Calum Marsh
Calum Marsh's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer when
published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Film Comment Magazine,
Film.com,
National Post,
Village Voice,
Globe and Mail,
Sight and Sound,
Slant Magazine,
Little White Lies,
Paste Magazine
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 69% | Annabelle: Creation (2017) |
Sandberg often seems an artist bored by his own material, resigned to doodling in the margins. ‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Aug 10, 2017
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| 60% | Despicable Me 3 (2017) |
Why resist, frankly? This is our truth now. We might as well resign ourselves to it. Long live the Minions. Tulaliloo ti amo. Bi-do. Banana.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Jun 29, 2017
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| 97% | Columbus (2017) |
Something not merely impressive, but in every respect a surprise.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2017
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| 67% | Golden Exits (2017) |
It is Perry's masterpiece, and one of the finest American films I've seen in many years.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2017
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| 100% | I Am Another You (2017) |
It's a canny bit of human-interest reportage and criticism of the form at once.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2017
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| 86% | Princess Cyd (2017) |
I can think of no higher compliment than that the film's warmth and generosity reminded me of the late Jonathan Demme.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2017
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| 92% | Gemini (2017) |
An uncanny, exquisite synthesis of naturalism and genre, the film is a heady cocktail of high style and lo-fi whose sum effect is irresistible.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2017
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| 3/4 | 45% | Paris Can Wait (Bonjour Anne) (2017) |
[Coppola] shoots, with Girlhood DP Crystel Fournier, in sumptuous glossy-magazine-spread fashion, the effect of which ought to impel the most abstemious moviegoer to dash to the nearest bistro immediately upon leaving the theatre.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted May 25, 2017
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| 1/4 | 29% | Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) |
Dead Men Tell No Tales hasn't the faintest residue of piratic thrill. It arouses no joy, no sense of daring. The prevailing register, instead, is indifference -- the bone-deep dispassion of mediocrity.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted May 25, 2017
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| 1/4 | 19% | Baywatch (2017) |
Baywatch in its big blockbuster iteration is a flippant, juvenile comedy, only nominally indebted to its source material and desperate to prove itself above it.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted May 25, 2017
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| 1/4 | 45% | Everything, Everything (2017) |
How can any interesting comment be made about how we live today if the reality of that living is so decorously rejected? It's a parable compromised by politesse.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted May 18, 2017
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| 1/4 | 28% | King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword (2017) |
I would suggest we are firmly in the realm of self-parody here, but that presumes anything about Ritchie's modus operandi could have at any time been enjoyed in earnest. ‐ National Post
Read More | Posted May 11, 2017
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| 93% | Rat Film (2017) |
In Theo Anthony's excellent new documentary Rat Film, these parasitic little critters seem to be scuttling about wherever the camera happens to look.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Apr 27, 2017
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| 1.5/4 | 66% | Free Fire (2017) |
[It] takes a director of real virtuosity and vision, someone who can ennoble and invigorate paltry material by technique alone. Ben Wheatley does not have those gifts, however malleable his instincts.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Apr 20, 2017
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| 1/4 | 89% | David Lynch: The Art Life (2017) |
Proximity is not proof of tact, let alone need. And given the paucity of what Nguyen extracts from the patient under his microscope, we'd be better off if he'd simply let the patient be.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Apr 6, 2017
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| 3.5/4 | 79% | Personal Shopper (2017) |
The competing styles are unified, under the deft command of director Olivier Assayas, by the swell of feeling coursing beneath them: grief, sorrow, yearning. And of course love.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Mar 23, 2017
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| 1/4 | 42% | Goon: Last of the Enforcers (2017) |
The end result is mediocrity - just the kind of movie, indeed, of which we need much less.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Mar 16, 2017
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| 1/4 | 75% | The Sense Of An Ending (2017) |
Because film is by nature a more literal medium than literature, and because the novella's first-person account has by necessity graded into cinematic omniscience, Batra's adaptation forfeits the ambiguity that for Barnes was precisely the point.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Mar 16, 2017
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| 2.5/4 | 99% | Get Out (2017) |
All this diabolic lunacy, of course, Peele depicts with B-movie relish, delighting gamely in the comic-sinister thrill.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Feb 26, 2017
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| .5/4 | 7% | Rings (2017) |
It is an audacious writer who sizes up this material and decides "more backstory" is the way to go. It is a pained audience who must endure the result.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Feb 3, 2017
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| 100% | Behemoth (Bei xi mo shou) (2017) |
Much as Antonioni did in the petrochemical plants of northern Italy, Zhao finds in the coal mines and ironworks of Inner Mongolia a devastating, infuriating splendor.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Jan 25, 2017
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| 3.5/4 | 91% | Sieranevada (2016) |
That's the other thing about Puiu's brand of realism: it effaces the virtuosity required to pull it off. The very mode downplays the feat.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Jan 12, 2017
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| 2/4 | 92% | La La Land (2016) |
Audiences find themselves carried away. That may be sensible enough. What's odd is that La La Land is not the merry entertainment it sometimes seems to be.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Dec 21, 2016
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| 1/4 | 18% | Assassin's Creed (2016) |
Both perform -- Fassbender as the death-row convict whose ancestral memories Abstergo is after; Cotillard as the lead scientist working on behalf of the Templar cause -- with grim conviction. Neither seem to be having any fun.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Dec 21, 2016
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| 3/4 | 100% | Things to Come (L'avenir) (2016) |
Things to Come charts its year briskly, never stopping to linger for long on any one moment or event. The days recede and fade and evaporate -- as they invariably do.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Dec 4, 2016
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| 2.5/4 | 73% | The Other Half (2017) |
Maslany and Cullen have been praised extensively (and justly) for their work here in festival reviews and across the trades; no less excellent, if perhaps less conspicuous, are the performances of the film's supporting players.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Dec 2, 2016
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| 1/4 | 23% | Bad Santa 2 (2016) |
Endless is the wink-wink oh-no-they-didn't jesting. Exhausting are the faux-defiant rib-nudging jibes.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Nov 23, 2016
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| 2/4 | 33% | Lavender (2017) |
As with nearly every other machination of this shopworn plot, how the psychiatrist turns out to be involved in this story would surprise only someone totally unacquainted with the medium of motion pictures.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Nov 4, 2016
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| 2/4 | 95% | The Handmaiden (Ah-ga-ssi) (2016) |
The flourishes of brutality, the pageantry of hardcore, the punchlines and slapstick gags: what's all this doing in an otherwise earnest film about deception and love?‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Oct 28, 2016
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| 1/4 | 22% | American Pastoral (2016) |
American Pastoral is a good novel and now a very bad film. ‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Oct 21, 2016
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| 3/4 | 82% | Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) |
Flanagan does indeed dazzle and rouse and win the skeptical over. ‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Oct 21, 2016
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| 4/4 | 100% | Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids (2016) |
Certainly it's possible that a live JT concert would entertain. But can this special achieve anything more? Oh, yes.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Oct 14, 2016
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| 1/4 | 82% | Denial (2016) |
Denial is, if nothing else, a rousing thespian pageant, a showcase for the sort of histrionics that impress not so much as good or bad as simply abundant. For better or worse, you're unlikely to see more acting all year.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Oct 7, 2016
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| 1.5/4 | 92% | Queen of Katwe (2016) |
"To find where you belong... sometimes you must make your move" is the Disney-approved, no-doubt-focus-tested tagline that bubbles up in block letters during the trailer... That's how groan-inducingly broad this stuff is.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Sep 22, 2016
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| 1/4 | 54% | The Dressmaker (2016) |
More often the intrusions of the comic on the dramatic aren't so much offensive as merely strange, which nevertheless torpedoes any hope of the audience taking this very seriously.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Sep 22, 2016
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| 2/4 | 35% | Blair Witch (2016) |
Alas, Blair Witch is another carnival of jump-scares: the new found-footage is the same as the old found-footage, despite the technological leaps.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2016
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| 2/4 | 87% | Don't Breathe (2016) |
Our heroes are compelled to spend so much time skulking around the house quietly that whenever one of them do make a noise, often stupidly, the entire audience groans in unison, as if they're blurting out, "Hey, blind man, I'm over here!" ‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Aug 25, 2016
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| 1/4 | 59% | War Dogs (2016) |
Look at all this depravity and vice! Madness. Throw in an upbeat rise-to-power montage and a few platitudes about the American Dream, and voila: prestige picture.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Aug 19, 2016
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| 2.5/4 | 100% | Multiple Maniacs (1970) |
This being a film by John Waters no stunt is too outrageous and no idea is too grotesque, and whether you'll personally leave shocked or delighted is as always a case of your-milage-may-vary. ‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Aug 5, 2016
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| 1/4 | 26% | Suicide Squad (2016) |
Suicide Squad is the most miserable time I've had at the movies in my life.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Aug 4, 2016
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| 1/4 | 56% | Jason Bourne (2016) |
It isn't just Bourne who's triumphantly returning. It's that hash of a style: the shaky-cam is back.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2016
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| 1.5/4 | 76% | Lights Out (2016) |
It has a fabulous idea of what it looks like when the boogeyman is coming to get you. It has no idea what to do when the boogeyman finally gets there.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Jul 22, 2016
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| 80% | Jia Zhangke, a Guy from Fenyang (2016) |
Salles, scrupulously self-effacing, affords Jia the latitude to think and talk at his leisure - to speak at length, and candidly, about his work and what informs it.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted May 25, 2016
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| 100% | O.J.: Made in America (2016) |
It's hardly surprising that O.J. continues to intrigue. Few subjects seem as extraordinary.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted May 18, 2016
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| 2.5/4 | 91% | City Of Gold (2016) |
Gabbert's film is part portrait, part city symphony. It celebrates Gold as a fixture of his native Los Angeles and L.A. as in thrall to its stalwart guide.‐ Globe and Mail
Read More | Posted Apr 1, 2016
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| 95% | Beauty and The Beast (La Belle et la bête) (1946) |
Beauty is fragile. Magic is rare. And it's precisely the blessing of the cinema that it affords us such opportunities to indulge in fantasy.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Feb 9, 2016
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| 4/4 | 97% | Arabian Nights: Volume 1 - The Restless One (As Mil e Uma Noites: Volume 1, O Inquieto) (2015) |
Gomes proves more than mere raconteur. And Arabian Nights turns out to be as much about the art of storytelling as what the stories tell us about Portugal and the world.‐ National Post
Read More | Posted Feb 4, 2016
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| 100% | Arabian Nights: Volume 2 - The Desolate One (As Mil e Uma Noites: Volume 2, O Desolado) (2015) |
The stories have an almost dreamlike sweep and imaginative energy, and the film never exhausts that exuberance.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Dec 1, 2015
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| 81% | Une femme mariée: Suite de fragments d'un film tourné en 1964 (A Married Woman) (1964) |
An extraordinarily rich and provocative picture in its own right.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Dec 1, 2015
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| 89% | Arabian Nights: Volume 3, the Enchanted One (As Mil e Uma Noites: Volume 3, O Encantado) (2015) |
The stories have an almost dreamlike sweep and imaginative energy, and the film never exhausts that exuberance.‐ Village Voice
Read More | Posted Dec 1, 2015
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