Critics » Christopher Orr » Fresh
Christopher Orr

Christopher Orr

Agrees with the Tomatometer 81% of the time.

Publications:
L.A. Weekly , The Atlantic , The New Republic
Total Reviews:
229

Best Reviewed Films

Showing 1 - 50 of 126
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Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
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
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
73% 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
76% 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." — The New Republic
Posted Dec 11, 2009
90% Up in the Air (2009) " Reitman has given us a witty, elegant movie that is nonetheless, like its protagonist, somewhat aloof from the vicissitudes experienced by mere mortals." — The New Republic
Posted Dec 4, 2009
89% Red Cliff (Chi Bi) (2009) " The biggest film of the year opens this week, though you may be forgiven if you haven't heard about it, as it has committed the unpardonable sin of being in Chinese." — The New Republic
Posted Nov 26, 2009
93% Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) " The same eye for immaculate compositions that had seemed increasingly to hem in his human actors here serves as the basis for some of the most inventive animated set pieces this side of Nick Park." — The New Republic
Posted Nov 26, 2009
75% The Road (2009) " Is the film too grim? Or not grim enough? In a perverse way, I fear it's both." — The New Republic
Posted Nov 26, 2009
87% Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009) " Making a bad movie this good is harder than it looks." — The New Republic
Posted Nov 20, 2009
91% Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009) " [I]f Precious has a crucial flaw, it is that it is at once too bleak and too hopeful in its closing scenes: too bleak in the history it unearths, and too hopeful that the mere fact of the unearthing will make that history go away." — The New Republic
Posted Nov 13, 2009
94% The Damned United (2009) " One of [its] primary pleasures...is that, in choosing a topic as narrow and parochial as the fate of an English soccer club, Morgan has relieved himself of any duty to persuade us that the events he describes are of world-historical import." — The New Republic
Posted Oct 23, 2009
74% Where the Wild Things Are (2009) " Where the Wild Things Are may not be a great film for children (or, at least, most children). But it is something rarer still: a great, and unsparing, film about childhood." — The New Republic
Posted Oct 15, 2009
90% Zombieland (2009) " [E]verything Jennifer's Body was not--fast, funny, and fully aware of the obligations and opportunities inherent in the genre." — The New Republic
Posted Oct 5, 2009
78% The Informant! (2009) " [Damon] occupies his equivocating antihero utterly, capturing the Walter Mittyish self-delusion, the desperate desire to please, and the bottomless conviction that, whatever his transgressions, he's still one of the good guys." — The New Republic
Posted Sep 18, 2009
89% Inglourious Basterds (2009) " The true moral universe in which the film unfolds is that of the spaghetti westerns...: a world in which the strong are above the law and the way to tell the good guys from the bad guys is not by their acts but by the kind of hats they wear." — The New Republic
Posted Aug 20, 2009
81% Bakjwi (Thirst) (2009) " [U]nlike most exercises in hematic excess--Richard Rodriguez's Planet Terror, for instance, or Tarantino's Kill Bill--Thirst offers not the consolations of camp but the intensity of opera." — The New Republic
Posted Aug 14, 2009
—— Thirst (1979) " [U]nlike most exercises in hematic excess--Richard Rodriguez's Planet Terror, for instance, or Tarantino's Kill Bill--Thirst offers not the consolations of camp but the intensity of opera." — The New Republic
Posted Aug 14, 2009
90% District 9 (2009) " District 9 succeeds brilliantly as an exercise in style, but the style promises a level of substance the film never quite delivers." — The New Republic
Posted Aug 14, 2009
75% Julie & Julia (2009) " [T]he whole enterprise has a whiff of marketing to it. Did the filmmakers worry that Child wouldn't be 'relatable' to contemporary women? Was there a fear that the 18-35 demographic would decline to show up if it didn't have an onscreen representative?" — The New Republic
Posted Aug 7, 2009
68% Funny People (2009) " The movie...feels like the work of an artist in transition, an attempt by Apatow to see how far he can push his foul-mouthed bromances toward earnest drama before finally having to let go of the dick jokes." — The New Republic
Posted Jul 30, 2009
97% The Hurt Locker (2009) " Like her protagonist, Bigelow is both a meticulous technician and a ballsy showoff. And, like him, she has ice water in her veins." — The New Republic
Posted Jul 24, 2009
87% 500 Days of Summer (2009) " Captures with such immediacy the elation and anxiety of new love, the tingle and the terror, the profound sense that you have never been more alive and the occasional wish that you could die on the spot." — The New Republic
Posted Jul 24, 2009
68% Public Enemies (2009) " If John Dillinger had not existed... Michael Mann would have had to invent him." — The New Republic
Posted Jul 3, 2009
98% Up (2009) " [A] kid's adventure yarn embedded in a grownup tale about grief and regret, purposes lost and rediscovered." — The New Republic
Posted May 29, 2009
95% Star Trek (2009) " In his daft, dizzy reinvention of a moribund franchise, Abrams has found a way to be referential without being reverential, to conjure nostalgia without being constrained by it." — The New Republic
Posted May 8, 2009
51% Observe and Report (2009) " [T]he upbeat ending--which comes on the heels of a genuinely shocking climax--is so incongruous that, as with The King of Comedy, it almost seems we're being dared to question whether it is real or delusion." — The New Republic
Posted Apr 10, 2009
89% Sin Nombre (2009) " Fukunaga's gift lies not in inventing clever reversals, but in declining to provide us with the typical cinematic cues that advertise what's coming." — The New Republic
Posted Apr 3, 2009
88% Adventureland (2009) " One of Mottola's best jokes involves Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus".... [I]t's hard to imagine a better use of nostalgia: to remind us of the many things we miss from a particular time, and the one reason we would never, ever want to go back." — The New Republic
Posted Apr 3, 2009
72% Monsters vs. Aliens (2009) " At the altar... Susan sprouts to just under 50 feet tall, taking out the church roof and steeple in the process. Next time, raise higher the roof beam, carpenters." — The New Republic
Posted Mar 27, 2009
82% Two Lovers (2008) " [A] film full of simple scenes brimming with unspoken complications." — The New Republic
Posted Feb 27, 2009
98% The Wrestler (2008) " Rourke, in a role that could have invited outsized characterization, instead offers modesty and understatement. This small performance, in a small film, is by far the biggest of his career." — The New Republic
Posted Dec 25, 2008
73% The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) " Benjamin Button is a film of mood, not motion. At its best, it is evocative and affecting; at its worst, an exercise in sentimental portraiture." — The New Republic
Posted Dec 25, 2008
61% Valkyrie (2008) " The movie... fails by the standards of $100 million Hollywood star action vehicles, and by the standards of World War II Oscar-bait epics. But by the standards of anticipated career-crushing trainwrecks, it's pretty good." — The New Republic
Posted Dec 25, 2008
88% I've Loved You So Long (2008) " [The] final twist undoes the film to some degree, [but] it cannot undo Scott Thomas's performance, one of the marvels of this, or any, cinematic year." — The New Republic
Posted Nov 21, 2008
49% Twilight (2008) " Twilight is silly and melodramatic and hard to dislike in much the same way as its target audience, with a distinctly teenage sense of tragedy." — The New Republic
Posted Nov 21, 2008
64% Quantum of Solace (2008) " Mr. White ultimately leads Bond to one Mr. Slate, who in turn leads him to a Mr. Greene. That's right: The global conspiracy this time around isn't SPECTRE, but some rogue wing of the United Colors of Benetton." — The New Republic
Posted Nov 14, 2008
94% Slumdog Millionaire (2008) " [E]ven at its most harrowing and heartbreaking, Slumdog Millionaire is never less than deliriously entertaining." — The New Republic
Posted Nov 12, 2008
69% Synecdoche, New York (2008) " Synecdoche, New York is a huge film about puny sentiments, an anti-heroic epic of failure, remorse, alienation, and self-pity. It may not be the best film of the year, but it is very likely to be the most extraordinary." — The New Republic
Posted Nov 10, 2008
85% Rachel Getting Married (2008) " Rachel Getting Married has the sense to recognize that it only takes one lunatic to throw a family gathering out of kilter; this is not an exercise in competitive crazy like last year's irritating Margot at the Wedding." — The New Republic
Posted Oct 17, 2008
54% Body of Lies (2008) " Its chief bid at seriousness, a confrontational colloquy with the top terrorist near the end of the film, comes across as the awkward regurgitation of a hastily swallowed subscription to The Economist." — The New Republic
Posted Oct 10, 2008
88% Superbad (2007) " [Cera] has some of the best comic timing of anyone working in film today, a precocious sense of the awkward pauses and misread cues in which social panic resides." — The New Republic
Posted Sep 22, 2008
83% Atonement (2007) " Atonement is a film out of balance, nimble enough in its first half but oddly scattered and ungainly once it leaves the grounds of the Tallis estate." — The New Republic
Posted Sep 22, 2008
93% Enchanted (2007) " Though the film is full of allusions to the Disney canon, they are generally unobtrusive echoes rather than eager satires. This is a children's movie at which adults are also welcome, not a cartoon for grownups." — The New Republic
Posted Sep 22, 2008
89% The Savages (2007) " Linney and Hoffman are both terrific, and Jenkins's script is pointed and perceptive, but the film's arc is a little flat." — The New Republic
Posted Sep 22, 2008
81% Charlie Wilson's War (2007) " [Philip Seymour Hoffman's] rumpled, cranky spy is hilarious--George Smiley by way of Jack Black--but with an edge of quiet ferocity that makes every scene he's in play a little sharper." — The New Republic
Posted Sep 22, 2008
88% Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) " The movie's title comes from the Irish toast, 'May you be in Heaven half an hour before the Devil knows you're dead.' Unfortunately, everyone in the film is running about 35 minutes late." — The New Republic
Posted Sep 18, 2008
94% Gone Baby Gone (2007) " Gone Baby Gone is an argument for obligation over accommodation, the absolute over the contingent." — The New Republic
Posted Sep 18, 2008
97% Once (2007) " In an era when Hollywood has largely lost the ability to distinguish between romance and sex, Once is the rare film that recognizes that love is no less love for being held in check, it is merely a different kind of love." — The New Republic
Posted Sep 18, 2008
94% Juno (2007) " Fierce without being cruel, sweet without becoming saccharine, and never short of hilarious, it's not only the best comedy of the year, but one of the best films, period." — The New Republic
Posted Sep 18, 2008
89% Zodiac (2007) " [W]here Se7en, with its stygian gloom and theatrical executions, inflated the serial killer genre to gothic proportions, Zodiac lets the air back out. It is methodical rather than macabre, clinical rather than cruel." — The New Republic
Posted Sep 18, 2008
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