Marjorie Baumgarten Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Marjorie Baumgarten

Marjorie Baumgarten

Agrees with the Tomatometer 80% of the time.

Publications:: Anchorage Press , Austin Chronicle , Variety

Total Reviews:: 2556
Total QuickRatings:: 2

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
2.5/5	71%	The East (2013)	" The images are sharp even when the film's ideas are not." — Austin Chronicle Posted Jun 14, 2013
3/5	85%	This Is the End (2013)	" Even with this film's comedy strategy being the "let 'em all fly and see what sticks" approach, it's amazing how adhesive so much of this is." — Austin Chronicle Posted Jun 13, 2013
2/5	50%	Now You See Me (2013)	" Although Now You See Me lures us with its razzle-dazzle, the film really has little up its sleeve." — Austin Chronicle Posted Jun 7, 2013
3.5/5	96%	Stories We Tell (2013)	" As with her other films, when Sarah Polley takes it upon herself to tell us a story, you can bet it's a tale well-told and one that you'll want to hear." — Austin Chronicle Posted Jun 7, 2013
2.5/5	38%	The Purge (2013)	" After establishing this interesting premise, writer/director James DeMonaco only scratches the surface of its implications before devolving into a creepy roundelay of murders and deaths averted." — Austin Chronicle Posted Jun 6, 2013
3.5/5	75%	Love Is All You Need (2013)	" There are smiles and laughter to be found in Love Is All You Need, but they're not the gossamer sort that evaporate in the moonlight." — Austin Chronicle Posted May 31, 2013
4.5/5	98%	Before Midnight (2013)	" Before Midnight surpasses the two previous films in this trilogy in terms of its intelligence, narrative design, and vivacity. It's a grand accomplishment, and I feel greedy about wanting to see this film series continue." — Austin Chronicle Posted May 23, 2013
3/5	80%	Pieta (2013)	" The performances of these two leads are compelling and the Cheonggyecheon area can almost be seen as another character in Kim's morality tale." — Austin Chronicle Posted May 17, 2013
2.5/5	76%	Renoir (2013)	" Renoir is great at capturing some of the details of daily life within this unique household and conveying an Impressionist atmosphere on film, but as far as telling us a story, the film is a washout." — Austin Chronicle Posted May 10, 2013
3.5/5	100%	Trash Dance (2013)	" In addition to being fascinating to observe the process over time, Garrison's focus is a smart move since his midrange camerawork doesn't fully capture the magnitude and magnificence of the show." — Austin Chronicle Posted May 3, 2013
3/5	56%	The Company You Keep (2013)	" This chase film combines elements of the thriller and newspaper procedural to create a contemporary saga about political idealism, stone-cold realities, and the repercussions of past deeds on future innocents." — Austin Chronicle Posted Apr 26, 2013
3/5	88%	Upstream Color (2013)	" Meticulous and abstruse, Shane Carruth's Upstream Color is an idiosyncratic film that invites explication but defies total understanding." — Austin Chronicle Posted Apr 19, 2013
1.5/5	65%	Starbuck (2013)	" What begins as a cute idea grows annoyingly sentimental before it is through." — Austin Chronicle Posted Apr 19, 2013
2.5/5	42%	To The Wonder (2013)	" To the Wonder will be required viewing for all students of Malick -- and by that I mean every cinephile -- but it's not likely to escort viewers into states of transcendence." — Austin Chronicle Posted Apr 12, 2013
3/5	93%	The Sapphires (2013)	" Exuberant but fairly formulaic." — Austin Chronicle Posted Apr 12, 2013
2.5/5	53%	The Girl (2013)	" A sentimental shift in the last reel of the film seems artificially designed to wrap up the story and demonstrate that a life lesson has been learned. It's when it's at its most contemplative that The Girl is at its best." — Austin Chronicle Posted Apr 5, 2013
1/5	16%	Temptation (2013)	" Perry has now built a media empire from spinning his own wheels." — Austin Chronicle Posted Apr 5, 2013
3/5	62%	Evil Dead (2013)	" Evil Dead, however, accomplishes what it sets out to do: Scare viewers silly and uphold a tradition." — Austin Chronicle Posted Apr 4, 2013
3/5	92%	No (2013)	" It's clear that the language of advertising has become universal, and that political commodities can be sold like soap. But toppling a dictatorship? Now there's a story." — Austin Chronicle Posted Mar 29, 2013
2/5	39%	The ABCs of Death (2013)	" A good concept yields scattershot results in this horror-film anthology." — Austin Chronicle Posted Mar 22, 2013
3/5	56%	Come Out And Play (2013)	" Come Out and Play is a good example of how to eke out film thrills with a minimum of elements. Makinov should prove to be a filmmaker to watch." — Austin Chronicle Posted Mar 22, 2013
3.5/5	65%	Spring Breakers (2013)	" In turns appealing and horrifying, Spring Breakers is Korine's most cogent take yet on society's outsiders." — Austin Chronicle Posted Mar 21, 2013
2.5/5	38%	Admission (2013)	" Never finding its right tone, Admission uncomfortably founders between the story's comic and dramatic aspects and leaves behind a lumpy residue that tars its likable leads, Tina Fey and Paul Rudd." — Austin Chronicle Posted Mar 21, 2013
3/5	47%	Olympus Has Fallen (2013)	" [Butler] performs capably as the film's tarnished hero in a role that can't help but echo Clint Eastwood's disgraced Secret Service agent in In the Line of Fire." — Austin Chronicle Posted Mar 21, 2013
2.5/5	100%	Masquerade (2012)	" Competently directed, the real pleasure in this high-grossing South Korean film lies in its performances, which lighten the regal solemnity with comic warmth." — Austin Chronicle Posted Mar 15, 2013
2.5/5	30%	Reincarnated (2013)	" More honest than you might expect a promotional piece such as this to be, but less self-investigative than you might like, you come away thinking there are much greater depths for Snoop Lion to plumb." — Austin Chronicle Posted Mar 15, 2013
3/5	37%	The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)	" This comedy is, ultimately, a lighthearted distraction, but "incredible" it is not." — Austin Chronicle Posted Mar 13, 2013
3/5	93%	Lore (2013)	" Although there are moments that push the story a bit beyond credulity, Shortland has created something remarkable by forcing us to find within ourselves sympathy for this would-be Aryan princess." — Austin Chronicle Posted Mar 8, 2013
3/5	59%	Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)	" This Disney prequel to MGM and Warner Bros.' enduring 1939 masterwork charts its own course, and, for the most part, is the better for it." — Austin Chronicle Posted Mar 7, 2013
1/5	17%	The Last Exorcism Part II (2013)	" So many sequences are structured to build to a little jolt, that the pattern becomes predictable and tired. Especially since the first film set a high standard for originality, this sequel, which is helmed by a different creative team, disappoints." — Austin Chronicle Posted Mar 6, 2013
3/5	36%	Dark Skies (2013)	" Effectively unsettling, Dark Skies is a science-fiction thriller that plays like an episode of The Twilight Zone crossed with Poltergeist." — Austin Chronicle Posted Mar 1, 2013
3/5	87%	Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2013)	" It's not that Happy People is uninteresting... It's just that the one sensibility of which we were previously aware -- that of Herzog's -- is indiscernible, as if frozen beneath all this movie's ice." — Austin Chronicle Posted Feb 28, 2013
3/5	89%	A Place at the Table (2013)	" Tthe strongest point made by the film is that hunger is a problem endemic to our social system, and it's a problem that will not be served up in a soup line, one meal at a time." — Austin Chronicle Posted Feb 28, 2013
3/5	70%	Bless Me, Ultima (2013)	" Although Bless Me, Ultima can feel a bit overstuffed, it's an honest and naturalistic kids' story about growing up Mexican-American." — Austin Chronicle Posted Feb 22, 2013
3/5	70%	Bless Me, Ultima (2013)	" The film won't disappoint fans of the book, although they may regret some of the adaptation's necessary condensation and/or elimination of narrative themes and events." — Orlando Weekly Posted Feb 19, 2013
3/5	96%	Chasing Ice (2012)	" If seeing equals believing, then this film's documentation ought to sway the world. But daredevil heroes and sexy screen goddesses probably help the medicine go down." — Austin Chronicle Posted Feb 15, 2013
3/5	45%	Beautiful Creatures (2013)	" For all its magical nonsense and overstuffed lore, Beautiful Creatures is also a simple story about kids who just want to be normal teenagers in love." — Austin Chronicle Posted Feb 14, 2013
3.5/5	84%	Side Effects (2013)	" The twists are so game-changing that they make it difficult to discuss with people who have yet to see it." — Austin Chronicle Posted Feb 8, 2013
3.5/5	——	Fourplay ()	" Often funny, sometimes poignant, always unconventional, the films all differ in tone, mood, and milieu." — Austin Chronicle Posted Feb 7, 2013
4/5	94%	Amour (2012)	" Death is part of love's bargain, and Haneke lays this fact bare." — Austin Chronicle Posted Jan 25, 2013
3.5/5	82%	De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone) (2012)	" Though Stéphanie's legs are removed from sight through the wonders of digital film effects, the character will remain in your consciousness like a phantom limb." — Austin Chronicle Posted Jan 18, 2013
2/5	19%	Texas Chainsaw (2013)	" This new film survives on its formulaic horror mechanics and the powerful image of a chain saw wielded in 3-D." — Austin Chronicle Posted Jan 11, 2013
3/5	88%	Life of Pi (2012)	" When adrift with Pi and the tiger on the open sea, the film is at its most wondrous: a ravishing spectacle that treads judiciously on the infinite line between what's possible and impossible." — Austin Chronicle Posted Jan 8, 2013
3.5/5	88%	Django Unchained (2012)	" Django Unchained offers an embarrassment of riches (and actors in tiny cameos)." — Austin Chronicle Posted Jan 4, 2013
2/5	69%	Not Fade Away (2012)	" It turns out that even though you can take the boy out of episodic TV, you still can't take him out of New Jersey." — Austin Chronicle Posted Jan 4, 2013
3/5	51%	Promised Land (2013)	" Promised Land doesn't offer great drama, nor does it offer the great debate on fracking that some viewers might have been hoping for. Yet, the film has lots of small moments that make it a worthy effort." — Austin Chronicle Posted Jan 4, 2013
2/5	38%	Hyde Park on Hudson (2012)	" When Murray's around, he's the only hot dog in the room." — Austin Chronicle Posted Dec 21, 2012
2.5/5	65%	The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)	" Rather than an epic continuation of Jackson's Middle-earth obsession, the film seems more like the work of a man driving around a multilevel parking garage without being able to find the exit." — Austin Chronicle Posted Dec 13, 2012
2.5/5	63%	Hitchcock (2012)	" The lovelorn Hitchcock of this film's fantasies would be better off left on the cutting-room floor." — Austin Chronicle Posted Dec 7, 2012

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