Critics » J. R. Jones
J. R. Jones

J. R. Jones

Agrees with the Tomatometer 72% of the time.

Publications:
Chicago Reader
Total Reviews:
1233

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 1233
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Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
85% The Way Way Back (2013) " Nice comedic work from Sam Rockwell and Allison Janney buoys this pleasant but routine coming-of-age drama by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash." — Chicago Reader
Posted Sep 10, 2013
90% Phantom Of The Opera (1925) " Lon Chaney's performance as the hideous organist prowling the sewers beneath the Paris Opera is still a cornerstone of gothic horror." — Chicago Reader
Posted Aug 16, 2013
97% The Act Of Killing (2013) " [A] unique and unforgettable documentary." — Chicago Reader
Posted Aug 8, 2013
94% March of the Penguins (2005) " Some of the eggs and chicks freeze, and the parents' cries are painful to hear (probably more for us than for them). " — Chicago Reader
Posted Aug 5, 2013
92% This Is Martin Bonner (2013) " Written and directed by Chad Hartigan, this touching, uncommonly humane drama centers on the tenuous friendship between two lonely older men." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 19, 2013
20% Girl Most Likely (2013) " This one seems a little determined in its quirkiness, assigning its characters one gag apiece." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 19, 2013
62% Broken (2013) " The comic and tragic elements are nicely balanced, and the three families' stories neatly and economically knit together." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 19, 2013
40% Only God Forgives (2013) " As always, Refn's style is captivating, but the fascination with extreme gore never amounts to more than a fetish, and there's none of the deft characterization that made his revered Pusher trilogy and British biopic Bronson so engaging." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 18, 2013
94% Fruitvale Station (2013) " Grant's ordinary life seems eminently dramatic even without its place in history." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 18, 2013
97% A Hijacking (2013) " Gripping and tightly focused." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 11, 2013
56% The Look of Love (2013) " Director Michael Winterbottom and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh provide the essential outline of Raymond's story, but they're a little too preoccupied with its glitzy aspects." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 11, 2013
37% Dealing With Idiots (2013) " Surprise is the spark of laughter, which may explain why this seldom generates any." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 11, 2013
63% Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain (2013) " Once Hart finally gets onstage his act can barely live up to the hype." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 11, 2013
72% How To Make Money Selling Drugs (2013) " This zippy documentary by Matthew Cooke can't compare to Eugene Jarecki's tragic and masterful The House I Live In (2012)." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 11, 2013
99% 20 Feet From Stardom (2013) " The movie takes its cues from Standing in the Shadows of Motown, another act of pop-culture revisionism that tried to give musical credit where it was due." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 11, 2013
72% Pacific Rim (2013) " Another marathon of cacophony and cliché." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 11, 2013
96% A Band Called Death (2013) " If the brothers seem a little drunk on their own myth, they're also genuinely humbled by the band's rediscovery and warmed by the fact that their kids have carried on the family tradition." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 3, 2013
31% The Lone Ranger (2013) " A stone-faced Depp fails to generate even the stinky charm of his mascaraed Jack Sparrow, and in fact almost everyone here comes off badly." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 2, 2013
93% Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me (2013) " It's a tale of extraordinary creative accomplishment followed by bitter rejection; fused with the band's lonely music, which DeNicola samples liberally on the soundtrack, it has the power of a pop myth." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jul 2, 2013
60% Games (2000) " Shot on the Universal Pictures lot, this has the staid, well-lit look of the studio's voluminous TV product." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 27, 2013
81% André Gregory: Before and After Dinner (2013) " The best scenes here show the retired thespian rehearsing a workshop production of Ibsen's The Master Builder with his friend, frequent collaborator, and Dinner costar Wallace Shawn." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 27, 2013
84% An Oversimplification Of Her Beauty (2013) " Bold and varied animation sequences lift this into the stratosphere before it falls back into Nance's obsessively layered narrative; the resulting film is both beautiful and disorienting (just like love). " — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 27, 2013
64% Unfinished Song (2013) " [A] sappy drama." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 27, 2013
50% White House Down (2013) " [A] hard-charging, fairly digestible thriller." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 27, 2013
67% World War Z (2013) " Director Marc Forster can't do much with the stale human story, in which Pitt leaves his frightened wife and daughters on an aircraft carrier to await his return." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 21, 2013
—— Heat Lightning (1934) " The proletarian era at Warner Bros. was still in full swing when Mervyn LeRoy directed this crackling 1934 adaptation of a play by Leon Abrams and George Abbott." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 20, 2013
59% The Bling Ring (2013) " The kids' story was irresistible to the media, permitting both sensationalism and easy zeitgeist commentary, and that's about as far as writer-director Sofia Coppola takes it in this big-screen dramatization." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 20, 2013
74% The Source Family (2013) " The former disciples interviewed here, now mostly professionals or entrepreneurs in New Agey businesses, seem frank about their leader's excesses, but the wild subject matter cries out for a more objective treatment. " — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 13, 2013
81% Shadow Dancer (2013) " This British thriller by James Marsh is a little too neatly scripted and tightly edited for my taste, but there are galvanizing performances from Andrea Riseborough... and Clive Owen." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 13, 2013
59% Pandora's Promise (2013) " The pro-nuclear left grabs the bullhorn in this lively advocacy documentary." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 13, 2013
—— Gideon's Army (2013) " Dawn Porter's engrossing HBO documentary profiles three public defenders in the Deep South." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 13, 2013
82% Dirty Wars (2013) " The flood of theatrical documentaries about the War on Terror... has slowed to a trickle since President Obama took office, which makes this uncompromising exposé from reporter Jeremy Scahill even more important. " — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 13, 2013
—— Born In Chicago () " Left unexamined, for the most part, is the complicated dance in which the more talented white acolytes... copied their mentors' licks, catapulted to the top of the music business, and (sometimes) pulled their heroes up after them." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 13, 2013
83% Berberian Sound Studio (2013) " Director Peter Strickland reaches for something more significant that he never quite finds, but by then you may be too entertained to care." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 13, 2013
84% This Is the End (2013) " Their big joke is to literalize the Book of Revelations, but snaking around this is a biting contempt for the entertainment business, their own bad movies, and the social privilege these confer." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 13, 2013
56% Man of Steel (2013) " [Nolan and Goyer's] screenplay is a big improvement over the previous one, mainly because they've created a satisfying arc between the hero's genesis story and the big battle at the end." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 13, 2013
89% Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay (2013) " The magic in this documentary portrait of actor and stage illusionist Ricky Jay comes mainly from his fond recollections of old performers." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 6, 2013
80% Becoming Traviata (2013) " The movie is most enjoyable as a simple record of the performers, allowing one to eavesdrop on soprano Natalie Dessay and tenor Charles Castronovo as opera director Jean-Francois Sivadier coaches them through some of the libretto's more layered moments." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 6, 2013
22% Violet & Daisy (2013) " Fletcher must have thought the dark comedy would indemnify him against the cascading illogic of the plot." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 6, 2013
35% The Internship (2013) " Wedding Crashers it's not, but the stars still make an agreeable pair, schooling their young colleagues on how to get blasted at a strip club and, in return, learning what HTML is." — Chicago Reader
Posted Jun 6, 2013
95% We Steal Secrets: The Story Of Wikileaks (2013) " The sequence in which Manning confides in former hacker Adrian Lamo and gets turned in to the FBI supplies the kind of human drama that has made Gibney's work so engrossing in the past." — Chicago Reader
Posted May 31, 2013
57% American Mary (2013) " Writer-directors Jen and Sylvia Soska don't seem to have their material completely under control, but they've created a worthy entry in the Freaks school of cult cinema." — Chicago Reader
Posted May 31, 2013
98% Before Midnight (2013) " This one is a slowly evolving quarrel between two people who know each other inside out, delivered with the same intelligence and discernment but, as you might imagine, something of a cold shower." — Chicago Reader
Posted May 31, 2013
50% Now You See Me (2013) " This is one of those mystery thrillers that are supposed to culminate in a big shocker ending, though the script piles up so many implausibilities that by the time the ending arrives, nothing is surprising anymore." — Chicago Reader
Posted May 30, 2013
3% fear dot com (FeardotCom) (2002) " [A] shameless exercise in high-tech sadism." — Chicago Reader
Posted May 29, 2013
19% The Hangover Part III (2013) " This final installment in the party-boy franchise... wisely drops the narrative gimmick of alcohol-induced amnesia that made the first movie so unusual and the second its pallid copy." — Chicago Reader
Posted May 24, 2013
95% Stories We Tell (2013) " Sarah might have wrapped up this documentary after her parentage is revealed about 70 minutes in, yet it continues for another 50 as she ruminates over the tale,... her engrossing personal story gradually devolving into an exercise in self-regard." — Chicago Reader
Posted May 24, 2013
54% Post Tenebras Lux (2013) " This one delivers a grand pictorialism and piercing existential moments that float atop the maundering narrative like noodles in soup." — Chicago Reader
Posted May 24, 2013
74% Love Is All You Need (2013) " I lost count of how many times "That's Amore" turned up on the soundtrack, and the comic situations are so stale that the whole thing plays like a Scandinavian Tyler Perry movie." — Chicago Reader
Posted May 24, 2013
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