Jordan Riefe
Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications:
Boston Phoenix,
Guardian,
Hollywood Reporter,
L.A. Weekly,
The Deadbolt,
Celebuzz,
Truthdig
Movie Reviews Only
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57% | The Hunt (2020) |
The ending only underscores the film's overall deficiency: a lack of imagination. - Truthdig
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| Posted Mar 13, 2020
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89% | 1917 (2020) |
It is an unusual epic told in a unique way that manages to engage even as it struggles to become more than just a cinematic exercise. - Truthdig
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| Posted Dec 26, 2019
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82% | The Report (2019) |
The result is a feature film crying out to be a documentary. Even so, bravo to Amazon, Burns and his cast for recognizing the importance of the story and delivering it in a format that gives it greater visibility. - Truthdig
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| Posted Nov 15, 2019
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92% | The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019) |
A soulful paean to unfortunate times of great fortune in a great city, The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a story from the sidelines, told with truth and beauty. Jordan Riefe. - Truthdig
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| Posted Jun 7, 2019
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92% | Cold War (Zimna wojna) (2018) |
By downplaying the romance and not accompanying each embrace with a swelling saxophone, Pawlikowski paradoxically makes Cold War even more romantic. - Truthdig
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| Posted Jan 3, 2019
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73% | On the Basis of Sex (2019) |
It's an epic legal life. Someone should make a movie. Someone else. - Truthdig
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| Posted Dec 28, 2018
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61% | Vox Lux (2018) |
Vox Lux won't help Portman's career much, but a misstep for the right reasons is not something to deride. - Truthdig
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| Posted Dec 14, 2018
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82% | Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018) |
Informative and engrossing for the most part, "Fahrenheit 11/9" seems to be composed of various documentaries stitched together to form a single work. - Truthdig
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| Posted Sep 20, 2018
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94% | Kusama: Infinity (2018) |
A troubled and gifted artist, she remains impenetrable throughout Lenz's movie, which nonetheless ends on a hopeful note. - Truthdig
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| Posted Sep 10, 2018
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28% | Jobs (2013) |
So impressed with its subject that it leaves precious little time to explore the imperfect man behind the icon. - Celebuzz
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| Posted Aug 21, 2018
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85% | End of Watch (2012) |
While Ayer and his cast demonstrate a thorough understanding of their subject, and their movie features realistic violence and casual callousness, End Of Watch doesn't really go anywhere. - Celebuzz
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| Posted Aug 21, 2018
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63% | Mama (2013) |
While Mama is occasionally hamstrung by cliches, it is a stylish and effective ghost story that lives up to its promise, delivering spine-tingling scares. - Celebuzz
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| Posted Aug 21, 2018
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53% | Promised Land (2013) |
Promised Land is a smart, character driven drama that takes an insightful look at a compelling environmental issue... But as the second act progresses, the movie begins to lose momentum. - Celebuzz
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| Posted Aug 21, 2018
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18% | Parental Guidance (2012) |
A series of contrivances born of some unholy union between America's Funniest Home Videos and Leave it to Beaver. - Celebuzz
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| Posted Aug 21, 2018
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44% | On the Road (2012) |
With On The Road, Salles creates a vivid portrait of youth and spirited abandon that probably won't resonate with everyone. But then again, the best movies seldom do. - Celebuzz
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| Posted Aug 21, 2018
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37% | The Guilt Trip (2012) |
Rogen and Streisand share adequate chemistry but seldom seem like the real deal in Anne Fletcher's fourth movie... Under her direction, Streisand and Rogen look like a pair of actors saying jokes written for them by a comedy think tank. - Celebuzz
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| Posted Aug 21, 2018
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60% | Hitchcock (2012) |
An occasionally enjoyable, though uneven look, at the making of Psycho... Hitchcock is most engaging when Hopkins and Mirren share the screen as a durable old couple straining under 33 years of marriage. - Celebuzz
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| Posted Aug 21, 2018
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89% | Lincoln (2012) |
With a lavish and distinctive look, superb acting and artfully rendered material, it's difficult to call Lincoln anything but a grand success. - Celebuzz
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| Posted Aug 21, 2018
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77% | Flight (2012) |
Performance and plane crash aside, in a climate of fewer and fewer quality mainstream movies, Flight looks like a winner simply by not being terrible. - Celebuzz
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| Posted Aug 21, 2018
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83% | Seven Psychopaths (2012) |
Seven Psychopaths unspools with clever ease and buffoonish charm. It is effortlessly brilliant and always accessible but more important, it slavishly satisfies the first rule of comedy - make 'em laugh. - Celebuzz
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| Posted Aug 21, 2018
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96% | Argo (2012) |
Tonal issues aside, however, Affleck's third feature is assured, smart and very entertaining. - Celebuzz
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| Posted Aug 21, 2018
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77% | Algorithms (2014) |
Visually arresting as it is, the pic stands out mainly for its subject matter, the first documentary on blind chess, even though it fits snugly within the sub-genre of underdog stories. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Aug 20, 2018
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69% | Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) |
Obviously fans are happy to keep revisiting the bellowing Wookiee and the warp-speed dashes through the wide beyond, and satisfying as it is, Solo gives them what they want: more of the same. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Aug 20, 2018
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67% | The Seagull (2018) |
As entertaining and as lovingly crafted as it is, it fails to transcend. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Aug 20, 2018
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91% | Crazy Rich Asians (2018) |
Chu and his writers find a delicate cultural balance that makes his characters universally familiar without forsaking Asian aspects of the story. - Truthdig
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| Posted Aug 15, 2018
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96% | BlacKkKlansman (2018) |
BlacKkKlansman has everything anyone would want from a cop movie, but its candid treatment of its subject matter and the conversation it might inspire are the telegram that audiences deserve. - Truthdig
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| Posted Aug 10, 2018
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93% | Sorry to Bother You (2018) |
Occasionally juvenile, heavy-handed and gimmicky, "Sorry to Bother You" isn't perfect, but it's seldom at its worst. And at its best, it's an entertaining, jacked-up, hypnagogic hike into the darkest chasm between the 1 percent and the rest of us. - Truthdig
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| Posted Jul 5, 2018
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61% | The Young Karl Marx (Le jeune Karl Marx) (2018) |
The elevated work of the cast is attributable to fine acting, but also to Peck's direction as he sidesteps some of the material's flaws. - Truthdig
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| Posted Feb 26, 2018
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92% | The Other Side of Hope (Toivon tuolla puolen) (2017) |
Although Kaurismäki might be accused of confusing passion with sentimentality, thereby avoiding it like the plague, the result is a unique movie on an urgent topic told without urgency. - Truthdig
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| Posted Dec 20, 2017
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88% | The Post (2018) |
But while it proudly displays its anti-Trump bona fides, it fails as resistance cinema, stirring the kind of soft fury one might expect from mollified Beverly Hills baby boomers. - Truthdig
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| Posted Dec 7, 2017
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84% | Darkest Hour (2017) |
A history lesson for many and an acting clinic for most, Darkest Hour features an outstanding cast and inspirational themes, some of the elements of good cinema. - Truthdig
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| Posted Nov 29, 2017
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28% | Suburbicon (2017) |
When it works, it's outstanding. And when it doesn't, it's good enough. - Truthdig
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| Posted Nov 1, 2017
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85% | Battle of the Sexes (2017) |
Without sermonizing, "Battle of the Sexes" speaks to issues that are sadly all too contemporary, but it does so in a way that is entertaining, thoughtful and emotionally engaging, making it a worthy entry in the Oscar race. - Truthdig
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| Posted Sep 28, 2017
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90% | The Force (2017) |
The result is a fly-on-the-wall documentary that offers surprisingly little insight. - Truthdig
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| Posted Sep 28, 2017
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100% | Strong Island (2017) |
Strong Island is an example of how the justice system routinely fails people of color. But more important, his film examines the impact of that failure on families and communities. - Truthdig
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| Posted Sep 21, 2017
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98% | Whose Streets? (2017) |
Activist Sabaah Folayan and St. Louis artist Damon Davis tell a story the mainstream media mostly neglected. - Truthdig
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| Posted Aug 16, 2017
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79% | An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power (2017) |
Of course, polar caps continue to melt, and more work needs to be done, but An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, flawed as it is, helps bring awareness to a new generation. - Truthdig
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| Posted Aug 7, 2017
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93% | Endless Poetry (Poesía Sin Fin) (2017) |
If Endless Poetry sounds episodic and a bit nutty, it is, delightfully so, and actually tamer than Jodorowsky's earlier works, sharing with them triumphant glimmer and a casual, unpretentious surrealism. - Truthdig
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| Posted Jul 20, 2017
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100% | Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS (2017) |
Junger and Quested organize the multisourced material in a straightforward chronology, tracing a complicated conflict with roots in the Arab Spring. - Truthdig
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| Posted Jun 29, 2017
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71% | The Commune (Kollektivet) (2017) |
The Commune is grounded in gritty acting at the core of an otherwise drawn-out melodrama. - Truthdig
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| Posted May 25, 2017
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99% | Truman (2017) |
Gay avoids heart-tugging claptrap by aiming for-and achieving-emotional veracity throughout, a rarity in popular cinema. - Truthdig
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| Posted Apr 20, 2017
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96% | The Salesman (Forushande) (2017) |
Farhadi is a master of his craft, a nuanced chronicler of the human condition, whose work unfailingly offers moments of truth and beauty. - Truthdig
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| Posted Feb 1, 2017
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93% | Neruda (2016) |
A clever, playful and, yes, poetic accounting of the literary icon's run for his life from his home country of Chile. - Truthdig
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| Posted Dec 21, 2016
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94% | Newtown (2016) |
Newtown is emotionally active, moving us in ways facts and figures never could. - Truthdig
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| Posted Oct 24, 2016
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36% | Misery Loves Comedy (2014) |
What might have turned out to be a movie about comedy only for comedians is instead a funny and engaging look at the most twisted and naked branch of the entertainment world. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Apr 17, 2015
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4/5 | 66% | Trash (2015) |
With its heavy plotting, Trash hardly aspires to docudrama, yet the trio paint an indelible portrait of youth in crisis that is essential to the movie's success. - Guardian
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| Posted Oct 20, 2014
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3/4 | 41% | Dead Man Down (2013) |
[A] bleak film noir that values character over tension. - Boston Phoenix
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| Posted Mar 7, 2013
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2.5/4 | 57% | Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) |
Oz the Great and Powerful isn't great, nor is it powerful, but it is competent and entertaining. - Boston Phoenix
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| Posted Mar 7, 2013
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2/4 | 35% | Escape From Planet Earth (2013) |
This might please young kids but torment discerning parents. - Boston Phoenix
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| Posted Feb 15, 2013
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2/4 | 14% | A Good Day To Die Hard (2013) |
A Good Day To Die Hard is a movie for people who like blowin' stuff up, evidently a favorite pastime of director John Moore, whose action scenes make about as much sense as his script, which was likely written on a cocktail napkin. - Boston Phoenix
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| Posted Feb 14, 2013
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