Jonathan Kiefer
Jonathan Kiefer's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
PopMatters
Salon.com
Village Voice
Sacramento News & Review
Esquire Magazine
SF Weekly
MUBI
Biography:
Twitter: @kieferama
Publications:
PopMatters,
Salon.com,
Village Voice,
Sacramento News & Review,
Maisonneuve,
Esquire Magazine,
The Faster Times,
SF Weekly,
SF360,
MUBI
Movie Reviews Only
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98% | Leaning Into the Wind (2018) |
Riedelsheimer doesn't much go in for save-the-planet urgency, instead putting stock in the grander eloquence of modesty, curiosity, empathy, and awe. - MUBI
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| Posted Mar 8, 2018
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3/5 | 83% | The Trip to Spain (2017) |
If not as wistfully evocative as a Richard Linklater project, or as bracing as one of Michael Apted's mathematically recurrent sociologies, it will at least maintain the virtue of being genuinely quixotic. - MUBI
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| Posted Dec 19, 2017
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3.5/5 | 92% | Dunkirk (2017) |
Any historical drama is necessarily a summary, and will approach a threshold at which distillation becomes dilution. Nolan doesn't seem too worried about this, and Dunkirk's eruptive brevity is almost refreshing. - MUBI
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| Posted Dec 13, 2017
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85% | Merchants Of Doubt (2015) |
Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner has turned it into a redundant, formally uninventive, Food, Inc.-like documentary - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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60% | All The Wilderness (2015) |
Someone ought to get Kodi Smit-McPhee a comedy. A dark one, of course. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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16% | Kill Me Three Times (2015) |
This is wrung-out neo-noir with no true blackness left intact, like a soggy heap of faded laundry. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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37% | Cut Bank (2015) |
Were Cut Bank not a movie but a pilot, with room and inclination to grow, maybe it could seem like more than just a hasty mash-up. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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32% | Desert Dancer (2015) |
We didn't need a pseudo-Persian Footloose to imagine dance as a means of political resistance, but surely there's no harm in drawing inspiration from [Andrew] Ghaffarian's bravely creative life. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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39% | Can't Stand Losing You (2015) |
Semi stiff voiceover readings from his memoir One Train Later make Summers sound like a hostage - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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84% | Dior and I (2015) |
Dior and I seems like the movie equivalent of one of those glossy multipage ad spreads that thicken up your favorite perfume-scented magazines - or, at best, an extended and extremely haute episode of Project Runway. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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36% | Misery Loves Comedy (2014) |
[Kevin] Pollak isn't taking a solve-for-x approach here so much as simply geeking out with his fellow tribesmen (and a few -women), who may or may not be your favorite funny people, anyway. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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48% | Adult Beginners (2015) |
Not surprisingly for a Duplass-brothers production, Adult Beginners gets its freshest juice out of low-boiled intra-sibling strife - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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53% | The D Train (2015) |
Unexpected developments ensue, including actual hilarity, amazing [Jack] Black-[James] Marsden chemistry, and a scorched-earth subversion of the default homophobia that's otherwise so common to movies like this. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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60% | Saint Laurent (2015) |
Saint Laurent is aesthetically rich, with exacting production design and a semi-jaundiced sepia hue that periodically evokes the brittleness of an aging newspaper. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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73% | Inherent Vice (2015) |
Inherent Vice is one of those movies that tries to put across its maker's lack of control as a conscious and meaningful aesthetic scheme. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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84% | I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story (2015) |
A slathering of sentimentally triumphant music emphasizes what seems like a feeling of protectiveness for their subject, but fair enough. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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56% | Spare Parts (2015) |
The movie sometimes seems almost like an abridgment of or commercial for itself. But Lopez sneaks his humor in gently, remaining a faithful servant of the story and its hopeful message. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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54% | Little Accidents (2015) |
If this story seems inorganic, or in any case less authentic than its well-observed atmosphere, at least the storyteller has seen and seized an opportunity. Here's hoping she'll have more. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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66% | Dark Star: HR Giger's World (2015) |
[H.R.] Giger's work tapped into the otherwise unremembered trauma of the perinatal journey; all he really knew was that in general he put his exquisitely creepy visions on canvas to keep them from freaking him out. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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89% | A Most Violent Year (2015) |
A Most Violent Year might disappoint some viewers by stoking unfair expectations. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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97% | Two Days, One Night (2014) |
[Two Days] may work as a dissertation on the trickling consequences of economic downturn, but what's more important is that it works, bracingly, as a drama. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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52% | In the Name of My Daughter (2015) |
A true crime story of money and power and sex and betrayal and missing persons and the mafia, André Téchiné's French Riviera-set film stars Catherine Deneuve as a casino owner and still somehow manages to be dull. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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33% | Song One (2015) |
Song One seems unabashedly fond of romantic rooftop wee-hours hangouts in front of Manhattan skyline bokeh backdrops. It's all tenderness and no cynicism in this little world. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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50% | Road Hard (2015) |
Next time, road harder? - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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17% | Aloft (2015) |
Aloft may have arisen from some unique personal mythology of maternalism, but it's brought down by abridgment, freezing out the feeling of whatever tragic pietà its maker may intend. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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86% | The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) |
A pinnacle of Technicolor expressionism, The Tales of Hoffmann is one of history's strangest, most sumptuous somethings-you-don't-see-every-day. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2017
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86% | Who Is Henry Jaglom? (1995) |
[A] fun, jaunty portrait. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Feb 13, 2017
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88% | Tangerines (2015) |
It's powered by casually great, lived-in acting, particularly from Lembit Ulfsak as the old man under whose roof the gruff Chechen mercenary and his sensitive young Georgian foe find themselves facing off. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Oct 31, 2016
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98% | The Babadook (2014) |
There are legitimate terrors here -- legitimate because, as any bleary-eyed parent will verify, they come from a real and terrible place. And for those who do enjoy at least some defiance of natural laws, The Babadook has that too. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Oct 5, 2016
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93% | Disneynature Monkey Kingdom (2015) |
Minor ethical questions do linger... But the higher-level mission here, to engender fascination among young viewers, is well accomplished. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jun 15, 2016
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77% | Puzzle (2011) |
[Smirnoff] doesn't really get into the subculture of competitive puzzling, and that's a mercy. Her priority is clear and refreshingly simple: to glimpse and celebrate a narrow life ever so slightly broadening. - SF360
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| Posted Mar 30, 2016
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87% | Cheatin' (2015) |
Movement is of the essence here, and it's really something to see these irrepressibly protean figures put through their emotional paces. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 2, 2016
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99% | Selma (2014) |
Ultimately, what makes DuVernay's movie so good and necessary is that it actually lets us see the arc of the moral universe bending -- being bent, by human will -- toward justice. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 2, 2016
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98% | Iris (2015) |
Although mostly a loose and unchallenging portrait, Iris is of value to the documentary field if only for taking a stand, however casual, against drabness. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 2, 2016
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72% | American Sniper (2015) |
American Sniper is not the nuanced trauma-of-violence conversation our country needs. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 2, 2016
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99% | About Elly (2015) |
Clever, compassionate, and completely riveting. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 2, 2016
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84% | Far From the Madding Crowd (2015) |
This may not be the most innovative literary update, but as a new episode of an old game show, it's a swoon-worthy knockout. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 1, 2016
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100% | The Cult of JT LeRoy (2014) |
Sturm's The Cult of JT LeRoy offers a sober yet somewhat punch-drunk reminder of what it felt like when the local literary wunderkind with a disturbingly tragic past was shown to possess an even more disturbingly tragic future. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 1, 2016
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83% | Cinderella (2015) |
Even allowing that Blanchett wrings a wee bit of actual pathos from the added backstory of her character's bitterness, these performances, like the CG concessions of animated animals, are irritatingly overdone. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 1, 2016
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16% | The Gunman (2015) |
Trinca fares the worst in this dour dudes' club, with Penn even seeming to hog all the gratuitous waist-up nudity; even in a bedroom scene with his distressed damsel, she's the only one wearing his shirt. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 1, 2016
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100% | A Man Escaped (Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut) (1957) |
It's coolly comforting to recall how the innocence that lay shattered in the wake of World War II wasn't America's alone - just as it's heartening to rediscover the improbable beauty within the bleak scenario of A Man Escaped. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 1, 2016
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98% | An Honest Liar (2015) |
An Honest Liar does entertainingly allow that for our peculiar species, true self-awareness sometimes requires a little self-deception. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 1, 2016
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16% | Serena (2015) |
Well, Serena isn't great, but it's better than the lousy reputation that precedes it. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 1, 2016
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77% | Danny Collins (2015) |
This lost-letter episode actually happened to British folk musician Steve Tilston - who seems more grounded, and more interesting, than the caricature that is Danny Collins. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 1, 2016
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65% | A Girl Like Her (2015) |
Well-intentioned but belabored, Weber's documentary conceit ultimately saps the story of its truthfulness and is therefore self-defeating. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 1, 2016
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80% | 3 Hearts (3 coeurs) (2015) |
Its scenery is attractive, its camera moves crisp, but the story itself remains lazily elliptical and contrived. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 1, 2016
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88% | White God (2015) |
Reads as a stylized conceit, undercut by too many little moments when performances, from human and canine alike, don't truthfully express what the movie says they do. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 1, 2016
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78% | Ned Rifle (2015) |
It's as close to an adding-up as can be expected from any thrifty trilogy spread out over three decades, but surely a testament to enduring indie integrity. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 1, 2016
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93% | I'll See You in My Dreams (2015) |
It's light touches all around, with everybody seeming to have gotten the emotional availability memo. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Jan 1, 2016
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84% | Testament Of Youth (2015) |
As this is a film about a witness bearer, it does well to capitalize on Vikander's perpetually observant eyes, which convey tenderness, intelligence, shock, incomprehension, comprehension, resiliency, and finally wisdom. - SF Weekly
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| Posted Dec 31, 2015
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