Budd Wilkins
Budd Wilkins's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer when
published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Film Journal International,
Slant Magazine
| Publications: | Film Journal International, Slant Magazine, House Next Door |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 45% | 6 Days (2017) |
This historical hostage docudrama aspires to rigorous objectivity but ultimately tips its hand as an endorsement of hardline conservatism. ‐ Film Journal International
Read More | Posted Aug 17, 2017
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| 92% | Some Freaks (2017) |
The psychological acuity with which [director Ian MacAllister-McDonald] delineates his characters more than makes up for [the film's] relatively minor lapses.‐ Film Journal International
Read More | Posted Aug 4, 2017
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| No Score Yet | Erosu Purasu Gyakusatsu (Eros Plus Massacre) (1969) |
Kiju Yoshida's thought-provoking political trilogy makes its Region A Blu-ray debut with sturdy transfers and some essential contextual bonus materials.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted May 30, 2017
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| 3/4 | 75% | We Are the Flesh (Tenemos la carne) (2017) |
The film establishes a hypnotic rhythm through razor-stropped editing and a reverberant sound design that later scenes will disrupt with alarming impunity.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Jan 17, 2017
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| 4/4 | 91% | Le Jour se lève (Daybreak) (1939) |
Like Marcel Carné's earlier Port of Shadows, Daybreak establishes a versatile visual palette that exerted a significant influence over classical noir.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2014
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| 4/4 | 100% | Hiroshima Mon Amour (1960) |
The facticity of the film itself is continually called into question by Alain Resnais's decision to blur the boundaries between nonfiction and fiction films.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Oct 14, 2014
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| 86% | Adieu au langage (Goodbye to Language) (2014) |
It's a good bit funnier, as well as freer in its rapid-fire associations, than the more strident and structured Film Socialisme. ‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted May 24, 2014
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| 97% | Two Days, One Night (2014) |
An old-fashioned social-problem film where the problem magically evaporates.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted May 21, 2014
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| 89% | Amour Fou (2015) |
An early reference to Kleist's short story The Marquise of O should clue you in on Hausner's stylistic debt to Rohmer's film version, with its static camera setups and gorgeous yet minimalist sets. ‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted May 21, 2014
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| 95% | Wild Tales (2015) |
As in the episode with the engineer turned terrorist, where restitution of the family unit supersedes revolutionary politics, it's clear that Szifrón lacks Almodóvar's truly confrontational sensibility.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted May 21, 2014
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| 88% | Winter Sleep (2014) |
The obvious analogue here would be Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage; the key difference lies in Winter Sleep's absolute refusal to let anything be at emotional stake.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted May 21, 2014
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| 25% | The Search (2015) |
Michel Hazanavicius's straw man conception of the Russians as brutal homophobes is hammered away at with an emphasis that's questionable at best.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted May 21, 2014
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| 88% | Foxcatcher (2014) |
As a consequence of Bennett Miller's relentless de-dramatization, Foxcatcher offers us next to nothing of utility or complexity about du Pont's pathology.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted May 19, 2014
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| 81% | The Homesman (2014) |
If what they have to say on the subject is as remotely superficial as The Homesman, maybe the less said, the better.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted May 18, 2014
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| 95% | National Gallery (2014) |
Its titular establishment as a springboard for an all-encompassing exploration into the multifarious nature of art as both history and object. This is one of Wiseman's richest and most thought-provoking films, and easily one of his best.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted May 17, 2014
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| 97% | Mr. Turner (2014) |
Leigh isn't so much interested in artist as martyr as he is in the artist as self-contained multitude, containing all the foibles and paradoxes of his age.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted May 17, 2014
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| 30% | The Captive (2014) |
For every way that The Sweet Hereafter makes its generic elements seem fresh and even a trifle mysterious, The Captive finds new ways to render them absurd. ‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted May 17, 2014
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| 4/4 | 93% | Gojira (1956) |
Rarely has the open wound of widespread devastation been transposed to celluloid with greater visceral impact.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Apr 13, 2014
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| 3.5/4 | 100% | Shonen (Boy) (1969) |
Nagisa Oshima and screenwriter Tsutomu Tamura encourage empathy without requiring emotionalism.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Jan 15, 2014
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| 94% | Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (Nosferatu the Vampyre) (1979) |
Nosferatu the Vampyre Playing to the visual and narrative strengths of the original, Werner Herzog still succeeds in imprinting the material with his own unique sensibility.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Oct 23, 2013
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| 4/4 | 82% | Scarecrow (1973) |
Jerry Schatzberg's film embraces sprawl of both the narrative and geographical variety with freewheeling abandon.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted May 16, 2013
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| 3/4 | 71% | Dead Man's Burden (2013) |
It's always a pleasure to encounter genre ambition contained in such a sinewy-shot, emotionally resonant, and gorgeously photographed package.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted May 1, 2013
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| 2/4 | 59% | Eddie The Sleepwalking Cannibal (2013) |
Because the film clearly aims for satire, Boris Rodriguez isn't entirely guilty of indulging gruesome spectacle for its own sake.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Apr 3, 2013
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| 87% | The River (1959) |
Jean Renoir's The River demonstrates with intoxicating lyricism the confluence of apparent contraries: past and present, innocence and experience, permanence and change-even Hinduism and Christianity.‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted Mar 1, 2013
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| 3.5/4 | 92% | Django (1966) |
Sergio Corbucci's film is notable not only for the artistry of its construction, but also for the underlying anger that fuels its political agenda.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Dec 20, 2012
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| 4/4 | 98% | The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie (Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie) (1972) |
Dreams nest within other dreams like so many Chinese puzzle boxes, while no dream belongs exclusively to a single dreamer, as though Buñuel were toying with the Jungian notion of the collective unconscious.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Nov 21, 2012
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| No Score Yet | Two Orphan Vampires (1996) |
The wonderfully ambiguous ending plunges the girls back into the fuggy marshland of the archetypal feminine, two orphan animas in search of their apotheosis.‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted Nov 20, 2012
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| No Score Yet | The Living Dead Girl (La Morte vivante) (1982) |
The film's blood-spattered descent into positively Jacobean tragedy helps to make it one of Rollin's strongest, most disturbing efforts.‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted Nov 20, 2012
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| 3/4 | 100% | Tristana (1970) |
Flanked by late-period masterworks that represent the culmination and perfection of Buñuel's long-cherished obsessions, the film is often relegated to the role of overlooked middle child.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Oct 10, 2012
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| 3/4 | 77% | Samsara (2012) |
Ron Fricke's film is a brightly hued bauble, fit for rapturous contemplation.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Aug 21, 2012
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| 3.5/4 | 64% | Cosmopolis (2012) |
Diamond-hard and dazzlingly brilliant, David Cronenberg's film plays like a deeply perverse, darkly comic successor to Videodrome.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Aug 12, 2012
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| 2.5/4 | 76% | Big Boys Gone Bananas!* (2012) |
The issue remains that this variety of faux-populism seems better suited to the soapbox than the silver screen.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Jul 25, 2012
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| 3/4 | 94% | The Queen of Versailles (2012) |
Lauren Greenfield's film evolves from an ode to entitled obliviousness to a more evenhanded character study, tracing the fault lines that develop within the Siegel family.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Jul 17, 2012
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| 98% | Mud (2013) |
The main trouble with Mud isn't that it feels content to play out as routine coming-of-age-in-the-sticks. It's that the story is shiftless and lazy.‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted May 28, 2012
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| 64% | Cosmopolis (2012) |
David Cronenberg's adaptation of Don DeLillo's postmodern, Ulysses-like novel Cosmopolis plays like a profoundly perverse, darkly comic successor to Videodrome. ‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted May 28, 2012
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| 55% | Post Tenebras Lux (2013) |
Of all the unanswerable questions this film provokes, here's one that may well have an answer: If a film falls flat on its face in the woods, does anybody hear it? The audience does. And they'll likely want to tear their own heads off too. ‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted May 25, 2012
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| 91% | Holy Motors (2012) |
Self-critique or self-indulgence, Holy Motors isn't afraid to attempt everything under the sun. ‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted May 25, 2012
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| 84% | You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet! (2013) |
Casts a funereal pall with its earnestly intentioned performance of Anouilh's Eurydice.‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted May 21, 2012
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| 93% | Amour (2012) |
This is easily Haneke's most humane film. ‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted May 20, 2012
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| 73% | Paradise: Love (2013) |
Despite accusations of empty provocation often leveled against Seidl, there's more going on here than just shock tactics.‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted May 18, 2012
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| 93% | Moonrise Kingdom (2012) |
Another programmatic, problematic, yet affectionate, homage by Wes Anderson to times past and passed.‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted May 17, 2012
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| 100% | Under Control (2011) |
In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Volker Sattel's Under Control takes on an eerily prescient quality. ‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted Apr 18, 2012
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| 76% | Big Boys Gone Bananas!* (2012) |
The issue remains that this variety of faux-populism seems better suited to the soapbox than the silver screen.‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted Apr 18, 2012
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| 94% | American Experience (2006) |
Testimony is easily Jonestown's greatest asset.‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted Apr 18, 2012
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| 85% | Detropia (2012) |
Plays out like the desolate inner-city endgame to Roger & Me's suburban-entropy scenario, only executed with more poise and visual flair than Michael Moore could ever hope to muster. ‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted Apr 18, 2012
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| 94% | The Queen of Versailles (2012) |
The Queen of Versailles is at its best when Greenfield delineates the push-pull between revelation and effacement.‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted Apr 18, 2012
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| 77% | Samsara (2012) |
Ron Fricke's Samsara is another visually stunning, globe-trotting "think piece" from the director of Baraka.‐ House Next Door
Read More | Posted Apr 18, 2012
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| 4/4 | 91% | The Graduate (1967) |
Mike Nichols and veteran cinematographer Robert Surtees threw out the DGA playbook for The Graduate.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Apr 10, 2012
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| 0/4 | 12% | The Darkest Hour (2011) |
In a year-end season stacked deep with worthwhile films, what possible incentive could there be for submitting to The Darkest Hour's utter pointlessness?‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Dec 27, 2011
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| 4/4 | 95% | L'année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad) (1961) |
The poster child of cinematic modernism, one of those early-'60s event films that seemed to break every rule classical Hollywood ever codified.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Dec 21, 2011
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