Richard von Busack Movie Reviews & Previews

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Richard von Busack

""This case has a lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what have yous"--Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski "Dunk your whiskers in this."--William Demarest, feeding a snake in The Lady Eve Those are two favorites--Preston Sturges' films are probably the most quotable of them all. As for film reviews: "The sisters aren't just doing it for themselves, they're doing it to themselves"--Pauline Kael on the movie Beaches "The film I Walk Alone should, like three or four other pictures, walk alone, tinkling a little bell and shouting "Unclean!" (This quote's only funny if you know about the medieval custom of making lepers announcing their presence whenever in a town. David Thomson on the ending of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and its punchline. "No sirt! This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Thomson's response: "Adherence to the legend at the expense of facts will ruin America--the work is well under way. And lovers of the movies should consider how far film has helped the undermining.""

Agrees with the Tomatometer 56% of the time.

Biography:: Born in Los Angeles, von Busack attended school at UC Santa Cruz and went on to be the lead film critic at Metro Newspapers, the Silicon Valley-based chain of weeklies.
Favorites:: This year it was: Late Marriage, Spider-Man, World Traveller, Y Tu Mama Tambien...
Publications:: MetroActive
Critics' Group:: San Francisco Film Critics Circle

Total Reviews:: 28
Total QuickRatings:: 7

Location:: East of the San Francisco Bay

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 28 of 28

Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
3/5	77%	Iron Man 3 (2013)	" As always in director/co-writer Shane Black-and this goes back to his cantaloupe-testicled actioners of the 1980 like The Last Boy Scout: Why waste energy mocking a convention that it might be better to do without in the first place? " — MetroActive Posted May 3, 2013
4/5	42%	To The Wonder (2013)	" If you have the ability to ignore Affleck, To the Wonder is a visual stunner, with a surprising transcendental enthusiasm for everything." — MetroActive Posted Apr 21, 2013
2.5	81%	The Place Beyond The Pines (2013)	" "It's up to the actors to figure this out, and they try...but The Place Beyond the Pines displays a strange paternalistic streak."" — MetroActive Posted Apr 21, 2013
5/5	90%	Beyond The Hills (2013)	" When the ill and unstable Alina returns to the monastery, just so she can be with her beloved, Beyond the Hills becomes a species of those exorcism movies that audiences gorge on, only done with a realism and ambiguity usually missing from the genre. " — MetroActive Posted Apr 9, 2013
3/5	81%	From Up On Poppy Hill (2013)	" As in so many Studio Ghibli films, the tension is between renovation and cherishing of tradition.The movie is staged during a beautifully chosen moment of transition-the months right before the Tokyo Olympiad. " — MetroActive Posted Apr 1, 2013
2.5	52%	This is 40 (2012)	" This Is 40 (40 minutes too long, that is) is getting at something, but it doesn't get there by 40 miles-not more than 40 people outside L.A. will understand it. This is not a refinement of the frat-pack comedy as much as a tombstone for a subgenre." — MetroActive Posted Mar 19, 2013
2/5	93%	Zero Dark Thirty (2013)	" Indulges Cheneyian fantasies complete with the bad-movie scene of the prisoner's defiance: "You're just a garbage man in the corporation," shouts the Arab who needs a lesson in manners from the Ph.D. (in torture?) who is racking him." — MetroActive Posted Mar 19, 2013
3/5	47%	Bullet to the Head (2013)	" The film could be summed by its product placement for Bulleit Bourbon, treated like a rare luxury when it's actually $20 a bottle at Trader Joe's; director Walter Hill serves this inexpensive, everyday material with a serious flourish." — MetroActive Posted Mar 19, 2013
2/5	31%	Emperor (2013)	" If you can't take this movie for history, what may it be taken as? As romance it's not believable. Much of the history is censored, including the rumored "Operation Blacklist" involving the pressure from above to clear the names of the royal family." — MetroActive Posted Mar 19, 2013
4/5 stars	93%	Barbara (2012)	" An intelligent, mature love triangle...It also functions as a tense, rarefied thriller about escape from a police state, as well the kind of medical procedural drama audiences gorge upon. " — MetroActive Posted Mar 19, 2013
	64%	Cosmopolis (2012)	" Cosmopolis is something like the anti-matter version of Atlas Shrugged." — MetroActive Posted Aug 24, 2012
	——	Around the Bay ()	" This remarkably talented newcomer make a compelling story out of well-chosen images and unsaid, unheard or overheard words." — MetroActive Posted Feb 12, 2009
	96%	Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea (2004)	" Plagues and Pleasures is the best kind of short vacation; you get to lounge with some interesting people, plus you get to learn a little something about the local environment and what can be done to keep it going." — MetroActive Posted Nov 14, 2007
	83%	Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005)	" In a movie in which the color is muted as close to black-and-white as possible, this bride is radiantly blue." — MetroActive Posted Sep 27, 2005
4/5	30%	Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)	" "The last great Universal Frankenstein movie, despite the overstuffed title."" — MetroActive Posted Sep 27, 2005
2/5	73%	Stand and Deliver (1988)	" "The greatest John G. Avildsen movie John G. Avidlsen never made. Olmos is far more understated than the average tough-teacher is in this kind of film."" — MetroActive Posted Sep 27, 2005
2/5	——	Dung fong tuk ying (Eastern Condors) (1987)	— MetroActive Posted Sep 27, 2005
2/5	75%	The Mosquito Coast (1986)	— MetroActive Posted Sep 27, 2005
2/5	——	Eclipse (1999)	— MetroActive Posted Sep 27, 2005
	83%	Keane (2005)	" There's more than a few spots where the improvisation [in Keane] spins out of control..." — MetroActive Posted Sep 27, 2005
	53%	The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2004)	" directror Larry Blamire has understood it all perfectly: the tautological dialogue Stiff-as-a-plank thespians in spacesuits, waterlogged messages of interstellar brotherhood." — MetroActive Posted Feb 3, 2004
	84%	Gloomy Sunday (Ein Lied von Liebe und Tod) (2003)	" Erika Marozsan's frequent bathtub scenes suggests how a movie called "Gloomy Sunday" hopes to appeal to today's sugarfed film audience." — MetroActive Posted Dec 3, 2003
	13%	The Haunted Mansion (2003)	" A dispirited, so to speak, adaptation of the best ride at Disneyland. As such, it's one more treasured piece of your childhood mangled on screen." — MetroActive Posted Nov 25, 2003
2/5	91%	Riff-Raff (1993)	— MetroActive Posted Nov 25, 2003
2/5	88%	The Man Who Knew Too Much (2003)	— MetroActive Posted Nov 25, 2003
	77%	Bad Santa (2003)	" A Christmas movie that would make old Bukowski's bloodshot eyes shine." — MetroActive Posted Nov 25, 2003
	63%	Love Actually (2003)	" There's good acting in Love Actually, but director Richard Curtis threatens to take the cool out of London." — MetroActive Posted Nov 24, 2003

Showing 1 - 28 of 28

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