Donald J. Levit

Donald J. Levit

Agrees with the Tomatometer 68% of the time.

Biography:
Donald J. Levit is a free-lance writer with a B.A. from Duke and a Ph. D. from Chicago. Although born in Nashville and raised there and in Brooklyn, he has lived in many other places in the U.S. He also resided for a time in the Caribbean and, for twenty-two years, in Spain. Dr. Levit now calls New York City his home.
Publications:
Film Threat , ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Critics' Group:
Online Film Critics Society
Total Reviews:
803

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 51 - 100 of 803
Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
100% Ordet (The Word) (1954) " With arresting faces but not cluttered with close-ups, attention-getting camera abilities beyond judicious lighting, or mood music, the film builds to a long emotional finale of biblical parallel. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Aug 27, 2012
64% Cosmopolis (2012) " Nothing lies behind or within the film's vapid non-personalities, flat acting and dull dialogue, hot-air one-liner aphorisms, mechanical couplings or ice-queen evasions of consummation." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Aug 17, 2012
95% Marley (2012) " This is as full a picture of Marley as is likely to emerge. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Aug 16, 2012
17% This Time (2012) " As with many similar films, there is an excess of clips, with the music left in teasing snippets. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Aug 10, 2012
100% The Philadelphia Story (1940) " How well all is pulled together and comes off, is more glaring when 'The Philadelphia Story' is compared to its fluffy but fangless 1956 musical adaptation, 'High Society.'" — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Aug 9, 2012
58% Red Hook Summer (2012) " Reflecting current headlines, a revelation and its root fifteen years before are treated sensitively and from an unusual side, with no finger-wagging righteousness. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Aug 6, 2012
—— Ace Attorney () " Silliness outstripping broad humor, a ludicrously involuted mystery -- actually two of them -- and visuals far more important than logic, this gamer cinema is geared towards a specific demographic, and on this level it succeeds. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jul 28, 2012
—— Waga haha no ki (Chronicle of My Mother) () " Avoiding easy mawkishness, 'Chronicle of My Mother' conveys mother-to-son and son-to-daughters generational torch-passing" — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jul 26, 2012
—— Monsutâzu kurabu (Monsters Club) () " The ending of this seventy-one minutes is a comedown, as though Toyoda cut it short and declined to take a stance. . " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jul 25, 2012
100% Tokyo Story (Tôkyô monogatari) (1953) " With its debt to Leo McCarey's 'Make Way for Tomorrow,' Yasujiro Ozu's 'Tokyo Story' is no less true, shattering, and not for viewers fretting about unsympathetic grown-up children." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jul 19, 2012
29% Red Lights (2012) " Directing from his own script, Rodrigo Cortés goes downhill in a story that goes limp in what is billed as a "mind-blowing conclusion" confrontation. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jul 13, 2012
67% Trishna (2012) " Deodorized and sanitized but memorably filmed and scored, 'Trishna' is less fully satisfactory in capturing the clutching crush and implication of the subcontinent's megacities. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jul 12, 2012
86% Easy Money (2012) " Those who can rise above the convoluted confusion will probably enjoy this 'gritty thriller of intrigue and self-delusion.' " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jul 11, 2012
94% I Wish (2012) " At eight minutes over two hours, the story goes on too long, with an excess of intercuts and brief scenes that do not contribute enough to warrant inclusion. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted May 11, 2012
52% Where Do We Go Now? (2012) " 'Real people in real situations,' the cast is sprinkled with non-professionals enlisted on the spot who contribute to the film's seriocomic authenticity." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted May 10, 2012
94% First Position (2012) " Director Bess Kargman does an excellent job here with this initial plunge into filmmaking, for her choice of participants could not have been better." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted May 3, 2012
86% Last Call at the Oasis (2012) " Presents one side of the question and assumes it is incontrovertible. In reality, this is preaching to the choir, and it is doubtful that unbelievers are proselytized. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted May 3, 2012
49% La Terza Madre (Mother of Tears: The Third Mother) (2007) " Super35 nudity and graphic sadism substitute for suggestiveness, and technology ups the gore but makes it cinematic common." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Apr 30, 2012
95% Suspiria (1977) " There is little logic in 'Suspiria,' just the exuberance of individual scenes." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Apr 29, 2012
22% Elles (2012) " What it says about society, hypocrisy and gender rôles is not wide of the mark but is semi-dramatized so blatantly as to be allegorical. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Apr 27, 2012
—— Don't Change the Subject () " Confronts suicide by bringing it out into the open in service to the dead and the living. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Apr 21, 2012
73% Cat O'Nine Tails (1971) " A tall and slimmer Karl Malden stands out, but even with a rooftop chase, the conclusion and revelation are abrupt." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Apr 18, 2012
91% L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo (The Bird With the Crystal Plumage) (1970) " A watchable serial murderer-search movie, even if not the stuff of cult status. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Apr 15, 2012
33% The Lady (2012) " This 'based on a true story' omits unpleasant facts and is unfreckled hagiography set into a background of marital perfection." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Apr 10, 2012
100% I Travel Because I Have to, I Come Back Because I Love You (2011) " Dramatized as narrative by its narration, this drama is able to free-associate just as the human mind does. The journey is pilgrimage which circles inwards to the heart of love and failure" — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Apr 5, 2012
85% Diary of a Chambermaid (Le Journal d'une femme de chambre) (2000) " Second-tier compared to Buñuel's masterworks, this film is worth seeing because it is his. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Apr 3, 2012
98% The Island President (2012) " Void of graphics and animation, focus is on Nasheed in 'this David and Goliath tale for the literal survival of his country.' " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Mar 28, 2012
84% In the Realm of the Senses (1976) " This particular consideration of mutual possession which approaches and then transcends death is well-paced and, within story possibilities, -acted as well." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Mar 22, 2012
90% Fear and Desire (1953) " Although some visuals are striking chiaroscuro, the film still comes across as tyro self-conscious, a belaboring of theme by one not yet sure of his art. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Mar 22, 2012
84% The Raid: Redemption (2012) " The fighting seems the same, repeated endlessly and unimaginatively and not different from what scores of such films offer. Without humor or originality, this is straight video game. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Mar 16, 2012
83% The Story of Lovers Rock () " Long on people speaking and comedic reminiscence, 'The Story of Lover's Rock' is short on sustained complete performance-examples." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Mar 16, 2012
—— Romance Joe (Lo-maen-seu Jo) () " Remember that the relativity of the 'real' is a theme in this film and, by implication, in film in general and in life. You are if you and others think you are. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Mar 16, 2012
41% Silent House (2012) " 'Silent House' sinks in the school of mere staccato scare. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Mar 9, 2012
53% Being Flynn (2012) " Reactions to this film will depend on acceptance of the two men's performances, which are good despite some contrivances in circumstances that surround them. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Mar 3, 2012
88% Boy (2012) " Humor, obscenity, drugs, sadness and an uncommon take lift 'Boy' above its advertised 'coming-of-age tale about heroes, magic and Michael Jackson.' " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Feb 25, 2012
86% The Snowtown Murders (2012) " A cast of mostly local, mostly first-time film actors is chillingly convincing. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Feb 25, 2012
80% Putin's Kiss (2012) " Offers a sobering portrait of the world's troubled resurgent largest country, in particular of its pliable rising generation that has come up after the fall of Communism. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Feb 19, 2012
—— Lost in the Stars (1974) " The individual drama, the human cost laid at the doorstep of social policies, saves 'Lost in the Stars.' " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Feb 16, 2012
100% Woodstock - 3 Days of Peace & Music (1970) " Those who do appear are good, with some for the ages." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Feb 16, 2012
92% El Sicario, Room 164 (2011) " This one-man dramatization is not a film, but surely an indictment. Rosi's 'grey zone where good and evil meet' is wide of the mark; this is pure evil. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Feb 6, 2012
100% Queen Kelly (1929) " A compelling curiosity deserving recognition beyond trivia value as the 'Sunset Boulevard' clip projected by Gloria Swanson's faded Norma Desmond. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Feb 3, 2012
—— Detroit, ville sauvage (Detroit Wild City) () " Points no fingers in its chilling but fascinating images of a moribund metropolis. Causes for the fall are hinted but neither pinpointed nor really the focus here. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jan 30, 2012
93% Nothing But a Man (1963) " It is difficult to fathom the long obscurity of this sincere, compassionate film. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jan 29, 2012
79% The Grey (2012) " The stripped core story is a good watch: man against the elements and against himself -- primordial antagonists without and within, Mother Nature and human nature. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jan 28, 2012
89% The Pruitt-igoe Myth: An Urban History (2012) " The drugs, fear and violence cannot be shown but are palpable in the speakers' memories. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jan 23, 2012
41% The Flowers of War (2011) " Fiction arising in, mirroring but distinct from, truth as we conceive it, page and screen are freed to play fast and loose with hard data and reality here. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jan 20, 2012
—— Foreign Parts (2011) " These are good people, rough-edged but pleasant, depicted while not romanticized." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jan 19, 2012
76% We Need to Talk About Kevin (2012) " After the fact, story outline can be pieced together, but beyond essential motivation, there also remain a number of unintentional loose ends." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jan 15, 2012
33% Lula, the Son of Brazil (2012) " Only half-way through, the film loses momentum. Emotion gives way to stagey conventional pseudo-populism, with the human disappeared. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jan 13, 2012
79% Battle for Brooklyn (2011) " 'A movie with a narrative' woven along a personal thread, Battle for Brooklyn squeezes drama even out of that person's repeatedly clicking a monitor 'refresh.' " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jan 9, 2012
85% Jack Smith and the Destruction Of Atlantis (2006) " Eccentric and pure like its hero, JSDA may appall or bore the many but should delight devotees of the real reel underground. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jan 8, 2012
83% Avatar (2009) " Planet Pandora's plant and animal life is done with a wonder that has been often absent from fiction screens. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jan 6, 2012
97% Diabolique (Les Diaboliques) (1955) " So dependent on visuals, many horror films do not wear well except as kitsch. But crafted fright films like Diabolique maintain their power by creating atmosphere through what is not seen. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jan 5, 2012
100% Rashômon (Rashomon) (In the Woods) (1951) " With fast tracking shots, b&w chiaroscuro camerawork and a pessimistic intimation that what exactly was done is not essential, the result hit the bull's-eye with foreign filmgoers and critics." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jan 4, 2012
97% Sing Your Song (2012) " The life of Harry Belafonte is so rich, truthful and hopeful that admirable 'Sing Your Song' can only give some idea of it. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jan 2, 2012
52% The Iron Lady (2012) " A story of love's informing the seldom-explored struggle for personal dignity and freedom in the face of ageing and conventional "wisdom" about seniors. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Dec 29, 2011
95% Pariah (2011) " Young people's mumbling and slang will be a stumbling block for mainstream audiences, but the lives and dilemmas of the mostly black and some Hispanic teens go beyond racial-cultural lines. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Dec 27, 2011
95% Pina (2011) " A welcome departure from the by-the-numbers fossilization in today's documentary deluge. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Dec 26, 2011
76% The Help (2011) " Aimed at heart and conscience, novel and film have their overdone moments but remain worthy of close attention. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Dec 24, 2011
91% Corman's World: Exploits Of A Hollywood Rebel (2011) " This bio-documentary about Roger Corman is a treat for buffs -- who might complain that the zillion clips are too few and short. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Dec 22, 2011
75% The Adventures of Tintin (2011) " While the live performers are credited and their real voices heard, there is none of the degrading with-it wisecracking so puzzingly popular nowadays. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Dec 22, 2011
83% Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) " Swedish Tomas Alfredson's first English-language try comes up short against the spy novel's 1979 U.K. Alec Guinness miniseries." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Dec 9, 2011
49% Sleeping Beauty (2011) " Some may see a commentary on the plight of women here. However, such 'radical passivity' is beyond the reach of empathy. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Dec 2, 2011
90% Love Exposure (2011) " Manga-indebted but without lens trickery, this is exhilarating cinema experience. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Dec 1, 2011
98% The Artist (2011) " A bonbon to movies as they used to be, 'The Artist' is a treat. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Nov 23, 2011
75% El Topo (1970) " ... the story of 'El Topo' proves too scattered and weak to bear its digressions and vague symbols that suggest everything, anything and nothing." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Nov 20, 2011
89% The Descendants (2011) " Clooney's understated modern man is not filled with self-importance, as he learns to appreciate what is truly important in life. 'The Descendants' is pleasant if easy cinema. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Nov 15, 2011
77% Melancholia (2011) " There is not much reason for anything in 'Melancholia.' When others fall apart and break down, madness is the only preservative. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Nov 11, 2011
80% The Love We Make (2011) " Running counter-style to the flood of cookie-cutter non-fictions, 'The Love We Make' is a reminder of love and fellow-feeling in a time of tragedy. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Nov 8, 2011
—— Ekusute (Exte: Hair Extensions) (2007) " With fewer possible resolutions than recent J-horror ringtones and video cassettes, 'Exte: Hair Extensions' goes nowhere surprising." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Oct 31, 2011
20% The Double (2011) " 'The Double' is a good return "to the classic spy thriller" of another time and another world that itself is making a comeback. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Oct 28, 2011
33% London Boulevard (2011) " By far too stylized, the film loses itself in this would-be "dynamic visual" style over content and coherence." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Oct 23, 2011
81% The Skin I Live In (2011) " Neither horror film, spoof, nor social commentary, 'The Skin I Live In' wanders in limbo, unsure of what its own essence is. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Oct 14, 2011
84% My Week with Marilyn (2011) " 'My Week with Marilyn' is serious but at the same time a funny comedy of stars' manners." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Oct 13, 2011
94% Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2012) " An unhurried rumination on men's lives and loves and, though they appear but briefly, on women's. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Oct 8, 2011
87% Miss Bala (2012) " Shootouts are sharp cracklings and deaths indiscriminate but without sensationalizing the gore. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Oct 8, 2011
82% The Way (2011) " Fathers and sons, wives and children, reconciliation and uplift for the soul -- undemanding schmaltz but most comfortable for its type. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Oct 6, 2011
85% George Harrison: Living In The Material World () " The streamlining of George Harrison's life's wants and needs does not warrant the length lavished on it here." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Oct 1, 2011
76% Rejoice & Shout (2011) " 'Rejoice and Shout' treats a long century and could have been more incisive and included fuller performance clips by dispensing with head interviews that interrupt often and at length. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Sep 30, 2011
98% Rosemary's Baby (1968) " 'Rosemary's Baby' presents the dark and the light and allows for choice: does she or doesn't she? " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Sep 29, 2011
—— A Woman with Red Hair (1979) " Neither amoral nihilistic nor misogynistic, 'WRH' is less degrading and banal in philosophy than 'Last Tango in Paris.' " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Sep 23, 2011
78% The Mill and the Cross (2011) " Renaissance man composer-librettist-painter-poet-novelist-cameraman-screenwriter-filmmaker Lech Majewski ingeniously melds several of his fields in 'The Mill and the Cross.'" — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Sep 15, 2011
91% The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011) " ...stirring in footage of long-unseen faces iconic or villainous, this documentary brings its subjects to the attention of younger generations unfamiliar with them. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Sep 9, 2011
83% Warrior (2011) " Story, character, development and outcome are hackneyed, done elsewhere, sometimes worse, often better, but you can't keep a good story down for the count." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Sep 8, 2011
100% Ivan Groznyy (Ivan the Terrible, Part One) (1944) " Eisenstein's 'Ivan' is a magnificence of parts, four-fifths of it a visual wonder beyond the man himself. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Sep 3, 2011
97% Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise) (1945) " The triumph here is the art-direction realization of 1840 Paris, where the grand monde mingled with the demimonde and the flat-out criminal. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Sep 2, 2011
73% Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life (2011) " Film and director-writer have won awards at home and abroad, as has Eric Elmosnino for his portrayal of the insolent yet winsome title hero, who also displays unheroic traits. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Aug 31, 2011
86% Circumstance (2011) " Too much in too many scenes is worked in, even though a thematic relationship may be gleaned among the parts in repressive, fearful, corrupt, Morality Policed Tehrān. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Aug 26, 2011
53% Brighton Rock (2011) " As antihero with no redeeming qualities, Riley is slick-haired shallow but unfortunately also one-note, an expressionless DiCaprio." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Aug 26, 2011
77% The Last Circus (2011) " The emotional aberration and physical disfigurement, the violence different in feel from the US crew-cut variety, the revenge, the bursts of sick humor, do not meld well here." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Aug 19, 2011
33% 5 Days Of War (2011) " A finely realized depiction of war today and of the civilians who suffer the not always 'collateral' consequences. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Aug 19, 2011
92% Senna (2011) " A compelling story still to be told, but political maneuvering within the sport and the one-upsmanship, technological tinkering, corner-cutting, negligence or cheating that possibly caused Senna's death, are hinted at but given short shrift. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Aug 12, 2011
98% Hoop Dreams (1994) " It slam-dunks documentaries that are so close-up to their subjects they cannot note the irony of adult commercialism and hard-sell hoopla overwhelming barely literate kids. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Aug 7, 2011
73% The Whistleblower (2011) " The cardboard characters have no shadings between good and nasty here; and Rachel Weisz' face is often unsuccessfully framed to indicate thought or something. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Aug 5, 2011
90% Attack the Block (2011) " Reprises scores of films, but despite an unusual combination of story with setting and characters, adds nothing in the re-doing and sports hokey creature effects." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jul 29, 2011
100% The Interrupters (2011) " An original three hundred hours of shooting trimmed to just shy of two-and-a-half, the film is still long, but who is to say where this eye-opener could have been cut. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jul 28, 2011
100% Burden of Dreams (1982) " Gramophone music soothes the savage breast, and operatic human excess defines director and obsession as well as his lead character." — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jul 18, 2011
91% Tabloid (2011) " 'Tabloid' never rises above -- in fact, it becomes -- the absurdity it depicts. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jul 14, 2011
100% Day of Wrath (Vredens Dag)(Day of Anger) (2008) " This masterwork is as modern as Euripides, timeless as O'Neill and Arthur Miller, militant as Friedan or Steinem, and empathetically devastating as Hawthorne. " — ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Posted Jul 14, 2011
Showing 51 - 100 of 803
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