mesmerism, metempsychosis and micro-organisms will leave some a little cold, most bemused if not utterly baffled, and near all needing to see it a second time." — Film4
Posted Aug 28, 2013
85% Upstream Color (2013) " subjecting this multi-faceted film to a simple, overarching explanatory frame proves as banally disappointing as reducing humanity to mere DNA & parasitology. Better to turn off your mind, relax & float upstream... " — MovieScope
Posted Aug 28, 2013
—— El Desierto (The Desert) () " stand[s] out as a welcome oasis amidst the arid uniformity of so many other zombie films. The apocalypse may be equally bleak wherever you go, but it is at least a whole lot more original, intense and internalised in the Argentine wastelands." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Aug 27, 2013
—— Dementamania () " As a story, Dementamania may not amount to much, and certainly lacks originality - but as a showcase for [director] Ryan's mastery of the medium in creating dreamlike images, this film is quite the calling card." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Aug 27, 2013
—— Daylight () " found footage itself becomes a kind of twilight zone where, just as older recorded materials occasionally intrude upon the new, the past itself is eternally returning to haunt the present, and cannot easily, perhaps ever, be erased or escaped. " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Aug 27, 2013
38% Dark Tourist (2013) " a deadly serious psychodrama with the emphasis on (finely acted) character, where even the odd transgressive twist serves and illuminates the story's integrity rather than just adding another cheap thrill. " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Aug 27, 2013
75% Dark Touch (2013) " Like Carrie without the religion, or Village of the Damned without the aliens, Dark Touch is uncompromising, utterly chilling, and actually about something - the misuse of power, whether a parent's or a child's. It is also unmissable." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Aug 27, 2013
70% Curse of Chucky (2013) " the film, unfolding for the most part in a veritable doll's house, is certainly a stylishly twisted unpeeling of its antagonist's strange history." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Aug 27, 2013
—— Contracted () " sets its heroine's personal dramas against the spiralling symptomatology of her infection, fusing psychological insights with full-on body horror, leading towards an ending that is also a new beginning in this young woman's metamorphosis. " — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Aug 27, 2013
83% The Conspiracy (2013) " Like any good conspiracy theorist (or perhaps Grand Master of the Universe), MacBride rewrites the cosmos, forcing us either to buy the particular reality that he's peddling, or to risk being cast as collusive shills or sacrificial 'sheeples'." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Aug 27, 2013
100% Cheap Thrills () " class-conscious black comedy reveals the American dream to be both a gladiatorial bumfight and a dog's dinner." — Grolsch Film Works
Posted Aug 27, 2013
Showing 1 - 50 of 1709
Previous | Next
  • Sort by Rating:

    Sort results by this critic's rating. This option is only available for critics with a rating system (4 star, letter grade, 1-10, etc.)

  • Sort by T-meter:

    Sort results by the Tomatometer (percentage of critics recommending a certain movie)

Best to Worst Sampling

Best Reviewed

More...

Worst Reviewed

More...

Fresh Links

Halloween Movies For Wimps
Halloween Movies For Wimps External Link
 Scary movies too scary for you? Here are some alternatives for October 31st.
10 Best Superhero TV Shows
10 Best Superhero TV Shows External Link
 HitFix combs through TV history to compile a superpowered list.
Ridiculous Movie Mistakes
Ridiculous Movie Mistakes External Link
 RollingStone proves even the best movies miss a details here and there.
Deadly Movie Kids
Deadly Movie Kids External Link
 Moviefone lists 11 Movie Kids Who Could Kick Our Asses.
50 States, 50 Movies
50 States, 50 Movies External Link
 For July 4th, TimeOut has compiled 50 state-specific movie choices.
Follow RT on Twitter!
Follow RT on Twitter! External Link
 Spice up your feed with hourly Tomatometer updates!
Help | About | Jobs | Critics Submission | Press | API | Licensing | Mobile
Copyright © Flixster, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright Policy | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Ad Choices