Critics » Brian Gibson
Brian Gibson

Brian Gibson

Agrees with the Tomatometer 81% of the time.

Favorites:
Citizen Kane Ran Three Colours: Red
Publications:
Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Total Reviews:
502
Total QuickRatings:
77
Location:
Nova Scotia

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 502
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Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
70% Not Fade Away (2012) " There's a nice, pop-in-and-see rhythm to the storytelling. Gandolfini's Pat descends into a rich sadness. There's wry humour to be had with Douglas and his idealizing buddies. Loneliness and longing lounge around together." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
50% White House Down (2013) " Crank up the destruction-porn, strike up the patriotic movie-muzak, round off the sun-bright halo around the Obama-like Prez. By the exhausted end, it's all a super-spangled slice of apple pie." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
78% Monsters University (2013) " Mostly takes the old college tropes and doesn't sneak, crawl or run too far with them. There's a bravura scene near the end that's far and away the film's best 10 minutes. Most spark, spontaneity and character complexity is left for the sideline monsters." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
56% Man of Steel (2013) " Super-duper-overStatement. A cataclysm-caravan of speeches, doomed and desolate landscapes, proclamations of glorious destiny or rebirth, and sprawling, stone-faced seriousness. Can't save itself from self-suffocating grandiosity." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
38% The Purge (2013) " A workable blueprint for a movie that falls apart in its shoddy construction. Hammers home its concept, then smashes down the doors of horror-movie clichés. Its beaten-to-a-pulp idea leaves the 'hood and sublets to some weakly shot home-invasion B-horror." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
86% The Manor () " What keeps Cohen's doc from slipping into comic stereotypes or reality-TV programming is his long, worried, head-on stare at his troubled parents. His pained, poignant gaze at them, trapped together but apart in a tawdry business's shadow, fascinates." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
11% After Earth (2013) " As the story moves along with an almost medicating dullness, so antiseptic and square and insulated from any fun or spark or non-self-seriousness, the entire movie has that plastic-wrap feel of a hermetically-sealed Hollywood vanity project." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
92% The Sapphires (2013) " Tries to dazzle itself but the shine comes off quickly, as this weakly structured story flees at the sight of any lingering dramatic conflict, preferring to turn history into a pleasant song-and-dance routine." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
19% The Hangover Part III (2013) " Whatever humour was left in the guys-gone-wild porn of the Hangover franchise dribbles and trickles and slips out, one quarter-chuckle every half-hour or so, in the third instalment." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
69% Fast & Furious 6 (2013) " This Formula 6 racing flick's tire-spinning in a vacuum: the plausible's passed early on, the ludicrous is smoked down the stretch, and any lingering basic law of action-film gravitas is shredded by the finish line." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
91% The Beguiled (1971) " Southern Gothic that sinks too deep into the bayous of sexploitation and horror towards the end, Don Siegel's adaptation of Thomas P Cullinan's 1966 novel is still ripe and pungent enough to intermittently fascinate." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
79% Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum) (1979) " Walks a taut, high rope between doubles and split selves, docu-realism and surrealism, brutality and naïveté, sacred and profane, and history and myth, without falling into the safety net of childish fantasy. (It only falters in its final half-hour.)" — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
97% Hotaru no haka (Grave of the Fireflies) (1988) " Such odd hopefulness, flitting around a child, mixed with the overwhelmingly sad, pervades Isao Takahata's film. And all around Seita and Setsuko, nature, in the face of human destruction and tragedy, persists in its beauty." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
71% My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999) " There's a crabby, gleeful spirit to the whole thing, carried along by animated bursts of imagination, snippets of haiku, and spirited song. Amid all the disgruntlement and dismay, there's a sweet we're-all-in-this-life-togetherness." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
83% From Up On Poppy Hill (2013) " Ghibli's latest is its most local and historical, like a gorgeous-looking manuscript plucked from a town's archives. A school-film about personal space and preserving place in a Japan on the cusp of a new era. But it'll lack spark for any non-Ghibli fan." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
49% The Great Gatsby (2013) " This take, pimped out in 3D spectacle and one woozy romance, renders the '20s as backdrop and swerves around the book's period-politics. A surreal slice-of-a-1922-summer overbaked into maximalist fantasia. The narrative frame is silly; the pacing is off." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
95% Weekend (2011) " A romance that finds intimacy in intense conversation but also a very British film about private and public spaces; a potent mix of the sensually intimate and the politically confrontational." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
82% A Cat in Paris (2012) " In this chase film, children's love of pursuit, of running and jumping and hiding and seeking, transforms the City of Lights into a playground where even a mother bounds along car roofs to reach her daughter. The story, though, lags behind the animation." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
79% Iron Man 3 (2013) " It's Iron Man 3's sneaky exposé of superhero cool--on the outside, a wisecracking warrior; on the inside, an anxiety-attacked guy who tries to insulate himself with arrogance--that brings this blockbuster down to sympathetic size. " — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
68% Wrong (2013) " Apart from arousing fitful curiosity, this stretch of surrealism yawns into an arid expanse of flat quirkiness. Meanders between torquing noir clichés and drifting through a funhouse-mirror-maze of SoCal conventions. Little strange poetry emerges." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
7% The Big Wedding (2013) " Behold the unholy matrimony of hack-job romance and whack-job comedy. Witness the blindingly bleached marriage of house-porn and cocky Caucasian privilege. Suffer the union of former A-list stars and express-cashed paycheques." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jul 11, 2013
100% Omohide poro poro (Only Yesterday) (1991) " Moves with barely a ripple along a woman's memories of her girlhood in 1966. Here, as love blossoms (blooming in one of cinema's most touching end-credit sequences), the environment's imbued with memories of families and workers." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
92% Ponyo (2009) " Miyazaki's ode to motherhood; the sea is the greatest nurturer of all. The underwater sequences are some of Ghibli's most luminous, complex reflections of nature's teeming beauty." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
79% Battle for Brooklyn (2011) " Battle for Brooklyn earns its epic-sounding title, building, block by block, a sturdy, gritty little film about the impassioned fight to ensure development's directed by the local people and for the local people, not by a few overlords above all." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
9% The Host (2013) " Beyond Meyer's trite-and-untrue formula (supernatural love triangle, exotic locale, family values and kisses as daring and transgressive), corpse-stiff dialogue, flat action sequences and a confused allegory make this movie particularly stultifying piffle" — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
94% Samson and Delilah (2010) " One of the great political films, masked as one of the best personal films, of 21st-century cinema. For all its unsparing, quietly condemning look at Australia's treatment of Aborigines today, it ends on a grace note of devotion and tender care." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
47% Olympus Has Fallen (2013) " A fiery pile of turdy dialogue, turgid action, and xenophobic boosterism for the frequently 'God bless!'-ed US of A. This movie's so stupid, the only suspense it offers is if your brain can avoid falling into a coma before the screen finally goes to black" — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
100% Porco Rosso (Kurenai no buta) (2003) " More action-packed and manga-style, but its predictable plot points (punch-ups and air-battles) are secondary to Miyazaki-esque scenes of women's work, the indifferent beauty of nature and war as nightmare." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
94% Neko no Ongaeshi (The Cat Returns) (2002) " The story whisks gracefully along with little saunters and pitter-patters of humour. A Princess-and-the-Cat tale that also coolly reflects the arrogant aloofness, suave superciliousness and intriguing independence of man's best-when-convenient friend." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
—— Umi ga kikoeru (I Can Hear the Sea) (The Ocean Waves) () " There's the boys' close friendship and the very Japanese dilemma of individuality versus social cohesion. This wistful meditation on maturity echoes and eddies around a trip to Tokyo in the past and a chance moment on a Tokyo train platform in the present" — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
44% The Call (2013) " A 911 flick that's actually 341--3 movies 4 the price of a bad 1. The psychological thriller rushes; the psycho-horror scrapes the bottom of the barrel of titillation; the quick ending burner-phones in any remaining character development and plausibility." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
80% Oldboy (2005) " Vengeance here's a clever, evolving beast. Dae-su's guardian-like enemy stokes his bloodlust, embittering the free man's returning love of life. The climax is a scarlet swelling into Greek tragedy as truth, reprisal and justice smear." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
89% A Royal Affair (2012) " Out of some dry lines, Shakespearean allusions, and its playing with statecraft as stagecraft, this slowly emerges as more than just some ruffle-collared, frilly-cuffed throne-porn-there's a sharp quill and glinting eye behind the gilt-edged curtain." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
100% The Flowers of St Francis (Francesco, giullare di Dio) (Francis, God's Jester) (1950) " Austerely glorious; what's seen confronts what's felt. 63 years on, Rossellini's vision of St Francis offers a humble Catholicism at stark odds with the reality of the Church's ruling elite today." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
93% Elena (2012) " A chilly noir about the beaten paths and icy ruts of Russian life in the capital, post-Communism. In a land of schemers, Elena suggests, the urban cloisters of Moscow's elite are as self-sealing as the lowly masses' stifling Soviet-era flats." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
37% Dark Skies (2013) " What body-snatches this beyond being another haunted-home flick is the attention to family breakdown rather than another scare around the next dark corner. It's more about eerieness and creepiness than outlandish confrontations and gory shocks." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
90% Whisper of the Heart (Mimi wo sumaseba) (If You Listen Closely) (2006) " This urban film cuts deep into an aspiring artist's innermost doubts. It's also about what Kondō knew well: apprenticeship, patient dedication to craft and nurturing friendship with other artists." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
92% My Neighbor Totoro (1988) " With the finest rhythm of any Ghibli film, this masterwork gently see-saws the faint aches of youth with utter trust in the wonder of a nature-inspired imagination. In lulling, Ozu-like moments, the landscape twinkles in its beauty, like the film itself." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
84% Side Effects (2013) " Even when it twists back to Hitchcockland, there's more than enough lingering spookiness about a culture's dependence on prescription drugs and psychiatry to wrench Side Effects away from being a mere trickster-tale." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
46% Bullet to the Head (2013) " The roar dies into a hollow echo, the growl gets gutturally one-note and the grit becomes B-movie background. Has too scuzzy a heart to pump out a deep throb of action. Peel this one back and you get more pit than pulp." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
15% Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) " Imagine the elaborate plan: 'We use the sets left over from Red Riding Hood, add a candy house, throw in some aerial forest shots out of Twilight, keep it cheap. Steampunk it up, and have 'em wear leather, 'specially her. Lotsa cleavage.'" — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
4% Movie 43 (2013) " An execrable waste cooked up by a hell's kitchen of directors and writers. It's death-of-laughter by committee. Its title? Because it's like one of those many asteroids out there--a dismal chunk of rock hurtling through an empty void, without purpose." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
100% 56 Up (2013) " 56 Up has become a stirring reflection, even tribute, to the little bends and turns of ordinariness, the ebbs and surges of everyday lives." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted May 6, 2013
86% Jackie Brown (1997) " While Jackie Brown can be too languid, drifting like one of Melanie's highs, its wearied, over-40 lows reveal Tarantino as a director who, once upon a crime, could've mined complexity and depth from the cracks and crevices of American genre movies." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 29, 2013
50% Pusher (2012) " Sniffing into the seams of England's multiculti capital, it's best at showing the grungy, hustling-and-bustling city as a place of slowly uncoiling despair. A hyper-charged, buzzy take on the London night-scene-and one man slipping under it, for no-good." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 29, 2013
32% Gangster Squad (2013) " Comes off as a hollow masquerade, play-acting at machismo for nearly two hours. Along with the furniture tossed in fits of rage, there are empty flourishes of neo-noir style, rote action sequences, and little danger for our hardboiled heroes." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 29, 2013
70% Les Misérables (2012) " So many close-ups, it seems better made for TV. Scene transitions are non-existent; the pace is relentless. All this over-the-top selling of emotion makes you look around before exiting-where's the gift shop, hawking more Hugo-not spinoffs and souvenirs?" — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 29, 2013
52% This is 40 (2012) " Apatow's works often involve stand-up riffs on a subject, dropped into a movie. When stress, one of the ingredients of actual film comedy (not a late-night spot at Yuk Yuks), finally crackles along, the story of Pete and Debbie gets funnier and friskier." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 29, 2013
65% The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) " Whenever this movie suffers from lengthy prequel-itis and a weighty sense of expectations, it falls short. Still, for much of its 165 minutes, this epic has enough small moments and deft touches that it tugs you along with the power of a good story." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 29, 2013
Showing 1 - 50 of 502
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