Joe Morgenstern Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Joe Morgenstern

Joe Morgenstern

Agrees with the Tomatometer 79% of the time.

Publications:: Wall Street Journal
Critics' Group:: Los Angeles Film Critics Association

Total Reviews:: 986

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 51 - 100 of 986

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
	89%	Koch (2013)	" The film advances no theories to explain his contradictions, only a thrilling, sometimes affecting account of what he did." — Wall Street Journal Posted Feb 28, 2013
	89%	A Place at the Table (2013)	" In addition to the dismaying facts and figures is a fuller sense of what hunger can look like, and feel like, among the millions of Americans classified as "food-insecure" ..." — Wall Street Journal Posted Feb 28, 2013
	52%	Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)	" Jack's problem is that he's a commoner, but the movie's problem is that its script is commoner still, an enchantment-free pretext for animated action, straight-ahead storytelling and ersatz romance." — Wall Street Journal Posted Feb 28, 2013
	67%	Stoker (2013)	" Spontaneity has been banished by rigid stylization, and the net effect is as lifeless as a severed head that turns up in a basement freezer." — Wall Street Journal Posted Feb 28, 2013
	77%	A Beautiful Mind (2001)	" It isn't the device that's so crude, but the execution, which turns Nash's persecutory demons into nuisances that won't leave us alone." — Wall Street Journal Posted Feb 24, 2013
	91%	Million Dollar Baby (2004)	" It is thoughtful, unfashionable, measured, mostly honest, sometimes clumsy or remote, often exciting, occasionally moving and eventually surprising. It's correct." — Wall Street Journal Posted Feb 24, 2013
	95%	5 Broken Cameras (2012)	" This is how the conflict looks from the other side of the barrier." — Wall Street Journal Posted Feb 21, 2013
	91%	Caesar Must Die (2013)	" What works best is what's readily accessible, the startling power of performers who understand the drama all too well." — Wall Street Journal Posted Feb 21, 2013
	82%	Like Someone in Love (2013)	" There is love, the movie tells us, then there is love." — Wall Street Journal Posted Feb 21, 2013
	96%	All the King's Men (1949)	" A poisonous political process from our not-so-distant past dominates Robert Rossen's classic film about the rise of a Southern demagogue." — Wall Street Journal Posted Feb 19, 2013
	45%	Beautiful Creatures (2013)	" The movie is claimed ... by narrative incoherence, Tim Burton-envy and the usual demons of digital effects." — Wall Street Journal Posted Feb 14, 2013
	15%	A Good Day To Die Hard (2013)	" For anyone who remembers the "Die Hard" adventures at their vital and exciting best, this film feels like a near-death experience." — Wall Street Journal Posted Feb 14, 2013
	92%	No (2013)	" "No" signals a huge spurt in the filmmaker's growth." — Wall Street Journal Posted Feb 14, 2013
	93%	Lore (2013)	" The pace is deliberate, verging on slow-Australian filmmakers aren't keen on short takes or quick cuts-but the content is constantly surprising." — Wall Street Journal Posted Feb 7, 2013
	20%	Identity Thief (2013)	" The comedy equivalent of mud-wrestling without the mud." — Wall Street Journal Posted Feb 7, 2013
	85%	Side Effects (2013)	" The film as a whole is consistently enjoyable and sometimes thrilling, a classic Soderbergh showcase for provocative storytelling and marvelous acting." — Wall Street Journal Posted Feb 7, 2013
	37%	Stand Up Guys (2013)	" Fisher Stevens directed from Noah Haidle's script, which is obviously the work of a young writer." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jan 31, 2013
	47%	Bullet to the Head (2013)	" By the end I could have used a Bulleit to the mouth." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jan 31, 2013
	92%	The Gatekeepers (2013)	" The Israeli journalist Dror Moreh has hit a documentarian's trifecta with "The Gatekeepers."" — Wall Street Journal Posted Jan 31, 2013
	88%	Yossi (2013)	" An affecting and admirably unsentimental portrait of lost love." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jan 24, 2013
	60%	John Dies at the End (2013)	" When you're having great fun at a movie and suddenly you're not, where's the fun?" — Wall Street Journal Posted Jan 24, 2013
	40%	Parker (2013)	" The most distinctive thing about "Parker" is its title." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jan 24, 2013
	93%	The Sapphires (2013)	" Though the production is unpolished, the music is great and Chris O'Dowd is delightfully droll as the group's boozy manager." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jan 22, 2013
	30%	Broken City (2013)	" The only reason to see this dreary parade of deception and venality is Mark Wahlberg's performance as a disgraced ex-cop caught up in the thick of menacing events he can't understand." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jan 17, 2013
	65%	Mama (2013)	" "Mama" announces the arrival of a director who works unusually well with actors-the two children are truly scary-and who creates highly charged environments, effective sound designs and powerful fantasy sequences." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jan 17, 2013
	59%	The Last Stand (2013)	" The movie isn't about eloquence, it's about giving Mr. Schwarzenegger a chance to take on new enemies that include advancing age." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jan 17, 2013
	79%	Quartet (2013)	" Mr. Hoffman's direction is impeccable, John de Borman's camera bathes the story in warm radiance, and the end credits are not to be missed, since they reveal who's really who in the supporting cast." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jan 10, 2013
	32%	Gangster Squad (2013)	" There's only so much style can do to spiff up shriveled substance." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jan 10, 2013
	98%	56 Up (2013)	" "56 Up" reminds us that change is ceaseless and often dramatic, bringing growth we could never have dreamed of as little kids." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jan 10, 2013
	88%	Django Unchained (2012)	" Wildly extravagant, ferociously violent, ludicrously lurid and outrageously entertaining, yet also, remarkably, very much about the pernicious lunacy of racism and, yes, slavery's singular horrors." — Wall Street Journal Posted Dec 27, 2012
	81%	The Impossible (2012)	" A thrilling, if also punishing, tale of heroic endurance." — Wall Street Journal Posted Dec 21, 2012
—	45%	On the Road (2012)	" It's neither the first nor the best road trip that Mr. Salles has brought to the screen." — Wall Street Journal Posted Dec 21, 2012
	93%	Amour (2012)	" Amour might seem hardly the stuff of entertainment, yet the reason it has been acclaimed isn't mysterious. Confronting death, it studies life, closely and lovingly." — Wall Street Journal Posted Dec 21, 2012
	38%	The Guilt Trip (2012)	" Andrew [Rogen], who has invented an organic cleaning compound, pitches it to retailers in a succession of meetings across the country that have no grounding in any known reality." — Wall Street Journal Posted Dec 21, 2012
	61%	Jack Reacher (2012)	" This movie is a turkey gone rancid." — Wall Street Journal Posted Dec 21, 2012
	93%	Zero Dark Thirty (2013)	" What it does in the course of telling a seminal story of our time is what contemporary films so rarely do, serve as brilliant provocation." — Wall Street Journal Posted Dec 20, 2012
	65%	The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)	" An overlong adventure enlivened by wonders." — Wall Street Journal Posted Dec 13, 2012
	82%	De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone) (2012)	" Why are certain films less than the sum of their appealing parts?" — Wall Street Journal Posted Dec 6, 2012
	38%	Hyde Park on Hudson (2012)	" A small film that, for all its considerable charm, miniaturizes its hero in the process of humanizing him." — Wall Street Journal Posted Dec 6, 2012
	75%	Killing Them Softly (2012)	" The film, for all its visual felicities, comes to life only sporadically." — Wall Street Journal Posted Nov 29, 2012
	94%	The Central Park Five (2012)	" Watching "The Central Park Five" is a deeply affecting experience." — Wall Street Journal Posted Nov 29, 2012
	98%	Wings of Desire (1987)	" A fantasy that... goes right in spite of its solemn style." — Wall Street Journal Posted Nov 27, 2012
	74%	Rise of the Guardians (2012)	" The script seems to have been written by committee, with members lobbying for each major character, and the action, set in vast environments all over the map, spreads itself so thin that a surfeit of motion vitiates emotion." — Wall Street Journal Posted Nov 22, 2012
	88%	Life of Pi (2012)	" Mr. Lee's film is stronger as a visual experience-especially in 3-D-than an emotional one, but it has a final plot twist that may also change what you thought you knew about the ancient art of storytelling." — Wall Street Journal Posted Nov 22, 2012
	63%	Hitchcock (2012)	" "Hitchcock" rings false from start to finish." — Wall Street Journal Posted Nov 22, 2012
	64%	Anna Karenina (2012)	" The ropes and curtains and ladders of this "Anna Karenina" serve mainly as distractions. And they're solutions to a part of the problem that doesn't exist." — Wall Street Journal Posted Nov 15, 2012
	92%	Silver Linings Playbook (2012)	" Everything comes together brilliantly in "Silver Linings Playbook"-for the film's crazed but uncrazy lovers; for the filmmaker, David O. Russell, and best of all for lucky us." — Wall Street Journal Posted Nov 15, 2012
	89%	A Royal Affair (2012)	" With its sumptuous settings, urgent romance and intellectual substance, A Royal Affair is a mind-opener crossed with a bodice-ripper." — Wall Street Journal Posted Nov 8, 2012
	92%	Skyfall (2012)	" The movie's smartest suit is emotional intelligence: Skyfall keeps us caring, intensely, for a hero who, by any rational measure, is a vestige of a vanished era." — Wall Street Journal Posted Nov 8, 2012
	89%	Lincoln (2012)	" The portrait of Lincoln transcends conventional judgments; it's a complete creation, perfect on its own terms." — Wall Street Journal Posted Nov 8, 2012
	68%	This Must Be The Place (2012)	" Bizarre can be good when it's done deftly. In this case, however, it's done ponderously and sententiously." — Wall Street Journal Posted Nov 1, 2012
	86%	Wreck-it Ralph (2012)	" It's a lovely pretext for dazzling visuals, yet the production is diminished by the clumsiness of an 8-bit script." — Wall Street Journal Posted Nov 1, 2012
	78%	Flight (2012)	" Shameless, though effective, melodrama." — Wall Street Journal Posted Nov 1, 2012
	79%	The Other Son (2012)	" Transcends its switched-at-birth premise to a degree that's surprising, considering that the well-worn plot militates against surprise." — Wall Street Journal Posted Oct 25, 2012
	70%	The Loneliest Planet (2012)	" Though the film moves as slowly as its hikers, it demands, and deserves, to be watched closely." — Wall Street Journal Posted Oct 25, 2012
	67%	Cloud Atlas (2012)	" It plays like a gargantuan trailer for a movie still to be made (one that, given the same ratio, would be 86 hours long)." — Wall Street Journal Posted Oct 25, 2012
	12%	Alex Cross (2012)	" The opening scene of "Alex Cross" serves notice of what's to come by taking us down into a Detroit sewer." — Wall Street Journal Posted Oct 18, 2012
	84%	The Flat (2012)	" Goes from intriguing to astonishing by way of unfathomable." — Wall Street Journal Posted Oct 18, 2012
	94%	The Sessions (2012)	" "The Sessions" is admirable, and often enjoyable, yet self-limiting in concept. It's exactly about what it sets out to be about-no less but no more." — Wall Street Journal Posted Oct 18, 2012
	82%	Seven Psychopaths (2012)	" The violence wears you down. Like one of its nutso characters, "Seven Psychopaths" has a death wish." — Wall Street Journal Posted Oct 11, 2012
	96%	Argo (2012)	" "Argo" exults in what a movie can do when its story has a compelling core." — Wall Street Journal Posted Oct 11, 2012
	94%	Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel (2012)	" Makes a compelling case for the late Diana Vreeland as the 20th century's pre-eminent tastemaker, not to mention one of its most extravagant personalities." — Wall Street Journal Posted Sep 27, 2012
	88%	The Other Dream Team (2012)	" The production's focus is split-properly and effectively-between basketball and realpolitik." — Wall Street Journal Posted Sep 27, 2012
	93%	Looper (2012)	" It's safe to predict that "Looper" will transform Mr. Johnson's career, and give pleasure to popeyed audiences for a long time to come." — Wall Street Journal Posted Sep 27, 2012
	51%	Trouble with the Curve (2012)	" I'd call it "Neanderthalball."" — Wall Street Journal Posted Sep 20, 2012
	85%	End of Watch (2012)	" Shallow down inside, "End of Watch" is a music-video Frappuccino of quick cuts, sparkling banter, serial crises, grisly violence and tongue-jerk profanity." — Wall Street Journal Posted Sep 20, 2012
	100%	How to Survive a Plague (2012)	" Tune in to the passionate voices in David France's brilliant documentary ..." — Wall Street Journal Posted Sep 20, 2012
	78%	Dredd (2012)	" What's exceptional is the orchestration of color, form, light and dark (lots of dark), 3-D technology and digital effects into a look that amounts to a vision." — Wall Street Journal Posted Sep 20, 2012
	87%	Arbitrage (2012)	" It could readily be mistaken for the work of an experienced and justifiably self-confident filmmaker with a nose for newsy stories, a knack for telling them tersely, and a gift for directing actors" — Wall Street Journal Posted Sep 13, 2012
	86%	The Master (2012)	" As gifts to homo sapiens go, it's a rich one." — Wall Street Journal Posted Sep 13, 2012
	87%	Robot & Frank (2012)	" "Robot & Frank" is the sort of undernourished, underpopulated production that indie fans must all too frequently settle for. It's a theatrical feature hell bent for home video." — Wall Street Journal Posted Aug 23, 2012
	89%	Compliance (2012)	" Too condescending to be trusted, too manipulative to be believed, too turgid to be enjoyed, too shameless to be endured and, before and after everything else, too inept to make its misanthropic case." — Wall Street Journal Posted Aug 23, 2012
	42%	Little White Lies (2012)	" A movie built from strung-together set pieces." — Wall Street Journal Posted Aug 23, 2012
	65%	The Campaign (2012)	" Maybe the surreal realities of the current campaign really are beyond satire, ridicule, parody or ready comprehension, but this ultimately puerile gagfest has little reach and less grasp." — Wall Street Journal Posted Aug 9, 2012
	74%	Hope Springs (2012)	" A surprise that sneaks up and moves you, "Hope Springs" has the courage of its awkwardness, and this is said admiringly in the spirit of the film, which is irony-free and unfashionably earnest." — Wall Street Journal Posted Aug 9, 2012
	56%	The Bourne Legacy (2012)	" Can a Bourne-again movie succeed without Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, without Bourne himself, and without a Robert Ludlum book as the production's turn-by-turn guide? Yes, it can." — Wall Street Journal Posted Aug 9, 2012
	95%	Before Sunset (2004)	" The reunion has some lively moments, but a great deal of slow walking and fatuous talking about love, married life and sex." — Wall Street Journal Posted Aug 8, 2012
	70%	Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012)	" The more these two likable people rattled on, the more I found myself thinking about the elusive distinction between characters talking genuinely smart talk and simply chattering for the camera." — Wall Street Journal Posted Aug 2, 2012
	31%	Total Recall (2012)	" The remake has no grace notes, or grace, no nuance, no humanity, no character quirks, no surprises in the dialogue and no humor ..." — Wall Street Journal Posted Aug 2, 2012
	77%	Killer Joe (2012)	" "Killer Joe" is, at bottom-and I mean bottom-ugly and vile, not to mention dumb and clumsy." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jul 26, 2012
	79%	Ruby Sparks (2012)	" "Ruby Sparks" is a closed system that gradually turns in on itself. There isn't enough of someone else." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jul 26, 2012
	97%	Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012)	" The film's greatest distinction is its intimacy." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jul 26, 2012
	87%	The Dark Knight Rises (2012)	" It's spectacular, to be sure, but also remarkable for its all-encompassing gloom." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jul 16, 2012
	94%	Farewell, My Queen (2012)	" It's a strangely unsatisfying combination of bloodless observations and unresolved sexuality. But Diane Kruger's queen, a mature beauty mourning the loss of her youth, is a vivid portrait of willfulness, childishness and genuine neediness." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jul 13, 2012
	67%	Trishna (2012)	" Spectacular visually, though awfully somber dramatically." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jul 13, 2012
	88%	Ballplayer: Pelotero (2012)	" The next time I see some superstar athlete giving an interview that suggests the absence of a functioning soul, I'll think of the two tense, joyless boys at the center of this quietly devastating documentary." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jul 13, 2012
	87%	Easy Money (2012)	" "Easy Money" breaks no new ground, but it gives us a memorable hero who cannot fathom his cohorts' passion to prevail and prosper or, failing that, to survive." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jul 12, 2012
—	76%	Frida (2002)	— Wall Street Journal Posted Jul 7, 2012
	51%	Savages (2012)	" The movie's great surprise, and delight, is Salma Hayek's Elena, a svelte monster with a Cleopatra haircut who runs the cartel." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jul 6, 2012
	73%	The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)	" This hugely elaborate production is supposed to be the reboot of a foundering franchise, but rebooting a computer wipes the silicon slate clean. In the movie, what's old is old again." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jul 3, 2012
	56%	People Like Us (2012)	" It seems ridiculous to dance around plot details when the movie allows the audience to get ahead of the story and to stay there as events laboriously unfold." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jun 30, 2012
	69%	Ted (2012)	" Everything goes on too long -- Ted's carousing, Lori's watchful waiting, John's wistful indecision." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jun 30, 2012
	80%	Magic Mike (2012)	" Tatum, whose talents have been the subject of debate, also makes Mike genuinely affecting, not to mention articulate within the bounds of a sketchy script." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jun 30, 2012
	86%	Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)	" There's no trace of calculation, only artistic ambitions and hopes that have come to fruition in the year's finest film thus far." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jun 28, 2012
	43%	To Rome with Love (2012)	" What's on screen is a collection of clichés intermingled with outlandish farce or surreal fantasy." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jun 21, 2012
	35%	Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)	" Someone forgot to tell the filmmakers ... that the movie was supposed to be fun. Or at least smart." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jun 21, 2012
	78%	Brave (2012)	" It's enjoyable, consistently beautiful, fairly conventional, occasionally surprising and ultimately disappointing." — Wall Street Journal Posted Jun 21, 2012
—	97%	Dumbo (1941)	— Wall Street Journal Posted Jun 16, 2012
—	100%	The Lady Eve (1941)	— Wall Street Journal Posted Jun 16, 2012

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