Michael Atkinson Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Michael Atkinson

Michael Atkinson

Agrees with the Tomatometer 72% of the time.

Publications:: Boston Phoenix , Chicago Reader , City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul , L.A. Weekly , Movieline , Mr. Showbiz , Village Voice

Total Reviews:: 856

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 856

Previous | Next

Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
	——	Fragments of Kubelka (2013)	" Martina Kudlacek's portrait pretty much lets Kubelka, now a merry, avuncular septuagenarian, run away with the show ..." — Village Voice Posted May 2, 2013
4/5	——	Memories Look at Me (2013)	" Sweet and fiercely humane, Song's layered family portrait is decidedly Buddhist: silent when it needs to be and steadfast about approaching inevitable tragedy with care and patience." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 30, 2013
3/5	71%	The Source Family (2013)	" Baker's cult was both progressive and decadent, and its story makes for a juicy saga-even if directors Maria Demopoulos and Jodi While reduce the collective's rise and fall to a mere talking-heads testimonial." — Time Out New York Posted Apr 30, 2013
	60%	The Happy House (2013)	" The only surprises in D.W. Young's tiny low-budget debut are how mildly he satirizes this thinnest of genres and how sincerely he treats his clichéd characters." — Village Voice Posted Apr 30, 2013
	90%	Voyage in Italy (1992)	" Voyage to Italy is close to watching actual strangers suffer loneliness despite being together. It can leave an aching bruise, but only if you're paying attention." — Village Voice Posted Apr 30, 2013
	62%	Paradise: Love (2013)	" It might be the most lonesome film about a tropical vacation we've seen, and the greatest film ever made about the weird socioeconomics of tourism." — Village Voice Posted Apr 23, 2013
	55%	The Company You Keep (2013)	" Given the finger-wagging suggestion of its title, it's actually no surprise to find that The Company You Keep turns out to be politically chicken-hearted ..." — Village Voice Posted Apr 3, 2013
3/5	73%	Violeta Went to Heaven (2013)	" A rare Chilean film that doesn't mention either the Allende or Pinochet regimes, Violeta Went to Heaven is a love letter to a lost 20th-century goddess. It's hard to resist her." — Time Out New York Posted Mar 26, 2013
2/5	70%	Somebody Up There Likes Me (2013)	" The time-killing universe Byington has created makes sure we never forget how absurd he thinks the whole movie is. Fun for him, perhaps." — Time Out New York Posted Mar 26, 2013
	91%	Gimme The Loot (2013)	" Leon's grungy résumé indie is a modest deal, with a sweet, mumblecore-style ending, but it glows with unmistakable star power." — Village Voice Posted Mar 19, 2013
	79%	Reality (2013)	" Garrone is in complete control of his thematic plutonium." — Village Voice Posted Mar 12, 2013
3/4	——	Far From Afghanistan ()	" It remains something of a definitive statement on a runaway global disaster." — Boston Phoenix Posted Mar 7, 2013
3/5	63%	The Monk (2013)	" There's always room for another adaptation of Matthew Lewis's 1795 scandal-igniting ur-Gothic novel, and this lavish French turn positively seethes with the strain of Christian sex-dread and debauchery." — Time Out New York Posted Mar 5, 2013
	96%	L'Argent (1983)	" A harrowing scour of ideological cinema." — Village Voice Posted Mar 5, 2013
	100%	Kurutta Kajitsu (crazed Fruit) (1956)	" The deep hurt and despair of the climactic passage, set against a milieu of unrelenting leisure, sun, and affluence, is still stunning." — Village Voice Posted Mar 5, 2013
	56%	The End of Love (2013)	" It's the kind of indie in which shrugging naturalism means nobody has a distinctive personality or energy, and the claustrophobic sense of young Industry workers collarbone-deep into their own navels is hard to shake." — Village Voice Posted Feb 26, 2013
	88%	Hava Nagila: The Movie (2013)	" Patronizing from toe to chin, the film opts continually for self-congratulation and cheesy aphorism, and could've-should've been comfortable slotted into a half hour of airtime on TJC." — Village Voice Posted Feb 26, 2013
3/5	25%	Phantom (2013)	" As far as such potboilers go, Phantom is literate, tense and, thankfully, modest." — Time Out New York Posted Feb 26, 2013
3/5	100%	Pavilion (2013)	" A lovely sonatina of a movie, brief and aching." — Time Out New York Posted Feb 26, 2013
2/5	0%	The Condemned (2013)	" Despite a lavish dose of gothic style (and the occasional inspired flourish, as when surveillance monitors are overcome with home movies of dead children), The Condemned's trek toward absolution is pretty familiar." — Time Out New York Posted Feb 26, 2013
	80%	Hangmen Also Die! (1943)	" The two-and-a-quarter-hour film has the iconic thrust of a silent; the pro-sacrifice resistance cant has an oddly jihadist tenor today." — Village Voice Posted Feb 25, 2013
2/5	46%	Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary (2013)	" More hagiography than history." — Time Out New York Posted Jan 29, 2013
3/5	87%	Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2013)	" [It's] all interesting and quite Nanook-ish, and the summertime mosquito assault can haunt your dreams. But don't expect the payloads of cosmic irony and mystery Herzog has had occasion to find wherever he goes." — Time Out New York Posted Jan 23, 2013
3/4	93%	Nothing But a Man (1963)	" Roemer had little more than his wits and good intentions to work with, and that DIY attitude makes the movie reverberate like a blues chord." — Boston Phoenix Posted Jan 8, 2013
	98%	56 Up (2013)	" As pop anthropology, the series is unchallenged." — Village Voice Posted Jan 2, 2013
	40%	Yelling to the Sky (2012)	" Little more than a résumé film for all involved, it certainly feels more Park City than Bushwick." — Village Voice Posted Dec 11, 2012
	42%	Heleno (2012)	" You're stuck daydreaming about a far, far better movie." — Village Voice Posted Dec 4, 2012
	67%	Otelo Burning (2012)	" This South African ditty is even framed as a scrapbook, mushily remembering childhood traumas and exaltations." — Village Voice Posted Nov 27, 2012
	81%	The Tales of Hoffmann (1951)	" As intensely expressionistic as any film since Caligari, and at the same time a veritable nova of springtime élan, the movie inhabits a unique puppet-theater universe, and could seduce a eunuch." — Village Voice Posted Nov 26, 2012
	59%	La Rafle (2012)	" Treading on a shameful piece of French history, Bosch bizarrely intercuts scenes of Hitler, Himmler, and Hess working out the logistics of the exportations, in vignettes that smack of Inglourious Basterds farce ..." — Village Voice Posted Nov 13, 2012
	33%	Buffalo Girls (2012)	" Buffalo Girls hews close to the experience at hand, which sometimes feels a little too much like a normal leading-up-to-the-big-game Undefeated-style sports doc." — Village Voice Posted Nov 13, 2012
	47%	The First Time (2012)	" Something of a wonder, a palm-size ball of banter and irony and earnestness that never stops rolling and almost never misses the sweet spots." — Village Voice Posted Oct 16, 2012
	68%	Wuthering Heights (2012)	" Undoubtedly, its coup de grâce has everything to do with race." — Village Voice Posted Oct 2, 2012
	——	The Double Steps (2012)	" Sweet stuff." — Village Voice Posted Oct 1, 2012
	65%	Solomon Kane (2012)	" It is, for a contemporary CGI-fraught fantasy-slash-living-video-game, not at all bad, dotted with moments of Bosch and steady on its storytelling feet." — Village Voice Posted Sep 25, 2012
	50%	The Manzanar Fishing Club (2012)	" The historical road less traveled-shot in re-enactments that are obviously familiar with the terrain-is beguiling enough." — Village Voice Posted Sep 11, 2012
	10%	Branded (2012)	" There's almost a Seussian vibe in this heap, but no hint that it's intentional." — Village Voice Posted Sep 11, 2012
	66%	For Ellen (2012)	" The film does find a patient balance between its obvious sincerity and the scenario's lack of depth and surprise." — Village Voice Posted Sep 4, 2012
	53%	Little Birds (2012)	" The dialogue is as stock as the characters, and James's visual palette never surpasses the adequate." — Village Voice Posted Aug 28, 2012
	20%	Brother, Can You Spare a Dollar (2012)	" A vague Occupy-ish indictment of the 1 percent and the collapse of community as a cultural foundation." — Village Voice Posted Aug 14, 2012
	100%	Almayer's Folly (2012)	" One of the year's most hypnotic and fascinating films ..." — Village Voice Posted Aug 7, 2012
	56%	The Bourne Legacy (2012)	" The Bourne films have more than just overstayed their welcome and outlasted the Ludlum books -- they've been Van Halenized, with an abrupt change of frontman and a resulting dip in personality." — Village Voice Posted Aug 7, 2012
	67%	Dreams of a Life (2012)	" Left with barely any there there, Morley compensates with long reenactments starring look-alike Zawe Ashton that are never quite convincing but instead suck more air out of the haunting vacuum left behind in Vincent's wake." — Village Voice Posted Jul 31, 2012
	79%	Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2012)	" It may well be Miike's best film, a patient, ominous piece of epic storytelling that conscientiously rips the scabs off the honorable samurai mythology." — Village Voice Posted Jul 17, 2012
	——	Lung Neaw Visits His Neighbours (2012)	" This epic-length Thai documentary takes the observational jungle stillness so hypnotic in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's work and doubles the bet." — Village Voice Posted Jul 10, 2012
	95%	The Imposter (2012)	" The story still harbors queasy mysteries at its center, as true-crime TV pro Layton micro-analyzes every step of the case, via interviews with the Texans, Bourdin, and the FBI." — Village Voice Posted Jul 10, 2012
	——	Lo roim alaich (Invisible) ()	" Earnest and blessed with immediate visual textures, Aviad's film is nevertheless much more a matter of feelings -- shared or suppressed and then shared -- than of story." — Village Voice Posted Jul 3, 2012
	80%	China Heavyweight (2012)	" Chang falls into a repetitive training-advice-meal scene structure that's less than revelatory, and the bouts are so blurrily filmed and so leavened with reaction shots that you can't really see what's going down." — Village Voice Posted Jul 3, 2012
	76%	The Do-Deca-Pentathlon (2012)	" The cast begins in that mumblecore mode of quietly overreacting to everything, but once the testosterone starts oozing, the characters jump out into four substantial dimensions." — Village Voice Posted Jul 3, 2012

Showing 1 - 50 of 856

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)