Akiva Gottlieb
Akiva Gottlieb's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer when
published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Apollo Guide,
Village Voice,
Slant Magazine
| Biography: |
In late 1998, I found myself to be a nervous wreck in the wonderful city of Los Angeles. I would go to the cinema twice or so a week, (usually) wasting money, skipping homework and having to put up with my parents' doubts. I desperately needed to convey my emotions! But I couldn't, so I became a film critic instead. I gave myself a reason to see what is now 3 or 4 films per week. Critics like Michael Dequina helped me move up the ranks, and in January 2000 I started a website called Picture Show (http://pictureshow.8m.com), which I share with 3 other wonderful young critics. I also am entertainment editor and resident film critic at L.A. publication Boiling Point. I love to write, but my real aspiration is filmmaking. I am currently directing a short film called "Yellow Brick Road", starring Robert Coppola Schwartzman ("Virgin Suicides"), Max Goldblatt ("My Giant") and fellow OFCS-member Michael Dequina. I am honored to be in the OFCS.
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| Favorites: |
Top 11 of 1999 (in no particular order)- American Beauty, The Insider, Magnolia, Run Lola Run, Fight Club, Three Seasons, The Matrix, Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl, Being John Malkovich, Boys Don't Cry, Eyes Wide Shut
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| Publications: | Apollo Guide, rec.arts.movies.reviews, Village Voice, Film Written Magazine, Slant Magazine, Stylus Magazine |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.5/4 | 93% | L'Heure d'été (Summer Hours) (2009) |
The last thing I expected from the mad genius behind Boarding Gate is a Chekhovian chamber drama whose mantra could be essentially reduced to: posterity cares.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted May 8, 2009
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| 2.5/4 | 80% | The End of America (2008) |
The End of America gives author and public intellectual Naomi Wolf an Inconvenient Truth-style platform to remind Americans about the Bush administration's assault on our civil liberties.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Dec 3, 2008
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| 2/4 | 76% | Let it Rain (Parlez-moi de la pluie) (2010) |
A question: If you spend an entire career chronicling power relationships among the incurably self-absorbed, is that not in itself a form of self-absorption?‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Oct 15, 2008
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| 1.5/4 | 67% | Four Nights With Anna (2008) |
Four Nights with Anna is one part funny ha-ha to 99 parts funny-strange.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Oct 13, 2008
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| 1/4 | 55% | Married Life (2008) |
When the characters in Married Life cry out for help, the entire mise-en-scène stifles them with irony.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Oct 19, 2007
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| 3.5/4 | 76% | Paranoid Park (2007) |
A fully subjective probe into the consciousness of a young man and a generous display of artistic empathy.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Oct 11, 2007
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| 3/4 | 88% | Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) |
Most of Before the Devil Knows You're Dead works so well as a fatalistic, post-Tarantino neo-noir that the last third's attempt to frame the drama as King Lear-level tragedy plays as an unnecessary reach.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Oct 8, 2007
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| 2/4 | 68% | Romance of Astrea and Celadon (2008) |
To borrow the film's vernacular, the words never stab into the soul.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Sep 26, 2007
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| 40% | The Ringer (2005) |
An uncomfortable intermingling of message movie and gross-out comedy, a sporadically funny vehicle that indicts its audience for laughing. Come on, guys. You can't have your fun and eat it too.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Dec 28, 2005
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| 44% | The Comedians of Comedy (2005) |
Watching the quartet doing laundry, playing arcade games, or getting haircuts evokes the banality of road life far too accurately, and at 105 minutes, the film hardly leaves us wanting more.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Nov 8, 2005
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| 74% | Loggerheads (2005) |
Unexpectedly resonant.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Oct 11, 2005
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| 40% | Going Shopping (2005) |
Henry Jaglom's latest study of contemporary female obsessions among a noxious clan of West L.A. bourgeoisie is of more pathological than cinematic interest.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Sep 27, 2005
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| 17% | Loudmouth Soup (2005) |
Loudmouth Soup perpetuates the same shallow myths about Los Angeles that it pretends to indict.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Sep 20, 2005
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| 88% | Campfire (2004) |
The timelier elements of Campfire, which cleared house at Israel's Academy Awards this year, are too salient to dismiss.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Sep 6, 2005
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| 22% | Formula 17 (2005) |
Mark my words: There is no way an innocent like Tien and a Meat Loaf-style heartthrob like Bai could ever make a love thing happen.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Aug 23, 2005
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| 71% | King of the Corner (2005) |
This is a story about the benefits of just showing up. Even at its most sentimental, Riegert's pet project possesses a lived-in integrity that nearly offsets the staleness of the material.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Aug 17, 2005
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| 32% | Valiant (2005) |
As education by anthropomorphism goes, Maus this ain't.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Aug 16, 2005
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| 2.5/4 | 52% | Four Brothers (2005) |
A crackerjack B-movie.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Aug 11, 2005
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| 75% | Just One Look (2005) |
A paean to cinephilia that might goad viewers into questioning the value of film itself.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Jul 26, 2005
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| 2/4 | 82% | Hustle & Flow (2005) |
Talent and practice isn't enough to realize your dreams. To get on MTV, sometimes you gotta shoot somebody.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Jul 13, 2005
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| 2/4 | 53% | Dallas 362 (2005) |
plays more like a vanity project from a rich kid who never got to do his share of macho posturing. ‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Jun 21, 2005
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| 41% | Second Best (2004) |
An ugly, amateurish film that champions mediocrity in a meta-attempt to justify its own ineptitude.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted May 24, 2005
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| 2/4 | 82% | Rock School (2005) |
There's something unsettling and downright Dickensian about Green's hard-knocks method and proprietary stance.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted May 22, 2005
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| 58% | Stolen Childhoods (2005) |
As cinema, this is standard, on-the-nose PBS fluff, but it's the grade school principal's perfect guilt inducement tool for slackers who arrive late to class.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted May 17, 2005
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| 2.5 | 56% | The Interpreter (2005) |
Subversive, maybe, but hardly explosive. ‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Apr 19, 2005
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| 38% | Beauty Shop (2005) |
Girls just wanna have fun, and so does the film, which recycles the requisite moralizing into a breezy, sporadically funny package.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Mar 29, 2005
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| 3/4 | 72% | Mondovino (2005) |
A remarkably focused docu-essay.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Mar 21, 2005
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| 46% | The Boys and Girl from County Clare (2004) |
John Irvin's Miramaxy paean to Irish Ceili music gets by on infectious geniality.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Mar 9, 2005
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| 2/4 | 52% | Melinda and Melinda (2005) |
Plays like the product of a Woody tribute act that couldn't decide if it preferred Annie Hall or Crimes and Misdemeanors.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Feb 23, 2005
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| 3/4 | 94% | Cinévardaphoto (2005) |
Varda remains a passionate gleaner of history.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Feb 16, 2005
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| 21% | Uncle Nino (2003) |
Sounds Disneyfied enough on paper, but the elderly, violin-toting hero's successful attempt to infiltrate his miscreant nephew's mall-punk garage band is too creepy to fulfill the hipness quotient.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Feb 8, 2005
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| 61% | Swimming Upstream (2004) |
Saddled with a ham-fistedly literal title and copious aesthetic ineptitude.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Feb 2, 2005
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| 1.5/4 | 76% | Assisted Living (2005) |
Greenebaum never molds his inchoate elements into any clear shape.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Feb 1, 2005
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| 43% | Bob, Verushka, and the Pursuit of Happiness (2000) |
While Waite's deadpan delivery eases the torture, Stigliano's micro-budget film plays like a preachy relic of the Gorbachev era.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Nov 16, 2004
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| 78% | Ein Leben lang kurze Hosen tragen (2003) |
While the serial-killer sob story subgenre rarely yields a nuanced product, Kai S. Pieck's debut feature finds a plaintive, compelling route to the pathology of 1960s German child-killer Jürgen Bartsch.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Oct 6, 2004
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| 57% | Cowboys & Angels (2003) |
In general, a film in which the protagonist exalts his friend on a city sidewalk, raising his arms to the sky and proclaiming, 'You've worked your magic on me, and I'll never be the same again!' should not be seen by anyone.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Sep 14, 2004
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| 5% | The Cookout (2004) |
The pointlessness of The Cookout exudes a modicum of charm, but the simple-minded mess still lacks the wit and moral weight of an episode of Family Matters.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Sep 7, 2004
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| 67% | Frankie and Johnny Are Married (2004) |
Successfully amalgamates Henry Jaglom's Hollywood- home-movie aesthetic, ego-skewering satire, and a measured understanding of the kinship between love and risk.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Jun 8, 2004
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| 25% | Off the Lip (2004) |
This inane debut feature is based around neon-suffused stock surfing footage from a Compaq commercial, so it's a notable accomplishment that Off the Lip succeeds at being laughably highfalutin.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted May 4, 2004
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| 73% | Showboy (2002) |
An ill-conceived, often implausible hybrid of fact and fiction.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Apr 6, 2004
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| 72/100 | 100% | Never Cry Wolf (1983) |
If you can get past the lack of significant dialogue then you will find a touching tale of one man's journey -- a journey that can teach us all a little bit about ourselves.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Jul 25, 2001
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| 2/4 | 40% | Varsity Blues (1999) |
Quote not available.‐ rec.arts.movies.reviews
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2000
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| 4/4 | 88% | American Beauty (1999) |
Quote not available.‐ rec.arts.movies.reviews
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2000
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| 2/4 | 67% | Sugar Town (1999) |
Quote not available.‐ rec.arts.movies.reviews
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2000
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| 3.5/4 | 72% | Existenz (1999) |
Quote not available.‐ rec.arts.movies.reviews
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2000
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| 3/4 | 83% | Notting Hill (1999) |
Quote not available.‐ rec.arts.movies.reviews
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2000
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| 3/4 | 69% | Analyze This (1999) |
Quote not available.‐ rec.arts.movies.reviews
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2000
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| 2/4 | 78% | Get Real (1999) |
Quote not available.‐ rec.arts.movies.reviews
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2000
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| 3/4 | 83% | Crna macka, beli macor (Black Cat, White Cat) (1999) |
Quote not available.‐ rec.arts.movies.reviews
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2000
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| 2.5/4 | 22% | The General's Daughter (1999) |
Quote not available.‐ rec.arts.movies.reviews
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2000
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