Cary Darling Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Cary Darling

Cary Darling

Agrees with the Tomatometer 75% of the time.

Publications:: Dallas Morning News , Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com , Miami Herald

Total Reviews:: 122

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
4/5	54%	Here and There (2013)	" Set in a village in (Mexico), the slow, thoughtful and absorbing portrait of a working-class family whose father has just returned from being an undocumented worker in New York, Aquí y Allá puts a face ... on the immigration debate. " — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted May 9, 2013
2/5	43%	The Great Gatsby (2013)	" The perfectionist Luhrmann ... captures the exterior excesses of Gatsby's life but overlooks the interior torment that fuels them. Without the latter, Gatsby is less a film and more of a salute to production design." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted May 9, 2013
4/5	77%	Kon Tiki (2013)	" Kon-Tiki has the look and feel of a big, bracing adventure. It skirts many of the emotional issues in favor of high adventure with hungry sharks and monster storms." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted May 2, 2013
3/5	77%	Iron Man 3 (2013)	" Iron Man 3 manages to rise above its naked ambitions thanks to ... Robert Downey Jr.'s sly charm ... and Ben Kingsley's too-short and ... hilarious turn as the villainous Mandarin, a clever update on the comic-book character created in the '60s." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted May 2, 2013
3/5	46%	Pain & Gain (2013)	" But at heart, it's still a Michael Bay movie: loud as a Harley at midnight, empty as a dance club at noon, yet as beautiful to look at as a sunrise in Miami, where it's set." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Apr 25, 2013
5/5	98%	Mud (2013)	" Mud has the feel of a novel ... that's rooted deep in American soil. Yet it was written specifically for the screen by [Jeff] Nichols, who has conjured up a coming-of-age story set in the South that doesn't resort to using caricatures and cliches." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Apr 25, 2013
4/5	87%	Upstream Color (2013)	" Taken as a whole, it's an impressive piece of filmmaking that shows Carruth's talents as director, actor, cinematographer and composer." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Apr 18, 2013
3/5	56%	Oblivion (2013)	" Stitched together from spare bits of other, often better films,[it]stumbles awkwardly in story and plot, shuffling toward the predictable explosions and fireballs of the third act. Yet...Oblivion is so beautiful to look at. " — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Apr 18, 2013
2/5	31%	Language of a Broken Heart (2013)	" Take (500) Days of Summer and Garden State, strip away their charms and you end up with Language of a Broken Heart, a handsomely shot but tired pile-up of indie rom-com clichés. " — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Apr 11, 2013
4/5	67%	Fists Of Legend (2013)	" At 2 1/2 hours, Fists of Legend goes on too long. But Kang Woo-suk's take on a genre often relegated to the level of cartoon is a refreshing change of pace." — Dallas Morning News Posted Apr 11, 2013
4/5	68%	Disconnect (2013)	" Built around several seemingly separate but ultimately interconnected stories, Disconnect will earn comparisons to Crash. Yet unlike Crash ... Disconnect tempers its more over-the-top moments with a real sense of tension and emotion." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Apr 11, 2013
3/5	77%	42 (2013)	" Even the most woefully sports-ignorant probably know all the plot points here by heart. For all its feel-good sports-movie predictability, 42 ... is surprisingly effective and even, at a couple of points, moving. " — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Apr 11, 2013
2/5	8%	Tomorrow You're Gone (2013)	" Tomorrow You're Gone looks like it was made after reading the first chapter of Noir for Dummies." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Apr 4, 2013
4/5	93%	The Sapphires (2013)	" The Sapphiresshouldn't gleam as brightly as it does. The up-from-struggle story follows the predictable form of movies like these, from Dreamgirls to The Commitments. But there's such a sense of joy ... that it's hard not to be won over. " — Dallas Morning News Posted Apr 4, 2013
3/5	62%	Evil Dead (2013)	" [This] is an efficient, exceedingly grisly horror film that goes places that Raimi could only dream of in the '80s ... Yet, without the low-rent cheesiness ... that made the originals so enjoyable, [it] becomes a numbing exercise in overkill." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Apr 4, 2013
2/5	9%	The Host (2013)	" By the time the film finally gets to its conclusion -- an obvious set-up for a sequel -- you may wish you'd been possessed by aliens for the previous couple of hours." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Mar 28, 2013
4/5	66%	Spring Breakers (2013)	" A mash-up of last year's teensploitation opus Project X, Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers and a Girls Gone Wild video. " — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Mar 21, 2013
2/5	38%	The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)	" There are a lot of big stars...What's missing are a lot of big laughs. Well, there are about four...so that's quite a bit of downtime between guffaws to contemplate just why so many people who should know better are involved in this. " — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Mar 14, 2013
2/5	60%	Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)	" Yet, like so many big-budget movies these days, it's hard to care much about what's going on, especially as the film builds to its special-effects-driven conclusion." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Mar 7, 2013
3/5	52%	Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)	" Unlike Peter Jackson with the overstuffed The Hobbit,[director Bryan]Singer shies away from the epic and settles for entertaining. Sometimes that's more than enough. " — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Mar 1, 2013
4/5	85%	Side Effects (2013)	" If this is indeed Soderbergh's final theatrical film, as the director has said he's going into semi-retirement, it's not such a bad way to go out." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Feb 7, 2013
4/5	80%	Warm Bodies (2013)	" Warm Bodies is a sweetly funny and touching riff on Beauty and the Beast or Romeo and Juliet -- if the Beast feasted on flesh or Romeo came back from the dead." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Jan 31, 2013
3/5	30%	Broken City (2013)	" While Broken City is hardly revolutionary, it's a slyly entertaining cop saga that leans more heavily on acting and dialogue than gunplay and chases." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Jan 17, 2013
3/5	59%	The Last Stand (2013)	" For sure, The Last Stand is no Terminator, but it is a fun, if predictable, action-thriller. " — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Jan 17, 2013
2/5	32%	Gangster Squad (2013)	" Gangster Squad may be loosely based on truth -- the takedown of notorious Los Angeles crime lord Mickey Cohen 60 years ago -- but it feels about as real as a mob-themed costume party." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Jan 10, 2013
4/5	81%	The Impossible (2012)	" Perhaps Jaws and Open Water are the only other movie experiences that might engender more fear of the sea." — Dallas Morning News Posted Jan 3, 2013
5/5	93%	Zero Dark Thirty (2013)	" [It's]a harrowing adventure behind the headlines that is at once a riveting procedural and, at the same time, a bracing political statement on the moral ambiguities of our war on terror." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Jan 3, 2013
3/5	51%	Promised Land (2013)	" The movie threatens to become one of those late '60s/early '70s heavy-handed message movies, but it's somewhat salvaged by Damon's innate likability and the chemistry among the cast. " — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Dec 28, 2012
2/5	88%	Django Unchained (2012)	" A mashup of the spaghetti Western Django and '70s blaxploitation Westerns, it offers Tarantino another chance to show off his twist on history. While it worked with Inglourious Basterds, it just comes across as contrived and excessive here." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Dec 21, 2012
4/5	93%	Barbara (2012)	" The plotting, the planning and the deepening relationships don't make for kinetic action, but they are the foundation for a smart, engrossing film." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Dec 21, 2012
2.5/4	52%	This is 40 (2012)	" There are few laugh-out-loud scenes. Yet maybe that's the point. That life isn't about the grand gesture but the little day-to-day details that keep us grounded and human." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Dec 20, 2012
4/5	77%	Any Day Now (2012)	" Any Day Now, about a gay couple in '70s LA trying to adopt a boy with Down syndrome, has movie-of-the-week melodrama written all over it. But it rises above the saccharin thanks to strong performances." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Dec 13, 2012
3/5	66%	The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)	" His first installment of The Hobbit, Tolkien's relatively slim precursor to the sprawling "Rings" saga, is a technically impressive but bloated adventure that makes you feel every one of its 169 minutes. " — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Dec 13, 2012
2/5	44%	Bad Kids Go to Hell (2012)	" The movie isn't scary enough for horror fans, gruesome enough for the slasher crowd or campy enough to be funny, so it falls into something of a cinematic purgatory. " — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Dec 7, 2012
3/5	76%	Killing Them Softly (2012)	" The anvils of obviousness rain down so hard and fast in New Zealand-born/Australian-based director Andrew Dominik's meditation on low-rent crime and American decline, that it might as well be a Coyote-Road Runner cartoon " — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Dec 3, 2012
5/5	88%	Life of Pi (2012)	" Technology and transcendence may sometimes be at war, but in Life of Pi, Ang Lee's spectacular take on the popular Yann Martel novel, they instead make for graceful dance partners." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Nov 20, 2012
4/5	89%	A Royal Affair (2012)	" History may not always be fun, but, at least in this case, it's fascinating." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Nov 15, 2012
	88%	The Other Dream Team (2012)	" In an era when so much of the focus in sports is on the glam and the glitz, it's nice to be reminded that it can still be about heart and soul, too." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Oct 26, 2012
3/5	61%	Tai Chi Zero (2012)	" The cross-cultural, steampunk, martial arts/comic-book Sino-Anglo mash-up...[is]visually entertaining. But...its considerable charms may prove exhausting before its relatively brief, 95-minute run time is over." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Oct 18, 2012
3/5	82%	Seven Psychopaths (2012)	" With its blend of low-rent gangster cool, high-body-count hipster violence, smart-mouth dialogue, inspired casting and a blissfully retro soundtrack...[this]might have been a groundbreaking film -- in 1992. " — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Oct 11, 2012
3/5	91%	The Revisionaries (2012)	" This frontline skirmish in the culture wars [over school textbooks] is the subject of Scott Thurman's engrossing documentary ... It's a symbolic fight of our times, making [the film] a compelling and involving work." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Oct 4, 2012
2/5	21%	Taken 2 (2012)	" Taken 2 ... has the requisite abductions, speeding cars and Americans in danger on foreign soil, but the only ones truly taken for a ride here are those of us in the audience." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Oct 4, 2012
4/5	93%	Looper (2012)	" There hasn't been much lately for those who crave some brain power along with their effects-driven firepower. Now comes Looper, the time-travel tease from Rian Johnson that is an immensely fun yet thought-provoking ride." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Sep 27, 2012
4/5	85%	End of Watch (2012)	" The ingredients in [this] cop drama are as routine as a traffic stop. But director/writer David Ayer (who wrote the electric good-cop/bad-cop Training Day) makes it work. " — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Sep 22, 2012
3/5	59%	10 Years (2012)	" 10 Years is no Big Chill, but it has just enough warmth to keep it alive." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Sep 22, 2012
3/5	67%	Hellbound? (2012)	" Hellbound will probably find favor mostly with a Christian-film audience when, if [director Kevin Miller] had cast a wider net, it might have had broader appeal." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Sep 22, 2012
5/5	89%	Compliance (2012)	" There's the adage that life is nasty, brutish and short. It's even worse when you're half-naked and locked in a supply room with your boss." — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Sep 22, 2012
4/5	86%	The Master (2012)	" The Master may go down as one of Paul Thomas Anderson's most compelling works for two simple reasons: Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman." — Dallas Morning News Posted Sep 22, 2012
1/5	0%	General Education (2012)	" If given the choice between going to class and seeing the high-school comedy General Education, go with school. " — Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Posted Sep 10, 2012

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