Josh Goller
Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:
My film reviews have appeared online for over 5 years at Spectrum Culture, where I also review music and books and work as an editor. I've been reviewing film in various publications for about 10 years (local weekly print publications prior to Spectrum Culture). I also review music for Slant Magazine, and I am the founder and editor-in-chief of The Molotov Cocktail lit zine, which publishes flash fiction online and in an annual print anthology. I earned my MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Pacific University in 2011, and I currently reside in Portland, Oregon.
Publications:
Spectrum Culture
Movie Reviews Only
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2.75/5 | 63% | The Toll (2020) |
While it gets a lot of mileage out of its unnerving setup and compelling characters, The Toll can't quite drive home its conclusion. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Apr 1, 2021
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3/5 | 68% | A Glitch in the Matrix (2021) |
Amid the backdrop of an increasingly isolating and solipsistic world, there are fascinating ideas here, even if A Glitch in the Matrix doesn't always connect. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Feb 9, 2021
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3.25/5 | 81% | The Night (2021) |
While it may not bring anything particularly new to the table, The Night nevertheless effectively assembles well-worn horror elements into a compelling atmosphere of dread. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Feb 1, 2021
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3.25/5 | 89% | My Psychedelic Love Story (2020) |
Timothy Leary may be the most famous figure here, but the film's most fascinating aspect is a woman near the end of her life boasting about lurid details of her salad days. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Dec 1, 2020
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3.75/5 | 89% | Save Yourselves! (2020) |
Thanks to witty dialogue between its likable characters, this techno-satire mostly feels fresh and vital even when indulging in well-worn tropes. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Oct 5, 2020
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2.75/5 | 62% | Children of the Sea (Kaijû no Kodomo) (2020) |
Once the kaleidoscopic spectacle ends, we're not left with much substance. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Sep 21, 2020
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3.5/5 | 82% | Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) |
Forward-facing and not trapped in its past, this third installment offers welcome escapism amid a world that does, in fact, feel very much in need of saving. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Aug 31, 2020
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1.5/5 | 21% | The Vanished (2020) |
A trifecta of implausible plot, clumsy pacing and inauthentic characters. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Aug 26, 2020
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2.75/5 | 77% | Summerland (2020) |
It's a trifle, certainly, but with the world in its current state, no one should feel too guilty about indulging in Summerland's simple pleasures. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Aug 3, 2020
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3.5/5 | 71% | Amulet (2020) |
Amulet is an unnervingly satisfying film that conjoins artful Rosemary's Baby-adjacent dread and Evil Dead-style ghoulishness with surprising aplomb. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jul 28, 2020
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3.25/5 | 75% | The Rental (2020) |
Dave Franco imbues well-worn horror tropes with distinctly modern anxieties, capitalizing on the inherently strange dynamic of renting someone else's personal home. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jul 27, 2020
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2.75/5 | 75% | I, Pastafari: A Flying Spaghetti Monster Story (2020) |
This exploration of an anti-religion religious movement presents a tasty concept, but its delivery is perhaps too undercooked to be nourishing. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jul 9, 2020
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3.25/5 | 95% | The Ghost of Peter Sellers (2020) |
The late comedian's impudent specter looms large, but this doc is more focused on Medak's self-reflection about a catastrophic professional failure that clearly still stings. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jun 28, 2020
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2.5/5 | 78% | Picture of His Life (2020) |
There's a sad irony in a documentary about an underwater photographer renowned for capturing striking images of creatures in their natural environments feeling so contrived. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jun 23, 2020
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3.5/5 | 92% | The Vast of Night (2020) |
The whole of what Patterson presents here transcends the sum of its parts largely due to technical proficiency and a focus on good, old-fashioned storytelling. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted May 30, 2020
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3/5 | 87% | 1BR (2020) |
1BR's modest success doesn't stem from an originality of ideas, but in its commitment to them. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted May 15, 2020
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1.75/5 | 20% | The Jack in the Box (2020) |
Murder clowns and demonic toys have enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, but in combining the two, The Jack in the Box offers no surprises. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted May 8, 2020
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3.25/5 | 88% | Deerskin (2020) |
Deerskin lampoons the fixations and compulsions of egocentric masculinity in all its ostentatiously fringed glory. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted May 1, 2020
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3/5 | 97% | Why Don't You Just Die! (Papa, sdokhni) (2020) |
Gleefully preposterous, ultraviolent escapism that does just enough to avoid being one-note. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Apr 13, 2020
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3/5 | 72% | Vivarium (2020) |
Vivarium's inescapable suburban dreamscape owes an aesthetic and conceptual debt to Tim Burton and Rod Serling, respectively. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Mar 31, 2020
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3.5/5 | 87% | Swallow (2020) |
Swallow skewers society's ugly insistence on both putting women on a pedestal and subjugating them, encapsulated here by the striking image of a trophy wife eating dirt. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Mar 15, 2020
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3.75/5 | 91% | The Invisible Man (2020) |
Crisp cinematography, fierce sound editing...and Moss' captivating performance cause The Invisible Man to leave an indelible impression. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Feb 28, 2020
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3.25/5 | 86% | Come to Daddy (2020) |
Come to Daddy may not reach the frenzied, hallucinatory heights of Mandy, but even as a little brother it's not all that far off. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Feb 10, 2020
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2.5/5 | 28% | The Rhythm Section (2020) |
All we're left with in the end is sharp cinematography and dull plot. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jan 31, 2020
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4.25/5 | 91% | Uncut Gems (2019) |
A stark, turbulent and mesmerizing ride-along with one man's futile navigation of late capitalism's darker and more fickle realms. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Dec 24, 2019
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2.25/5 | 20% | The Mandela Effect (2019) |
The Mandela Effect spends far too much time on dry exposition, leaving little room for character development or a compelling narrative. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Dec 10, 2019
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3.5/5 | 91% | In Fabric (2019) |
It's Strickland's unrepentantly gleeful approach and artful handling of absurdity that allows In Fabric to transcend its B-movie material. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Dec 7, 2019
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2.75/5 | 50% | Earthquake Bird (2019) |
An underwhelming, melodramatic story that culminates in a shaky ending dooms Earthquake Bird. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Dec 3, 2019
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3/5 | 84% | Girl on the Third Floor (2019) |
A compellingly campy haunted house flick that borrows heavily from elements of The Shining while effectively breathing some new life into other horror movie tropes. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Oct 28, 2019
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2.75/5 | 45% | The Addams Family (2019) |
An underwhelming story and hit-or-miss jokes ultimately doom The Addams Family, not that they'd mind that in the least. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Oct 11, 2019
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4/5 | 71% | Wrinkles the Clown (2019) |
Wrinkles the Clown is more Banksy than Bozo. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Oct 9, 2019
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88% | The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2006) |
A convincing case for how the transcendence of Johnston's art stemmed from the rawness with which he expressed himself in spite of, and not due to, his demons. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Sep 28, 2019
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1.5/5 | 23% | Zeroville (2019) |
Franco's incomprehensible film offers, at best, little more than a dime-store Tarantino knockoff, while at worst it isn't far from the inept self-indulgence of Tommy Wiseau. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Sep 22, 2019
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3.25/5 | 84% | Depraved (2019) |
Improbably, Fessenden takes material that hews closely to Mary Shelley's classic and breathes new life into it, making a compelling, if a bit warmed-over monster movie. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Sep 18, 2019
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3.5/5 | 88% | Freaks (2019) |
An uncommon combination of cerebral thrills and popcorn action. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Sep 11, 2019
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2.5 / 5 | 80% | Good Boys (2019) |
Good Boys offers a mixed bag of benign vulgarity, amusing zingers and painfully strained jokes that just don't land. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Aug 15, 2019
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3/5 | 59% | Them That Follow (2019) |
Hums with fierce tension, which mostly forgives its glossing over a deeper examination of what exactly drives these people. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Aug 4, 2019
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2.75/5 | 76% | Skin (2019) |
A gripping interpersonal drama that nevertheless only scratches the surface of its weighty social themes. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jul 29, 2019
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88% | Pit and the Pendulum (The Pit and the Pendulum) (1961) |
There are few other cinematic experiences that can imitate the specific pleasure of watching Vincent Price skulk through darkened corridors holding a candelabra. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jul 24, 2019
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94% | Blue Velvet (1986) |
Blue Velvet captures Lynch's fixation on the contrast between purity and depravity, all while crisscrossing the line between idyllic surfaces and their vile underbellies. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jul 23, 2019
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3.5/5 | 57% | Pet Sematary (2019) |
A tauter, more crisply paced and psychologically weightier exercise in reanimating the dead in soil turned sour. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jul 23, 2019
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4/5 | 89% | Hereditary (2018) |
Steeped in profound horrors tied to grief, guilt, resentment and mental illness, Hereditary tethers itself to real-world trauma before lifting off into the supernatural. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jul 20, 2019
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1.25/5 | No Score Yet | Dark Crimes (2018) |
There's not even much novelty in seeing Carrey play so aggressively against type in this oppressively artless slog. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jul 20, 2019
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2.25/5 | 53% | Bad Samaritan (2018) |
By devolving into unoriginal nonsense by the third act, the film is laid even lower by the fact that it actually had a lot going for it before completely falling apart. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jul 20, 2019
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1.5/5 | 38% | Backstabbing for Beginners (2018) |
Takes an unsexy geopolitical scandal and makes it even more drab. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jul 20, 2019
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2.5/5 | 67% | 10x10 (2018) |
Opts for a melodramatic thriller angle rather than psychological horror. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jul 20, 2019
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3/5 | 92% | The Endless (2018) |
The Endless ends up going more "Twilight Zone" than Heaven's Gate. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jul 20, 2019
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3.25/5 | 90% | Isle of Dogs (2018) |
Making widely beloved pets the target of a genocidal dictator leaves little room for subtlety in Anderson's latest beautifully rendered foray into stop-motion animation. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jul 20, 2019
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1.75/5 | 16% | Dear Dictator (2018) |
Appropriates and then drains all subversion out of its punk and revolutionary trappings in favor of contrived, melodramatic pap. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jul 20, 2019
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2/5 | 81% | Midnighters (2018) |
A stilted, cringe-inducing script dooms a promising if relatively well-worn premise in a caper that telegraphs its twists from a mile away. - Spectrum Culture
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| Posted Jul 20, 2019
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