Joseph Jon Lanthier Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Joseph Jon Lanthier

Joseph Jon Lanthier

Agrees with the Tomatometer 70% of the time.

Publications:: House Next Door , Slant Magazine

Total Reviews:: 325

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 325

Previous | Next

Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
2/4	——	Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton As Himself (2013)	" The doc's looseness adequately portrays George Plimpton as an inwardly conflicted figure, but it fails to make much of a case for the man's legacy outside of The Paris Review's still-noticeable brand." — Slant Magazine Posted May 17, 2013
	97%	Major Dundee (1965)	" Twilight Time's high-def restorative efforts prove that Major Dundee is anything but minor Peckinpah." — Slant Magazine Posted Apr 30, 2013
3.5/4	——	Out-Takes From The Life Of A Happy Man (2013)	" Jonas Mekas's camera is never passive, often seeming to feed upon sensation that energizes it to the point of jittery transcendence." — Slant Magazine Posted Apr 25, 2013
3.5/4	100%	Portrait of Jason (1967)	" Shirley Clarke counters Jason's queen-bitch attitude by reminding us with vocal and technological interjections that this is a performance, and that aesthetic judgments have been made while recording it." — Slant Magazine Posted Apr 16, 2013
2.5/4	90%	Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay (2013)	" It never bothers to attempt the one thing we'd expect and hope from a documentary about Ricky Jay: It doesn't try to bamboozle us." — Slant Magazine Posted Apr 14, 2013
3/4	77%	André Gregory: Before and After Dinner (2013)	" Perhaps the most valuable insight that the film provides about its subject is that he acts even as he directs." — Slant Magazine Posted Apr 5, 2013
2.5/4	64%	Dog Pound ()	" The plot willfully denies our satisfaction, often at the risk of compromising its own structural integrity." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 25, 2013
3/4	47%	Heaven's Gate (1980)	" Michael Cimino's film represented a slight return to classicism--to larger-than-life Panavision spectacle and crane shot-managed majesty, however contradicted by narrative bleakness." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 16, 2013
3/4	100%	Cuchillo de palo (108) (2013)	" Renate Costa's doc gradually simplifies into an elaborate seesaw between general, journalistic scoopery and unabashedly personal confrontation." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 16, 2013
	——	On Approval (1945)	" Possibly the best non-Ealing British comedy ever made, Clive Brook's On Approval has unfortunately received a Blu-ray treatment of which the serious cinephile can't quite approve." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 13, 2013
	100%	Ministry of Fear (1944)	" Criterion's Ministry of Fear Blu-ray takes the cake-then blows it up, then goes hunting for its sweetly iced fragments." — Slant Magazine Posted Mar 9, 2013
	——	The Unspeakable Act (2013)	" Writer-director Dan Sallitt's fourth feature moves with confident boldness from the incestuous gauntlet its prologue impishly hurls down." — Slant Magazine Posted Feb 26, 2013
	——	Chronicle of a Summer (1961)	" Looking ever more the masterpiece on Criterion's blu-ray, Chronicle of a Summer discovers that when asked "Are you happy?," most would answer: "Not when I'm on camera!"" — Slant Magazine Posted Feb 25, 2013
3.5/4	92%	Little Fugitive (The Coney Island Kid ) (1953)	" The not-to-be-underestimated singularity of Little Fugitive is such that its legacy nearly contradicts its nature. " — Slant Magazine Posted Jan 27, 2013
3/4	67%	Nana (2013)	" Its meta-cinematic "think piece"-ness is redeemed by the slinky symmetries drawn between Massadian's own auteur-ship and the protagonist's narrative role." — Slant Magazine Posted Jan 23, 2013
	——	It's in the Bag! (1945)	" "Television is a medium," Fred Allen once said, "because it is neither rare nor well done." It's in the Bag! hilariously proves that he likely held film in similar esteem." — Slant Magazine Posted Jan 20, 2013
	88%	The Man Who Knew Too Much (2003)	" In high-definition, Hitch's original The Man Who Knew Too Much is the epitome of film class in both senses." — Slant Magazine Posted Jan 14, 2013
	94%	Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)	" America exploded in the 60s; Two-Lane Blacktop is the post-apocalyptic road trip, now rendered with epic clarity on Criterion's Blu-ray." — Slant Magazine Posted Jan 6, 2013
4/4	100%	Black Narcissus (1947)	" Michael Powell was right when he called Black Narcissus an "erotic film," but the attraction is pure Pygmalionism." — Slant Magazine Posted Dec 30, 2012
2/4	45%	On the Road (2012)	" The lack of a strong expository voice further simplifies the wealth of explicit sex Walter Salles dramatizes, much of it drawn from juicy swathes of Jack Kerouac's only recently published original scroll." — Slant Magazine Posted Dec 17, 2012
	100%	Suddenly (1954)	" Frank Sinatra has the force of a president-killing adverb in Suddenly, a philosophical thriller made all the tighter by this high-def transfer." — Slant Magazine Posted Dec 11, 2012
4/4	89%	Consuming Spirits (2012)	" Not only a monstrous visual achievement, but one of the most uniquely humanistic animated features of all time." — Slant Magazine Posted Dec 10, 2012
	100%	Plein soleil (Purple Noon) (Blazing Sun) (Full Sun) (Lust for Evil) (1996)	" Purple Noon is a French macaroon full of arsenic, and all the more tempting in Criterion's 1080p transfer." — Slant Magazine Posted Dec 5, 2012
2.5/4	80%	Wagner & Me (2012)	" Even when Wagner & Me seems uneven as an art historical study, it's fairly successful as a travelogue." — Slant Magazine Posted Dec 4, 2012
	47%	Heaven's Gate (1980)	" With Criterion's Blu-ray release of Heaven's Gate, late New Hollywood's most famous hot mess gets a little bit hotter." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 28, 2012
1.5/4	——	My Brothers (2012)	" An uncommon example of purely allegorical cinema, Paul Fraser's film foregoes plot almost entirely in favor of thematic resonance." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 27, 2012
	80%	Il fiore delle mille e una notte (Flower of the Arabian Nights) (Arabian Nights) (1998)	" As art films derived from classic literature brimming with erotic interludes, Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life" still provides a great way to both look smart and look at naked bodies." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 21, 2012
	63%	I Racconti di Canterbury (The Canterbury Tales) (1971)	" As art films derived from classic literature brimming with erotic interludes, Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life" still provides a great way to both look smart and look at naked bodies." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 21, 2012
	83%	Il Decameron (The Decameron) (1970)	" As art films derived from classic literature brimming with erotic interludes, Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life" still provides a great way to both look smart and look at naked bodies." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 21, 2012
2.5/4	94%	The Central Park Five (2012)	" Though relentlessly and admirably logical, the movie constantly glosses over the buried human element." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 16, 2012
	——	Such Good Friends (1971)	" These Otto Preminger films may not be perfect, but where else can you see trashcans waltzing or a Batman villain dropping the n-word like it's going out of style?" — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 11, 2012
	36%	Skidoo (1968)	" These Otto Preminger films may not be perfect, but where else can you see trashcans waltzing or a Batman villain dropping the n-word like it's going out of style?" — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 11, 2012
	29%	Hurry Sundown (1967)	" These Otto Preminger films may not be perfect, but where else can you see trashcans waltzing or a Batman villain dropping the n-word like it's going out of style?" — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 11, 2012
4/4	100%	The Man in the White Suit (2012)	" That Stratton proves so unable to resist his hubris surely provides the film with a cautionary subtext, but this is beautifully complicated by an ending that denies the possibility of rehabilitation." — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 10, 2012
	——	Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton As Himself (2013)	" Tom Bean and Luke Poling's doc is rightfully less than certain of the quality of its subject's output, and no potential excuse for Plimpton's occasionally clunky wordplay is left unmentioned. " — House Next Door Posted Nov 8, 2012
	——	Persistence Of Vision ()	" One of the least stylistically handicapped documentaries ever produced about animation." — House Next Door Posted Nov 8, 2012
3.5/4	46%	The Comedy (2012)	" Tim Heidecker's Swanson does not amuse us in spite of the pity he inspires but because of it. " — Slant Magazine Posted Nov 4, 2012
	93%	Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962)	" Now that Long Day's Journey into Night is on Blu-ray, we can finally drink along with the characters in the safety of our own homes." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 28, 2012
3.5/4	68%	This Must Be The Place (2012)	" The film believes in maturity, but only as a freely continual process of acceptance." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 28, 2012
2.5/4	80%	Orchestra Of Exiles (2012)	" Its episodic nature poses a narrative challenge that director Josh Aronson's just barely feature-length documentary can't quite surmount. " — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 21, 2012
	92%	Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971)	" In Sunday Bloody Sunday, bisexual romance is a wild goose chase with occasional boners." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 21, 2012
	——	The Slender Thread (1965)	" Olive Films's high-def release of Sydney Pollack's slickly oppression-conscious debut is an unfortunately slender package." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 16, 2012
2.5/4	84%	The Flat (2012)	" Accusation is the rhetoric of outrage, and Arnon Goldfinger can't bring himself to experience even conservative anger, regardless of its appropriateness." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 14, 2012
3.5/4	94%	Photographic Memory (2012)	" Ross McElwee is less anxious of death itself than of finally comprehending the vast faultiness of the life he's lived. " — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 5, 2012
3/4	100%	It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)	" By favoring the repetition of gestures over plot or graphics, Don Hertzfeldt argues that animation is, at its essence, a kinetic rather than simply visual form of expression." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 3, 2012
3/4	68%	Wuthering Heights (2012)	" In whittling down Emily Brontë's romance to its most earthly aspects, Andrea Arnold stylizes herself into an unavoidable corner." — Slant Magazine Posted Oct 1, 2012
3/4	78%	Tales of the Night (2012)	" The recent cartoons of Michel Ocelot cleverly advance Lotte Reiniger's prototypical stop-motion technique into the digital age." — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 23, 2012
	84%	Eating Raoul (1982)	" Criterion's pass at "Canonizing Raoul" makes me want to start lobbying for the inclusion of Bartel's farce in 2022's Sight & Sound poll." — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 20, 2012
2/4	11%	About Cherry (2012)	" The lack of plausible conflict mars the movie's highly commendable depiction of San Francisco as a the new porn capital." — Slant Magazine Posted Sep 16, 2012

Showing 1 - 50 of 325

Previous | Next

Sort by Rating:

Sort results by this critic's rating. This option is only available for critics with a rating system (4 star, letter grade, 1-10, etc.)
Sort by T-meter:

Sort results by the Tomatometer (percentage of critics recommending a certain movie)