Joshua Rothkopf Movie Reviews & Previews

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Joshua Rothkopf

Agrees with the Tomatometer 79% of the time.

Biography:: Senior Film Critic for Time Out New York
Publications:: Chicago Reader , City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul , Time Out , Time Out New York , Time Out Sydney
Critics' Group:: Chicago Film Critics Association, New York Film Critics Circle

Total Reviews:: 1120

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Showing 51 - 100 of 1120

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
3/5	52%	This is 40 (2012)	" As [Apatow's] title implies, he could have taken a deeper plunge into the main task of middle age: revision." — Time Out New York Posted Dec 11, 2012
3/5	88%	Tchoupitoulas (2012)	" Even at this short running time, there's a looseness to the kaleidoscopic adventure that becomes slightly wearying." — Time Out New York Posted Dec 4, 2012
2/5	50%	In Our Nature (2012)	" Savelson can't seem to mount a head of steam, and his chamber piece feels underdeveloped." — Time Out New York Posted Dec 4, 2012
5/5	98%	Beware Of Mr. Baker (2012)	" You'll love the idea that someone like this deserves a movie, but with the whole of heavy metal in his debt, the honor is merited and handled with honesty." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 27, 2012
3/5	56%	Walk Away Renee (2012)	" No filmmaker, especially one this compassionate, should be criticized for mining a rich vein over two efforts." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 27, 2012
2/5	——	Young & Wild (2012)	" The young actors' vacant-eyed brazenness may be true to life, but there's a whiff of exploitation, matched by the script's disinterest in exploring any friction that isn't skin on skin." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 27, 2012
4/5	94%	The Central Park Five (2012)	" This effort is required viewing for anyone content to remember a dangerous town from afar." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 20, 2012
4/5	88%	Life of Pi (2012)	" The movie works on a bedrock level that many ostensible action films forget." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 20, 2012
2/5	13%	Red Dawn (2012)	" Anew Red Dawn could have been so much more fun had it thrown a properly out-of-bounds tea party. (It lacks the signature brawn of original director John Milius, a guns-first libertarian.)" — Time Out New York Posted Nov 20, 2012
4/5	73%	Generation P (2012)	" Generation P is worth struggling through, even if it boggles you. In many ways, it's a keyhole into the future of the entire world." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 13, 2012
3/5	67%	Price Check (2012)	" These conference-room banalities have been better explored elsewhere, and the effort here feels like a rough draft." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 13, 2012
1/5	46%	The Comedy (2012)	" [A] faux-courageous nondrama." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 13, 2012
3/5	81%	In Another Country (2013)	" It's a fairly banal comment on foreign estrangement (or love) that could have used some roughing up." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 6, 2012
3/5	88%	Starlet (2012)	" Unfortunately, the film signals its more serious aspirations aggressively, via "thoughtful" synth drones and an italicized parental subtext." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 6, 2012
5/5	89%	Lincoln (2012)	" Defiantly intellectual, complex and true to the shifting winds of real-world governance, Lincoln is not the movie that this election season has earned-but one that a more perfect union can aspire to." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 6, 2012
4/5	86%	Wreck-it Ralph (2012)	" The metaphor is clever, injecting real-life risk and reward into these beautifully artificial vistas, scored to composer Henry Jackman's Nintendo-worthy beeps and bloops." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 31, 2012
4/5	76%	The Bay (2012)	" The Bay, a real creepfest, joins the suggestive company of eco-terror entries like Hitchcock's The Birds and 1979's Prophecy ..." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 31, 2012
2/5	47%	A Liar's Autobiography - The Untrue Story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman (2012)	" A coda shifts to video footage of Cleese's irreverent eulogy; you wish the whole film could have been as slyly somber." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 31, 2012
3/5	93%	Sleep Tight (2012)	" Hard as it is to find a decent rental space in any town, it's clearly harder to spin dramatic gold out of tired urban legends." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 23, 2012
4/5	70%	The Loneliest Planet (2012)	" Adjust to the deliberate rhythms of this hiking movie-set on the lush slopes of Georgia's Caucasus Mountains-and the psychological payoff stings like a blister." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 23, 2012
4/5	94%	The Sessions (2012)	" It's an adult movie about an adult subject that upends the conventions of the sex comedy by investing them with solemn purpose. Fortunately, that turns out to be pretty funny in itself." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 16, 2012
3/5	90%	Holy Motors (2012)	" Holy Motors is aggressively "wild," a puzzle that tweaks the mind but doesn't nourish." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 16, 2012
1/5	47%	The First Time (2012)	" Writer-director Jonathan Kasdan can't even bother to satisfy the buildup with a real moment of consummation (welcome to the fade to black) or believable postcoital complications." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 16, 2012
4/5	67%	An Affair of the Heart (2012)	" It doesn't matter how many of these moments are self-flattering; the subtext is clear enough." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 9, 2012
3/5	96%	Argo (2012)	" Out in the audience, you never shake the feeling-partly intentional-that Argo itself is swaddled in a kind of phony ersatzness." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 9, 2012
3/5	84%	Smashed (2012)	" The film as a whole feels like a creaky vehicle, belabored with plot strands and stereotypes that only serve to highlight Winstead's ragged commitment to something real." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 9, 2012
4/5	68%	Wuthering Heights (2012)	" This weird, yearning movie could become beloved to many, just as the novel has been." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 2, 2012
2/5	54%	V/H/S (2012)	" Mainly, the omnibus film feels undercooked, even on the grounds of its forced technological setup." — Time Out New York Posted Oct 2, 2012
2/5	65%	Solomon Kane (2012)	" A borrowed mélange of Lord of the Rings pomp, weightless CGI sorcery, artfully smudged cheekbones and exceedingly dull sword slicings." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 25, 2012
3/5	81%	Pitch Perfect (2012)	" This film could have done with a few more mouth beats and unlikely moments of extracurricular celebrity." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 25, 2012
3/5	78%	Tales of the Night (2012)	" The film feels naive for an audience that's ready for some harder truths." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 25, 2012
4/5	93%	Looper (2012)	" Looper tries (and fails) for a love-against-all-odds resonance, but the shortcomings are minimal. Johnson's still got plenty of unlooped time to grab that brass ring." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 25, 2012
5/5	100%	How to Survive a Plague (2012)	" A nightmarish clash comes to life in this devastating montage of inflamed voices, their rage infusing the very grain of '80s videography." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 18, 2012
3/5	69%	Liberal Arts (2012)	" You'll recognize these characters and the wisdom they arrive at, but it's too bad our hero is such a deeply ethical square." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 11, 2012
4/5	87%	Arbitrage (2012)	" Sex, wealth, paternal swagger-all of the colors come out of Gere in a showstopping performance." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 11, 2012
3/5	86%	The Master (2012)	" Ponderous and demanding, Paul Thomas Anderson's latest slows to a rattlesnake-swallowing-a-mouse lurch, a pace that makes There Will Be Blood feel like Boogie Nights." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 11, 2012
5/5	90%	Keep the Lights On (2012)	" It's hard to recall a film so attentive to the uncertain moments in all relationships: the teary Christmas toasts, the slow slide away from patience and tenderness." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 4, 2012
4/5	93%	Girl Model (2012)	" Make time during Fashion Week for this one." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 4, 2012
2/5	55%	Bachelorette (2012)	" Not to sound too much like a bratty teen-and these bachelorettes should know better-but, um, why should I care again?" — Time Out New York Posted Sep 4, 2012
3/5	58%	The Eye of the Storm (2012)	" The title takes on a depressing literalness; you sense the movie teetering with tonal imbalance, its brilliant cast of savage line-readers forced to turn inward." — Time Out New York Posted Sep 4, 2012
3/5	77%	Samsara (2012)	" It's the equivalent of eyes-agog wonderment and New Age communion. But it's not enough." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 21, 2012
4/5	85%	Sleepwalk With Me (2012)	" Sleepwalk with Me embraces its toughness and emerges with a sharp comment about evasion." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 21, 2012
4/5	89%	Compliance (2012)	" The movie's frightening momentum can't be denied; indeed, it's the whole point." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 14, 2012
4/5	64%	Cosmopolis (2012)	" A sensual, propulsive thriller, the apocalypse as viewed from lush interiors and a hermetic remove." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 7, 2012
4/5	58%	Red Hook Summer (2012)	" Isn't it valuable that Lee refuses to make that gentle church movie we expected? He has to grab the live wire of referendum, go deeper into his Breslinesque outrage." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 7, 2012
3/5	56%	The Bourne Legacy (2012)	" Renner and scientist Rachel Weisz are sympathetic enough (although lacking in Matt Damon's all-American approachability), and the movie flies along briskly." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 7, 2012
3/5	65%	The Campaign (2012)	" Any film that features a baby's jowly face getting punched (in slo-mo) is walking a line that has to be admired." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 7, 2012
4/5	67%	Dreams of a Life (2012)	" Director Morley has at least restored something of a soul to her subject." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 31, 2012
2/5	83%	You've Been Trumped (2012)	" Secure in its righteous rage, You've Been Trumped never stops for a second to seriously explore the economic points of view, even ones that might benefit the community." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 31, 2012
4/5	100%	Planet of Snail (2012)	" The spirit of the movie is nonjudgmental, an observational intimacy that, in turn, becomes inspiring." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 24, 2012
3/5	96%	Searching for Sugar Man (2012)	" A diverting but frustrating quasiprofile, one that doesn't have the answers to its own questions." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 24, 2012
3/5	79%	Klown (2012)	" A lesser effort, certainly, but an entertaining one nonetheless, with a near-fantasy sense of randomness around every bend in the creek." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 24, 2012
3/5	95%	The Queen of Versailles (2012)	" The doc's post-Bush fallout is worth sifting through, even if it's hard to fully care for a pair so incognizant of their own culpability." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 17, 2012
3/5	67%	Trishna (2012)	" Winterbottom's risks are welcome; it may be time, though, to invest more heart instead of head." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 10, 2012
1/5	29%	Red Lights (2012)	" Why wait for the next M. Night Shyamalan fiasco to vent your spleen when another director has beaten him to it?" — Time Out New York Posted Jul 10, 2012
4/5	95%	The Imposter (2012)	" Go and be stunned." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 10, 2012
5/5	99%	La Battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers) (1967)	" Essential viewing." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 3, 2012
3/5	73%	The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)	" On the whole, it's passable stuff, a surprise, given how mechanical the masked character seemed." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 3, 2012
2/5	51%	Savages (2012)	" When John Travolta and Benicio Del Toro show up for extended, cartoonish dialogues, you'll wonder what year it is, and let out a sigh of relief that the moment is long gone." — Time Out New York Posted Jul 3, 2012
4/5	80%	Magic Mike (2012)	" If Magic Mike doesn't quite attain the hedonistic stature of twin cautionary tales Boogie Nights and the campy Showgirls, it can't be faulted for wanting to satisfy on a deeper level." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 26, 2012
3/5	86%	Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)	" How can a movie so steeped in post-Katrina imagery eschew even the smallest comment about social responsibility?" — Time Out New York Posted Jun 26, 2012
3/5	91%	Gypsy (2012)	" Best are the film's tender ghostly visitations from Dad, evoked with a minimum of artiness, and the authentic, impoverished locations." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 26, 2012
3/5	43%	To Rome with Love (2012)	" You never feel like you're anywhere except a mediocre New Yorker casual." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 21, 2012
3/5	64%	Kumaré (2012)	" Kumaré struggles mightily to emerge from its well-rendered cleverness, and doesn't begin to seriously explore the sense of emptiness plaguing too many." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 19, 2012
2/5	55%	Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)	" The casting is spectacularly wrong, and even on its own scant merits, writer-director Lorene Scafaria's screenplay has little insight into apocalyptic licentiousness, barring a tart line or two." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 19, 2012
	90%	Yiddish Theater: A Love Story (2006)	" If you end up kvelling for these performers, the doc has served its purpose." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 17, 2012
4/5	95%	Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present (2012)	" Rare is the profile that captures so much oddness with so little judgment. You owe yourself a chance to be challenged." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 12, 2012
4/5	83%	Your Sister's Sister (2012)	" Barring some late-inning coyness, it's some of the truest, dinged-heart couples' circling of the year." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 12, 2012
3/5	96%	Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap (2012)	" Maybe an aspiring artist will sample these bits of wisdom into a masterpiece." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 12, 2012
1/5	6%	The Tortured (2012)	" The flick gets off on surgical slicings and an overall Fincheresque gloominess, the latter becoming an unwitting joke." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 12, 2012
3/5	74%	Prometheus (2012)	" Calling Prometheus-or any Ridley Scott movie -- gorgeous is the stingiest of compliments. So let's point out specifics that quicken the pulse." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 8, 2012
	100%	Toni (1934)	" Renoir invests it with a sense of character and place that gives it an unusually blunt and sensual impact." — Time Out Posted Jun 6, 2012
3/5	73%	Dark Horse (2012)	" Solondz still has an ear and an eye for a specific hell in the real world." — Time Out New York Posted Jun 5, 2012
3/5	91%	Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)	" Alas, a sophisticated trajectory is cut short for an outcome that's cringingly earnest. Who'd want to go back in time when a whole future is right there in his arms?" — Time Out New York Posted Jun 5, 2012
4/5	95%	5 Broken Cameras (2012)	" Troublesome, worthy." — Time Out New York Posted May 29, 2012
4/5	86%	Battle Royale 3D (2000)	" Forgive the film its small flaws of histrionic performances and cheap execution for the giddy rush of its banal, Verhoevenesque atmosphere..." — Time Out New York Posted May 22, 2012
4/5	98%	Oslo, August 31st (2012)	" Moment to moment, you sense the fragility of Anders's fate as it hangs in the balance." — Time Out New York Posted May 22, 2012
4/5	70%	Men in Black III (2012)	" Apparently, it's okay to be nostalgic again, especially when the emotional payoff is this big-a wonderful surprise." — Time Out New York Posted May 22, 2012
4/5	93%	Elena (2012)	" Elena feels a touch repetitive right when it should be tightening the screws. But its fatalism is contagious." — Time Out New York Posted May 15, 2012
2/5	34%	Battleship (2012)	" Battleship, a commercial for, alternately, the military or Michael Bay's back catalog, feels sunken from an overdose of charmless grunting and computer-generated ballast." — Time Out New York Posted May 15, 2012
2/5	58%	Hysteria (2012)	" There's nothing strictly wrong with any of this, except for the fact that even a buttoned-down period piece like Topsy-Turvy feels sexier." — Time Out New York Posted May 15, 2012
2/5	41%	Lovely Molly (2012)	" Sánchez is going for a fear that's closer to home than any mysterious bumps in the night. His Polanskian psychodrama, shrouded by our expectations, develops violently and, it must be said, with little sense of actual domestic tragedy." — Time Out New York Posted May 15, 2012
3/5	38%	Dark Shadows (2012)	" Burton, as usual, is great on atmosphere and comic timing (these are his weirdest moments since Ed Wood), but less so at reining in an overcomplicated plot and dimly lit action scenes." — Time Out New York Posted May 8, 2012
2/5	67%	God Bless America (2012)	" The movie is the kind of undercooked satire that might be mistaken for meaningful by the midnight-madness crowd; let's hope Goldthwait the stealth smartie returns posthaste." — Time Out New York Posted May 8, 2012
2/5	40%	Tonight You're Mine (2012)	" Boggle at finding strangers in the audience more appealing than our main characters." — Time Out New York Posted May 8, 2012
3/5	67%	The Incredible Hulk (2008)	" Norton makes for a wiry, curious Bruce Banner. But you can tell from the film's tedium-inducing smackdowns that a different philosophy prevailed: the artificial Zen of video-game playing." — Time Out Chicago Posted May 4, 2012
3/5	86%	Last Call at the Oasis (2012)	" Jessica Yu's alarming (and unusually zippy) doc assembles some frightening facts..." — Time Out New York Posted May 1, 2012
4/5	93%	Marvel's The Avengers (2012)	" Whedon, the pop savant responsible for TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, straddles the line between sarcastic gab and pulp solemnity like Eli Manning on a fourth-down, go-it-alone jag." — Time Out New York Posted May 1, 2012
3/5	94%	First Position (2012)	" Kargman, herself a former ballerina, deserves credit for capturing key performance moments that allow us to come to a finer appreciation of the art form." — Time Out New York Posted May 1, 2012
5/5	90%	Bernie (2012)	" Taking its time with a flavorful middle section, the movie builds into a true-crime treat; some will think of Fargo (apt, but this movie is gentler), others, the documentaries of Werner Herzog." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 24, 2012
3/5	20%	Broken Tower (2012)	" The Broken Tower feels unique as a young man's tribute to an adventuresome, doomed soul." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 24, 2012
3/5	51%	The Three Stooges (2012)	" As with the shorts, our enjoyment was never about the scenarios, just the weird Zen of furious hand-to-Stooge combat." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 17, 2012
4/5	85%	The Devil Probably (Le diable probablement) (1977)	" Hold on to something, Bresson implies, or you may fall in love with boredom itself. See it for the mood." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 17, 2012
5/5	95%	Marley (2012)	" The tunes, flooding every frame, remain perfect." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 17, 2012
1/5	38%	Detention (2012)	" The whole thing comes off like 200 commercials smashed together, selling you your own obsolescence." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 10, 2012
4/5	38%	Lockout (Unrated) (2012)	" Lockout is the kind of manly nonsense no one wants to make anymore." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 10, 2012
4/5	92%	The Cabin in the Woods (2012)	" It works thrillingly for audiences, especially the pointy-headed kind who have been trained to predict the outcomes of every week's slasher." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 10, 2012
	76%	My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)	" Second City alum Nia Vardalos stars in this ethnic comedy, which she also wrote -- an ambitious way to break into a leading role; too bad the results are insubstantial." — Chicago Reader Posted Apr 4, 2012
3/5	70%	The Hunter (2012)	" You watch Dafoe's intelligent hands skillfully setting traps, building fires and squeezing triggers, and wonder if an entire movie might be made of such manly components." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 3, 2012

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