Jon Lap
Jon Lap's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer when
published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Apollo Guide
| Biography: |
Graduated New York University with a BFA in Cinema Studies and Film & TV.
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| Favorites: |
Top 10 2002
1. Nijinsky: The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky
2. Dogtown and Z-Boys
3. Yellow Asphalt
4. Max
5. Merci Pour Le Chocolat
6. 25th Hour
7. Full Frontal
8. 13 Conversations About One Thing
9. 8 Women
0. Narc (tie) Possession
The 1990s
*Goodfellas
*Magnolia
*My Own Private Idaho
*Naked
*Everyone Says I Love You
*Cold Water
*La Belle Noiseuse
*Leaving Las Vegas
*English Patient
*Casino
*Wings of the Dove
*Poison (Todd Haynes)
*Titanic
*Legends of the Fall
*Carlito's Way
*Heat
*Exotica
*Unzipped
*Sweet Hereafter
*Crumb
*Fallen Angels
*Your Friends And Neighbors
*Chungking Express
The 20th Century
Swept Away (1974, Wertmuller)
Seven Beauties (1976, Wertmuller)
Wizard of Oz (1939, Fleming)
Raging Bull (1980, Scorsese)
East of Eden (1955, Kazan)
The Immortal Story (1968, Welles)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Welles)
Moscow in Clad and Snow (Bauer, 1908)
Parallax View (1974, Pakula)
Sunrise, (1927, Murnau)
Running on Empty (1988, Lumet)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989, Allen)
Another Woman (1988, Allen)
The Man With A Movie Camera (1929, Vertov)
L'Atalante (1934, Vigo)
Last Laugh (1924, Murnau)
Sansho the Bailiff (1954, Mizoguchi)
The Bicycle Thief (1948, De Sica)
The Godfather Trilogy (1972-1990, Coppola)
The 400 Blows (1959, Truffaut)
Singin' In The Rain (1952, Donnen)
Marjorie Morningstar (1958, Rapper)
Notorious (1946, Hitchcock)
Bless Their Little Hearts (1984, Woodberry)
Bushmama (1976, Gerima)
Killer of Sheep (1977, Burnett)
Two Underrated Select Works (1990s): Three of Hearts (1993, Yurek Bogayevicz); Amongst Friends (1993, Rob Weiss)
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| Publications: | Apollo Guide, Long Island Press |
| Location: | New York |
| Official Websites: | http://apolloguide.com |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60/100 | 86% | Lilo & Stitch (2002) |
Similar to most contemporary American feature-length animation, the film's overall structure is frayed.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted May 13, 2005
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| 75/100 | 94% | Girlhood (2003) |
To the film's great credit, [director] Garbus evens out her often heavy-hand and we're given the emotional core of two young female criminals in ways often eluded in the movies.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted May 13, 2005
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| 84/100 | 88% | Mystic River (2003) |
The film births wonderful performances from all three lead actors, as well as Marcia Gay Harden, who's palpable in preternatural ways, Thomas Guiry as the boy in love with Jimmy's daughter, and virtually everyone else with a strip of film time.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted May 13, 2005
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| 59/100 | 81% | Colors (1988) |
What is there to write about a lacklustre gang-related film that wants to be more than it amounts to?‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted May 13, 2005
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| 93/100 | 81% | My Own Private Idaho (1991) |
Works as a brilliant piece of art, and entertainment.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted May 13, 2005
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| 81/100 | 55% | El Leyton (2003) |
A sloppy but stylistically incendiary handling of mystery, thriller, suspense, doldrums-of-domestic-romance and labour fraternity tropes.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Nov 16, 2003
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| 59/100 | 91% | Shattered Glass (2003) |
A fascinating story, with enough dramaturgical potential to make a rock take notice. Unfortunately, Shattered Glass is an ignorant rock unto itself.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2003
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| 76/100 | 84% | Gloomy Sunday (2003) |
Cinematographer Edward Klosinki finds many an interesting place for his camera to doss and gurney - giving us a skulking psychoanalytical aesthetic.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Nov 7, 2003
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| 84/100 | 37% | Sylvia (2003) |
Much of this film plays to the audience's subconscious, forced to deal with the spirals of perverse intertwinement.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Nov 5, 2003
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| 70/100 | 53% | A Wedding for Bella (2003) |
A story of death-as-deus-ex-machina - where the contrivances are not so offensive - with interesting performances.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Oct 24, 2003
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| 92/100 | 70% | Dogville (2003) |
A brilliant tale of intellectual awakening.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Oct 15, 2003
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| 75/100 | 73% | Elephant (2003) |
A valiant experiment in existential pathology gone tepid.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Oct 8, 2003
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| 92/100 | 53% | Three of Hearts (1993) |
[E]gregiously misunderstood.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Oct 8, 2003
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| 75/100 | 50% | Southlander: Diary of a Desperate Musician (2001) |
Hanft captures the goosy, roach-of-a-joint lifestyle pressed upon fledgling musicians in underground circles of L.A. and other urban blights.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Oct 2, 2003
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| 69/100 | 20% | Stealing the Fire (2002) |
The discursive nature of the information that is presented greets its audience like a plunged inert mass.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Sep 24, 2003
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| 60/100 | 50% | 7 Year Zigzag (2003) |
Said ingenuity is at times recursive in its chintzy pell-mell of images and superimpositions...‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Sep 24, 2003
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| 85/100 | 53% | Baunsu ko gaurusu (Bounce KO Gals) (1997) |
Harada fashions a socially mimetic picture of seedy street-hustler life a la My Own Private Idaho and Olivier Assayas' Cold Water.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Sep 24, 2003
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| 92/100 | 80% | Beau Travail (2000) |
Rhythm in Denis' sight is pejorative routine.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Sep 24, 2003
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| 80/100 | 79% | Open Range (2003) |
Costner's epic, as director, is one to behold, not for its 24th hour sentimental about-face, but for the existential knack it has for the pacific, the stately and the quiet.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Sep 18, 2003
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| 89/100 | 40% | Anything Else (2003) |
The most rebelliously, subtly and subversively creative Woody Allen has been since Sleeper.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Sep 18, 2003
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| 90/100 | 48% | And Now Ladies & Gentlemen (2003) |
The most sophisticated love story since In the Mood for Love, The House of Mirth and The English Patient.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Sep 18, 2003
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| 86/100 | 73% | Taking Sides: Le cas Furtwängler (2003) |
Istvan Szabo uses his compositions-of-depth as a sort of excavation of the epistemological quandaries haunting the post-Second World War world.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Sep 7, 2003
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| 89/100 | 94% | American Splendor (2003) |
One's reception of the film as art depends solely on whether you see it as a sell-out or an inside joke that takes some time to assimilate.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Sep 5, 2003
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| 77/100 | 94% | Dirty Pretty Things (2003) |
Frears has continually built on the foundation of Griffith's A Corner in Wheat and Chaplin's The Immigrant.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Sep 4, 2003
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| 45/100 | 64% | Camp (2003) |
Gives glib critics something to horselaugh about.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Sep 1, 2003
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| 78/100 | 83% | Swimming Pool (2003) |
The swimming pool in the film, as depicted by Ozon, is a self-reflexive epicentre...‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Sep 1, 2003
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| 65/100 | 81% | Thirteen (2003) |
Catherine Hardwicke's idea of context is the trite schematics of schoolyard popularity.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Aug 30, 2003
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| 75/100 | 87% | 28 Days Later (2003) |
An agoraphobic New Age.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Aug 30, 2003
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| 85/100 | 77% | Seabiscuit (2003) |
A triumph of a movie - one that, despite a certain historical and emotional gloss, we can only hope gives us as real an account of horseracing as it appears.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Aug 14, 2003
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| 2.5/4 | 98% | Three Colors: Blue (Trois Couleurs: Bleu) (1993) |
Beginning with Blue, straight through to White and Red, Kieslowski comes off like a deaf person trying, in fits of frustration, to communicate with the hearing.‐ Long Island Press
Read More | Posted Apr 26, 2003
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| 75/100 | 31% | Returning Mickey Stern (2003) |
There's a sort of magical realism, but in the vein of a low-budget Big or Groundhog Day, rather than Luis Buñuel and Jan Svankmajer.‐ Long Island Press
Read More | Posted Apr 26, 2003
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| 4/4 | 95% | Open Hearts (Elsker Dig For Evigt) (2002) |
An astounding investigation of the natural feud within us all: the confusion of wanting self-help, while simultaneously settling for self-complacency.‐ Long Island Press
Read More | Posted Mar 21, 2003
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| 4/4 | 85% | Nowhere in Africa (Nirgendwo in Afrika) (2001) |
...the imagery is one to marvel...There's a striking irony in much of what we see.‐ Long Island Press
Read More | Posted Mar 7, 2003
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| 3/4 | 84% | Spider (2002) |
Most of Cronenberg's previous films are busy with corporeal matter-monsters or creatures-but with Spider, there's a sort of poetic singularity in that Fiennes rarely has actors to play off. The monster is his psyche, the way he interprets existence.‐ Long Island Press
Read More | Posted Feb 27, 2003
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| 2.5/4 | 94% | Lost in La Mancha (2003) |
From a puritanical perspective, the genius that is the chronicle is undermined by the laxity of the execution.‐ Long Island Press
Read More | Posted Feb 7, 2003
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| 71/100 | 42% | How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) |
A brand of entertainment that's dissatisfying intellectually and formulaically.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Feb 7, 2003
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| 3.5/4 | 67% | Amen (2003) |
The pervasive use of staircases -- whether people are ascending or descending -- lends an interesting leitmotif of class and religious struggle.‐ Long Island Press
Read More | Posted Jan 29, 2003
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| 64/100 | 74% | Blackboards (2002) |
Samira Makhmalbaf's new film Blackboards is much like the ethos of a stream of consciousness, although, it's unfortunate for the viewer that the thoughts and reflections coming through are torpid and banal‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Dec 5, 2002
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| 61/100 | No Score Yet | Ben Harper - Pleasure and Pain (2002) |
The film is a timorous, flailing attempt at docu-philosophy. Co-directors Danny Clinch and Sam Lee must have thought that desultory use of slow motion and quick-cuts can cover for aimlessness.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Nov 27, 2002
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| 74/100 | 76% | Revolution #9 (2001) |
[T]he film is never sure to make a clear point - even if it seeks to rely on an ambiguous presentation.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Nov 15, 2002
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| 85/100 | 94% | Hell House (2002) |
Ratliff's two previous titles, Plutonium Circus and Purgatory County show his penchant for wry, contentious configurations, and this film is part of that delicate canon.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Nov 14, 2002
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| 88/100 | 79% | American Experience (2004) |
The socio-histo-political treatise is told in earnest strides... [and] personal illusion is deconstructed with poignancy.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Nov 1, 2002
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| 79/100 | 81% | Divine Intervention (2003) |
Women take on a role of auxiliary endurance... the only character[s] to confront the camera head-on, in close up, or direct stares.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Oct 26, 2002
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| 82/100 | 75% | Family Fundamentals (2002) |
Using his audience as a figurative port-of-call, Dong pulls his even-handed ideological ship to their dock for unloading, before he continues his longer journey still ahead.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Oct 7, 2002
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| 80/100 | 97% | Read My Lips (2002) |
Its primary benefits are held in a quark of arcane visual symbols and cultural criticism.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Sep 10, 2002
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| 80/100 | 25% | Heartbreak Hospital (2002) |
A deliberative account of a lifestyle characterized by its surface-obsession - one that typifies the delirium of post, pre, and extant stardom.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Sep 3, 2002
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| 60/100 | 83% | The Execution of Wanda Jean (2002) |
[Garbus] discards the potential for pathological study, exhuming instead, the skewed melodrama of the circumstantial situation.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Sep 3, 2002
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| 85/100 | 64% | Possession (2002) |
We get the romantic doom of [LaBute's] usual commentary, but this time with new filmic scope and multidimensionality.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Aug 13, 2002
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| 72/100 | 74% | Signs (2002) |
It's a terrain that reverses the cultural value assigned to the low angle shot... but ultimately transforms the viscera of horror/ sci-fi cinema to a feckless point.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Aug 3, 2002
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| 85/100 | 50% | Trouble Every Day (Gargoyle) (2001) |
The film is an odd little piece, one in which its malaise disposition persists to engender the cinematic thrill that subcultural viewers hope for.‐ Apollo Guide
Read More | Posted Jul 29, 2002
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