Adam Markovitz

Adam Markovitz's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Entertainment Weekly
Publications:
Entertainment Weekly
Movie Reviews Only
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C | 16% | Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return (2014) |
The bricks are still yellow, but the road doesn't lead anywhere special. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted May 9, 2014
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B- | 83% | The Double (2014) |
Director Richard Ayoade gets a huge impact from minimal expressionist sets. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted May 8, 2014
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B | 25% | Devil's Knot (2014) |
The movie doesn't grab you emotionally, but director Atom Egoyan (Exotica) teases apart the case's details with grim fascination. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted May 8, 2014
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C- | 26% | Brick Mansions (2014) |
You know those ridiculous action movies where a bad guy with, say, four large guns gets beaten up by a quick-witted good guy with absolutely zero guns? They've got nothing on Brick Mansions. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Apr 24, 2014
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C | 51% | Heaven Is for Real (2014) |
There's no antagonist, no resolution, and no real climax - just a series of mildly charming scenes in which Colton shares heavenly knowledge while his family reacts with awestruck tears. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Apr 20, 2014
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B+ | 90% | Disneynature Bears (2014) |
If the sight of bear cubs prancing through wildflowers doesn't make you smile, then you probably won't like the new Disneynature documentary Bears. You also probably aren't human. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Apr 17, 2014
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C+ | 22% | That Awkward Moment (2014) |
The movie's ideas about relationships would've felt middle-of-the-road in the '80s, and its big epiphany moments (Guys can fall in love, too!) are shallow enough to make you long for the comparatively profound rom-com oeuvre of Kate Hudson. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Feb 1, 2014
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C+ | 53% | Justin Bieber's Believe (2013) |
When the movie occasionally does confront its hero's foibles, its answers are disappointingly pat. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Dec 30, 2013
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B- | 48% | The Book Thief (2013) |
It would make for a pretty ghastly pageant if not for smart, understated turns by Watson and Geoffrey Rush. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Nov 7, 2013
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A- | 98% | Let The Fire Burn (2013) |
[A] lean and deeply unsettling archival-footage documentary. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Oct 4, 2013
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B | 68% | Haute Cuisine (2013) |
A pleasant dramedy inspired by a true story. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Sep 27, 2013
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D- | 3% | Getaway (2013) |
Getaway has some of the crass trappings of a charmingly crass, go-for-broke action pic like the delightful Crank. But it's too dumb - and far too cynical about what audiences want - to even know how to have fun with them. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Aug 30, 2013
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C | 23% | Paranormal Activity 4 (2012) |
Mostly, it plays like a overlong prologue for the already-in-the-works PA5. Here's hoping this is just the tension-racking lull before the next big scream. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Oct 18, 2012
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C+ | 88% | Bernie (2012) |
All those twangy, homespun observations interrupt and annotate the narrative until Black and MacLaine's scenes start to feel as trivial as reenactments on a true-crime TV show. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Apr 25, 2012
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B+ | 86% | The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012) |
Even when the whimsy in The Pirates! Band of Misfits's history-be-damned story (which also ropes in Charles Darwin) feels a bit forced, the magic of the medium never does. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Apr 25, 2012
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B | 76% | Disneynature Chimpanzee (2012) |
Chimpanzee gives us a fully smoothed-out story -- about an orphan ape named Oscar -- populated with chimps so cute and Disney-fied that you half expect them to break out in an Alan Menken song. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Apr 13, 2012
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D+ | 18% | Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012) |
Like the first Ghost Rider movie, this one burns plenty of rubber trying to swerve around plot holes and thinly written characters. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Feb 17, 2012
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C- | 12% | Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (2011) |
Good news: The shrill CG rodents, who last infested theaters in 2009's Squeakquel, are stranded on a jungle island with little hope of survival. Bad news: They've brought us along. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Dec 15, 2011
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B | 46% | Immortals (2011) |
Without any narrative heft, these sights don't last in the mind much longer than they linger on screen. And yet they thrill in short-lived bursts that Singh doles out carefully, keeping pace with the audience's appetite. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Nov 18, 2011
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C- | 54% | Flipped (2010) |
- Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Nov 18, 2011
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D | 18% | Shark Night 3D (2011) |
A ho-hum series of kills and lulls so predictable that it doesn't even look like much fun for the sharks; when they open wide, they might as well be yawning. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Sep 2, 2011
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B | 63% | Jig (2011) |
Uncovers the sweat and toil behind all the sparkly outfits and clickety-clack footwork. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jun 22, 2011
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D | No Score Yet | Love Wedding Marriage (2011) |
Though it doesn't work as entertainment, this numbingly chipper rom-com (directed by Dermot Mulroney) might be of historical value someday as an A-to-Z guide to the genre's most overworked clichés. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted May 27, 2011
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C- | 15% | Priest (2011) |
Adapted from a graphic-novel series (and what isn't these days?), this unholy mess of horror and Western clichés is, at least, blessed with a wonderfully loony premise. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted May 13, 2011
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C- | 7% | Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (2011) |
Never mind that Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is loosely based on an Italian comic series from the 1980s; this low-rent adaptation owes an embarrassingly big blood debt to HBO's True Blood. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Apr 29, 2011
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D- | 21% | Beastly (2011) |
Stunningly bad. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Mar 5, 2011
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D+ | 5% | Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (2011) |
Lawrence's gender-bending jokes are played out, and his slapstick is wooden and slow. It's understandable: Clowning around underneath that fat suit must be exhausting. Almost as much as watching it. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Feb 18, 2011
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B | 30% | Sanctum (2011) |
A lean, clear-headed 3-D thriller that knows exactly where it's headed from the moment its adrenaline junkie explorers dive into the world's biggest cave in Papua New Guinea. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Feb 3, 2011
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D | 5% | Waiting for Forever (2011) |
An indistinct romantic-dramedy-ish something or other. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jan 27, 2011
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C+ | 85% | The Time That Remains (2011) |
Suleiman's obvious gift for cinema makes you wish that in connecting so personally with his past, he'd occasionally reach out to the audience, too. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jan 19, 2011
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B- | 12% | Yogi Bear (2010) |
There's nothing particularly inventive in the plot or grade-school humor, but the movie skates by on the timeless, undemanding charm of watching a tie-wearing bear try to steal people's lunches. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Dec 15, 2010
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D+ | 31% | The Warrior's Way (2010) |
There isn't a shred of subtlety in their clowning -- or in any part of the movie, which clumsily shoots for operatic highs and lows. But with so many borrowed bits and pieces, the only feeling it successfully evokes is déjà vu. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Dec 3, 2010
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D | 42% | Faster (2010) |
Faster ... leaves it to Johnson -- as deadly focused as a gunsight -- to make it all believable. The problem is, he can't.. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Nov 24, 2010
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B- | 81% | Today's Special (2010) |
The cooking scenes are fun, but Samir's reawakening and romance with a co-worker hold about as many surprises as a prix fixe meal. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Nov 17, 2010
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C+ | 16% | Skyline (2010) |
The Strauses used their tech savvy to make a marvel of logistics that looks every bit as slick as a studio tentpole. It's just a shame they haven't figured out a way to CG a decent story. Yet. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2010
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D- | 10% | My Soul to Take (2010) |
Wes Craven's first new movie in five years is a brainless, joyless, and yes, you might even say, soulless teen slasher. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Oct 8, 2010
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C+ | 50% | Devil (2010) |
A pocket-size supernatural thriller that plays a bit like Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians retold by an unstable Sunday School teacher. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Sep 17, 2010
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C | 18% | Alpha and Omega (2010) |
Underwhelming in the style of most off-brand CG, Alpha and Omega is livened by pretty Rocky Mountain backdrops and leadened by stock characters and the wolves' weirdly prissy behavior. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Sep 15, 2010
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C- | 18% | Legendary (2010) |
A well-meaning dud that'll put you out faster than a sleeper hold. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Sep 8, 2010
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C- | 28% | Takers (2010) |
At least they do look sharp in those suits. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Aug 27, 2010
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C- | 4% | Vampires Suck (2010) |
The Twilight Saga, with its operatic gloom and straight-faced fantasy, is undoubtedly ripe for a smart, good-natured ribbing. This isn't it. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Aug 19, 2010
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D | 13% | Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (2010) |
No movie -- whether aimed at adults or kids or canines themselves -- has the right to be as tiresome and unoriginal as this action-comedy mutt. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jul 28, 2010
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D- | 6% | Standing Ovation (2010) |
For us grinchy adults out there without children to sedate, the whole thing feels slightly less like a movie than like the filmed record of a mutiny at a juvie talent agency. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jul 19, 2010
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C- | 9% | Marmaduke (2010) |
If the phrase ''From the producer of Garfield'' doesn't scare you off, then step right up. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jun 4, 2010
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C | 35% | The Good Guy (2009) |
The Good Guy has a few half-cute moments, some chuckles, and enough pretty faces to cast at least two TV pilots. What it doesn't have is a clue. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Mar 3, 2010
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C+ | 49% | Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010) |
Has all the CGI sorcery of a Harry Potter pic, but none of the magic. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Feb 12, 2010
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D+ | 17% | When in Rome (2010) |
We get three acts of labored slapstick wrung from an eye-roller of a premise. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jan 29, 2010
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F | No Score Yet | Transylmania (2009) |
A no-stars, no-plot, no-point vampire spoof about a group of coeds studying abroad in a haunted castle, Transylmania boasts the kind of acting and direction usually relegated to the adult section of your local video store. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Dec 4, 2009
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B | 23% | Planet 51 (2009) |
Delivers a few pleasant surprises, including a smart story -- a reverse-E.T. riff that plops an American astronaut down in a world of just-like-us-only-green creatures -- and clever characters... - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Nov 18, 2009
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D | 23% | The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (2009) |
Earns points only for being remarkably unself-conscious about its across-the-board ineptitude. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Nov 4, 2009
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