Peter Canavese Movie Reviews & Previews

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Peter Canavese

""I got a good mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it." —Groucho Marx in Duck Soup "

Agrees with the Tomatometer 81% of the time.

Biography:: Since 1987, Peter "Groucho" Canavese has been writing film reviews and articles in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is a member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle. Peter authors and maintains an exhaustive website called GrouchoReviews and is the chief film critic for monthly ON Magazine (since 1995), and Celluloid Dreams, a weekly radio show devoted to film (Celluloid Dreams runs on KSJS—90.5 FM—every Monday at 5pm). Since 2009, he has regularly contributed film reviews to Palo Alto Weekly. His reviews have also appeared in the San Jose Mercury News (1991-1994), in Bay Area weekly Alternate101 (2007-2008), and on Portland's 1190 KEX drive-time show Mark & Dave (2008).
Favorites:: Citizen Kane, Brazil, Duck Soup, Ikiru, North by Northwest, 8 1/2
Publications:: Groucho Reviews , ON Magazine , Palo Alto Weekly

Total Reviews:: 1795
Total QuickRatings:: 3

Location:: San Jose, CA

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 1795

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
2.5/4	58%	At Any Price (2013)	" Works best when it sticks close to Henry, whose broad grin fails to mask a growing desperation. Quaid not only makes a believably corn-fed patriarch, but he captures the mien of one who is slowly ceding his soul..." — Groucho Reviews Posted May 4, 2013
3.5/4	81%	The Place Beyond The Pines (2013)	" The most satisfying cinematic experience we've had at the multiplex thus far this year, and largely through its disinterest in playing along with movie trends." — Groucho Reviews Posted Apr 26, 2013
2.5/4	81%	Renoir (2013)	" Perhaps it's damning Renoir with faint praise to call it agreeable, but Gilles Bourdos' film...shows an admirable restraint, quiet simplicity, and lush pictorial beauty." — Groucho Reviews Posted Apr 26, 2013
2.5/4	62%	Evil Dead (2013)	" There are two types of people in the world. Those who should under no circumstances see the horror sequel/reboot Evil Dead and those who just gotta see it." — Groucho Reviews Posted Apr 4, 2013
3.5/4	89%	Lincoln (2012)	" Day-Lewis...wears well the weariness of the office and Lincoln's puckish yet subdued sense of humor, scaling the man closer to life-size than Mount Rushmore monumental. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Apr 2, 2013
3/4	81%	From Up On Poppy Hill (2013)	" Sunny days, blue skies, and rippling blue waters lined with greenery...Plain nice, and there's nothing wrong with that." — Groucho Reviews Posted Mar 28, 2013
.5/4	9%	The Host (2013)	" Do not consume The Host before operating heavy machinery. Side effects may include spontaneous coma or fits of giggling." — Groucho Reviews Posted Mar 28, 2013
4/4	97%	Monsieur Verdoux (1947)	" Monsieur Verdoux can boast a screenplay with a highly unusual moral complexity and a deeply philosophical bent...Yes, Verdoux is a film that name-drops Schopenhauer, but it's also damn funny... [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Mar 24, 2013
2/4	45%	On the Road (2012)	" This pretty period-pictorial companion piece to the novel fatally misses out on the brain-firing raw buzz that Kerouac felt and passed on to his readers..." — Groucho Reviews Posted Mar 22, 2013
2.5/4	69%	The Croods (2013)	" Appears to have been market-tested to within an inch of its life, so despite a theme of finding the capacity to evolve, the picture remains mired in the tar pit of formula." — Groucho Reviews Posted Mar 22, 2013
2.5/4	67%	Stoker (2013)	" Park’s skills for surreal subjectivity and the mischievously weird certainly don’t hurt, but they can’t quite banish Stoker’s narrative speed bumps and draughts of cold air..." — Groucho Reviews Posted Mar 16, 2013
1.5/4	31%	Emperor (2013)	" The mealy half-truth director Peter Webber...screenwriters Vera Blasi and David Klass settle for just winds up a waste of everyone's time." — Groucho Reviews Posted Mar 8, 2013
3.5/4	92%	No (2013)	" Swims upstream against high-definition with a defiantly lo-fi approach that's also ingeniously evocative of the historical period." — Groucho Reviews Posted Mar 8, 2013
2.5/4	60%	Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)	" Oz the Great and Powerful gets saved from the junk heap by Franco and especially by director Sam Raimi, who happily treats the enterprise as a sandbox." — Groucho Reviews Posted Mar 8, 2013
3/4	89%	A Place at the Table (2013)	" Provides plenty of moving case studies...[but] it's most useful for its prismatic look at the problem of American hunger, examining the problem's recent history, its root causes...and its inextricability from other national crises... " — Groucho Reviews Posted Mar 5, 2013
2.5/4	31%	A Star is Born (1976)	" While in its romantic and romanticized particulars, this A Star Is Born can often seem silly, hoary, disjointed or meandering, the essence of the showbiz narrative still exerts a powerful pull... [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Feb 25, 2013
2.5/4	58%	Snitch (2013)	" In its modern way, Snitch is almost Dickensian in its intent, missing no opportunity for melodramatic confrontation as it puts a (baby) face on a social ill." — Groucho Reviews Posted Feb 21, 2013
2.5/4	70%	Bless Me, Ultima (2013)	" The material calls out for a more expressive cinematographic treatment. Had the film been less antiseptic and more bold in its visuals and the emotional depths of its performances, it could have been a classic; instead, it's a rather ordinary indie." — Groucho Reviews Posted Feb 21, 2013
3.5/4	92%	The Gatekeepers (2013)	" The 'other' Oscar-nominated feature about a war on terror, Dror Moreh's documentary The Gatekeepers proves more intellectually engaging than Hollywood's Zero Dark Thirty, and at least as unsettling." — Groucho Reviews Posted Feb 21, 2013
3/4	82%	Our Man Flint (1966)	" To the extent that Our Man Flint works, it does so due to its tossed-off wit...and the sheer oddity of Coburn, the toothy, gangly character actor who nevertheless charms his way into stardom here with laid-back cool. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Feb 20, 2013
2.5/4	75%	In Like Flint (1967)	" It's a shame that In Like Flint plays as such a defensive reaction to on-the-rise American feminism...in most other respects, it's a worthy-enough sequel to Our Man Flint. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Feb 20, 2013
3/4	69%	Gypsy (1962)	" Even when it's not quite running on all cylinders, LeRoy's Gypsy is never less than cute, and sometimes, it's a good deal more. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Feb 19, 2013
3.5/4	75%	Deathtrap (1982)	" It would be criminal to reveal how the plot unfolds, other than to say it's impressive dramatic origami, manipulated deftly by an ideal cast and one of Hollywood's all-time top directors. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Feb 19, 2013
.5/4	13%	Safe Haven (2013)	" Does Sparks have to treat people like total idiots...?...[A] soulless-cash-grab." — Groucho Reviews Posted Feb 15, 2013
2.5/4	20%	Identity Thief (2013)	" McCarthy is a worthy successor to John Candy, who also had a gift for warming up caricatures with loveable humanity." — Groucho Reviews Posted Feb 8, 2013
1.5/4	——	Vs (2013)	" Written in four days and shot in fifteen, this homegrown indie shows its seams...in cinematic terms, it's pretty weak sauce." — Groucho Reviews Posted Feb 7, 2013
2/4	37%	Stand Up Guys (2013)	" The awfulness of the narrative is plain to see, and yet...no one can say Stand Up Guys lacks personality." — Groucho Reviews Posted Feb 1, 2013
3/4	79%	Quartet (2013)	" Doesn't avoid all of the traps of the genre, but Hoffman does show good taste, particularly in casting." — Groucho Reviews Posted Jan 23, 2013
3/4	82%	Rust and Bone (2012)	" Has significant blemishes that don't quite come out in the wash...but the picture persists on the strength of its committed performances." — Groucho Reviews Posted Jan 17, 2013
1.5/4	32%	Gangster Squad (2013)	" The sheer bulk of talent involved (top-tier technicians and designers included) turns out to be a case of water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink." — Groucho Reviews Posted Jan 10, 2013
2.5/4	93%	Zero Dark Thirty (2013)	" By most cinematic measures, Zero Dark Thirty is one of the best-made films of 2012. It also probably shouldn't exist. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Jan 3, 2013
3/4	81%	The Impossible (2012)	" Takes dicey material—the story of one privileged family's suffering during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami—and transcends its political incorrectness by focusing on the human condition." — Groucho Reviews Posted Jan 3, 2013
3/4	70%	Les Misérables (2012)	" A mixed bag of suitable and not-so-suitable choices. On balance, though, it's about as compelling a screen version of Les Mis as we have any right to expect...Pop a dramamine and you'll be fine." — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 26, 2012
.5/4	18%	Parental Guidance (2012)	" The Baby Boomer teaming no one was asking for—Billy Crystal and Bette Midler—melded to that most moribund of genres, rugrats "comedy"..." — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 26, 2012
3.5/4	88%	Django Unchained (2012)	" There's a case to be made that blood-spattering revenge pictures, no matter how evil the villain, are cultural poison, but if this is what it takes to [get] Don Johnson as a dyed-in-the-wool racist done up as Colonel Sanders, well, so be it." — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 25, 2012
2.5/4	52%	This is 40 (2012)	" Mostly succeeds on its own merits...[but] many comedic and musical distractions pad the 134-minute running time and stray from the implicit promise of that title: the film has little to say about middle age..." — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 21, 2012
2/4	38%	The Guilt Trip (2012)	" Silly and nice, basically unfunny but basically innocuous—so as satisfying as your average leftovers." — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 21, 2012
2.5/4	61%	Jack Reacher (2012)	" [McQuarrie] spreads a unearned veneer of intelligence over...a plot one character aptly describes as 'grassy-knoll ludicrous.'" — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 21, 2012
2.5/4	95%	Chasing Ice (2012)	" While more detailed scientific analysis and greater discussion of impacts would have been welcome, the film's visual rhetoric is solid." — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 13, 2012
3.5/4	90%	Holy Motors (2012)	" As playful as it is...Holy Motors has the power to haunt as much as to amuse." — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 7, 2012
.5/4	4%	Playing for Keeps (2012)	" Another day at the Romantic Comedy Factory: '...Pull me down a Gerard Butler and a Jessica Biel, will ya?'" — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 7, 2012
3.5/4	——	Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Celebration Of Season 2 (2012)	" Trek became famous in large part for its (often corny) science-fiction morality plays...Few episodes of either series achieve this goal more elegantly than Melinda Snodgrass' 'The Measure of a Man.' [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 3, 2012
3.5/4	99%	Finding Nemo 3D (2012)	" Though some scary parts may make the very young fret unduly, the film also puts forward some thoughtful messages for both children and their parents. [Blu-ray 3D]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 3, 2012
2/4	63%	Hitchcock (2012)	" Reenactment cinema...On balance, Hitchcock is about as entertaining and as trustworthy as a tabloid." — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 29, 2012
2.5/4	74%	Rise of the Guardians (2012)	" Even if the cause and effect of the plot proves fairly impenetrable...one can't deny the film is frequently visually resplendent and imaginative..." — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 21, 2012
2/4	64%	Anna Karenina (2012)	" Who's for 130 minutes of alienation?...We're able to intellectualize why we should care (those social strictures are crushing hearts!), but we're too distracted to be moved." — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 21, 2012
1.5/4	13%	Red Dawn (2012)	" John Milius' 1984 original may not have been a paragon of clear-headed foreign policy, but...Dan Bradley's remake predictably sidesteps-and, in one case, mocks-its source material's most interesting moments..." — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 21, 2012
3.5/4	88%	Life of Pi (2012)	" In the hands of Ang Lee, a true film artist, Life of Pi elegantly walks Martel's philosophical line while also brilliantly using every modern cinematic tool to spin an epic yarn." — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 21, 2012
3.5/4	89%	A Royal Affair (2012)	" Supplements its palace intrigue with the good old-fashioned pull of romance and costume drama...Mikkelsen's magnetism and sly expression hold the film's center with a quiet potency." — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 16, 2012

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