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 82% 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:: 1640
Total QuickRatings:: 3

Location:: San Jose, CA

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 1640

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
3.5/4	93%	The Secret World of Arrietty (2012)	" That relaxed pace allows the story to breathe—forget the franticness of most American animation—and along with the gorgeously detailed art, lush color, and swoony music...the film is all but guaranteed to entrance children." — Groucho Reviews Posted Feb 18, 2012
3.5/4	99%	A Separation (2011)	" Above all, Farhadi’s parable teaches that a rush to judgment inevitably turns back on the judge." — Groucho Reviews Posted Feb 3, 2012
2/4	74%	Big Miracle (2012)	" Perhaps the title sets an expectation Ken Kwapis’ movie can’t quite deliver." — Groucho Reviews Posted Feb 3, 2012
3/4	78%	The Grey (2012)	" Though it does thrill with intense, close-cropped action photography, swift editing, and vivid sound design, The Grey makes as much of an impression by being unexpectedly emotional." — Groucho Reviews Posted Jan 27, 2012
2/4	46%	Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2012)	" Except as a tool for pediatric grief counseling, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close amounts to a fetishization of its own trappings (the boy, NYC, 9/11) more interested in Oscar than Oskar." — Groucho Reviews Posted Jan 20, 2012
2.5/4	80%	Haywire (2012)	" Finds Soderbergh keeping it simple, stupid, by filling the story's hollowness with kick-butt action and elements of style." — Groucho Reviews Posted Jan 20, 2012
3.5/4	71%	Il Momento della Verita (The Moment of Truth) (1965)	" This fable of the disposable performer rising above his class transcends ordinary fiction to be an expressive visual record of the art of bullfighting: primal, brutal, repellent and magnetic in equal measure. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Jan 16, 2012
3/4	71%	Carnage (2011)	" A slow disintegration of the thin veneer of social niceties, revealing the human animalism underneath. Like Reza's equally popular Art, God of Carnage isn't as deep as it would have you believe, but both plays are catnip for actors." — Groucho Reviews Posted Jan 13, 2012
3.5/4	91%	Sid & Nancy (1986)	" Oldman's mid-film music-video performance of 'My Way' before a neon staircase compares favorably-as a revelation of character through performance-to Robert De Niro's framing monologues in Raging Bull. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Jan 11, 2012
3/4	74%	Fright Night (2011)	" While it's unspooling, it has enough visual snap, narrative tension, and humor for a satisfying 'drive-in movie' diversion. [3D Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Jan 6, 2012
2/4	61%	Glee: The 3D Concert Movie (2011)	" An orgiastic celebration of Glee concocted by its own creators...sort of like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, but with more hot air. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 31, 2011
4/4	100%	Three Colors: Blue (Trois Couleurs: Bleu) (1993)	" Kieslowski...implies, not for the first or last time, a form of divine intervention or destiny at work... [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 31, 2011
4/4	91%	Three Colors: White (Trzy kolory: Bialy) (Trois Couleurs: Blanc) (1994)	" Karol Karol embodies his homeland, going for broke--in criminal fashion, if necessary--to stake its claim as a player in the European landscape. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 31, 2011
4/4	98%	Three Colors: Red (Trois couleurs: Rouge) (1994)	" Explores fraternity in large part as much through the dynamic of neighbors and community as through potential one-on-one friendships or romances. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 31, 2011
3/4	95%	The Guard (2011)	" Self-conscious gestures in the direction of fish-out-of-water comedies, buddy-cop movies and Westerns don't amount to much in and of themselves, but they tie together as a functional clothesline for character comedy... [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 29, 2011
3/4	61%	The Rocketeer (1991)	" A charmer in its gee-whiz, irony-light resuscitation of the movie serials of the '30s. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 29, 2011
3.5/4	84%	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)	" Whether coolly dispatching a fly or eating a Wimpy burger with knife and fork, Oldman carefully makes every gesture part of his quiet revelation of character. " — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 23, 2011
1.5/4	63%	We Bought a Zoo (2011)	" Let me begin by saying something nice about Cameron Crowe’s We Bought a Zoo: kids will probably like it. Okay, that’s all I’ve got." — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 23, 2011
2.5/4	83%	Dolphin Tale (2011)	" In the hands of actor-turned-director Charles Martin Smith, this kid-centric drama provides a welcome family option with positive values and a minimum of frantic, noisy CGI. It's a tale told on a human (and animal) scale." — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 22, 2011
3/4	87%	The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)	" Fincher is perfectly suited to the material, with its voluminous clues to be organized and parsed, its emotional austerity, and its serial murder, rape, and sundry sick plot twists." — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 21, 2011
3/4	80%	Shame (2011)	" A mood piece, as abstract and engrossing as the many Bach piano selections laid on the soundtrack." — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 16, 2011
3/4	82%	Young Adult (2011)	" What ultimately makes Young Adult worth the trip is Theron’s uncompromising performance, which dares to make Mavis unlikeable and, in the process, earns our pity and, more disturbingly, our identification." — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 16, 2011
4/4	93%	West Side Story (1961)	" A landmark screen musical that left its own indelible stamp on popular culture. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 11, 2011
1.5/4	8%	New Year's Eve (2011)	" I tell ya, I haven't heard this much talk about ball-dropping since the junior high locker room." — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 8, 2011
3.5/4	97%	The Artist (2011)	" Though this pastiche has been crafted by film nerds and largely for them, Michel Hazanavicius' feature has an emotional generosity that speaks louder than words." — Groucho Reviews Posted Dec 7, 2011
2.5/4	84%	My Week with Marilyn (2011)	" Williams is better than the picture, but within the screenplay's constraints, she nails every possible nuance of physical and emotional expression. It's dazzling work, and reason alone to spend ninety-nine minutes "with Marilyn."" — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 23, 2011
2.5/4	89%	The Descendants (2011)	" If you see The Descendants, see it for Clooney (and Woodley), but don't believe the hype that it's one for the ages." — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 23, 2011
3/4	96%	The Muppets (2011)	" Muppet News Flash! Your friends in felt are back on the big screen, ready and waiting to charm a new generation of...moppets. " — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 23, 2011
3/4	89%	Into The Abyss (2011)	" The interviews that make up the balance of the film yield plenty of oddities of modern American life." — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 19, 2011
2.5/4	44%	Happy Feet Two (2011)	" "It brings out my happy." For kids facing a potentially rough adulthood, it's probably a message worth hearing, maybe more than once." — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 19, 2011
4/4	92%	Blue Velvet (1986)	" Works brilliantly as an allegory of American repression and willful illusion of order, Lumberton's forced-smile '50s sensibility unable to keep down the anarchic, raging id that is humanity's primal drive. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 15, 2011
3/4	91%	Winnie the Pooh (2011)	" A back-to-basics charmer evoking the Pooh short films from the '60s and '70s. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 14, 2011
2.5/4	78%	Melancholia (2011)	" The director's emotional sadism and laughable bluntness in his symbolic approach leave us in the cold, to pick through the art-auction catalog of Manuel Alberto Claro's cinematography and contemplate Dunst's award-winning suffering. " — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 11, 2011
2.5/4	90%	Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)	" At least, though the insights here aren't as plentiful as Durkin seems to think, Olsen's fine work as the off-balance, paranoid anti-hero helps to create that illusion." — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 4, 2011
2/4	68%	Tower Heist (2011)	" Has the perfect "generic brand" title to match its Teflon blandness." — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 4, 2011
2/4	47%	Anonymous (2011)	" From the man who brought you Godzilla and 2012...a loud and ludicrous historical rewrite about the supposed hidden authorship of Shakespeare's plays" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 28, 2011
3.5/4	89%	The Lion King (2011)	" It's not hard to understand why The Lion King's good-vs.-evil adventure and high-spirited comic passages haven't lost their appeal. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 24, 2011
3.5/4	86%	Jackie Brown (1997)	" Succeeds as a witty Elmore Leonard crime story...but also as a surprisingly affecting mid-life romance. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 20, 2011
4/4	95%	Pulp Fiction (1994)	" A balls-out postmodern comedy par excellence. It's a Royale with Cheese. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 19, 2011
2/4	35%	Space Jam (1996)	" If you weren't a kid when you first saw Space Jam, you're a lot less likely to find it palatable. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 14, 2011
4/4	92%	Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985)	" A purely creative movie that one must admit has no equal in cinema history (for better or worse). [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 14, 2011
3/4	67%	The Bad Seed (1956)	" The dark drama that launched a genre of evil-kid movies. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 14, 2011
3/4	96%	Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)	" Not everything works out neatly for everyone, but life seems a little better by the end of two hours' struggle, for the characters and for the audience. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 14, 2011
1.5/4	60%	The Cutting Edge (1992)	" The only thing that could make The Cutting Edge more absurd would be if the final competition revolved around a potentially deadly, possibly illegal move called the Pamchenko Twist. Wait, it does? Never mind. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 14, 2011
3.5/4	92%	Take Shelter (2011)	" A Rod Serling-esque social allegory for these days of economic collapse, environmental sea change, and increasing talk of "end times."" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 13, 2011
2/4	39%	The Big Year (2011)	" If the mere mention of the blue-footed booby sends you into paroxysms, The Big Year is the film for you." — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 13, 2011
2.5/4	61%	Honeymoon in Vegas (1992)	" The romantic comedy version of its setting: an overgrown theme park that momentarily amuses, wears down the body and spirit, but mentally stays behind. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 13, 2011
1/4	24%	A Guy Thing (2003)	" Cycles through the same old cliches, like squares accidentally being dosed with drugs, overzealous pharmacists blaring out sensitive medical information (nothing like a good ol' venereal disease joke), and climactically scotched weddings. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 13, 2011
1/4	33%	Wedding Daze (2007)	" Something of a train wreck...[but] comedy scavengers may find it worthwhile to pick through the remains for a few amusing gags. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 13, 2011

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