Critics » Barbara VanDenburgh
Barbara VanDenburgh

Barbara VanDenburgh

Agrees with the Tomatometer 85% of the time.

Publications:
Arizona Republic
Total Reviews:
61

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 61
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Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
3/5 68% Bad Milo! (2013) " This movie is about a monster that crawls out of a man's butt and starts killing people." — Arizona Republic
Posted Oct 3, 2013
3.5/5 78% Metallica Through the Never (2013) " The 3-D concert footage is unassailably cool. Less assured is the occasional storyline threaded through the film." — Arizona Republic
Posted Sep 26, 2013
2/5 35% Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) " All the standard spooks pop up: creepy baby toys, a piano that plays itself, a lady in white roaming the house, predictable jump-scares galore." — Arizona Republic
Posted Sep 12, 2013
3.5/5 75% Populaire (2013) " "Populaire" is catnip for a certain breed of twee Francophile." — Arizona Republic
Posted Sep 12, 2013
4/5 83% The Patience Stone (2013) " The film burns with the collective anger of exiles, unfolding as an indictment of the Islamic customs and religious practices that oppress women in their native countries." — Arizona Republic
Posted Sep 5, 2013
3/5 60% Riddick (2013) " Riddick's at his most fun when the pressure's on, and he retreats to plan something special for his new visitors. All the build-up pays off with tense showdowns in the dark, thrilling restraint and ominous suggestion giving way to slasher gore." — Arizona Republic
Posted Sep 5, 2013
5/5 99% Short Term 12 (2013) " An authentic drama couched in character that never stoops to manipulation." — Arizona Republic
Posted Aug 29, 2013
2.5/5 46% Closed Circuit (2013) " It's a film that eschews intrigue and insinuation for government agents who monologue about the dangers of free speech and fair trials while garroting their victims." — Arizona Republic
Posted Aug 28, 2013
2/5 31% Austenland (2013) " The film does little delving into what could make a modern woman so hung up on the romantic conventions of yesteryear, even less with complications of class conflict." — Arizona Republic
Posted Aug 22, 2013
2/5 4% Paranoia (2013) " "Paranoia" is ostensibly a thriller, but there's nothing remotely thrilling about it. The slick, plodding bore is as exciting as watching somebody else tap out text messages." — Arizona Republic
Posted Aug 15, 2013
3/5 84% Prince Avalanche (2013) " The movie feels like there wasn't a script. Like Green just handed Rudd and Hirsche two pairs of overalls, a few bottles of grain alcohol and set the cameras rolling as they bromanced it out over a weekend in the woods." — Arizona Republic
Posted Aug 8, 2013
3.5/5 83% Computer Chess (2013) " It approaches its subjects not with the gleeful, madcap hilarity of a Christopher Guest mockumentary ("Best in Show," "A Mighty Wind"), but with the calculated precision of lines of code." — Arizona Republic
Posted Aug 1, 2013
3/5 52% The To Do List (2013) " The film is flush with done-to-death gross-out gags, bodily fluids serving as too many punch lines. Yes, girls can dish out F-bombs and body objectification as well as the boys can, but that shouldn't be the whole joke." — Arizona Republic
Posted Jul 25, 2013
1.5/5 14% R.I.P.D. (2013) " It's an unpleasant way to pass a couple summer hours." — Arizona Republic
Posted Jul 19, 2013
4/5 99% 20 Feet From Stardom (2013) " Music documentarian Morgan Neville uses a mix of live interviews and archival footage to let the singers, and their music, tell their stories of vocal triumph and thwarted ambition." — Arizona Republic
Posted Jul 4, 2013
3.5/5 64% Unfinished Song (2013) " Terence Stamp and Vanessa Redgrave would be captivating reading the nutrition label on a bag of crisps, so it's no surprise that they elevate "Unfinished Song"..." — Arizona Republic
Posted Jun 27, 2013
2.5/5 49% Redemption (2013) " "Redemption" doesn't have the chutzpah to let loose and be as dumb as it needs to be, so it instead bores the audience comatose with long stretches of sad-face Statham putzing around an apartment to justify the too-brief bursts of giddy bone-breaking." — Arizona Republic
Posted Jun 27, 2013
3/5 65% The Heat (2013) " It's disappointing that "The Heat" doesn't do more than take an established film template - in this case, the buddy-cop flick - throw in a Tarantino-size helping of F-bombs, cast a couple of women and call it a day." — Arizona Republic
Posted Jun 27, 2013
1.5/5 22% Rushlights (2013) " They say it isn't nice to kick a dog when it's down. But man, there are a lot of dogs in "Rushlights"..." — Arizona Republic
Posted Jun 20, 2013
3.5/5 88% What Maisie Knew (2013) " A raw, uncomfortable examination of a family torn apart by two parents who love their daughter only half as much as they love themselves." — Arizona Republic
Posted May 23, 2013
4/5 75% Pieta (2013) " For all its cringe-inducing horror, "Pieta" is visually restrained, striking visceral blows with psychological precision while making little use of gore." — Arizona Republic
Posted May 16, 2013
3/5 42% Midnight's Children (2013) " Faithfully adapted from Salman Rushdie's award-winning 1981 novel, the movie feels both too packed and too slight, overflowing with vivid details but lacking the structure to support their weight." — Arizona Republic
Posted May 9, 2013
2.5/5 55% The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2013) " It most disappoints as a thriller, the flashbacks and voiceovers and romantic entanglements so dominating the proceedings you forget that someone is bound and gagged in real time." — Arizona Republic
Posted May 9, 2013
2.5/5 49% Pain & Gain (2013) " You can't thread a needle this fine with a script filtered through Bay's puerile id." — Arizona Republic
Posted Apr 25, 2013
2/5 42% Leonie (2013) " It hits all the expected beats of a thoroughly vanilla biopic as an aging Leonie reflects on her unconventional life via plodding voiceover while doddering through a forest collecting berries." — Arizona Republic
Posted Apr 18, 2013
3/5 65% Nicky's Family (2013) " The story is good enough to tell itself, and the filmmakers should have let it." — Arizona Republic
Posted Mar 28, 2013
2/5 47% Olympus Has Fallen (2013) " "Olympus" has a strictly director-for-hire vibe; anyone with access to a Roland Emmerich movie or two (namely "Independence Day") and a mad-libbed action script could have churned out something similar." — Arizona Republic
Posted Mar 21, 2013
3/5 69% Greedy Lying Bastards (2013) " In Rosebraugh's uncompromising hands, it plays out like a strident screed for those already burning with righteous indignation." — Arizona Republic
Posted Mar 7, 2013
4/5 87% Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2013) " Herzog's longing for the ideological purity in which these lives are lived, free of paperwork and bureaucracy, taxes and technology, drives the film, which lacks an overall story arc." — Arizona Republic
Posted Feb 28, 2013
3/5 55% Snitch (2013) " For all its lunkheadedness, "Snitch" is a shockingly deeper, less action-oriented affair than one would expect ..." — Arizona Republic
Posted Feb 21, 2013
2/5 13% Safe Haven (2013) " "Safe Haven" plays out less like a love story than it does a two-hour audition tape Julianne Hough commissioned to land a lucrative lip-gloss-modeling contract." — Arizona Republic
Posted Feb 13, 2013
2/5 20% Identity Thief (2013) " The film's few chuckles can be chalked up to the sheer comedic charisma of McCarthy and Bateman." — Arizona Republic
Posted Feb 7, 2013
4/5 81% Warm Bodies (2013) " No, it's not the best zombie film, but it may well be the cutest." — Arizona Republic
Posted Jan 31, 2013
3/5 46% Bullet to the Head (2013) " An unapologetic rock 'em, sock 'em rumble of exploding squibs and bourbon bottles, the film could just as easily have been titled "Guns, Boobs and Booze."" — Arizona Republic
Posted Jan 31, 2013
4/5 95% Sister (2012) " "Sister" avoids sentimental indulgence. There's no room for wallowing in this spare, almost ascetic exercise ..." — Arizona Republic
Posted Dec 6, 2012
3/5 45% The Comedy (2012) " The joke, I guess, is that there's nothing funny about "The Comedy."" — Arizona Republic
Posted Nov 29, 2012
3.5/5 84% Detropia (2012) " A fascinating portrait of a 21st-century post-industrial hellscape." — Arizona Republic
Posted Nov 1, 2012
1.5/5 40% Little Red Wagon (2012) " Even the cheesiest inspirational flicks have to be populated with characters who have something at stake. Conflict is the heart of good storytelling, and "Little Red Wagon" is conflict-free to the point of catatonia." — Arizona Republic
Posted Nov 1, 2012
2.5/5 38% Here Comes the Boom (2012) " The film would have the same audience that came to see James get elbowed in the face also get weepy over disadvantaged schoolchildren." — Arizona Republic
Posted Oct 11, 2012
2.5/5 34% Butter (2012) " "Butter" is funny in spots, but it's so preoccupied with landing below-the-belt cultural jabs that it misses the opportunity for laying out biting social commentary." — Arizona Republic
Posted Oct 4, 2012
2/5 33% Won't Back Down (2012) " It's rich territory for human drama; unfortunately, the film is more interested in slapping a charter-school Band-Aid on the gushing wound than exploring dramatic possibilities." — Arizona Republic
Posted Sep 26, 2012
1/5 0% Last Ounce of Courage (2012) " Bookended by a pair of Ronald Reagan quotes, "Last Ounce of Courage" is pure preaching-to-the-choir poppycock." — Arizona Republic
Posted Sep 13, 2012
3.5/5 55% For a Good Time, Call... (2012) " This hot-pink and leopard-print take on a familiar formula is so energetic and self-assured that it powers past its predictability." — Arizona Republic
Posted Sep 6, 2012
3/5 22% The Words (2012) " A lush but fumbling literary melodrama outfitted with an attractive, generations-spanning cast and a puzzle box of three competing narratives." — Arizona Republic
Posted Sep 5, 2012
1.5/5 0% General Education (2012) " Defiantly humorless, the comedy is little more than a grab-bag of familiar high school-film cliches populated with bland characters played by barely-there actors. It was clearly a labor of love for no one." — Arizona Republic
Posted Aug 30, 2012
3.5/5 79% Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2012) " A quiet, narratively layered period drama with a focus squarely on character." — Arizona Republic
Posted Aug 16, 2012
1/5 8% The Babymakers (2012) " Even those with the lowest enjoyment threshold for knuckle-dragging comedies will be hard-pressed to find joy in this impotent misfire from director Jay Chandrasekhar." — Arizona Republic
Posted Aug 2, 2012
2.5/5 42% Step Up Revolution (2012) " She's a rich daddy's girl! He's from the wrong side of the tracks! They bridge their socio-economic gap through the power of dance! Rinse, repeat." — Arizona Republic
Posted Jul 26, 2012
3/5 55% People Like Us (2012) " Though it's just a Christmas tree away from being a holiday special, the stellar cast wrings just enough genuine emotion out of a stale premise to make it mostly sweet." — Arizona Republic
Posted Jun 28, 2012
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