Brian Gibson Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » 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:: 520
Total QuickRatings:: 77

Location:: Nova Scotia

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 520

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T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
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
48%	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
39%	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
81%	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
35%	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
90%	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
85%	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
47%	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
14%	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
98%	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
51%	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
66%	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
4%	Playing for Keeps (2012)	" An own-goal shambles of bland characterization, comic shtick, exes-still-in-love clichés and lazy implausibilities, Playing For Keeps plays down to the ugliest American stereotype of soccer-dull to the point of brain-death." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Jan 29, 2013
88%	Life of Pi (2012)	" Takes some time to find its flow. The CGI-tiger is the greatest marvel here-the intensity of its stare alone makes it the truest fiction of all. Religious platitudes remain fairly pat; the final allegory's overstated." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Jan 29, 2013
74%	Rise of the Guardians (2012)	" The animation's usually a visual delight. There's enough visual spark and inventiveness to make this animated adventure rise above the Christmas crowd of flicks." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Jan 29, 2013
71%	We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists (2012)	" There's no genuine discussion by anyone of tactics, ideology and ethics. Even arrogantly reframes the overthrow of Mubarak as an Anonymous-fuelled uprising. Aren't-we-f**in'-awesome! hubris bubbles out of the legion of remarkably inarticulate interviews." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)* Posted Nov 22, 2012
44%	Midnight's Children (2013)	" A series of pretty, disconnected scenes. At worst, it becomes D-movie Dickens, devolving into semi-broad, semi-quirky comedy, poorly sketched-out coincidence, and a bad X-Men plot. The book is drained of its allusive, allegorical and dramatic force." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Nov 22, 2012
25%	Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)	" Little depth or subtext here. It's tough to care about the fate of a generic, whitebread family and its blonde-in-distress living in an airless, gated-community Nevada. We've seen the creepy kid and freaked-out teens in countless fear-fests before." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Nov 22, 2012
43%	Hotel Transylvania (2012)	" From the spooked start, the comic-rhythm dial's set to bulldozer. Whizzes through the superficially amusing conceit without actually taking much time to craft cunning comedy. Like a sugar-rushed Count Chocula-meets-Fawlty-Towers idea. " — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Nov 22, 2012
34%	The Odd Life of Timothy Green (2012)	" Disney-schmaltz, family-values hokum, and dopey clichés ('anything's possible,' 'different's OK,' etc.), syrup over the intriguing allegory. If only the movie had plunged deeper into its well of meaning and stopped jerking at our heartstrings." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Nov 22, 2012
16%	The Watch (2012)	" Bland and juvenile, with little thought, humour, or imagination. It actually endorses its posse of puerile nobodies as noble, ass-kicking Americans." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Nov 22, 2012
87%	The Dark Knight Rises (2012)	" Weighed down by portentousness and momentousness. The overall story remains a bit muddled. A better trilogy-capper than a movie in its own right. " — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Nov 22, 2012
37%	Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012)	" Fossilized in a syrupy, always-stick-by-your-family-and-friends formula. Scrat provides the only constant humour. The surrealism and manic slapstick that animation can do so well are dwarfed by adventures with pirates and a clichéd teen-fitting-in story." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Jul 24, 2012
96%	Do the Right Thing (1989)	" Captures a sense of black pride in the late '80s that's caught between essentialism and pop-culture commercialism. Trash-talking racism, distrust, and males' insistence on respect blaze the story along a path that LA would burn with its 1992 riots." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Jul 24, 2012
51%	Savages (2012)	" Brutally empty. Vacant style (including way too many close-ups) is the rule. And there's the double ending: the first reflects just how violence-celebrating and death-enchanted this entire waste of 130 minutes is while the second is a happy-dopey cop-out." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Jul 24, 2012
62%	We Have a Pope (2012)	" To its great credit, just before the credits, We Have A Pope slips away from its droll dramedy and offers a sharp anticlimax--a pointed stab at Catholicism now. The declaration of its title turns out to be the emptiest statement of all." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Jul 24, 2012
86%	The Forgiveness of Blood (2012)	" Runs deepest as a vicious twist on the coming-of-age teen movie and when it offers up small moments within its near-mythic feud. Here, revenge is a dish served hot-blooded. It's the sharp slaps of betrayal and yearnings for the impossible that chill." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Jul 24, 2012
69%	Ted (2012)	" A pet project padded out to feature-length, bromance-meets-romance predictability. The story beats are so obvious they seem tapped out on a telegraph. If you want to see a Boston bruin who was truly interesting, watch a documentary about Bobby Orr." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Jul 24, 2012
35%	Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)	" Comes off like a series of forgettable History Channel recreations with some axeman versus vampire video game scenes tossed in. Editing is choppy; some transitions are sloppy. A parchment paper-thin conceit playing at being a feature-length movie." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Jul 24, 2012
83%	Comic-Con: Episode IV - A Fan's Hope (2012)	" We're left looking at a mass cult-gathering of fans paying tribute to commercial idols. Individual stories are under-built after being initially overhyped. We're put in the bleachers to watch a field of American pop-cult dreams, and told to cheer." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Jul 24, 2012
48%	Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)	" At best, Snow White and the Huntsman is pretty but forgettable. At worst, as with its occasionally anachronistic dialogue ('passed away,' 'OK') and its heroine's sadly undeveloped character, there's something rather hollow about these dark woods." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Jul 24, 2012
96%	The Kid with a Bike (2012)	" The Dardennes smoothly shift one gear up in the film's coda, offering a sting of humility before a flash of quiet grace. Then we're left watching after one boy on his bike, stubbornly moving, moving, moving, a force to be reckoned with and respected." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Jul 24, 2012
70%	Men in Black III (2012)	" Mainly rollicks along, keeping a nice balance between grotesque-alien playfulness and badass secret-agent seriousness. The story doesn't have as much fun with the near-alien weirdnesses of 1969 as it could have but the ending comes with a poignant twist." — Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) Posted Jul 24, 2012

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