John Semley Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » John Semley

John Semley

Agrees with the Tomatometer 80% of the time.

Publications:: AV Club , Slant Magazine

Total Reviews:: 53

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Showing 1 - 50 of 53

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
	98%	Repo Man (1984)	" With their immaculate rerelease of Alex Cox's astoundingly original debut, Criterion not only further verifies their dedication to streams of both classic and cult films, but effectively (and correctly) resuscitates a cult object as a certifiable classic." — Slant Magazine Posted Apr 11, 2013
3/4	62%	Evil Dead (2013)	" The setup and geography are consistent with the original, though the film never makes the mistake of trying to rebottle the lightning that electrified Sam Raimi's movie." — Slant Magazine Posted Apr 4, 2013
	52%	This is 40 (2012)	" Packed to the rafters with featurettes, bonus jokes, and extended riffs, This Is 40's home-video release will give the film's admirers much to pore over, while arming its deterrents with more "white people problems" fodder ("My Blu-ray's too stuffed!")." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 26, 2013
	76%	Killing Them Softly (2012)	" This slight package does Killing Them Softly no real favors. But the film itself may prove enduringly fascinating, if only in its function as an arch object of its era." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 24, 2013
4/4	94%	Room 237 (2013)	" The doc positions The Shining as a comparably coiled, thematically overflowing microcosm--standing in for cinema, for history, for obsession, for postmodern theory buckling under the film's heft." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 24, 2013
	66%	The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)	" A top-shelf presentation of one of last year's baggiest, most unnecessary films, this combo pack confirms An Unexpected Journey's status as little more than pricey techno-bauble." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 18, 2013
3/4	——	People's Park ()	" Aesthetically, People's Park continuous long take presents a gentle comment on cinema's relationship to a people's history." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 17, 2013
	96%	Argo (2012)	" The top-notch packaging reveals Argo for what it really is: less a nail-biting chamber-piece character drama and more a coolly realized, wildly reckless, actioner." — Slant Magazine Posted Feb 18, 2013
1/4	15%	A Good Day To Die Hard (2013)	" A wholly generic international actioner barely distinguished by the presence of Willis's banner hero." — Slant Magazine Posted Feb 13, 2013
	89%	White Zombie (1932)	" The release is made considerably better by its buried alternate cut "extra," as well as film's interest for zombie diehards eager to bone up on the genre's pre-boilerplate origins. " — Slant Magazine Posted Jan 29, 2013
	13%	Stolen (2012)	" Though entirely derivative and undercooked, Stolen nonetheless proves a proficient "Cager" and suitable excuse for wasting half an afternoon." — Slant Magazine Posted Jan 22, 2013
	89%	Compliance (2012)	" Less weighty moral inquiry than astute, well-managed provocation, Craig Zobel's Compliance effectively splits the difference between American indie art-house solemnity and direct-to-video bad-object tastelessness." — Slant Magazine Posted Jan 20, 2013
1.5/4	40%	Parker (2013)	" As an especial embarrassment, here Jason Statham's superficial manipulability is put in service of corny capering and costuming." — Slant Magazine Posted Jan 19, 2013
3/4	76%	Hors Satan (2013)	" Bruno Dumont's employment of his bucolic French backdrop here attends to Hors Satan's muddying spiritual ambiguity." — Slant Magazine Posted Jan 14, 2013
	——	The Story Of Film: An Odyssey (2012)	" Essential viewing, if not for only for its edutainment factor, but for the dynamism and felt resonance of its maker's bounding enthusiasms." — Slant Magazine Posted Jan 3, 2013
	77%	Killer Joe (2012)	" One of the best films of the past year-bracing, funny, uncompromising-arrives on home video in a package that makes good on its swelling rep as an American indie video nasty." — Slant Magazine Posted Dec 28, 2012
3/4	93%	Zero Dark Thirty (2013)	" Doubtless, Kathryn Bigelow's greatest strengths emerge when she can more freely flex her muscles as an action filmmaker. " — Slant Magazine Posted Dec 12, 2012
2.5/4	88%	Django Unchained (2012)	" There's an undeniable pleasure that emerges in seeing Tarantino juggle the dynamite of his ideas, even when they prematurely pop off in his face." — Slant Magazine Posted Dec 11, 2012
	75%	Alps (2012)	" Alps significantly improves (or at least expands) on the surrealist exercises of Yorgos Lanthimos's predecessor, the Oscar-nominated Dogtooth. Though you'd never know it by its rote dumping to home video." — Slant Magazine Posted Dec 6, 2012
2/4	50%	Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012)	" Like a stiff Schwarzeneggerian conqueror making good on an "I'll be back," John Hyams returns to one-up the franchise again." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 20, 2012
	100%	Battleship Potemkin (1925)	" Kino's hi-def releases of Strike and Battleship Potemkin still embody the ideological character and formal-intellectual rigor of Eisenstein's early films...but they've got a new box." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 20, 2012
	100%	Strike (Stachka) (1925)	" Kino's hi-def releases of Strike and Battleship Potemkin still embody the ideological character and formal-intellectual rigor of Eisenstein's early films...but they've got a new box." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 20, 2012
	100%	Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (2012)	" The trilogy proves as compelling in its warts-and-all portraiture of backwater America as its more subtle explorations of the limits and capabilities of the documentary form." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 9, 2012
	90%	Paradise Lost 2 - Revelations (2000)	" The trilogy proves as compelling in its warts-and-all portraiture of backwater America as its more subtle explorations of the limits and capabilities of the documentary form." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 9, 2012
	96%	Paradise Lost - The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996)	" The trilogy proves as compelling in its warts-and-all portraiture of backwater America as its more subtle explorations of the limits and capabilities of the documentary form." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 9, 2012
1.5/4	86%	Wreck-it Ralph (2012)	" Nothing but broad, pandering indexes tailored to appeal to the arcade wistfulness it never even bothers to convincingly evoke." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 28, 2012
3.5/4	92%	Skyfall (2012)	" Bond's latest is a remarkable high watermark for the series: at once solemn and deeply funny, sexy and sad, self-conscious without all the rib-bruising elbowing." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 26, 2012
	90%	Fear and Desire (1953)	" There's no reason for Kino's welcome release of Kubrick's impressive debut to feel like anything but an overdue, completists-only offering." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 22, 2012
2.5/4	82%	Seven Psychopaths (2012)	" If Seven Psychopaths smacks a bit showoff-y in places, it's only because Martin McDonagh has so much worth showing off. " — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 10, 2012
1.5/4	21%	Taken 2 (2012)	" Some of the basic pleasures of the original remain intact (nobody shoots up a small room of bearded Eastern European men like Neeson), but ultimately the film feels compromised." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 4, 2012
4/4	100%	Wake in Fright (2012)	" The film's vision of masculine self-sufficiency is built around--and on, via Australia's own bloody colonial history--an elemental violence. " — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 29, 2012
3/4	——	Bwakaw ()	" This oddball Filipino film effectively mints its own genre: the light dark comedy. " — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 24, 2012
3/4	93%	Barbara (2012)	" Most compelling in Barbara, Christian Petzold's latest, is the way the filmmaker adeptly conducts his tides of Cold War paranoia. " — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 18, 2012
4/4	87%	Tabu (2012)	" The pangs of romance, eroticism, anguish, and longing (both for the stolen moments of private passion and for the sense-making schematics of Empire) transcend any period of cinema Tabu may evoke." — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 17, 2012
2.5/4	92%	The Gatekeepers (2013)	" Even when the so-called Gatekeepers offer up damning testimony against their organization, there's no real threat that they'll ever be held accountable for it. " — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 17, 2012
	95%	Raiders of the Lost Ark (2012)	" A necessary package for any fan of the franchise, at least until the folks at Lucasfilm dust off another forgotten making-of feature or, God forbid, green light another Indiana Jones adventure." — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 16, 2012
	85%	Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)	" A necessary package for any fan of the franchise, at least until the folks at Lucasfilm dust off another forgotten making-of feature or, God forbid, green light another Indiana Jones adventure." — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 16, 2012
	89%	Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)	" A necessary package for any fan of the franchise, at least until the folks at Lucasfilm dust off another forgotten making-of feature or, God forbid, green light another Indiana Jones adventure." — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 16, 2012
	78%	Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)	" A necessary package for any fan of the franchise, at least until the folks at Lucasfilm dust off another forgotten making-of feature or, God forbid, green light another Indiana Jones adventure." — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 16, 2012
	91%	Arachnophobia (1990)	" A pretty (sub)standard package for a pretty serviceable B movie, this new Arachnophobia discs function foremost as a reminder that, hey, the film exists." — Slant Magazine Posted Aug 29, 2012
3/4	65%	The Expendables 2 (2012)	" It plays out like a series wet-dream scenarios, performed by a cast of vintage action figures battered and broken from overuse, bleached and slightly molted from sitting in the sun too long." — Slant Magazine Posted Aug 13, 2012
4/4	84%	Total Recall (1990)	" Total Recall's caricaturing of Schwarzenegger, its flip ribbing at his stocks of action-hero cache, signal the deep, almost atomic level at which its satire functions. " — Slant Magazine Posted Aug 5, 2012
1.5/4	31%	Total Recall (2012)	" Len Wiseman's Total Recall's a trifling mess, as superfluous as a third breast." — Slant Magazine Posted Aug 1, 2012
	38%	Lockout (Unrated) (2012)	" A film this refreshingly flip rests as much on the passable competence of its director(s) as the enduringly shrugging shoulders of its protagonist. " — Slant Magazine Posted Jul 26, 2012
3/4	63%	Nuit #1 (2012)	" It works--quite successfully, in places--as a warming tonic against this emotional nippiness of the cinema of Canadian coldness." — Slant Magazine Posted Jul 22, 2012
1/4	25%	Drunkboat (2012)	" Drunkboat is a "small" movie that plays like a mawkish, Friedberg/Seltzer riff on a small movie." — Slant Magazine Posted Jul 12, 2012
2.5/4	80%	Magic Mike (2012)	" It's as if Soderbergh expects the film to mostly resolve itself, rounded out by the asses-in-the-seats appeal of the material, rote thematic underpinning, and ample charms of the cast." — Slant Magazine Posted Jun 28, 2012
1.5/4	74%	Prometheus (2012)	" Prometheus seems to delusionally maintain that its modest thrills are being enlivened by deeper concerns. " — Slant Magazine Posted Jun 5, 2012
2/4	70%	Men in Black III (2012)	" More like an attempt to reenergize a franchise than rebottle the lightning that electrified the original." — Slant Magazine Posted May 23, 2012

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