David Elliott Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » David Elliott

David Elliott

Agrees with the Tomatometer 68% of the time.

Publications:: DVDActive.com , MSNBC , San Diego Union-Tribune

Total Reviews:: 1301

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
3.5/4	83%	Paprika (2006)	" Paprika is a fertile delta of forms and colors, wildly inventive, shape-shifting, jiggly with fat jokes." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Jun 1, 2007
1/4	79%	Chalk (2007)	" Demeaningly patronizing to educators, cheaply dismissive of students, Chalk is a dunce. Erase it." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Jun 1, 2007
3/4	60%	Gracie (2007)	" This more homespun film doesn't let down its story or the Shue family. Its plain integrity outshines predictability. It is feminist without cant. And Schroeder delivers perhaps the finest young female performance of the year." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Jun 1, 2007
2.5/4	55%	Mr. Brooks (2007)	" Mr. Brooks does work up some clammy tension. The script has bite." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Jun 1, 2007
3/4	91%	Knocked Up (2007)	" An attitude bazooka full of sex, drugs and raw language, yet so high on babies and family values that this must be the first R-rated film for both sleazoid slackers and earnest right-to-lifers." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted May 31, 2007
3.5/4	44%	Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End (2007)	" The third film is a startling cascade of climaxes, too long, but to complain about excess in such an exuberant bonanza is like complaining that Gibraltar has too much rock." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted May 24, 2007
3/4	45%	Fay Grim (2007)	" Parker Posey is one of the indie queens used feebly by Hollywood, but in the hands of Hartley she is the star needed and right on schedule." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted May 18, 2007
2/4	40%	Shrek the Third (2007)	" Essentially the movie is saying to its loyal crowd: You bought this stuff before, now take it re-canned. There is nothing really happening but the breezy ricochet of gags, the rote sitcom types, the star voices that are phoning in performances." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted May 18, 2007
2/4	70%	28 Weeks Later... (2007)	" The movie has some vivid shock touches and the scenes of depopulated London are queasily strange. Still, this is really about a grimly ravaged couple and two kids put through hell. Your idea of fun? Munch on it." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted May 11, 2007
2/4	17%	Georgia Rule (2007)	" A bar of soap is a repeated element in Georgia Rule, and rightly so. Suds rise in this capably acted fem-drama laced with slap-in comedy." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted May 11, 2007
1.5/4	19%	The Ex (2007)	" Extravagantly expendable." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted May 10, 2007
3/4	63%	Spider-Man 3 (2007)	" It's a dynamic Spider-Man movie. Most of the familiars are back, the additions work well enough, the movie often looks terrific and excess length (about 15 minutes) is just the pad built into these piled-up projects." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted May 3, 2007
2/4	70%	Year of the Dog (2007)	" Sometimes you pan a deadpan comedy because it's effectively dead." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Apr 27, 2007
2/4	70%	Diggers (2007)	" No doubt there was hope for a manlier, brinier My Big Fat Greek Wedding. But that had better food -- and better jokes." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Apr 27, 2007
2/4	91%	Hot Fuzz (2007)	" Director Edgar Wright, scripting with star Simon Pegg, winds it up and lets it fly. The result, even hitting its target, tends to splat." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Apr 20, 2007
2/4	72%	Fracture (2007)	" Movies like this, side ventures of the John Grisham franchise, are meant to entertain with 'substance' that never risks actual depth." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Apr 20, 2007
3.5/4	88%	The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2007)	" Barry Ackroyd's wonderful imagery often gives a sense of vernal moisture, which adds to the sweaty tension." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Apr 13, 2007
1.5/4	11%	Pathfinder (2007)	" Must the 13-year-old boy Hollywood seems most eager to please also be a sadist? First came Apocalypto, then 300, now Pathfinder." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Apr 13, 2007
2.5/4	48%	Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres (2007)	" The animation is pastiche but impudently inventive, with pop culture eating its furry tail after a long lick." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Apr 13, 2007
2/4	68%	Disturbia (2007)	" If you're going to remake (or salute) a Hitchcock classic, it's fine to start off like Disturbia. It is not fine to end up like Disturbia." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Apr 13, 2007
2/4	83%	Grindhouse (2007)	" Robert Rodriguez bakes a load of stale if bloody pastry called Planet Terror, while Quentin Tarantino fries up a tasty mess of fun with Death Proof." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Apr 9, 2007
3/4	38%	Firehouse Dog (2007)	" Firehouse Dog has good fire action, an engaging cast and enough vividly shot turns, surprises and bowwow reactions to hold the firm attention of pet lovers from age 5 on up. Go fetch." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Apr 5, 2007
1/4	8%	Are We Done Yet? (2007)	" Puerile prop gags slapped in without development, an inane score, dud reactions, Steve Carr's dismal direction, a Magic Johnson phone-in cameo -- it adds up to the question that keeps arising, which is (yep) the title." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Apr 5, 2007
3/4	66%	Meet the Robinsons (2007)	" Giddily inventive, cute, charming, even wry." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Mar 30, 2007
2/4	69%	Blades of Glory (2007)	" On ice, the movie is often fairly funny. Off it, the garish outfits, the genitalia jokes, the beer-slob gags about gays, the women as cheap laughs, even the cute guest cameos start to shiver and melt." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Mar 30, 2007
2/4	87%	The Lookout (2007)	" Tends to bubble along as a plot-boiler. Chris' guilty fantasy about the past girlfriend, just as he works up nerve for some major action, is the kind of twist that one studies screenwriting to learn and then surpass." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Mar 30, 2007
2/4	45%	Pride (2007)	" Not even Howard's genuine appeal, or his can-do kids, can keep Pride out of the shallow end of the pool." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Mar 23, 2007
3/4	48%	Shooter (2007)	" As Bob Lee Swagger, marksman, sniper, death dealer, Wahlberg in Shooter has his most physically perfect role since Boogie Nights." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Mar 23, 2007
1/4	63%	Reign Over Me (2007)	" It's all padded, contrived, gummy with sympathy given or denied." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Mar 22, 2007
2.5/4	74%	Fah talai jone (Tears of the Black Tiger) (2007)	" Camp out with Tears, a hoot, and your tent will be wet only from tears of laughter." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Mar 16, 2007
2.5/4	74%	Avenue Montaigne (Fauteuils d'orchestre) (Orchestra Seats) (2006)	" While a Feydeau farce fits well, and the salute to a Brancusi sculpture is sweet, Beethoven piano passages overload the souffle." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Mar 16, 2007
2/4	19%	I Think I Love My Wife (2007)	" The movie lays on gag situations that smack of fillers." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Mar 16, 2007
1/4	8%	Premonition (2007)	" Not exactly a thriller, never quite a chiller, hardly suspenseful, it is, at best, a Sandra Bullock vehicle made of vanishing vapors." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Mar 16, 2007
2/4	93%	Gwoemul (The Host) (2007)	" Implausibles become inane in this Godzilla Jr. jubilee, something just right for the DVD cheapie bins." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Mar 8, 2007
1/4	60%	300 (2007)	" It is too dumb as drama, even as war spectacle, to be transporting, frightening or sickening. Just numbing." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Mar 8, 2007
2.5/4	82%	Days of Glory (Indigenes) (2007)	" We can pretty well guess some coming deaths, but the combat for a tiny Alsatian town is vividly done." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Mar 2, 2007
3/4	91%	God Grew Tired Of Us (2007)	" Christopher Quinn and Tommy Walker made this fine and never simply pleading film, its moving subjects including tall, gentle, tireless, prayerful and humane John Bul Dau." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Mar 2, 2007
2.5/4	66%	Black Snake Moan (2007)	" The movie snakes along with an earthy hiss, thanks to music, Jackson and Ricci's painful availability." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Mar 2, 2007
1/4	14%	Wild Hogs (2007)	" Wild Hogs is an oinker. Feeding us slops of dud comedy are stars who ought to know better by now." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Mar 2, 2007
3.5/4	70%	Amazing Grace (2007)	" Often vulnerable, more often inspiring, Gruffudd's Wilberforce not only stirs curiosity but also quickens your conscience. As Fox notes eloquently, he was a great man. One does not have to be religious to believe he had amazing grace." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Feb 23, 2007
3/4	57%	The Astronaut Farmer (2006)	" This oddball has something beyond root-for-the-roots sentiments. Thornton, well into his own orbit, is very genuinely appealing as a guy who wires his big dream machine to a loose but glowing screw in his head. Rise up, farm bird." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Feb 23, 2007
2/4	75%	Becket (1964)	" Peter Glenville's stage-plank direction creaks badly, but the acting still holds you." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Feb 16, 2007
2/4	19%	Factory Girl (2007)	" Factory Girl is weirdo weary, despite some vivacity spooned into it by Sienna Miller as Edie Sedgwick." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Feb 16, 2007
3/4	84%	Breach (2007)	" Despite limits, the story has traction and grip. As Hanssen plays out his fate, truly worshipping nothing but his own importance, we enjoy the pressures so bracingly incarnated by Chris Cooper." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Feb 16, 2007
3/4	84%	Bridge to Terabithia (2007)	" The adroitly calibrated life lessons include a chill gulp of death, and Terabithia proves to be soulful, even healing. What most delivers is the efficiently just-right cast, the charmed bonding of kid stars Robb and Hutcherson." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Feb 16, 2007
2.5/4	63%	Music and Lyrics (2007)	" Grant happily rummages through his role, Barrymore is splendid with gulps and goofs, and Campbell Scott is an impeccably pompous author." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Feb 14, 2007
2.5/4	33%	Breaking and Entering (2007)	" An A-list soaper on moral pins and needles, the film is urbanely textured, full of Brit glibness and plush layering. Minghella makes broodingly adult coffee-table movies, and sometimes we wish he'd just serve up the coffee." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Feb 9, 2007
0/4	9%	Norbit (2007)	" Norbit is not a thriller, action film or suspense story. Still, it achieves the assassination of comedy." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Feb 9, 2007
2/4	15%	Hannibal Rising (2007)	" The film's ugliness is less in its 'artful' death rituals, by now deeply generic, than in asking us to feel for Lecter because of his horrid, warping youth." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Feb 9, 2007
1/4	5%	Because I Said So (2007)	" With Keaton in devastating overdrive, Moore can barely exercise her own brand of ginchiness." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Feb 2, 2007
4/4	89%	Venus (2006)	" Peter O'Toole is surpassingly good in Venus." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Jan 26, 2007
2/4	21%	Catch and Release (2007)	" Calling this a chick flick is maybe too easy. The film is for people who want to leave the house but watch TV without going to a bar or hotel. Bring along a remote and you can be fully comfortable." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Jan 26, 2007
0/4	29%	Smokin' Aces (2007)	" The intended audience must be the fan club for Scarface (Pacino's), anyone who has made a superficial pass at Quentin Tarantino's work, and anyone who felt challenged by Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Jan 26, 2007
3/4	79%	Le Petit Lieutenant (2006)	" Basically a vivid meal of characters, plus coffee and wine and one gin tonic, Le Petit Lieutenant keeps true to its brasserie menu." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Jan 19, 2007
4/4	91%	Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)	" Eastwood has at times been a theme-bound and overly praised director. But the laurels really fit this unique double bill. His spare, careful classicism, braced by compelling care for tension and action, makes Letters a great battle movie." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Jan 12, 2007
2.5/4	96%	Pan's Labyrinth (2006)	" Pan's Labyrinth, like del Toro's previous and related The Devil's Backbone, is a saturated vision, an artist's work. What it lacks is successful unity." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Jan 12, 2007
1/4	54%	Alpha Dog (2007)	" It is all so done and overdone, so regurgitated, so late-night TV and what-else-is-new-in-hell." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Jan 12, 2007
2/4	26%	Stomp the Yard (2007)	" [Director Sylvain] White has a good cast but directs the fiercely macho dances in a choppy, video-buzzed manner that breaks up patterns and fuzzes some steps." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Jan 12, 2007
3.5/4	74%	The Painted Veil (2006)	" The Painted Veil doesn't have quite the gripping pressure that Maugham built in his prose with such sober, masterly confidence, but it is strong work, honestly done." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Dec 29, 2006
3/4	78%	Charlotte's Web (2006)	" In this crafty version of the E.B. White classic, critters say the darndest things, humans are often marginal (and mom frying bacon is darn tactless), humor and warmth keep bubbling up." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Dec 15, 2006
3.5/4	66%	The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)	" This is one of the few American movies to deal with how people live and survive. It admires smart brokers but also feels for the many people down below, and we know that Chris will not claim his 'happyness' by becoming a cold fish in a glass office." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Dec 15, 2006
2/4	62%	Blood Diamond (2006)	" Director Edward Zwick, whose movies tend to preen, swell and stretch, pushes lengths past the obvious emotional closure and moral payoff." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Dec 8, 2006
2/4	47%	The Holiday (2006)	" Winslet, Black, Law and to some extent the others are often swell. But the script limits are still there, knots in the weave, and you need to be a goner for manipulation not to notice." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Dec 8, 2006
1/4	65%	Apocalypto (2006)	" Apocalypto is a big load of sado." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Dec 8, 2006
3/4	88%	The Cave of the Yellow Dog (Die Hohle des gelben Hundes) (2005)	" [Byambasuren Davaa is] a sure talent, slipping into the life he observes unobtrusively." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Dec 1, 2006
2.5/4	38%	The Nativity Story (2006)	" How moved you are by this holiday fare depends, beyond basic human empathy, on your piety (or nostalgia for childhood readings and Nativity plays)." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Dec 1, 2006
4/4	32%	Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)	" To call Fur one of the year's best seems a little diminishing -- it's a classic." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Nov 21, 2006
2/4	55%	Déjà Vu (2006)	" At least N'Orleans got production dollars from this film. What do we get? Lack of originality that starts with the title, used for feature films in 1985, 1988 and 1997." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Nov 21, 2006
3/4	48%	Harsh Times (2006)	" A buddy movie shot with artless rawness, yet highly implicative about the wastage of modern street males and the sort of men cultivated by state agencies to be disposable killers, Harsh Times is a B-film with A-level morsels." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Nov 10, 2006
2/4	25%	A Good Year (2006)	" Despite all the sunny, Provencale charms, the plot is a wisp of wee gags, peeps of flesh, mildly charming repartee." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Nov 10, 2006
2/4	69%	Babel (2006)	" Long, belabored, terminally solemn despite some vigor, and numbingly sentimental under a tough surface, this is a serpentine coiling of three modestly connected and episodic stories." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Nov 10, 2006
2/4	69%	Cocaine Cowboys (2006)	" It's watchable, but like gorging on every rotten issue of the old Confidential magazine." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Nov 10, 2006
3.5/4	91%	Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)	" With our help, Borat can move the United States above Kazakhstan on the U.N. laff meter." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Nov 3, 2006
2/4	72%	Flushed Away (2006)	" Many hands, including many writers, applied themselves to Flushed Away (doesn't that usually require just one hand?). The result is committee animation: cute, fast, uninspired, softly consumable." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Nov 3, 2006
2/4	72%	American Hardcore (2006)	" You can come away feeling bruised and half-deaf." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 27, 2006
3.5/4	99%	Deliver Us From Evil (2006)	" The movie is a litany of victims and a chilling indictment." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 27, 2006
3.5/4	96%	The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)	" Concise, elegant, a tad scary, this is a treat for Halloween." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 20, 2006
2/4	48%	Driving Lessons (2006)	" Julie Walters lets out the stops as this stooped bulldozer, pushing whole hogs of ham." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 20, 2006
3/4	66%	Shortbus (2006)	" Lancingly funny, brash and alive, this hotsie-totsie peeper aches for love, and the gay fire of pre-AIDs partydom." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 20, 2006
2/4	76%	The Prestige (2006)	" It is good for magic to be, in effect, confounding. It is not so good for a movie about magic to be confusing." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 20, 2006
3.5/4	73%	Flags of Our Fathers (2006)	" Flags has the guts to put honest quote remarks around 'the good war" and 'the greatest generation.' It honors the fathers and the lost sons by not simply raising a flag." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 20, 2006
3/4	55%	Marie Antoinette (2006)	" If not so witty as Coppola's Lost in Translation, this is like a funnier and feminine Barry Lyndon." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 19, 2006
2.5/4	22%	7 días (2007)	" [Arroyuelo and Camil] are enjoyable, so is Martha Higareda as Claudio's patient girlfriend, though the coming of the band is treated like Jesus returning with the Beatles." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 13, 2006
3/4	97%	The Queen (2006)	" Funny? At times, but mainly sad, seasoned and alive to the test of a summer when a canny new PM met history through two remarkable women." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 13, 2006
2/4	78%	Fanfan La Tulipe (Fan-Fan the Tulip) (1953)	" Tiresomely tireless escapade." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 13, 2006
3/4	95%	49 Up (2006)	" Now, they are middle-aged, and (unfair to spoil small surprises here) embedded in life with some learned wisdom." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 13, 2006
2/4	21%	Man of the Year (2006)	" Robin Williams doesn't need to prove he can act, not after The Fisher King, The Night Listener, Good Will Hunting and Mrs. Doubtfire. What he does in Man of the Year seems a long way from actual acting." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 13, 2006
3.5/4	72%	Infamous (2006)	" In this truth game, Capote is an ace and Infamous is a compelling queen, both in play for high stakes with In Cold Blood and Richard Brooks' scary 1967 film of it." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 13, 2006
2/4	47%	Renaissance (2006)	" Even more soulless than Tron or The Black Cauldron, Renaissance seems less a vanguard advance than the rococo degeneration of an art movement for trippy nerds." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 6, 2006
3/4	87%	Jesus Camp (2006)	" Ewing and Grady avoid prodding or sneering, giving Fischer and her young charges nearly all the scenes." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 6, 2006
4/4	87%	The Last King of Scotland (2006)	" The key achievement, in this vividly shot and superbly cast drama, is to make us fear for the slightly contemptible Garrigan but feel mostly for Ugandans, even (a little) for Amin." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 6, 2006
2/4	93%	The Departed (2006)	" Crime stories have become incredibly generic, and though this is not a pit like Miami Vice, some bursts of good staging and imagery only serve to remind us that Scorsese is a streak gambler who can get stuck with the wrong hand." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Oct 6, 2006
3/4	92%	La demoiselle d'honneur (The Bridesmaid) (2004)	" France's Claude Chabrol, venerable (76) chessman of suspenseful bourgeois rot, moves his pawns superbly again, though we see the checkmate coming." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Sep 29, 2006
3/4	56%	Keeping Mum (2006)	" A charm parade of serial death in the old, cherishable line of The Ladykillers and Kind Hearts and Coronets, though more cozily pastoral, the film rouses chuckles." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Sep 29, 2006
3/4	71%	The Science of Sleep (2006)	" As was famously said, we'll always have Paris. Very few, even the makers of Amelie, have Paris quite like Gondry." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Sep 29, 2006
3/4	37%	The Guardian (2006)	" It is surprising to find quite a good Coast Guard movie. But then, it's surprising to find any Coast Guard movie." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Sep 29, 2006
1/4	25%	School for Scoundrels (2006)	" To call it slight is to slight the word 'slight.' Even to call it a movie is to place 'movie' in the order of entertainment somewhere near paint scraping." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Sep 29, 2006
2/4	26%	Poster Boy (2006)	" The people do not reduce to issues, but we know they will hit their issues marks reliably." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Sep 22, 2006
2.5/4	80%	Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (2006)	" The often stunningly raw landscapes and scenes of village life cannot entirely make the film more than exotically accessible, although themes are spelled out, as if by translation." — San Diego Union-Tribune Posted Sep 22, 2006

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