Michael Phillips

Michael Phillips

Agrees with the Tomatometer 78% of the time.

Publications:
At the Movies , Baltimore Sun , Chicago Tribune , Metromix.com
Total Reviews:
1512

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 1512
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Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
2/4 46% Parkland (2013) " The minidramas on display, in the hospital or in the anguish of Zapruder's accidental chronicling of a horror, dart this way and that, inconclusively." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Oct 3, 2013
3.5/4 98% Gravity (2013) " It's a relief to see an unconventional big-budget studio movie that doesn't hew to the same old pounding action beats, or person-to-person physical violence." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Oct 3, 2013
3/4 95% Enough Said (2013) " Despite the movie's limitations, it's very satisfying to watch Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini enjoy each other's company on screen, as characters, because it's satisfying to watch them enjoy each other's company as performers." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Sep 26, 2013
3/4 59% Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013) " Better in every respect than the original "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs."" — Chicago Tribune
Posted Sep 26, 2013
2.5/4 88% Rush (2013) " "Rush," while never dull, rarely feels dramatically alive; it hits its marks dutifully and darts onward." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Sep 26, 2013
3/4 83% Don Jon (2013) " It's a dark comedy about matters of the heart, and how far some people go to take their minds off such matters." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Sep 26, 2013
2.5/4 71% C.O.G. (2013) " Modest and good-looking, the film starts as dark comedy and ends in pathos. Director Alvarez makes the Oregon scenery a character unto itself." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Sep 20, 2013
1.5/4 34% Salinger (2013) " A good documentary can lead you to a place of not knowing what to believe about a subject. A bad documentary tells you what to believe, and why, but in ways provoking disbelief in the movie's tactics." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Sep 20, 2013
3/4 98% Wadjda (2013) " "Wadjda" works quietly and well in its story of a young protagonist questioning the restrictive status quo." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Sep 19, 2013
3/4 80% Prisoners (2013) " Throughout this beautifully made, slightly specious exercise in Old Testament revenge, the character-study aspects of "Prisoners" coexist intriguingly with the grisly-inhumanity components." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Sep 19, 2013
3/4 53% The Muslims Are Coming (2013) " Much of the stand-up material caught on camera has a ring of familiarity and settles for rehashing ethnic and religious stereotypes in new ways. But the best of it provides a perspective, and a punch, transcending the same old punch lines." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Sep 19, 2013
2.5/4 35% Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) " Wan is getting better and better at figuring out what to do with the camera, and maneuvering actors within a shot for maximum suspense, while letting his design collaborators do the rest." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Sep 12, 2013
3/4 81% Una noche (One Night) (2013) " Mulloy's camera is fully alive to the geographical possibilities of her location, hustling after the hustlers, pausing for a shot of a caged bird or a nightclub singer. It's quite a stew." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Sep 12, 2013
3/4 83% The Patience Stone (2013) " It's a little on-the-nose. But "The Patience Stone" has Farahani, in nearly every shot, and in its meticulously paced way her movie-long confessional is something to see." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Sep 5, 2013
2.5/4 59% Afternoon Delight (2013) " It's an up-and-down movie, honest one minute and a fraud the next, but you stick with it mainly because of Hahn." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Sep 5, 2013
3/4 60% Riddick (2013) " This is not one of those Johnny-come-lately sequels preoccupied with getting a new audience up to speed on where the story was. It's about living in the moment, in the now, and killing in the now." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Sep 5, 2013
3/4 81% Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013) " It is not a large film. But Lowery may well be a large talent, and he sure knows how to cast the right actors." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 29, 2013
1.5/4 3% Getaway (2013) " So mechanical and derivative, not even the abducted-spouse routine can stoke the audience's rooting interests." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 29, 2013
3/4 46% Closed Circuit (2013) " Directed unfussily and well by John Crowley, "Closed Circuit" has enough on the ball in terms of atmosphere and crafty performances to take your mind off the gaps in logic." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 28, 2013
3.5/4 89% The World's End (2013) " The movie is madly, wonderfully at odds with itself." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 22, 2013
2/4 80% Drinking Buddies (2013) " "Drinking Buddies" has a cleaner structure than Swanberg's earlier wanderings, but after several projects I still don't know what compels him as a filmmaker ..." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 22, 2013
3.5/4 91% In a World... (2013) " Bell's debut feature is pretty terrific." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 15, 2013
2/5 31% Austenland (2013) " Feels tentative - all too attuned to the blandly easygoing protagonist." — Los Angeles Times
Posted Aug 15, 2013
2.5/4 73% Lee Daniels' The Butler (2013) " Like America itself, the movie's a stimulating tangle." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 15, 2013
3.5/4 84% Prince Avalanche (2013) " It's an actors' showcase. But Green films it with real feeling and an eye for parts of the Lone Star State that, as we can see, are no longer." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 15, 2013
1.5/4 30% Kick-Ass 2 (2013) " Honestly, this movie is rank." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 15, 2013
2/4 26% Jobs (2013) " Kutcher is everything except interesting." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 15, 2013
2/4 27% Planes (2013) " "Cars," with planes. And some cars. And a truck or two." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 8, 2013
2.5/4 54% Lovelace (2013) " The re-creations of the era are artful, and the acting's strong. Seyfried and Sarsgaard have a lot to play, and attack the material fiercely and honestly." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 8, 2013
3/4 91% The Spectacular Now (2013) " Woodley is genuinely wonderful in it. And Teller's right behind her." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 8, 2013
3/4 68% Elysium (2013) " Damon has an awfully good nose for material; even when "Elysium" grows allegorically simplistic or familiar, the script avoids pounding cliche, and Blomkamp and his design and effects teams give us a plausibly harsh idea of things to come." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 8, 2013
1.5/4 47% We're The Millers (2013) " The crux of the humor depends on the Sudeikis and Aniston characters bickering in a way that spells l-o-v-e, but the screenplay spells it a-g-g-r-a-v-a-t-i-o-n instead." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 6, 2013
2.5/4 91% Blue Jasmine (2013) " Plenty of fine actresses have delighted in Allen's snappish comic rhythms, which the writer never really loses, even in drama. Or in drama borrowed from Tennessee Williams." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 1, 2013
2.5/4 63% 2 Guns (2013) " He has talent, this director: "2 Guns" isn't necessarily my thing (the jokey sadism is a drag), but Kormakur lays out an action sequence with a swiftness and a coherence missing from many other pictures." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Aug 1, 2013
3.5/4 92% This Is Martin Bonner (2013) " This Is Martin Bonner explores what it means to be a good person at a crossroads, and whom you might find there." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 31, 2013
3/4 69% The Wolverine (2013) " "The Wolverine" won't change anybody's mind about the character, or about what Jackman can do with it. It's simply a more focused scenario than usual, full of violence done up with a little more coherence and visceral impact than usual." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 25, 2013
3/4 98% Blackfish (2013) " The film may be depressing. But even with a terrible, watery musical score, it's also good." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 25, 2013
2.5/4 52% The To Do List (2013) " This is a welcome female-centric variation on a familiar theme, not the first to deal with a teenage girl's de-virginization project, but certainly a minority report in a field crowded with boys trying to Get Some ..." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 25, 2013
4/4 94% Fruitvale Station (2013) " Coogler could've settled for an enraging, full-throttle melodrama, designed to boil your blood from beginning to end. But "Fruitvale Station" is better, more heartbreaking, than that." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 18, 2013
2/4 42% Red 2 (2013) " The movie's adequate. That's not much." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 18, 2013
0/4 40% Only God Forgives (2013) " This is the worst, least, dumbest picture made by people of talent this year ..." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 18, 2013
3.5/4 87% The Conjuring (2013) " An "Amityville Horror" for a new century (and a far better movie than that 1979 hit), yet firmly rooted, without being slavish or self-conscious, in the visual language of 1970s filmmaking." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 16, 2013
4/4 99% 20 Feet From Stardom (2013) " Just about everything in this movie is right. And anybody who gives a rip about unsung heroines of popular music and giving credit when credit's overdue had better come up with a good excuse not to see it." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 11, 2013
3/4 72% Pacific Rim (2013) " It's closer to the hammering "Transformers" aesthetic than expected. Yet the weirdness around the edges saves it from impersonality." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 10, 2013
2.5/4 75% Despicable Me 2 (2013) " Steve Carell's Slavic inflections as Gru do the trick, as before. Wiig's clever hesitations and comic timing help save the day." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 2, 2013
1/4 31% The Lone Ranger (2013) " How/why/wherefore did it turn out this way? The evidence suggests a combination of hubris, errant revisionism, a misguided and perverse degree of violence, and a script that never worked in the first place." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 2, 2013
3/4 87% 100 Bloody Acres (2013) " It sounds appalling, but "100 Bloody Acres" has a spring in its step." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 2, 2013
3/4 81% André Gregory: Before and After Dinner (2013) " A fond documentary made by Gregory's wife, Cindy Kleine." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Jul 2, 2013
3/4 65% The Heat (2013) " With so few women afforded the opportunity to steer the course of a movie - any movie, on screen or off - even a formulaic vehicle such as "The Heat" arrives as a surprise and a relief." — Chicago Tribune
Posted Jun 27, 2013
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