Stephanie Zacharek Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Stephanie Zacharek

Official Websites:
salon.com

Stephanie Zacharek

Agrees with the Tomatometer 68% of the time.

Favorites:: 10 Favorites (Always Subject to Change): The Wild Bunch, Irma Vep, The Right Stuff, Blowout, Top Hat, The Godfather Part II, A Hard Day's Night, Breathless, Before Sunrise, L'Atalante
Publications:: CNN.com , Film.com , Los Angeles Times , Movieline , NPR , NPR.org , Salon.com , Sight and Sound , Village Voice
Critics' Group:: New York Film Critics Online

Total Reviews:: 1419

Location:: Brooklyn, NY, US

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 51 - 100 of 1419

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
	69%	Not Fade Away (2012)	" Feels like a three-part miniseries shoehorned into one nearly-two-hour morsel - there's too much going on in it for anything to have much weight." — Film.com Posted Nov 19, 2012
	92%	Silver Linings Playbook (2012)	" Cooper's performance meets Lawrence's, beautifully, halfway." — NPR Posted Nov 15, 2012
	48%	The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (2012)	" While "Breaking Dawn - Part 1" was zany enough...to almost work as a stand-alone, "Part 2" relies on mad rushes of exposition to explain exactly what's at stake here." — Film.com Posted Nov 15, 2012
	89%	Lincoln (2012)	" Its characters, people who lived long ago and who tended to be much more loquacious than a 140-character burst would allow, somehow seem to breathe the same air we do." — Film.com Posted Nov 9, 2012
	26%	Fun Size (2012)	" The fun to be had in Fun Size, a 'tween comedy featuring Victoria Justice of the Nickelodeon TV series Victorious, is neither gigantic nor minuscule; it's just about fun size, which is probably enough." — NPR Posted Oct 25, 2012
	0%	That's What She Said (2012)	" The road to hell is paved not just with good intentions, but with movies that attempt to capture the way women really talk." — NPR Posted Oct 18, 2012
	94%	The Sessions (2012)	" This is either a delicate subject or an unapologetically vital one, and the key to "The Sessions" is that [Ben] Lewin treats it as the latter." — Film.com Posted Oct 17, 2012
	90%	Holy Motors (2012)	" It could almost be a film made in a time before language, a rendering of modern life - or modern lives - as a kind of cinematic cave painting. With songs. And a white stretch limo. And Kylie Minogue." — NPR Posted Oct 16, 2012
	39%	Here Comes the Boom (2012)	" It's nice that the hero goes to the mat for what he believes in. But he's not the only thing that comes down with a thud." — Film.com Posted Oct 12, 2012
	82%	Seven Psychopaths (2012)	" There's something overtly mechanical about McDonagh's approach that keeps it all from being as outrageously fun as it's pretending to be. But it is enjoyable to watch the parade of actors McDonagh has assembled ..." — NPR Posted Oct 11, 2012
	87%	Frankenweenie (2012)	" Burton half succeeds in making this revamped Frankenweenie its own distinctive creature, pieced together from the essential bits of the 29-minute original. But he just doesn't know when to stop, and his overgrown creation gets the better of him." — NPR Posted Oct 4, 2012
	21%	Taken 2 (2012)	" Taken 2 must not be taken 2 seriously, although at the very least Megaton could have found better ways to use all those glorious, antique-looking Istanbul backdrops." — NPR Posted Oct 4, 2012
	93%	Amour (2012)	" Haneke ... knows the reality of growing old together isn't for the faint of heart." — Film.com Posted Oct 3, 2012
	44%	The Paperboy (2012)	" The Paperboy doesn't hold together as a sensible piece of work. But as an insensible piece of work, it's pretty jaw-dropping." — Film.com Posted Oct 3, 2012
	81%	Pitch Perfect (2012)	" It moves at a clip, a sprightly relay race between a dozen or so mellifluous performers." — NPR Posted Sep 27, 2012
	32%	Won't Back Down (2012)	" It's terrible when schools fail our children. But it's not so great when movies fail their actors, either." — Film.com Posted Sep 26, 2012
	51%	Trouble with the Curve (2012)	" Even if Eastwood's grumpy old man routine wears you down - it's perhaps too much of a not-very-good thing - there are lots of terrific second bananas." — Film.com Posted Sep 21, 2012
	85%	End of Watch (2012)	" At times Ayer rubs our noses, almost literally, in the devastating horribleness of it all." — NPR Posted Sep 20, 2012
	30%	Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)	" Writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson ... attempts to fill out a flimsy plot structure by making the characters' comings and goings overly convoluted." — Film.com Posted Sep 14, 2012
	13%	Stolen (2012)	" In Stolen, [Cage] steals away with nothing; he's simply stalled out." — NPR Posted Sep 13, 2012
	87%	Arbitrage (2012)	" In the end, the moralism of "Arbitrage" feels glued-on rather than earned." — Film.com Posted Sep 12, 2012
	55%	Bachelorette (2012)	" The lion's share of Bachelorette, written and directed by Leslye Headland, is unnervingly entertaining." — NPR Posted Sep 6, 2012
	58%	The Eye of the Storm (2012)	" Schepisi orchestrates these vitriolic cat-and-mouse games with great subtlety and skill, and you can almost feel the pleasure he takes in watching these actors do what they do best." — NPR Posted Sep 6, 2012
	22%	The Words (2012)	" Another actor might have made us feel something complicated for this troubled soul, but Cooper merely looks like the kind of guy who would steal another man's story." — Film.com Posted Sep 5, 2012
	39%	The Possession (2012)	" The first half of The Possession is suitably atmospheric and reasonably creepy." — Film.com Posted Sep 1, 2012
	70%	The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (2012)	" The trick is to let yourself swoon into the picture's visual embrace and not get too hung up on its myriad sticky plot points." — NPR Posted Aug 30, 2012
	67%	Lawless (2012)	" [Lawless] is both too obvious and not direct enough, and its shapelessness dilutes its power." — NPR Posted Aug 29, 2012
	48%	Hit & Run (2012)	" Hit and Run lures you in with its jackalope rhythms. There's nothing else like it on the current landscape." — NPR Posted Aug 23, 2012
	85%	Sleepwalk With Me (2012)	" Matt's learning curve is probably supposed to be entertaining, or endearing, or something, but mostly it just sends the movie lurching into inertia." — NPR Posted Aug 23, 2012
2/5	62%	The Awakening (2012)	" "The Awakening" takes so many unnecessary twists and turns that the final one, which should be a biggie, ends up feeling inconsequential." — Los Angeles Times Posted Aug 16, 2012
	65%	The Expendables 2 (2012)	" The Expendables 2 is reasonably cathartic in a fall-down-go-boom way, and if the picture's self-conscious riffing becomes tiresome after a while ... it's still much wittier than its predecessor." — NPR Posted Aug 16, 2012
	87%	ParaNorman (2012)	" The spirit of great stop-motion animators like George Pal and Ray Harryhausen lives on in ParaNorman, and not just as a ghost: It's so real you could almost reach out and touch it." — NPR Posted Aug 16, 2012
	65%	2 Days in New York (2012)	" The screenplay - which was written by Delpy, Landeau and Nahon - has a jittery kind of honesty about it, which Rock and Delpy sometimes push to its limits." — NPR Posted Aug 9, 2012
2.5/5	50%	Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (2012)	" Ends the series' winning streak, or at least slows it down to a panting, dog-day crawl." — Los Angeles Times Posted Aug 2, 2012
	70%	Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012)	" Maybe Celeste and Jesse Forever sometimes works too hard at being funny-sad. Still, it's admirable in its pursuit of an unnamable beast that's elusive and fragile: The funny sadness of the whole damn thing." — NPR Posted Aug 2, 2012
3.5/5	73%	Dark Horse (2012)	" For once, Solondz seems less interested in scoring points off his characters than in creeping into their shy, sad interior worlds." — Los Angeles Times Posted Jul 26, 2012
	100%	Planet of Snail (2012)	" A portrait of practical symbiosis in both domestic and emotional terms." — NPR Posted Jul 24, 2012
	52%	Grassroots (2012)	" Grassroots is a movie where bad ideas, because they're the ones championed by the "correct" side, are king. It never acknowledges that sometimes idealism is just another kind of manipulation." — NPR Posted Jul 19, 2012
6/10	92%	Farewell, My Queen (2012)	" The experience of watching it is something like lounging on a satin divan, being fanned lazily with a bouquet of ostrich plumes." — Movieline Posted Jul 12, 2012
6.5/10	67%	Trishna (2012)	" Some of it sticks and some of it doesn't. But almost always, [Winterbottom] gives us something worth looking at." — Movieline Posted Jul 11, 2012
5.5/10	51%	Savages (2012)	" There's just no shaking the feeling that it would be so much better if Stone had made it trimmer and more taut and limited himself to the use of only 12 different types of film stock." — Movieline Posted Jul 5, 2012
7/10	73%	The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)	" [I] had no specific desire to see the series resuscitated. But watching Garfield and Stone made me think doing so wasn't such a bad idea ..." — Movieline Posted Jul 2, 2012
7.5/10	69%	Ted (2012)	" Ted finds a surprising range of off-color vowel sounds in its potentially one-note gag." — Movieline Posted Jun 28, 2012
8.5/10	56%	People Like Us (2012)	" This is a straightforward family comedy-drama, a movie made for adults, and one that actually gives its actors - among them Chris Pine, Elizabeth Banks, Michelle Pfeiffer and Philip Baker Hall - something to do." — Movieline Posted Jun 27, 2012
4/10	35%	Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)	" It's not every day you see a movie and ask yourself, "Why does this thing even exist?"" — Movieline Posted Jun 21, 2012
8.5/10	78%	Brave (2012)	" This is a story about mothers and daughters and the ways they clash over basic, seemingly simple things, only to find their ultimate connection in the very things they can't change about each other." — Movieline Posted Jun 21, 2012
7.5/10	43%	To Rome with Love (2012)	" It will never be listed among his greats, but its willingness to surrender - that is, Allen's willingness to surrender - to mere pleasantness makes it charming enough." — Movieline Posted Jun 20, 2012
6/10	63%	The Woman in the Fifth (2012)	" The Woman in the Fifth leaves a tantalizing trail of breadcrumbs only to lead us to...one last breadcrumb." — Movieline Posted Jun 15, 2012
7/10	41%	Rock of Ages (2012)	" It's a fake tattoo with the volume turned way, way up." — Movieline Posted Jun 14, 2012
5.5/10	29%	Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding (2012)	" What's that you're saying? You really don't want to see Jane Fonda in twirly Grateful Dead skirts and dreadful ethnic earrings, urging the younger folk to get in touch with their inner Alex Comfort? Neither did I." — Movieline Posted Jun 7, 2012
6/10	74%	Prometheus (2012)	" Big and overcomplicated is so often mistaken for better, when really it's only...big and overcomplicated." — Movieline Posted Jun 5, 2012
2.5/10	13%	Piranha 3DD (2012)	" Piranha 3D was ridiculous, gory and fun, everything Piranha 3DD is not." — Movieline Posted Jun 1, 2012
6/10	48%	Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)	" Stewart moves through the picture looking noble and sadly dull, unwittingly setting the stage for the evil queen to steal her show." — Movieline Posted May 31, 2012
9/10	81%	A Cat in Paris (2012)	" The visuals of A Cat in Paris resonate in any language, and it doesn't hurt that the picture features a stunning, stealthy Bernard Hermann-style orchestral score by Serge Bessett." — Movieline Posted May 31, 2012
6/10	70%	Men in Black III (2012)	" Men in Black 3 is almost good enough to make you care about its existence. And yet not quite." — Movieline Posted May 24, 2012
6.5/10	94%	Moonrise Kingdom (2012)	" For all the movie's technical meticulousness, the storytelling still has a wiggly-waggly quality, like a dangly loose tooth." — Movieline Posted May 24, 2012
6/10	75%	The Intouchables (2012)	" The Intouchables is a movie about life, love and the enduring power of Earth Wind & Fire. You have been forewarned." — Movieline Posted May 24, 2012
5.5/10	34%	Battleship (2012)	" Perhaps not quite as painful as you might be expecting, though probably not as enjoyable, either." — Movieline Posted May 17, 2012
4.5/10	22%	What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012)	" What to Expect When You're Expecting doesn't find new laughs, just layers on attempts at the tried-and-true ones - think one scene in which a woman howls and makes funny faces during labor is funny? How about many of them together?" — Movieline Posted May 17, 2012
6.5/10	58%	Hysteria (2012)	" Like the little motorized whatsit that is its subject, it does have its charms." — Movieline Posted May 17, 2012
8.5/10	58%	The Dictator (2012)	" Sacha Baron Cohen and Larry Charles' The Dictator is indefensible and hilarious, an unruly thing that invites you to laugh at things you feel you shouldn't." — Movieline Posted May 15, 2012
5.5/10	38%	Dark Shadows (2012)	" Dark Shadows suffers from the now-predictable Tim Burton pile-on: Like a matron who's gone mad for garish jewelry, he just doesn't know when to stop." — Movieline Posted May 10, 2012
6/10	52%	Where Do We Go Now? (2012)	" Its occasional entertainment value aside, the picture is also blithe to the point of being flimsy." — Movieline Posted May 10, 2012
5.5/10	5%	Hick (2012)	" In the end, the story's potential emotional complexity - the idea that we might want to protect a young character while also recognizing her waiting-in-the-wings sexuality - ends up in a bland gray area." — Movieline Posted May 9, 2012
8/10	94%	First Position (2012)	" Documentaries don't have to be technically great to be irresistible, and Bess Kargman's First Position, which follows six young ballet dancers as they prepare for an elite competition, is a case in point." — Movieline Posted May 4, 2012
4.5/10	4%	A Little Bit Of Heaven (2012)	" In A Little Bit of Heaven, Hudson pushes the "Just Die Already" meter straight into the red." — Movieline Posted May 4, 2012
6/10	93%	Marvel's The Avengers (2012)	" The picture is broken down into narrative chunks that ultimately don't tell much of a story - what you get instead is a series of mini-climaxes held together by banter between characters." — Movieline Posted May 1, 2012
6/10	75%	Sound of My Voice (2012)	" This is the kind of picture that may often make you snort audibly, even as you're wondering how the heck it's going to resolve itself." — Movieline Posted Apr 28, 2012
6/10	23%	The Raven (2012)	" The whole thing has the feel of a second-rate living-history exhibit." — Movieline Posted Apr 28, 2012
5.5/10	57%	Safe (2012)	" Safe is safer than safe - it's so relentlessly kinetic that it ends up being dull." — Movieline Posted Apr 26, 2012
6/10	90%	Bernie (2012)	" Bernie, like its lead character, has a degree of diffuse, aw-shucks charm, but it's also maddeningly opaque." — Movieline Posted Apr 26, 2012
7/10	13%	The Moth Diaries (2012)	" It offers glancing pleasures of the atmospheric kind - the impact is the equivalent of a filmy cobweb brushing against your cheek. It tickles more than it bites." — Movieline Posted Apr 19, 2012
8.5/10	95%	Marley (2012)	" It's at once leisurely and controlled, like a Bob Marley song, with fresh secrets in every groove." — Movieline Posted Apr 19, 2012
5/10	22%	Darling Companion (2012)	" There's too much people and not enough dog in Lawrence Kasdan's Darling Companion, and even if you prefer people to dogs, that's a serious problem." — Movieline Posted Apr 19, 2012
8/10	51%	The Three Stooges (2012)	" The Three Stooges is not particularly great, though it is possibly brilliant, a picture that goes beyond homage to become its own rambunctious invention - it's one big eye-poke, with footnotes." — Movieline Posted Apr 12, 2012
7.5/10	84%	Post Mortem (2012)	" Post Mortem starts out at a crawl, but it gathers emotional momentum as it pushes forward." — Movieline Posted Apr 11, 2012
7/10	44%	American Reunion (2012)	" The picture is devilishly entertaining, not least because it's laced with just the sort of dumb raunchy jokes you hate yourself for laughing at." — Movieline Posted Apr 5, 2012
6/10	75%	Damsels in Distress (2012)	" The thing has the feel of a vanity project, lacking urgency - like the work of a gentleman filmmaker who doesn't have to work." — Movieline Posted Apr 3, 2012
6.5/10	54%	Bully (2001)	— Movieline Posted Mar 30, 2012
8.5/10	50%	Mirror Mirror (2012)	" There's plenty of spectacle in movies these days; it's delight that's in short supply, and Tarsem Singh's Mirror Mirror offers plenty of it, shimmering like a school of minnows in a reflective pond." — Movieline Posted Mar 29, 2012
8/10	82%	Goon (2012)	" Goon is crude, violent and deeply enjoyable." — Movieline Posted Mar 29, 2012
6.5/10	87%	Bully (2012)	" Bully is effective as a document of the suffering that too many kids suffer at the hands of their cruel and sometimes possibly even psychopathic peers, particularly in parts of the country where the idea of "normal" is pretty narrow." — Movieline Posted Mar 29, 2012
6.5/10	48%	4:44 Last Day on Earth (2012)	" Watching the excessively craggy Dafoe and the excessively nubile Leigh roll around on their pre-Apocalyptic mattress was certainly good for a giggle." — Movieline Posted Mar 23, 2012
7.5/10	79%	The Deep Blue Sea (2012)	" Rachel Weisz, as a woman who risks everything for the love of the wrong man, carries the mood and subtext of the material safely tucked in her dressing-gown pocket -- she's vulnerable and self-motivated in all the right measures." — Movieline Posted Mar 22, 2012
8.5/10	85%	The Hunger Games (2012)	" This is a movie about an independent-minded girl who just isn't sure she can trust a boy, as true to the spirit of the Shirelles as it is to Greek myth." — Movieline Posted Mar 20, 2012
6.5/10	78%	Jeff Who Lives at Home (2012)	" At what point do we stop applauding the Duplass brothers for their gumption and stick-to-itiveness and admit that, maybe, their storytelling just isn't so hot?" — Movieline Posted Mar 16, 2012
7/10	85%	21 Jump Street (2012)	" Together Hill and Tatum are so much fun to watch that it's disappointing when the story around them becomes overly cluttered and convoluted." — Movieline Posted Mar 15, 2012
7.5/10	51%	John Carter (2012)	" John Carter is so eager to please that, despite its overblown execution, it still manages to feel intimate and fun." — Movieline Posted Mar 8, 2012
5.5/10	41%	Silent House (2012)	" This is good-for-you, arthouse-style horror. Which doesn't mean it's necessarily any good." — Movieline Posted Mar 8, 2012
8.5/10	99%	Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2012)	" At its simplest level, Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a portrait of a master. In its deeper layers, it explores what drives us to make things: Beautiful, jewel-like things, or things that delight our palate - or, in this case, both." — Movieline Posted Mar 7, 2012
7.5/10	90%	Footnote (2012)	" Cedar approaches his subject with so much wit and verve that he almost - almost - makes you forget you're watching a movie about a very small, cloistered subset of academic obsessives whose life's work is about as visually undynamic as you can imagine." — Movieline Posted Mar 7, 2012
6/10	67%	Friends With Kids (2012)	" It's polished to the point of shallow glossiness -- it could benefit from being a little rougher, a little messier." — Movieline Posted Mar 6, 2012
4.5/10	52%	The Iron Lady (2012)	— Movieline Posted Mar 6, 2012
8/10	——	Hell: The Devil's Domain (2006)	— Movieline Posted Mar 6, 2012
8.5/10	99%	A Separation (2011)	— Movieline Posted Mar 6, 2012
8.5/10	100%	This Is Not a Film (2003)	— Movieline Posted Mar 6, 2012
8/10	82%	The Salt of Life (2012)	" To my knowledge, the only movie about the love lives of sexagenarians that closes with the Pixies' "Here Comes Your Man."" — Movieline Posted Mar 2, 2012
4/10	54%	Dr Seuss' The Lorax (2012)	" The Lorax is so big, flashy and redundant that it courts precisely the kind of blind consumerism it's supposed to be condemning. It doesn't trust kids to sit still and pay attention for even a minute." — Movieline Posted Mar 1, 2012
6/10	53%	Being Flynn (2012)	" There's no doubt that Being Flynn is an attempt at something painful and genuine - the movie itself yearns to make a connection, even if it can't quite locate the most effective channels." — Movieline Posted Mar 1, 2012

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