Tom Maurstad Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Tom Maurstad

Tom Maurstad

Agrees with the Tomatometer 71% of the time.

Publications:: Dallas Morning News
Critics' Group:: Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association

Total Reviews:: 239

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Showing 51 - 100 of 239

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
A	95%	Star Trek (2009)	" The summer movie season has barely begun, but already one thing is certain: It will have at least one indisputably great movie." — Dallas Morning News Posted May 7, 2009
C-	38%	X-Men Origins - Wolverine (2009)	" What a wasteful shame." — Dallas Morning News Posted May 1, 2009
B-	56%	The Soloist (2009)	" While the film is unable to resolve its central subject, its background portrayal of the ongoing dissolution of the newspaper industry -- captured in a few fleeting images of layoffs and downsizing -- is vividly realized." — Dallas Morning News Posted Apr 24, 2009
C-	37%	Gigantic (2009)	" Aselton's reason for making this movie is easy to discern -- he wants to be a filmmaker. But coming up with a reason for watching this movie is more of a challenge." — Dallas Morning News Posted Apr 17, 2009
B	41%	The Last House on the Left (2009)	" In this era of torture porn, this film seems intent on reconnecting audiences with the power and intensity of real-life, even quiet and casual creepiness." — Dallas Morning News Posted Mar 13, 2009
C+	64%	Watchmen (2009)	" As transferred to the big screen by director Zack Snyder, Watchmen is often visually stunning but also confusing and scattered." — Dallas Morning News Posted Mar 5, 2009
C+	82%	Two Lovers (2008)	" While Gray shares Leonard's love of photographing Brighton Beach street life and storefronts, and does so with great sensitivity and skill, this is such a worn-out cinematic setting that it has the effect of someone who's forever showing you baby photos." — Dallas Morning News Posted Feb 27, 2009
C	59%	The International (2009)	" The script tries to explain how this improbable alliance happened, but it never does make much sense, which is a recurrent theme in this overly complicated conspiracy tale." — Dallas Morning News Posted Feb 13, 2009
C-	25%	Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009)	" Too bad. It could have been more, and its audience deserves better." — Dallas Morning News Posted Feb 13, 2009
B-	41%	He's Just Not That Into You (2009)	" Somehow, director Ken Kwapis and screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein have managed to construct a movie that stays on its feet." — Dallas Morning News Posted Feb 6, 2009
A-	89%	Coraline (2009)	" Parents may need to give a reassuring squeeze now and then, but Coraline is the best kind of children's entertainment -- smartly told and deeply felt." — Dallas Morning News Posted Feb 6, 2009
A-	96%	Waltz with Bashir (2008)	" It's a fearless and unblinking march into the heart of one man's darkness and the pain and anguish of generations and nations." — Dallas Morning News Posted Jan 23, 2009
B	98%	The Wrestler (2008)	" The movie presses too hard and too often, but the performances are strong enough to withstand the melodramatic impulses, and the themes of isolation and self-destructiveness are too sharply realized to be trivialized." — Dallas Morning News Posted Jan 9, 2009
D+	10%	Bride Wars (2009)	" It's been awhile since a movie has been this stridently insufferable while pulling off that moviemaking trifecta of combining bad directing, bad writing and bad acting." — Dallas Morning News Posted Jan 9, 2009
B-	62%	Valkyrie (2008)	" Singer keeps the conspiracy racing to its fated conclusion." — Dallas Morning News Posted Dec 30, 2008
B	56%	The Tale of Despereaux (2008)	" The film dispenses entirely with the bathroom humor that has become a standard element in so much kids entertainment." — Dallas Morning News Posted Dec 19, 2008
C	27%	Seven Pounds (2008)	" It's impossible to talk about the movie without revealing the least little thing about its secret. And the secret is so flimsy, absurd and obvious that, if we write about it at all, you could figure it out from almost the moment the movie starts." — Dallas Morning News Posted Dec 19, 2008
B+	78%	Doubt (2008)	" This is a film bound to provoke differing interpretations and lively conversation at the cafe or in the car after it's over. A movie that's rewarding to think and talk about: That's the nicest Christmas present you can give a moviegoer." — Dallas Morning News Posted Dec 12, 2008
D	21%	The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)	" This movie is as clunky and unappealing as the space-saving acronym being used to avoid its endless title -- TDTESS." — Dallas Morning News Posted Dec 12, 2008
D	27%	Punisher: War Zone (2008)	" This is the third crack Hollywood has taken at the comic-book hero the Punisher. They say the third time's the charm. But then, they say a lot of things." — Dallas Morning News Posted Dec 5, 2008
A	94%	Milk (2008)	" It's a reminder, in this age of virtual flash and computer-generated wonders, of the power of simple human expression." — Dallas Morning News Posted Nov 26, 2008
B-	55%	Australia (2008)	" Australia provides some remarkable moments: remarkably beautiful, remarkably imaginative and, against all odds, genuinely moving, which in a movie this overwrought and overblown is, in itself, remarkable." — Dallas Morning News Posted Nov 26, 2008
B	88%	Bolt (2008)	" The directors and screenwriters hit all their marks and push all the right buttons, but the story never really takes off, and the characters never really spark to life." — Dallas Morning News Posted Nov 21, 2008
C	64%	Quantum of Solace (2008)	" The problems can be traced to a screenplay that is stuffed with internecine plot points and shades-of-gray complexities, but little else: no character-sharpening details and none of the wit and charm that buoyed Casino Royale." — Dallas Morning News Posted Nov 14, 2008
B-	69%	Synecdoche, New York (2008)	" It's hard to say just what kind of movie Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut is, and by the end of it, his film has made a pretty convincing case that it's pointless to try." — Dallas Morning News Posted Nov 7, 2008
B+	44%	Soul Men (2008)	" There's nothing here you haven't seen before, but the genuine and infectious chemistry between Mr. Jackson and Mr. Mac and the irresistible energy of their performances is more than enough to give the movie real heft and momentum." — Dallas Morning News Posted Nov 7, 2008
B-	65%	Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)	" [Rogen's] funny, it works." — Dallas Morning News Posted Oct 31, 2008
C	62%	Changeling (2008)	" Changeling may be the most beautiful horror film ever made; it may also be the most boring." — Dallas Morning News Posted Oct 24, 2008
A	85%	Rachel Getting Married (2008)	" This is an amazing movie... the best work from Mr. Demme since his classic Something Wild." — Dallas Morning News Posted Oct 17, 2008
C	59%	W. (2008)	" Rather than throwing gas on the fire, the in-the-moment, history-as-it's-happening framing of W. throws a bucket of water on the experience. This movie doesn't explode; it fizzles." — Dallas Morning News Posted Oct 17, 2008
C+	54%	Body of Lies (2008)	" As a movie seeking to tell a story, Body of Lies is a confused jumble." — Dallas Morning News Posted Oct 10, 2008
B+	73%	Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008)	" Nick and Norah takes the relatively radical approach of making a movie that occurs on a genuinely human scale." — Dallas Morning News Posted Oct 3, 2008
B-	69%	Religulous (2008)	" Many may laugh, and many will surely be offended, but nothing here bridges the gap between those two reactions." — Dallas Morning News Posted Oct 3, 2008
D	26%	Eagle Eye (2008)	" Forget suspending disbelief; you would have to suspend consciousness to go along with this story." — Dallas Morning News Posted Sep 26, 2008
C	34%	Miracle at St. Anna (2008)	" Along the way, Mr. Lee has some gripping moments. But for every striking irony, there is a hammer-handed scene driving the same point into self-parody." — Dallas Morning News Posted Sep 26, 2008
B+	85%	Ghost Town (2008)	" As Ghost Town reminds us, there's nothing wrong with formula filmmaking - as long as it's done with smarts and style. Indeed, formulaic doesn't have to be shorthand for lazy, obvious and uninspired." — Dallas Morning News Posted Sep 19, 2008
D	19%	Righteous Kill (2008)	" In every way that matters (indeed, in just about every way a movie can), Righteous Kill fails to deliver." — Dallas Morning News Posted Sep 12, 2008
B+	89%	Auf der Anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven) (On the Other Side) (2007)	" Propelled by the beautiful camerawork and scenery that moves back and forth between pastoral idyll and urban chaos as it takes the viewer on a journey that ends with a final image as quiet and beautiful as any in recent cinema." — Dallas Morning News Posted Sep 5, 2008
C	63%	Traitor (2008)	" A confused and unsatisfying experience with some nice moments that don't amount to much." — Dallas Morning News Posted Aug 27, 2008
B	75%	Elegy (2008)	" It's beautifully photographed and slowly paced, all the better to emphasize the film's emphasis on and exploration of deep feelings." — Dallas Morning News Posted Aug 22, 2008
B+	43%	Death Race (2008)	" The movie gets its own Mad Max mojo working, but there's no real attempt at social commentary here -- these churls just want to have fun." — Dallas Morning News Posted Aug 22, 2008
B+	82%	Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)	" A movie brimming with beautiful people and beautiful scenery; there's a contagious enthusiasm as this movie whirs through the sights and sounds of Barcelona." — Dallas Morning News Posted Aug 15, 2008
B	83%	Tropic Thunder (2008)	" Tropic Thunder is more consistently entertaining, and its best moments burn much brighter than those of Pineapple Express." — Dallas Morning News Posted Aug 13, 2008
B+	88%	Boy A (2007)	" There are some gaps in the movie's reality, and some O. Henry-like contrivances, but the masterful trick Boy A plays on viewers is to get them to care before giving them reasons not to." — Dallas Morning News Posted Aug 8, 2008
B-	68%	Pineapple Express (2008)	" Pineapple Express presents viewers with an oxymoronic experience: the action stoner film." — Dallas Morning News Posted Aug 6, 2008
a-	71%	Wanted (2008)	" A one-word review of Wanted would be "Wow."" — Dallas Morning News Posted Jun 26, 2008
B-	51%	Get Smart (2008)	" Instead of the show's wacky, slapstick tone, Get Smart presents itself as an action-filled spy movie that just happens to be really funny. And for the most part, it succeeds." — Dallas Morning News Posted Jun 20, 2008
A-	50%	Sex and the City (2008)	" Fans rejoice: It's good. And smart. And funny." — Dallas Morning News Posted May 29, 2008
A	39%	Speed Racer (2008)	" This is a movie that is giddily, gorgeously overwhelming, from the cool slow-motion to the Kubrick cartoons to the wormhole pyrotechnics to the kaleidoscopic bliss." — Dallas Morning News Posted May 9, 2008
B	63%	Baby Mama (2008)	" A really funny, surprisingly smart and genuinely sweet comedy." — Dallas Morning News Posted Apr 25, 2008
F	8%	10,000 B.C. (2008)	" You may be expecting a showcase of cutting-edge visuals -- isn't the appeal of the title the implicit promise of seeing a lost world re-created to presumably dazzling effect? But for the most part, it's just barren landscapes and people in animal skins." — Dallas Morning News Posted Mar 7, 2008
B-	37%	Rambo (Rambo IV) (2008)	" Stunningly, unrelentingly violent." — Dallas Morning News Posted Jan 25, 2008
D	14%	Hitman (2007)	" The only thing Hitman succeeds in doing is confirming what common sense could tell you without spending millions of dollars on a special-effects-filled movie: A series of novels is much richer source material than a series of video games." — Dallas Morning News Posted Nov 26, 2007
C	47%	Rendition (2007)	" It's all too simplistic to really engage the deeply complex dilemma it seeks to pass judgment on." — Dallas Morning News Posted Oct 19, 2007
D+	20%	Death Sentence (2007)	" Utterly humorless and unrelentingly grim. Giving it a grainy, washed-out, fidgety look and choreographing scenes to create an atmosphere of claustrophobic disorientation, Mr. Wan has made a movie that is literally unpleasant to watch." — Dallas Morning News Posted Aug 31, 2007
B+	20%	The Invasion (2007)	" The movie offers plenty of smarts and imaginative distractions to counter the stacking of improbabilities." — Dallas Morning News Posted Aug 17, 2007
B+	76%	Stardust (2007)	" As with most fairy tales, it can sound silly and overcomplicated because, really, it is silly and overcomplicated. That's part of the fun, part of its out-of-this-world power." — Dallas Morning News Posted Aug 10, 2007
C-	78%	You Kill Me (2007)	" With strong lead performances and sure-footed direction, You Kill Me isn't terrible, it's just not nearly as smart or interesting as it should be or as it seems to think it is." — Dallas Morning News Posted Jul 6, 2007
B-	57%	Transformers (2007)	" This is a movie to see on the big screen." — Dallas Morning News Posted Jul 3, 2007
D	40%	The Wendell Baker Story (2005)	" The movie undercuts whatever good graces it has generated with a feel-good ending that is just stunningly stupid. It's hard to be hip when your finale is so square." — Dallas Morning News Posted May 18, 2007
B	56%	Civic Duty (2006)	" If Mr. Krause weren't so good at making his psychotic break with reality (or was it?) so steadily, plausibly convincing, the movie would be unwatchable. Instead, it's a disturbing diary of one man's descent." — Dallas Morning News Posted May 4, 2007
B	28%	Next (2007)	" Good summer fun that's both brain and eye candy." — Dallas Morning News Posted Apr 27, 2007
B-	48%	Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres (2007)	" Fittingly, the sequences when the movie actually tries to tell a story are when things bog down and fall apart. Much better is when the movie stops trying to make sense and just lets the pop-art absurdities fly." — Dallas Morning News Posted Apr 13, 2007
B	48%	Shooter (2007)	" Director Antoine Fuqua knows how to stage and shoot scenes of violence and chaos so that they build without ever bubbling over into absurdity." — Dallas Morning News Posted Mar 23, 2007
C+	19%	I Think I Love My Wife (2007)	" The movie never breaks the surface of its characters or their situation. And Mr. Rock's paint-by-numbers approach as director only compounds the movie's flat, formulaic feel." — Dallas Morning News Posted Mar 16, 2007
C-	29%	Smokin' Aces (2007)	" This movie is meant to be watched the way a video game is played: just go from scene to scene and start blasting the minute you walk through the door." — Dallas Morning News Posted Jan 26, 2007
B-	62%	Blood Diamond (2006)	" What keeps you watching is the level of acting, especially between the two male leads." — Dallas Morning News Posted Dec 8, 2006
C-	54%	Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny (2006)	" It's pointless to nitpick a film this ostentatiously loose and loutish, but in the film's execution much of that spirit just comes off as lazy and careless." — Dallas Morning News Posted Nov 23, 2006
C-	14%	The Genius Club (2006)	" The Genius Club is a stultifying, static movie about a group of people trapped in a dingy boardroom yelling at one another and their tormentor." — Dallas Morning News Posted Oct 27, 2006
C+	55%	Marie Antoinette (2006)	" The movie ends as it started, with Marie in a carriage, unaware of the fate we know awaits her. It's the last in a long line of things the movie neither shows or tells us." — Dallas Morning News Posted Oct 20, 2006
C	69%	Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man (2006)	" Mr. Cohen is funny and charming while being brilliantly observant, so it's especially frustrating that this film about him is so reverent and humorless." — Dallas Morning News Posted Jul 13, 2006
B+	35%	The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)	" To call it a great film would be to oversell it, but as a fun, fascinating work of kinetic art, a 100-minute visual spectacle, it's a knockout." — Dallas Morning News Posted Jun 15, 2006
F	9%	See No Evil (2006)	" ... there's the assembly-line predictability of it all." — Dallas Morning News Posted May 19, 2006
C+	56%	The Big Buy: Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress (2006)	" Unapologetic partisanship underscores the central question and problem of The Big Buy: For whom and what is it intended?" — Dallas Morning News Posted May 18, 2006
C+	73%	V for Vendetta (2006)	" V for Vendetta engages in lots of speechifying about the importance of ideas and the freedom to question them. Ironically, though, the movie doesn't really seem to have any ideas of its own." — Dallas Morning News Posted Mar 16, 2006
C-	22%	The Pink Panther (2006)	" The most effective way of reviewing the new Pink Panther movie would be to issue two reviews. One would be a simply worded warning to adults: Skip it if you can." — Dallas Morning News Posted Feb 9, 2006
C	61%	The New World (2005)	" It's by no means the longest movie ever made, but it's one of the longest movies ever made in which next to nothing ever happens and barely a word is spoken." — Dallas Morning News Posted Jan 19, 2006
F	4%	Bloodrayne (2006)	" There's nothing certain in life except death, taxes and ... that movies based on video games are going to stink. Cue BloodRayne." — Dallas Morning News Posted Jan 7, 2006
B	53%	Wolf Creek (2005)	" Mr. McLean uses all sorts of storytelling tricks to keep you guessing while the quartet of unknown actors deliver deeply affecting performances." — Dallas Morning News Posted Dec 24, 2005
B+	29%	Fun With Dick and Jane (2005)	" Fun With Dick and Jane is the best kind of remake: It takes a dated film most people haven't seen or vaguely remember and updates the basic premise in a way that plugs it into here and now." — Dallas Morning News Posted Dec 21, 2005
B+	10%	Aeon Flux (2005)	" There's no way to say it but to come right out with it: Aeon Flux is a good movie. Actually, it's a really good movie." — Dallas Morning News Posted Dec 5, 2005
C-	36%	Saw II (2005)	" Saw II goes to great lengths to be smart and not just viscerally but intellectually provocative. An admirable ambition, but it just makes the movie even more silly when it fails so utterly in the effort." — Dallas Morning News Posted Oct 28, 2005
B+	57%	Last Days (2005)	" This movie, depending on what you do with it, can be boring, brilliant or both." — Dallas Morning News Posted Aug 11, 2005
B-	55%	Wonderful Days (Sky Blue) (2004)	" A gorgeous work of animation, juxtaposing photo-realistic backgrounds with surrealistic images and actions. It rewards the effort of seeing it on the big screen." — Dallas Morning News Posted Mar 31, 2005
C	78%	Sin City (2005)	" Sin City is one of those films that you know going in is either going to be super-cool or ultra-awful. And in this case, depending on how you look at it, you can't lose or you can't win, because it's both." — Dallas Morning News Posted Mar 31, 2005
C-	35%	Hostage (2005)	" Inevitably, the action has to take over, and the film devolves into a frenzy of fireballs and automatic gunfire." — Dallas Morning News Posted Mar 10, 2005
C	13%	Hide and Seek (2005)	" Add this movie to Robert De Niro's climb up Mount Hackdom." — Dallas Morning News Posted Jan 27, 2005
C	26%	Blade: Trinity (2004)	" Brings this three-part tale of a vampire hunter (Wesley Snipes) to a close with more of a shrug than a shriek." — Dallas Morning News Posted Dec 8, 2004
C-	6%	Testosterone (Testosteroni) (2004)	" A lackluster and meandering exercise in psycho-sexual provocation." — Dallas Morning News Posted Dec 2, 2004
B-	68%	The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (2004)	" Being so good is what led to making the movie, and it's also the reason that many small-screen episodes are better than this big-screen venture." — Dallas Morning News Posted Nov 18, 2004
C-	10%	Taxi (2004)	" This comedy caper throws a little of everything into the mix with the predictable result that it winds up not being much of anything." — Dallas Morning News Posted Oct 6, 2004
A-	91%	Shaun of the Dead (2004)	" This movie is destined for cult greatness. See it now and you can say -- honestly, for once -- that you were there in the beginning." — Dallas Morning News Posted Sep 23, 2004
C-	56%	Mr. 3000 (2004)	" For a movie with such a big number in its title, Mr. 3000 never amounts to much." — Dallas Morning News Posted Sep 16, 2004
B-	54%	Cellular (2004)	" Ellis crafts an impressive procession of car chases, fight scenes and things going boom. And he keeps things moving at such a rip-roaring pace that all the ways in which this movie just doesn't make any sense whatsoever blur into the background." — Dallas Morning News Posted Sep 9, 2004
A-	33%	What the Bleep Do We Know!? (2004)	" A film that dares to treat people as smart and deeply curious rather than dumb and deeply cynical." — Dallas Morning News Posted Sep 9, 2004
D-	18%	Paparazzi (2004)	" The film is directed by Paul Abascal who exhibits all the subtlety you would expect from a director who got his start as a celebrity hair stylist." — Dallas Morning News Posted Sep 4, 2004
A	95%	Hero (2004)	" Filled with unforgettable scenes." — Dallas Morning News Posted Aug 26, 2004
C	73%	The Best Two Years (2004)	" There's not much to this movie." — Dallas Morning News Posted Aug 19, 2004
D	16%	Twist (2004)	" The only thing funny about Twist is how seriously it takes its own pompous preposterousness." — Dallas Morning News Posted Aug 5, 2004

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