Michael W. Phillips, Jr. Movie Reviews & Previews

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Michael W. Phillips, Jr.

Agrees with the Tomatometer 81% of the time.

Biography:: Michael W. Phillips Jr. started reviewing films at the age of 15, when he walked into the local newspaper office and asked if they wanted a film critic. The paper closed down soon thereafter. He took a break to attend college and start graduate school in History, then he restarted his career as a film critic with a geocities site in 2000. Somewhere in there he had a short-lived professional relationship with a major movie site that he'd rather not discuss. He moved to his own URL in 2004. In 2005, he was hired as a film critic for yet another small, local paper, which ceased publication shortly thereafter. He's reasonably sure he had nothing to do with this, but after closing down two newspapers, he's not positive anymore. He pays the bills by editing print ads for fast food retailers, as well as programming and running the projector at a film revival house. He's also a filmmaker.
Publications:: Goatdog's Movies , Movie-Vault.com
Critics' Group:: Online Film Critics Society

Total Reviews:: 1104
Total QuickRatings:: 51

Location:: Chicago, IL

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Showing 1 - 50 of 1104

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
2/5	29%	The Wicker Tree (2012)	— Upcomingdiscs.Com Posted Apr 25, 2012
4.5/5	——	Ultimate Guitar - Tremelo Bar Techniques (2009)	— Upcomingdiscs.Com Posted Apr 18, 2012
3.5/5	——	Stryker's War (Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except) (1985)	— Upcomingdiscs.Com Posted Apr 11, 2012
3/5	59%	Wizards (1977)	— Upcomingdiscs.Com Posted Mar 28, 2012
2.5/5	14%	Krippendorf's Tribe (1998)	— Upcomingdiscs.Com Posted Mar 7, 2012
3.5/5	——	Intruder (1989)	— Upcomingdiscs.Com Posted Feb 7, 2012
3/5	100%	One Foot in Heaven (1941)	" It's worth watching for March's performance -- although we don't get to hear him preach enough -- and for his take-down of a wealthy family determined to run his church for him." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Feb 3, 2012
2/5	57%	Nevada Smith (1966)	" Not a worthless film, although it's impossible to take seriously." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 30, 2011
4/5	90%	Bridesmaids (2011)	" I laughed almost without pause; at several points I made horselike snorting sounds that hurt the insides of my nose." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 30, 2011
4.5/5	94%	The Dark Knight (2008)	" Visceral and terrifying." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 29, 2011
2/5	23%	Angels Crest (2011)	" A high-school production of a second-rate Greek tragedian. " — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 29, 2011
4/5	85%	Contagion (2011)	" A supercharged cross between an episode of CSI and a World Health Organization infographic." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 29, 2011
4/5	——	Last Pullman Car (1998)	" One of Chicago documentary group Kartemquin Films's many incisive documentaries about social injustice." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 29, 2011
2.5/5	45%	The Perfect Host (2011)	" It's a film, not a play, and it doesn't work." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 29, 2011
3/5	93%	Midnight in Paris (2011)	" Watchable, and on a certain level, it's quite enjoyable." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 29, 2011
4.5/5	75%	Stake Land (2011)	" May be the best blunt-force-trauma, tear-your-throat-out vicious vampire film since Near Dark." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 15, 2011
4.5/5	96%	13 Assassins (2011)	" Miike's sadistic fetishization of violence and suffering is nowhere in evidence." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 15, 2011
2.5/5	83%	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)	" If the best thing about a spy movie is the wallpaper, perhaps you've miscalculated." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 14, 2011
2.5/5	76%	The Debt (2011)	" Wants to ask deep philosophical questions [but] the protracted ending prevents any of these philosophical darts from sticking. " — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 5, 2011
4.5/5	91%	Point Blank (2011)	" Action cinema distilled." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Nov 20, 2011
2.5/5	52%	Four Brothers (2005)	" Feels like a nervous student's heavily footnoted thesis film." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Nov 20, 2011
2.5/5	83%	Warrior (2011)	" Suddenly Thunderdome doesn't seem like such a pipe dream anymore." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Nov 16, 2011
2.5/5	——	She Demons (1958)	" Seems to have been created by choosing randomly from a selection of 13-year-old boys' 'these are a few of my favorite things' lists." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Nov 5, 2011
4/5	——	Tomorrow Is Another Day (1951)	" Not a film noir, but you should still invest your time in locating and viewing it." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Oct 30, 2011
3/5	89%	Maniac (Sex Maniac) (1934)	" A truly wretched film that I enjoyed, partly because of and partly in spite of its excessive excrescence." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Oct 17, 2011
2.5/5	——	Along the Great Divide (1951)	" Flawed by structural problems in the script but buoyed by its A-list leading cast" — Goatdog's Movies Posted Oct 10, 2011
3.5/5	——	Dance, Fools, Dance (1931)	" A wonderful little film on its own, but it's also a handy little primer of early-1930s genre conventions." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Aug 19, 2011
3/5	——	Tugboat Annie (1933)	" An enjoyable diversion that provides Dressler with ample opportunities to flex her acting chops." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Aug 19, 2011
4/5	65%	Dementia 13 (The Haunted and the Hunted) (1963)	" A peerless horror film of the low-budget variety, a sort of how-to guide for future filmmakers on working with a limited budget." — Movie-Vault.com Posted Aug 19, 2011
3/5	——	The Phantom Planet (1961)	" It's actually quite compelling." — Goatdog's Movies Posted May 28, 2011
4/5	100%	The Lost Patrol (1934)	" A mostly successful experiment in minimalism that allows Ford to work with his traditional themes." — Goatdog's Movies Posted May 4, 2011
2.5/5	——	Sensuela (1973)	" So low-budget that it appears Brechtian, so confoundingly bad that it borders on brilliant, and so 1970s softcore that it might just be feminist." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Apr 4, 2011
3.5/5	——	Do It Again ()	" A fanboy's love letter to his favorite band, a desperate and admittedly somewhat selfish wish that they get back together and bring back some of the magic he remembers as a lifelong fan. " — Goatdog's Movies Posted Apr 4, 2011
2/5	——	Daresalam (2005)	— Goatdog's Movies Posted Apr 4, 2011
3/5	90%	The Fighter (2010)	" Chopin playing Chopsticks." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Jan 16, 2011
3.5/5	96%	True Grit (2010)	" Watching them snipe at each other was one of the undeniable pleasures of the 2010 movie season. " — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 28, 2010
3/5	82%	Night Catches Us (2010)	" Attempts to pry the lid off a painful chapter of American history that textbook writers and elected officials would rather erase or whitewash." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 26, 2010
3/5	63%	Exam (2010)	" Low-budget but handsomely mounted cross between Cube and 12 Angry Men, with some script input by mystery writer Agatha Christie and literary critic Terry Eagleton." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 19, 2010
3.5/5	90%	Red Riding: 1980 (2010)	" A huge step up from the unfollowable plot and unfathomable evil of Red Riding: 1974." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 18, 2010
4/5	41%	Death at a Funeral (2010)	" It's almost a checklist of things I don't like, but it won me over in its opening minutes and never let go. " — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 15, 2010
3/5	12%	Jonah Hex (2010)	" When it works, which it does quite often, it's one of the better comic book adaptations of recent years." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 14, 2010
4.5/5	98%	Marwencol (2010)	" A painfully intimate, mysterious, joyous film." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 11, 2010
5/5	88%	White Material (2010)	" Possesses a defiant, exhilarating life, a testament to its peerless crafts(wo)manship and its uniqueness." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 7, 2010
2.5/5	68%	Conviction (2010)	" I charge director Tony Goldwyn and screenwriter Pamela Gray with ineffective assistance of counsel." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 5, 2010
4/5	86%	Unstoppable (2010)	" The most fun I've had at the movies all year." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Dec 4, 2010
3/5	66%	The American (2010)	" There's a lot to value, even if it drinks a little too deeply from the well of stock Euro-assassin-movie characters and situations." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Nov 30, 2010
2.5/5	87%	Black Swan (2010)	" Shackled by sports-movie clichés, a reductive view of how creativity works, and, most importantly, Natalie Portman's limitations as an actress." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Nov 29, 2010
2.5/5	58%	It's Kind of a Funny Story (2010)	" Has a genuine understanding of the protagonist, but ends up betraying him. " — Goatdog's Movies Posted Nov 28, 2010
2.5/5	72%	Monsters (2010)	" A somewhat confused spawn of Cloverfield and District 9, with less of an effects budget and less of a coherent self-concept than either of its parents." — Goatdog's Movies Posted Nov 27, 2010

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