John Semley Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » John Semley

John Semley

Agrees with the Tomatometer 79% of the time.

Publications:: AV Club , House Next Door , Slant Magazine

Total Reviews:: 35

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 35 of 35

Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
	98%	Wings of Desire (1987)	" And even when sadness isn't equalized by its opposite, even when no light pierces the fog, even when all there is is gloomy, abiding melancholy, well, at least it's in Technicolor." — House Next Door Posted Jun 13, 2013
	40%	The Great Outdoors (1988)	" Like a family holiday, like a family, The Great Outdoors is far from perfect, but we like it as it is--perhaps not a great film, but certainly a good-enough movie." — House Next Door Posted Jun 12, 2013
	95%	Medium Cool (1969)	" Criterion painstakingly restores and beautifully packages Medium Cool on Blu-ray, positioning the film as a definitive document of the political tumult in late-1960s America." — Slant Magazine Posted Jun 6, 2013
	98%	This Is Not a Film (2012)	" This Is Not a Film brilliantly marries high-modernist artistry with urgent political provocation. A masterpiece." — Slant Magazine Posted May 31, 2013
	42%	Phil Spector (2013)	" As written and directed by Mamet, never shy about his exceptionalist view of Jewish identity, the sympathy the film affords to Spector scans as suspect. " — Slant Magazine Posted May 22, 2013
	——	Crimewave (1986)	" Beyond its wadding of auteurist interest, Crimewave is a singularly entertaining watch, a platform for its makers' most wildly unchecked, brazenly silly, excesses." — Slant Magazine Posted May 15, 2013
.5/4	80%	Pieta (2013)	" Kim Ki-duk's film makes an exaggerated, undeserved show of its cruelty, indignity, and aspirations of importance." — Slant Magazine Posted May 14, 2013
3/4	91%	Frances Ha (2013)	" Noah Baumbach's film feels like too perfect a portrait of quarter-life malady, down to the rushed redemptive endnotes and Greta Gerwig's idealized heroine." — Slant Magazine Posted May 12, 2013
	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
	75%	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
	65%	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

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