Christopher Orr Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Christopher Orr

Christopher Orr

Agrees with the Tomatometer 81% of the time.

Publications:: L.A. Weekly , New Republic , The Atlantic

Total Reviews:: 169

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Showing 1 - 50 of 169

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T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
95%	Moonrise Kingdom (2012)	" Anderson's best feature since Rushmore, in part because, like that film, it takes as its primary subject matter odd, precocious children, rather than the damaged and dissatisfied adults they will one day become. " — The Atlantic Posted Jun 1, 2012
46%	Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)	" Sanders does not (yet) share Guillermo del Toro's gifts, but he, too, has an eye for the beautiful and the grotesque, and for that entrancing borderline where the two meet." — The Atlantic Posted Jun 1, 2012
68%	Men in Black III (2012)	" The movie represents at least a partial return to form--not as inventive as the first, but surely better than the recycled materials that made up the second." — The Atlantic Posted May 25, 2012
34%	Battleship (2012)	" Battleship is substantially less awful than it could have been. And for me, that may have been the biggest disappointment of all." — The Atlantic Posted May 18, 2012
58%	The Dictator (2012)	" A bit scattershot and schticky, the film never quite settles into a consistent comic rhythm. Yet for fans of Baron Cohen's work there are plenty of moments of crass hilarity." — The Atlantic Posted May 16, 2012
40%	Dark Shadows (2012)	" Fans of Depp's past collusions with Burton will find their rewards along the way. But there's a perfunctory vibe to the goings on, a weariness amid the weirdness." — The Atlantic Posted May 11, 2012
93%	Marvel's The Avengers (2012)	" Ultimately, it all comes back to Whedon: His clear vision for each character and how they might be profitably intermingled; his unexpected knack for action choreography; his funny, tender, immaculately constructed script." — The Atlantic Posted May 4, 2012
90%	The Cabin in the Woods (2012)	" A horror movie embedded in a conspiracy flick embedded in another horror movie-the most inventive cabin-in-the-woods picture since The Evil Dead and the canniest genre deconstruction since Scream." — The Atlantic Posted Apr 13, 2012
52%	John Carter (2012)	" The most indelible performance in the film is not, strictly speaking, a performance at all. Rather it is Woola, a six-legged Martian hound who rather resembles a cross between a bulldog and a fetal gila monster." — The Atlantic Posted Mar 9, 2012
96%	The Muppets (2011)	" The chorus of one of the songs declares, 'I've got everything that I need, right in front of me.' For 120 minutes, that's precisely how I felt." — The Atlantic Posted Nov 24, 2011
73%	Like Crazy (2011)	" Belying its title, Like Crazy is a film not about the ferocity of love, but about its fragility." — The Atlantic Posted Nov 4, 2011
47%	Anonymous (2011)	" Take the political intrigue of Elizabeth, add the backstage drama of Shakespeare in Love, and divide by the adherence to fact and logic that propelled 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow. " — The Atlantic Posted Oct 28, 2011
89%	Margin Call (2011)	" Chandor's film is not a tale of the plots and counterplots of conniving bankers. It is a disaster movie, in which even the Masters of the Universe are running for their lives. " — The Atlantic Posted Oct 21, 2011
36%	The Thing (2011)	" The line between homage and apery is a fine one, and The Thing teeters on it at times." — The Atlantic Posted Oct 14, 2011
85%	The Ides of March (2011)	" From the film's ideological vantage point, moderate Democrats are Machiavellian devils, and Republicans are an inconceivable evil looming on a distant horizon, like the White Walkers in Game of Thrones. " — The Atlantic Posted Oct 7, 2011
92%	Drive (2011)	" The extreme and escalating violence will prove off-putting to some-frankly, I'm surprised not to have been among them-but for the rest, Drive is a needle-punch of adrenaline to the aorta. " — The Atlantic Posted Sep 16, 2011
84%	Contagion (2011)	" The film resembles its viral subject a little too closely: an intricate, formidable mechanism with no evident purpose." — The Atlantic Posted Sep 9, 2011
76%	The Debt (2011)	" Vogel's introduction, 'This is my hand, and this is the speculum,' may at last have displaced the 'Is it safe?' of Christian Szell--another Mengele stand-in--as the most discomfiting sentence ever uttered by doctor to patient onscreen. " — The Atlantic Posted Sep 2, 2011
44%	30 Minutes or Less (2011)	" The movie belongs to Ansari, who steals nearly every scene he is in with his jangly, nervous intensity." — The Atlantic Posted Aug 12, 2011
83%	Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)	" [H]alf good and half bad, and the primary dividing line is by genus. " — The Atlantic Posted Aug 5, 2011
44%	Cowboys & Aliens (2011)	" [A] phenomenally successful two-man war against narrative clarity and continuity. " — The Atlantic Posted Jul 29, 2011
79%	Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)	" What lingers most about Captain America is its innocent, throwback ethos, a firm, unqualified embrace of the Little Guy." — The Atlantic Posted Jul 22, 2011
96%	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (2011)	" It's a pleasant irony that, just as the first installments of Rowling's oeuvre were better suited to page than screen, the final installments have reversed the relationship." — The Atlantic Posted Jul 15, 2011
69%	Horrible Bosses (2011)	" Horrible Bosses offers a reminder that adherence to formula may not be among the signal virtues of comedy, but--provided the jokes are funny--it's no great vice either." — The Atlantic Posted Jul 8, 2011
35%	Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)	" Despite its manifest improvements, there is something so sour and unpleasant about the new film that it left me almost nostalgic for the innocent idiocies of its predecessor." — The Atlantic Posted Jul 1, 2011
89%	The Trip (2011)	" A comic diversion that aspires to the old Seinfeld gag of being 'about nothing.' " — The Atlantic Posted Jun 17, 2011
27%	Green Lantern (2011)	" The superhero genre is the home-court of the underdog, of skinny Peter Parkers and mutant outcasts, of heroes born from pain or ingenuity. In Green Lantern, the rich get richer." — The Atlantic Posted Jun 17, 2011
82%	Super 8 (2011)	" A love letter to a cinematic era, before 'blockbuster' became a synonym for 'franchise' or 'tent pole.' " — The Atlantic Posted Jun 10, 2011
85%	The Tree of Life (2011)	" A beautiful, messy film: at times lyrical, intimate, and uplifting; at others, vast, inscrutable, and maddening." — The Atlantic Posted Jun 3, 2011
35%	The Hangover Part II (2011)	" The missing person, the seamy urban setting, the gradual accretion of clues: The Hangover films are, essentially, hard-boiled crime stories spun into comic depravity." — The Atlantic Posted May 27, 2011
34%	Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)	" It has the feel of a TV drama renewed for one season too many, a last, furtive run at the till before it closes for business." — The Atlantic Posted May 20, 2011
77%	Thor (2011)	" For those with a taste for the genre, Thor is a worthy addition to the pantheon." — The Atlantic Posted May 6, 2011
72%	The Adjustment Bureau (2011)	" The Adjustment Bureau presents itself as a paean to free will, to overcoming obstacles, to creating your own destiny-provided, that is, that you happen to be a dude." — The Atlantic Posted Mar 4, 2011
19%	Just Go with It (2011)	" In Funny People, it took a brush with terminal illness for Sandler to rediscover his craft and his self-respect. One can't help but wonder what it might take in real life." — The Atlantic Posted Feb 11, 2011
44%	The Green Hornet (2011)	" There are elements of a sharp hero/sidekick inversion here: Kato is the handsome, brilliant inventor and karate expert; Britt is, well, rich enough to pay the salary of someone like Kato. But the inversion is inevitably incomplete. " — The Atlantic Posted Jan 14, 2011
96%	True Grit (2010)	" The real reason to see the film is the work of the Coens' regular collaborators, cinematographer Roger Deakins and composer Carter Burwell, who supply the visual and auditory landscapes that are True Grit's most notable achievement." — The Atlantic Posted Dec 24, 2010
87%	Black Swan (2010)	" Black Swan is vivid and engrossing, teetering between trash and art, a sleek exploitation borrowing from (among others) Fight Club and The Fly, Mulholland Drive and Persona." — The Atlantic Posted Dec 3, 2010
71%	Red (2010)	" A lengthy procession of geriatric-assassin jokes [that] offers a chilling portent of what lies in store should soon-to-be-ex-Governor Schwarzenegger ever return to the big screen." — The Atlantic Posted Oct 15, 2010
96%	The Social Network (2010)	" [P]roof that Fincher's directorial verve can imbue virtually any tale with urgency, be it the search for a killer or the search for a killer app." — The Atlantic Posted Oct 1, 2010
55%	Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)	" [A]gainst all probability, 'Money Never Sleeps' is a watchable enough movie for its first hour or so.... But as the financial bubble pops, so too does the cinematic one." — The Atlantic Posted Sep 24, 2010
32%	A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop (San qiang pai an jing qi) (A Simple Noodle Story) (The First Gun) (2010)	" In Blood Simple, the cascading confusions lead to moral solitude and death; in Noodle Shop, the foremost misunderstanding involves a character who mistakes the phrase 'must die' for 'moose die.'" — The Atlantic Posted Sep 17, 2010
66%	The American (2010)	" Early on, the priest explains to Jack, 'You have the hands of a craftsman, not an artist.' The American is the product of such hands as well: lovely in execution, if somewhat wanting in inspiration. " — The Atlantic Posted Sep 3, 2010
62%	Salt (2010)	" [T]he limited, forgivable absurdities... gradually give way to a level of pandemic preposterousness that makes Ethan Hunt look like George Smiley." — The Atlantic Posted Jul 23, 2010
86%	Inception (2010)	" Like his protagonist, Nolan excels as an implanter of subversive ideas. This time, alas, he didn't dig quite deep enough for them to take root. " — The Atlantic Posted Jul 16, 2010
6%	The Last Airbender (2010)	" [T]he film works so hard to explain its plot developments that it scarcely has any time left over to dramatize them. Exposition has not merely vanquished mimesis, it has burned its homes to the ground and sown salt in its fields. " — The Atlantic Posted Jul 2, 2010
53%	Knight & Day (2010)	" By the finale, it's hard to shake the sense that the movie has already expired, and everyone involved [is] just trying to prop it up, "Weekend at Bernie's"-style, long enough to heave it over the 100-minute mark. " — The Atlantic Posted Jun 25, 2010
99%	Toy Story 3 (2010)	" As Lotso, Ned Beatty offers the most compelling portrait of avuncular villainy since, well, Ned Beatty in Network, and Michael Keaton's Ken is the quintessence of himbo-ism. " — The Atlantic Posted Jun 18, 2010
74%	Iron Man 2 (2010)	" Even the director...seems to view the heavy clanking of mechanized men as a bit of a chore: the kind of well-prepared yet unremarkable meat course that must inevitably follow the delightful amuse bouche of Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of Stark." — The Atlantic Posted May 7, 2010
75%	Invictus (2009)	" [T]he epitome of Hollywood filmmaking in ways both good and bad: uplifting, overlong, ambitious in scope but simple in moral vision, well-crafted but inured to irony." — New Republic Posted Dec 11, 2009

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