Linda Barnard Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Linda Barnard

Linda Barnard

Agrees with the Tomatometer 79% of the time.

Biography:: Toronto Star movie critic.
Publications:: Toronto Star

Total Reviews:: 359

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 359

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
3/4	76%	Kon Tiki (2013)	" Part history lesson, part classic adventure tale and often stunning to watch." — Toronto Star Posted May 2, 2013
1/4	8%	The Big Wedding (2013)	" The Big Wedding aims low and achieves every aspiration." — Toronto Star Posted Apr 26, 2013
3/4	54%	The Company You Keep (2013)	" A drama that's more than a look at what happened to a generation of socially aware hippies whose new drug of choice is likely Lipitor." — Toronto Star Posted Apr 25, 2013
2.5/4	46%	Pain & Gain (2013)	" Pain & Gain brings fun to the multiplex with its story of knucklehead bodybuilders with pumped-up dreams and 98-pound weakling brains." — Toronto Star Posted Apr 25, 2013
2/4	70%	Wrong (2013)	" Dupieux makes the viewer work for it with Wrong. And it's not always worth the effort ..." — Toronto Star Posted Apr 18, 2013
3/4	——	Stevie Nicks: In Your Dreams (2013)	" True fans will find their gold dust woman as the doc unspools, witnessing the creative machinery behind her songwriting process, as Nicks makes the 2011 album of the same name in her California home studio." — Toronto Star Posted Apr 15, 2013
3/4	81%	Renoir (2013)	" As sensually beautiful as the work of its subject matter, French filmmaker Gilles Bourdos's dreamy biography Renoir is more a series of tableaux than a narrative film." — Toronto Star Posted Apr 11, 2013
2/4	——	Revolution ()	" A well-meaning yet disjointed effort that often seems more like a crusader's travelogue than documentary." — Toronto Star Posted Apr 11, 2013
2.5/4	93%	The Sapphires (2013)	" Sapphires is hardly a cinematic diamond mine. But this Commitments-style mashup of music and melodrama manages to entertain without demanding too much of its audience." — Toronto Star Posted Apr 4, 2013
3/4	89%	A Place at the Table (2013)	" A shocking indictment of how people are starving in the land of plenty ..." — Toronto Star Posted Apr 4, 2013
2/4	——	Hit 'n Strum ()	" The story often subs ploys for sympathy in place of inspiration." — Toronto Star Posted Apr 4, 2013
2.5/4	——	Mad Ship ()	" Director David Mortin loses us with this beautifully shot, if relentlessly depressing, story." — Toronto Star Posted Mar 28, 2013
3/4	98%	Brooklyn Castle (2012)	" Brooklyn Castle is inspiring stuff that grabs you by the throat and will leave you cheering - quietly of course. No shouting in a chess match." — Toronto Star Posted Mar 28, 2013
3/4	79%	Ginger & Rosa (2013)	" In all respects, this is the completely captivating Fanning's picture." — Toronto Star Posted Mar 28, 2013
3/4	88%	Yossi (2013)	" Knoller is wonderful as the emotionally cut-off, yet vulnerable Yossi, who yearns for something more from life, but feels both terror at the prospect and unworthiness to claim it." — Toronto Star Posted Mar 22, 2013
2/4	69%	New World (2013)	" New World tries to expand the genre with nods to The Godfather but can't escape the over-the-top acting, expansive violence and overdone story typical of Seoul-made crime dramas." — Toronto Star Posted Mar 22, 2013
2.5/4	43%	Admission (2013)	" When Admission stumbles, which it does often, aiming low for easy laughs at the price of missed opportunities to go deeper, the picture lays there uninspired, like a slice of boiled ham." — Toronto Star Posted Mar 21, 2013
3/4	——	Cloudburst (2013)	" An affectionate twist on a classic tale of lovers on the lam, sprinkled with renegade hints of Thelma & Louise, Cloudburst is a life- and heart-affirming journey." — Toronto Star Posted Mar 7, 2013
1/4	26%	21 And Over (2013)	" Everything is done to excess with the needle on the gross-out meter buried in the red." — Toronto Star Posted Mar 1, 2013
3/4	52%	Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)	" Although it often feels there's more of mechanics than the muse keeping Jack the Giant Slayer going, this sprightly fairy tale reworking is full of beans, smartly written and packs plenty of fun." — Toronto Star Posted Mar 1, 2013
1.5/4	35%	Dark Skies (2013)	" Dark Skies is an alien-abduction thriller where the biggest acts of appropriation involve the lifting of plots from other - and often better - films." — Toronto Star Posted Feb 22, 2013
2.5/4	——	Shadows Of Liberty ()	" Shadows of Liberty asks consumers to look critically at what they are being told, and seek out what they are not." — Toronto Star Posted Feb 14, 2013
2/4	30%	The Berlin File (2013)	" The Berlin File benefits from gritty surroundings that add a cold war realism to this otherwise confusing tale of conflicted loyalties and secret agendas." — Toronto Star Posted Feb 14, 2013
2/4	13%	Safe Haven (2013)	" Another Nicholas Sparks-penned romantic potboiler about commitment-shy, G-rated lovers who find romance, overcoming dark secrets and unhappy pasts." — Toronto Star Posted Feb 13, 2013
2/4	65%	All In Good Time ()	" [It] has a late-entry note of poignancy that cuts through the predictable in this Bollywood bedroom farce. But it's not enough to nudge it out of the column marked "mediocre."" — Toronto Star Posted Feb 8, 2013
1.5/4	20%	Identity Thief (2013)	" [A] sloppily made exercise of rip-offs and redemption." — Toronto Star Posted Feb 8, 2013
2.5/4	——	Mavro livadi (Black Field) (2009)	— Toronto Star Posted Jan 22, 2013
2.5/4	——	The Bastard Sings The Sweetest Song ()	" Garland somehow manages to let everybody keep their dignity in her sometimes disturbing look at a Guyanese family ..." — Toronto Star Posted Jan 17, 2013
2.5/4	79%	Quartet (2013)	" Quartet is a bit shameless in its approach, but for those who enjoy a whimsical drama that includes scenery chewing from grand dames and hammy fellows, it's a welcome if often predictable treat." — Toronto Star Posted Jan 17, 2013
3/4	65%	Mama (2013)	" An elegant and edgy thriller, Mamais a ghost story laced with fairytale sensibilities, benefitting from the nightmarish, artful influence of executive producer Guillermo del Toro." — Toronto Star Posted Jan 17, 2013
1.5/4	8%	A Dark Truth (2013)	" A slog of a thriller that tries for relevance with an environmental message, A Dark Truth's biggest mystery is how so many "name" actors ended up in this torpid turkey." — Toronto Star Posted Jan 10, 2013
3/4	79%	Ruby Sparks (2012)	" Sure it's been done before -- man brings ideal woman to life -- but not quite like Ruby Sparks. And that sets this film up to be a smart and romantic low-key comedy that goes beyond expectations." — Toronto Star Posted Jan 8, 2013
2.5/4	69%	Not Fade Away (2012)	" Chase takes a basement view of the birth of America's '60s rock revolution with his big-screen debut Not Fade Away." — Toronto Star Posted Dec 27, 2012
3/4	93%	Barbara (2012)	" Hoss is mesmerizing as a woman who holds it all together to the point of losing herself. " — Toronto Star Posted Dec 27, 2012
1/4	18%	Parental Guidance (2012)	" Parental Guidance should be rated X - suitable for no one." — Toronto Star Posted Dec 24, 2012
3/4	94%	The Central Park Five (2012)	" Expect your blood pressure to rise during The Central Park Five." — Toronto Star Posted Dec 24, 2012
3/4	81%	The Impossible (2012)	" For all the visually impactful moments that all but put an audience directly into the horror of the Boxing Day tsunami in The Impossible, the true test of this drama comes in the emotion conveyed in its simplest moments." — Toronto Star Posted Dec 20, 2012
3/4	47%	Cirque Du Soleil: Worlds Away 3D (2012)	" It serves as a greatest-hits reel of the staggeringly gorgeous and superbly creative acts of the Canadian-born entertainment phenomenon cherry picked from seven Cirque productions." — Toronto Star Posted Dec 20, 2012
4/4	82%	Rust and Bone (2012)	" An unusual and unsettling love story, Rust and Bone shows once again that Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard is as close to perfect as any female has ever been onscreen." — Toronto Star Posted Dec 20, 2012
2/4	38%	The Guilt Trip (2012)	" The Guilt Trip is like getting rice pudding for dessert: it's sweet, simple and will do when you can't get anything else." — Toronto Star Posted Dec 18, 2012
3/4	93%	Meet the Fokkens (2012)	" The doc gives a rare look at the business of plying the world's oldest profession over the past 50 years in the famously tolerant city, but the directors are a bit too hands-off and the narrative wanders." — Toronto Star Posted Dec 13, 2012
2/4	68%	Step Up To The Plate (2012)	" Lacoste threatens to lose his audience several times with the deliberate pacing of his doc, which takes too long to get things to the table in most cases." — Toronto Star Posted Dec 6, 2012
2/4	33%	Deadfall (2012)	" Looks great but sacrifices much in its charge towards a final showdown that's been telegraphed from the early going." — Toronto Star Posted Dec 6, 2012
1.5/4	32%	The Oranges (2012)	" The leafy green trees evident everywhere in what purports to be New Jersey Christmas scenes aren't the only thing that feels off in the predictable domestic bedroom comedy The Oranges." — Toronto Star Posted Nov 8, 2012
2/4	51%	Pusher (2012)	" The characters that populate Pusher are surprisingly naïve and hardly the brightest of bulbs. So much for the image of the wily, street-smart criminal." — Toronto Star Posted Nov 8, 2012
3/4	95%	Chasing Ice (2012)	" Considering the gravity of the situation there is very little preaching in Chasing Ice. Facts about global warming are presented then backed up with staggering visuals. An audience is invited to accept it as proof, or not." — Toronto Star Posted Nov 8, 2012
2/4	86%	Wreck-it Ralph (2012)	" Starts out as a funny high scorer but limps into a second half as flat as those quarters we once pumped into arcade machines long ago." — Toronto Star Posted Nov 1, 2012
2.5/4	43%	Midnight's Children (2013)	" Deepa Mehta has crafted an epic, visually pleasing tale weaving politics, colourful splendour, romantic love and magic with her most ambitious film to date ..." — Toronto Star Posted Nov 1, 2012
2/4	33%	Chasing Mavericks (2012)	" The heart-pounding surfing scenes are epic but the script can barely keep its head above the waves in the dramatized biopic Chasing Mavericks." — Toronto Star Posted Oct 26, 2012

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