Simon Abrams Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams

Agrees with the Tomatometer 63% of the time.

Publications:: House Next Door , New York Press , Slant Magazine , The Playlist , Twitch
Critics' Group:: Online Film Critics Society

Total Reviews:: 324

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 324

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
	——	Shootout At Wadala (2013)	" Shootout at Wadala is a true-crime gangster epic about an ostensibly charismatic outlaw who's really just a preening monster-something the filmmakers seem to miss." — Village Voice Posted May 7, 2013
2.5/4	46%	Pain & Gain (2013)	" As ambitious and vibrant as it is ugly and scattershot, "Pain & Gain" is the most charming Michael Bay movie in a long while." — Chicago Sun-Times Posted Apr 25, 2013
D	24%	Arthur Newman (2013)	" Arthur Newman an intentionally listless story about a boring everyman." — The Playlist Posted Apr 24, 2013
	——	Holla II (2013)	" Wailing amateur actors are thrust into viewers' face so often that Holla II looks like it was shot in someone's dirty rear-view mirror." — Village Voice Posted Apr 23, 2013
	33%	Tai Chi Hero (2013)	" This sequel is sluggish and rote where its predecessor was aggressively perky and desperate to please." — Village Voice Posted Apr 23, 2013
C	98%	Mud (2013)	" Mud is as unmoving as it is because it doesn't aspire to be anything other than a competent anti-fairy tale in which the paint-by-number morals are enforced by equally obvious main protagonists." — The Playlist Posted Apr 22, 2013
3/4	47%	The Lords of Salem (2013)	" Instead of retreating into his manic, hyper-allusive style of psychedelic, grindhouse-friendly pastiche, Zombie tested his considerable skills and made something different." — Chicago Sun-Times Posted Apr 18, 2013
	75%	A Cop (Un Flic) (2013)	" A fitting final act for noir master Jean-Pierre Melville ..." — Village Voice Posted Apr 16, 2013
B+	47%	The Lords of Salem (2013)	" This is probably Rob Zombie's best film, though it does often prove that the cinephile writer/director is a gifted tyro. At the same time, as his most formally mannered and tonally tempered film, Zombie's latest also proves his versatility." — The Playlist Posted Apr 16, 2013
C-	88%	The Angels' Share (2013)	" Some good laughs and a passable air of bonhomie do nothing to cover up the fact that The Angels' Share is totally lightweight and distractingly underdone." — The Playlist Posted Apr 10, 2013
	——	Chashme Buddoor (2013)	" Simultaneously dopey and irrepressibly charming." — Village Voice Posted Apr 9, 2013
2/4	74%	Simon Killer (2013)	" A relentless and largely unrewarding descent into an ostensibly personal hell." — Chicago Sun-Times Posted Apr 4, 2013
3.5/4	87%	Upstream Color (2013)	" A romance, a thriller, and a science-fiction drama, "Upstream Color" tantalizes viewers with an open-ended narrative about overcoming personal loss." — Chicago Sun-Times Posted Apr 4, 2013
1.5/4	81%	The Place Beyond The Pines (2013)	" An over-stuffed, hyper-pulpy, and mostly trite trifurcated drama about family, crime, and moral ambiguity." — Chicago Sun-Times Posted Mar 28, 2013
	73%	Violeta Went to Heaven (2013)	" Violeta Went to Heaven's creators do a disservice to Chilean singer and multi-hyphenate artist Violeta Parra's legacy by making her suicide the logical climax to her working life." — Village Voice Posted Mar 26, 2013
	——	Mindless Behavior Lose Your Mind (2013)	" The film's creators exploit the group's natural, thoughtless enthusiasm." — Village Voice Posted Mar 19, 2013
2.5/4	66%	Spring Breakers (2013)	" Korine's latest is a characteristically serious film about inherently ridiculous characters, but it's too montonous to be really thoughtful or funny." — Chicago Sun-Times Posted Mar 17, 2013
	13%	The Last Exorcism Part II (2013)	" When the creators of The Last Exorcism Part II swapped pseudo-verité realism for psychological realism, they made it a lot harder to take their franchise seriously ..." — Village Voice Posted Mar 6, 2013
	——	The Attacks Of 26/11 (2013)	" An exploitative docudrama that mercilessly begs viewers to wallow in an exhausting, stilted re-enactment of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks." — Village Voice Posted Mar 6, 2013
	——	White T (2013)	" It's pretty apparent that inmates were allowed to take over the asylum." — Village Voice Posted Feb 26, 2013
	——	Doctor Bello (2013)	" The film's writers left no cliché unused, and no major plot point undeveloped." — Village Voice Posted Feb 26, 2013
	——	Lost In Thailand (2013)	" Zheng errs on the side of improvisatory and lazily assembled Apatow-esque narrative episodes; many of those scenes are amiably goofy, but it all holds together based on his cast's charm and energy." — Village Voice Posted Feb 13, 2013
	——	Special 26 (2013)	" What sets Special 26 apart is its insistence that cops and robbers operate based on similarly intractable assumptions about each other." — Village Voice Posted Feb 13, 2013
1/4	14%	Small Apartments (2013)	" A toxically quirky black comedy starring a morbidly obese albino who dreams of traveling to Switzerland." — Chicago Sun-Times Posted Feb 7, 2013
	27%	The Sorcerer and the White Snake (2013)	" The clunky action mostly revolves around uninspired wire-fu choreography: Monks fly around while flailing their arms as hordes of CGI creatures gather around and then do nothing." — Village Voice Posted Feb 6, 2013
	——	David (2013)	" It's thrilling to watch Nambiar futz around with tone and style for the sake of establishing a thematic progression." — Village Voice Posted Feb 5, 2013
	——	Race 2 (2013)	" What most interests the creators of Race 2? Action-figure posturing." — Village Voice Posted Jan 30, 2013
	——	Mumbai Mirror (2013)	" An essentially conventional loose-cannon cop story made occasionally exciting thanks to some unexpectedly lurid narrative flourishes, Mumbai Mirror feels weirdly exciting and novel despite its pompous and clichéd scenario." — Village Voice Posted Jan 23, 2013
	100%	Birders: The Central Park Effect (2013)	" A well-measured docu-character study ..." — Village Voice Posted Jan 23, 2013
	33%	Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola (2013)	" Save for a couple of visually engaging dance numbers, mostly shot with hand-held digital cameras, MKBKM is dishearteningly banal." — Village Voice Posted Jan 15, 2013
	18%	My Best Enemy (2013)	" A banal World War II thriller dependent on contrived role reversals." — Village Voice Posted Jan 9, 2013
	18%	Allegiance (2012)	" Without its topical pretext and overzealous patriotism, Allegiance would be just another generic action film." — Village Voice Posted Dec 27, 2012
	——	Dabangg 2 (2012)	" Mostly likable thanks to its creators' preference for lighthearted mugging over self-serious teeth-gnashing." — Village Voice Posted Dec 24, 2012
	——	Sahkanaga (2012)	" The film feels flimsy rather than delicate, lacking strong performances or psychological nuance." — Village Voice Posted Dec 7, 2012
	32%	Deadfall (2012)	" Deadfall just isn't manic enough to be memorable." — Village Voice Posted Dec 4, 2012
	——	Happy New Year (2012)	" So trite that it's unwittingly insensitive." — Village Voice Posted Dec 4, 2012
	67%	Talaash (2012)	" Kapoor naturally exudes a kittenish charm that not even a violet, skintight, leopard-print dress and equally purple dialogue can entirely diminish." — Village Voice Posted Nov 30, 2012
	33%	Certainty (2012)	" There are few romantic dramas more frustrating than the kind that studiously avoid clichéd characterizations while gracelessly begging viewers to alternately coo and tsk-tsk the behavior of their adult protagonists." — Village Voice Posted Nov 29, 2012
	29%	Ex-Girlfriends (2012)	" The callow behavior that characterizes Ex-Girlfriends' lead would be less maddening had writer/director/star Alexander Poe firmly decided how to portray the bedroom follies of youth." — Village Voice Posted Nov 27, 2012
	——	The Normals (2012)	" Ciancimino and director Kevin Patrick Connors's lone gag pays off. Too bad the joke is only funny in retrospect." — Village Voice Posted Nov 15, 2012
	——	The Return of Lencho (2012)	" As far as agitprop goes, The Return of Lencho is not totally generic, but its subject is mostly undistinguished." — Village Voice Posted Nov 7, 2012
	——	Shady Lady (2012)	" Too many Wiki-worthy info dumps and not enough character-enriching detail stops Shady Lady, a docudrama about a team of World War II Australian bombardiers, from cohering into a compelling fiction-doc hybrid." — Village Voice Posted Nov 1, 2012
	79%	The Other Son (2012)	" Ham-fisted dialogue and clichéd characterizations trump genuine chemistry in The Other Son, a contrived Franco-Israeli drama about two 18-year-olds, an Israeli and a Palestinian, accidentally switched at birth." — Village Voice Posted Oct 23, 2012
	——	Sheer ()	" This modest crime drama is infused with the joy and expectation that only comes from young filmmakers instinctively awed by their urban surroundings." — Village Voice Posted Oct 16, 2012
	14%	Excuse Me for Living (2012)	" No strand of Excuse Me for Living's frantic, unfunny, and pseudo-thoughtful narrative is well conceived." — Village Voice Posted Oct 11, 2012
	67%	An Affair of the Heart (2012)	" Affair of the Heart's focus is so vaguely sketched out that it ultimately could be about any grateful artist who enjoys a modicum of celebrity years after his initial success." — Village Voice Posted Oct 10, 2012
	30%	Least Among Saints (2012)	" A film in which any authority figure who can't magically sober up and play surrogate daddy for a spell is treated as either a meddler or a well-meaning, do-nothing skeptic." — Village Voice Posted Oct 9, 2012
	100%	It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)	" Seeing "the years [slip] out of [Bill's] head" in this 71-minute compendium is nothing short of revelatory." — Village Voice Posted Oct 2, 2012
	78%	Dredd (2012)	" Dredd is proudly degenerate-and it never feels compelled to slow down and explain itself." — Village Voice Posted Sep 18, 2012

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