Critics » Philip Martin
Philip Martin

Philip Martin

Agrees with the Tomatometer 80% of the time.

Biography:
Author, newspaper columnist, former shortstop, songwriter and rhythm guitarist strangepup.blogspot.com
Publications:
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Critics' Group:
Southeastern Film Critics Association
Total Reviews:
4809
Total QuickRatings:
3390
Location:
Little Rock, Arkansas

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 4809
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Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
90/100 95% The Hunt (2013) " ... a movie of uncommon power about the evil that well-meaning people commit when given license by what they perceive as atrocity." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Sep 3, 2013
87/100 74% The Grandmaster (2013) " ...closer in tone to an art movie, an exercise in pure cinema, than it is a chopsocky extravaganza" — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Sep 3, 2013
87/100 51% Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf's (2013) " ...works both as a large format infommercial for the store and a Rorschach for those of us with our noses pressed against those windows, watching the elaborate working displays of decorator David Hoey. Are we amused or envious? " — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Sep 3, 2013
87/100 98% Blackfish (2013) " We have traditionally taken license to do as we will with our fellow creatures, whether that means slaughtering them for food or dressing them up for Halloween. Perhaps only a God created in our image could sanction ... the ways we exploit the vulnerable." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 26, 2013
87/100 86% The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (2011) " ...an odd and absorbing film that comes perilously close to fulfilling the promise of its cheeky title (" — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 17, 2013
82/100 40% Only God Forgives (2013) " I don't think it's bad. I think it's dull, and a product of an imagination that is very much pleased with itself. " — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 17, 2013
77/100 64% Tiger Eyes (2013) " ...scants the rich emotional potential in favor of After School Special cliches" — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 17, 2013
88/100 82% Dirty Wars (2013) " ... though I have certain qualms about the way Scahill is presented in the film ... I cannot imagine that a more compelling film could have been made without his character carrying this dramatic payload." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 17, 2013
85/100 17% Roadie (1980) " None of this is to argue that this is a great - or even very good - film but it is enjoyable on any number of levels. I'm just happy to have confirmation that I didn't just dream the whole thing. " — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 17, 2013
87/100 89% The Angels' Share (2013) " ...a low key and rather marvelous, sweet-natured heist movie" — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 17, 2013
88/100 93% Ain't In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm (2013) " And of all the figures - Bob Dylan, Gram Parsons, et al. - who smuggled those sepia-toned seeds into rock 'n' roll, Helm, was arguably the most authentic. " — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 17, 2013
88/100 50% At Any Price (2013) " ...feels like a great American tragedy, like East of Eden or Death of a Salesman. There's ... a fidelity to the way things actually work themselves out in the real world, in compromise and half-measures and moral doubt." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 16, 2013
84/100 55% The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2013) " Despite some promising moments, it never quite coheres into a convincing story. It's worth seeing... but it ultimately feels like a missed opportunity - like a pedant groping for a profundity beyond his moral ken." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 16, 2013
82/100 13% Hello Herman (2012) " ... a messy, blunt movie that manages to push a lot of buttons. Surely one of them does something." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 16, 2013
88/100 98% Before Midnight (2013) " ...in the surprising third act, the film comes together as a plausible horror show of how good intentions and real affection can give way to vicious, realistic psychic combat. (" — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 16, 2013
87/100 84% This Is the End (2013) " ...a very savvy send up of the way we perceive celebrities as vapid and self-involved ciphers who are so often flattered and coddled that they come to accept applause as their due. " — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 16, 2013
79/100 65% The Heat (2013) " But it's heartbreaking to watch McCarthy and Bullock work so hard to such little profit ... This is a movie that doesn't once do the unexpected thing. " — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 16, 2013
85/100 42% Red 2 (2013) " About the best - and maybe the worst - that can be about RED 2 is that it is an exceedingly safe pick." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 16, 2013
88/100 84% Fill the Void (2013) " Burshstein has managed a small miracle with his gentle film ... . A movie about matters of faith that manages to be neither condescending nor smug ... a surprisingly accessible and satisfying experience." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 16, 2013
83/100 54% Lovelace (2013) " ...the film is all surface, despite some hard work from an overqualified cast that unfortunately seems not to have been given a key note to tune to." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 16, 2013
87/100 89% A Place at the Table (2013) " presents us with the counter-intuitive idea that while Americans may be among the world's most obese people ... there is a surprisingly large segment of our population - nearly 50 million people - who are "food insecure"" — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 16, 2013
83/100 73% Lee Daniels' The Butler (2013) " The film is, in the conventional and lamentable 21st-century Hollywood mode, so overt and obvious that at times it feels like a parody of historical drama." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Aug 16, 2013
87/100 93% No (2013) " ... like Mad Men, it's a period piece set in the world of advertising and it pays a distracting (and sometimes humorous) amount of attention to period details." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted May 17, 2013
83/100 0% Hating Breitbart (2012) " ... as far as this film is concerned Andrew Breitbart was a great American, a nearly mythical figure like Daniel Boone. (Who, as members of my generation will remember, also "fought for America, to make all Americans free.") " — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted May 17, 2013
88/100 93% Room 237 (2013) " ...all about the work of criticism - finding fresh avenues of delight." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted May 3, 2013
87/100 43% 28 Hotel Rooms (2012) " ... one of the movie's points is that when you are cocooned with your lover, intoxicated and infatuated, you don't care much about the rest of the world" — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 27, 2013
88/100 64% Anna Karenina (2012) " Maybe Wright and Stoppard have not given us a great Anna Karenina. .. this movie is too derivative and flashy for that, but they have connected the romantic and philosophical poles...The heart wants what it wants, and will destroy itself to have it." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 27, 2013
88/100 88% Starlet (2012) " ...has a sunny SoCal vibe that belies its tawdry milieu" — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 27, 2013
89/100 84% The Flat (2012) " It's a mesmerizing detective story ...with an oddly uplifting ending that suggests a commonality of the human spirit that supersedes ideology." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 27, 2013
87/100 80% The Other Son (2012) " Somehow Levy - and her actors - avoid sentimentality and trite homilies. The Other Son explores the age-old nature vs. nurture divide, and ends up as refutation of ignorance and hate." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 27, 2013
82/100 52% This is 40 (2012) " ...a collection of demos, obviously inessential but interesting to the cultists." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 27, 2013
82/100 34% Deadfall (2012) " An excellent cast and an admirable refusal to give in to its audience's pleas for relief from its blue-gray bleakness aren't enough to raise Stefan Ruzowitsky's Deadfall above your run-of-the-mill snowbelt-set nihilistic noir." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 27, 2013
82/100 37% Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) " ...you certainly could do worse than enjoy a fanciful little film about a gentle president, his supposedly homely lover and two twittish English people appalled by hot dogs. I just wish they'd gone ahead and changed the names." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 27, 2013
86/100 81% The Impossible (2012) " ... a terrific horror movie, one that genuinely grips and shocks its audience and forces empathy with the would-be victims. " — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 27, 2013
87/100 51% Promised Land (2013) " ... Van Sant's eye and sense of poetry no doubt elevate what's essentially an updated Frank Capra story ..." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 27, 2013
83/100 63% Hitchcock (2012) " ... a slight, forgettable movie. Sometimes that's enough." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 27, 2013
92/100 93% Zero Dark Thirty (2013) " ...a somber, black-winged benediction for what we might count as a lost decade." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 27, 2013
83/100 82% De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone) (2012) " ...while all the admittedly well-wrought details engage us on an intellectual level and keep us watching, the film doesn't linger in the imagination the way truly great cinema does" — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 27, 2013
86/100 38% Stand Up Guys (2013) " It's hardly great, but it's refreshingly old school." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 27, 2013
87/100 75% Murph: The Protector (2013) " ... a documentary with the limited but entirely honorable mission of commemorating the life and sacrifice of Navy Lt. Michael P. Murphy, a Navy SEAL who died in a firefight in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan in June 2005." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 26, 2013
90/100 93% The Gatekeepers (2013) " ...a riveting and sobering documentary about Shin Bet that raises important if unanswerable questions about the morality of state-sanctioned violence in the name of internal security. " — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 26, 2013
86/100 96% War Witch (2013) " ... driven by a remarkably natural, unaffected performance by Mwanza. And Nguyen, despite relying a little too heavily on the initial voice-over for exposition, is a confident and sensitive intelligence behind the camera." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 26, 2013
81/100 44% On the Road (2012) " If our On the Road is a barely coherent tightrope act - a fizzy word drunk stand-up speed-rapped by an aspiring poet posing as a dumb saint prole - then it's tough to take this pretty version, populated by Gap models in retro Americana fashions." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 26, 2013
77/100 30% Emperor (2013) " ...probably the most disappointing 2013 film I've seen so far." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 26, 2013
88 90% Beyond The Hills (2013) " Strikingly shot and punishingly long ..." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 26, 2013
86/100 79% Ginger & Rosa (2013) " ...probably Potter's most accessible movie to date, but the script is perhaps nothing special ..." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 26, 2013
87/100 55% The Company You Keep (2013) " Redford's direction feels tighter and and less ruminative than it has in years, and his acting is still marked by a kind of intelligent alertness. " — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 26, 2013
89/100 98% Mud (2013) " ...a movie about relationships that are tenuous and inescapable, desperate and fraught with misplaced romance." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Apr 26, 2013
86/100 89% Compliance (2012) " I admire the workings of the movie, in the same cool way I might regard a machine gun as a work of art ..." — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Posted Nov 4, 2012
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