Jane Sumner
Tomatometer-approved critic
| Publications: | Dallas Morning News, Austin American-Statesman |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| B+ | 33% | My All American (2015) |
No car chases. No guns. No fire-breathing monsters. Just a thrilling, inspirational film about a legendary coach and a determined undersized player.‐ Austin American-Statesman
Posted Nov 12, 2015
|
| B+ | 91% | Bridge of Spies (2015) |
It's classic Spielberg with the help of master editor Michael Kahn turning up the heat in a Cold War thriller that intrigues and entertains while reminding us that more than 50 years later the Doomsday Clock is ticking louder than ever.‐ Austin American-Statesman
Posted Oct 15, 2015
|
| B- | 63% | Ricki And The Flash (2015) |
Jonathan Demme still owns the groove that 31 years ago made the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense one of the great, nearly perfect concert films.‐ Austin American-Statesman
Posted Aug 6, 2015
|
| B+ | 85% | The Wolfpack (2015) |
An eye-popping portrait of six brothers virtually imprisoned for most of their lives inside a 16th-floor flat in a New York housing project.‐ Austin American-Statesman
Read More | Posted Jun 18, 2015
|
| B | 64% | The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015) |
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was such a worldwide sleeper hit, and its British-Indian cast so beloved, that it's no surprise that three years later they're back in Rajasthan.‐ Austin American-Statesman
Read More | Posted Mar 6, 2015
|
| A | 97% | Mr. Turner (2014) |
Mr. Turner is an absolutely luminous film.‐ Austin American-Statesman
Read More | Posted Feb 2, 2015
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| A- | 95% | Finding Vivian Maier (2014) |
Slickly shot and edited by Aaron Wickenden, its more than 40 amazingly forthcoming interview subjects include acclaimed photographers Joel Meyerwitz and Mary Ellen Mark.‐ Austin American-Statesman
Posted May 1, 2014
|
| A- | 88% | The Wind Rises (2014) |
[A] spellbinding, dreamy paean to imagination.‐ Austin American-Statesman
Posted Feb 27, 2014
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| B+ | 91% | Philomena (2013) |
At last, a holiday film for intelligent life.‐ Austin American-Statesman
Read More | Posted Nov 26, 2013
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| B+ | 94% | All Is Lost (2013) |
It's supremely skillful acting reminiscent of his memorable turn more than 40 years ago as the mountain man of few words fighting to survive in Jeremiah Johnson.‐ Austin American-Statesman
Posted Nov 7, 2013
|
| B- | 64% | Pandora's Promise (2013) |
With glaciers melting, seas rising and superstorms in the wings, Pandora's Promise, despite its one-sided polemics, revives a desperately needed conversation.‐ Austin American-Statesman
Read More | Posted Jun 20, 2013
|
| B+ | 55% | The Conspirator (2011) |
Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel paints a world lit by candles, gaslights and torches, and costume designer Louise Frogley makes the cast look like people of the period, not actors wearing rented clothes.‐ Austin American-Statesman
Read More | Posted Apr 20, 2011
|
| B+ | 83% | Bukowski: Born into This (2003) |
An amazing, worthy journey.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Oct 28, 2004
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| B- | 62% | The Last Shot (2004) |
The Last Shot doesn't crackle and pop, but the send-up of Hollywood and the government gets off some good lines and generally endears itself with a kind of earnest scattershot loopiness.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Oct 14, 2004
|
| B+ | 81% | Friday Night Lights (2004) |
A hard-hitting, fast-paced, stirring film.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Oct 7, 2004
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| C+ | 15% | Raise Your Voice (2004) |
It's a sweet and touching West Coast Fame, though it lacks that 1980 musical's manic energy and excitement.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Oct 7, 2004
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| B | 89% | Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry (2004) |
A partisan film but ultimately a powerful one.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Oct 6, 2004
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| A- | 83% | The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) |
Credit Mr. Salles with making all the right artistic decisions and turning what could have been a routine polemical film into a fresh mind-changing experience. ‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Sep 30, 2004
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| C+ | 48% | Silver City (2004) |
If Silver City isn't in the same class as [Sayles'] Texas-shot Lone Star, it's still worth a look.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2004
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| C+ | 69% | Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi (2004) |
A slight but winsome, affirmative film.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Sep 9, 2004
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| B- | 74% | The Hunting of the President (2004) |
There's wit, revelation and mercifully, more about Whitewater than Monica Lewinsky.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Sep 2, 2004
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| B+ | 93% | Riding Giants (2004) |
It's a big wet kiss to the heroes and history of an ancient water sport.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Aug 5, 2004
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| B | 50% | A Home at the End of the World (2004) |
The best reasons [to see it] have to be the subtle, nuanced performances of Mr. Farrell, newcomer Dallas Roberts, a never-better Robin Wright Penn and the endearing evergreen Pride of Quitman, Texas, Sissy Spacek.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Jul 29, 2004
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| B+ | 95% | Before Sunset (2004) |
If you didn't like Before Sunrise, filmmaker Richard Linklater says, you'll hate Before Sunset. But if you treasured the original, you're sure to prize the 'romance for realists' sequel.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Jul 8, 2004
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| A- | 94% | The Story of the Weeping Camel (2004) |
A window on a changing world most of us will never see.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Jul 3, 2004
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| B- | 50% | America's Heart and Soul (2004) |
A visual treat with the sweep and canvas of an IMAX film, the movie, all shot before Sept. 11, 2001, explodes like a chrysanthemum fireworks shell with red, white and blue stars.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Jul 1, 2004
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| D | 0% | The Singing Forest (2003) |
One has to feel for actors faced with clunky, obvious lines.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Jun 17, 2004
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| B+ | 73% | Les égarés (Strayed) (2003) |
A fascinating mystery -- a halcyon idyll with a gnawing sense of terror at the edge.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Jun 17, 2004
|
| C- | 31% | A Thousand Clouds of Peace (2004) |
Mr. Hernández's attempt to put an interior landscape on film a la Pasolini may seem stultifying and pretentious, but it's also a brave dark experiment.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Jun 17, 2004
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| C | 31% | Around the World in 80 Days (2004) |
Plays like a Three Stooges travelogue.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2004
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| B | 94% | The Agronomist (2004) |
A lively, illuminating homage to an extraordinary man of courage, whose cry for his beloved country got him killed.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Jun 10, 2004
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| B+ | 96% | Control Room (2004) |
It's an intriguing, entertaining glimpse at the inner workings of the most-watched television channel in the world.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Jun 10, 2004
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| B | 89% | National Geographic: Forces of Nature (2004) |
With the spectacular opening of Forces of Nature, narrated by Kevin Bacon, IMAX outdoes Hollywood's fanciest effects wizards.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Jun 4, 2004
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| A- | 68% | Carandiru (2004) |
An urgent piece of cinema -- a shiv in the ribs and right cross to the chin -- that's also a salutation to human solidarity and the will to live.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted May 27, 2004
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| B- | 64% | Coffee and Cigarettes (2004) |
It has the sad, goofy charm of a silent comedy with Buster Keaton, a Jarmusch favorite, with passive-aggressive hits and flashes of barely contained antagonism.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted May 27, 2004
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| B- | 61% | Valentin (2004) |
Seen as the wishful coming-of-age of a writer, who escapes tribulation through imagination, the semi-autobiographical movie seems less sentimental and makes a lot more sense.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted May 20, 2004
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| B+ | 92% | Super Size Me (2004) |
What makes all this work is that the charming Mr. Spurlock, unlike combative Michael Moore, is winning, witty and completely at ease before the camera.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted May 13, 2004
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| B+ | 87% | Mayor of the Sunset Strip (2004) |
What gives this its weight and substance is that Mr. Hickenlooper came to see himself in the man whom Nancy Sinatra calls 'Peter Pan in the school of hard knocks.'‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Apr 29, 2004
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| C+ | 63% | Two Men Went to War (2004) |
The mission, which the soldiers codenamed Operation Mad Dog, would have been delicious as a documentary, but director John Henderson goes for an antic Two Stooges Abroad approach.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Apr 8, 2004
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| B+ | 96% | Osama (2004) |
A poignant film with stinging images.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Mar 11, 2004
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| A | 93% | My Architect (2004) |
Irresistible and haunting.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Feb 12, 2004
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| A | 97% | The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003) |
[Morris] gave him a stage -- and Mr. McNamara took it -- to chart the tragedy of Vietnam and prove that war is too complex, too dangerous for fallible human beings in power to know what they're doing.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Feb 5, 2004
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| C | 25% | Along Came Polly (2004) |
Superlative wasted cast and chamber pot-embarrassing humor.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Jan 15, 2004
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| B+ | 98% | Chavez: Inside the Coup (2003) |
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised may be controversial, biased and patchy, but it contains some of the most electrifying and immediate nonfiction footage seen on the big screen.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Jan 15, 2004
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| B | 73% | Taking Sides: Le cas Furtwängler (2003) |
The talk in this moral debate smokes with provocative drama and actors of weight.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Dec 4, 2003
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| B+ | 72% | Bonhoeffer (2003) |
There is more to the philosophy and faith of Dietrich Bonhoeffer than a 90-minute documentary can begin to cover, but this is a powerful and timely introduction.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Nov 28, 2003
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| B+ | 86% | Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion (2003) |
It's a rare glimpse of China's 'final solution' for a courageous people whose world view is one of forgiveness, nonviolence and love.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Nov 25, 2003
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| A- | 84% | Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) |
Mr. Weir will possibly get his fifth nomination for Oscar gold, but everybody -- from costume designer Wendy Stites to Australians Iva Davies, Richard Tognetti and Christopher Gordon, who composed the classic-pop score -- deserves three cheers.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Nov 13, 2003
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| B | 97% | Autumn Spring (Babí léto) (2003) |
A bittersweet charmer.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Nov 13, 2003
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| B- | 65% | The Flower of Evil (2003) |
This three-generation melodrama, set in the Bordeaux region, may be just an elegant shadow of 'the gallic Hitchcock,' but even pale and dry, it's still Chabrol and sippable.‐ Dallas Morning News
Read More | Posted Nov 6, 2003
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