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

Movies

	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Review
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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 24, 2019
2.25/5	No Score Yet	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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 10, 2019
3.5/5	94%	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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 7, 2019
2.75/5	51%	Earthquake Bird (2019)	An underwhelming, melodramatic story that culminates in a shaky ending dooms Earthquake Bird. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 3, 2019
3/5	81%	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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 28, 2019
2.75/5	43%	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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 11, 2019
4/5	69%	Wrinkles the Clown (2019)	Wrinkles the Clown is more Banksy than Bozo. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 9, 2019
	89%	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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 28, 2019
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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 22, 2019
3.25/5	87%	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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 18, 2019
3.5/5	88%	Freaks (2019)	An uncommon combination of cerebral thrills and popcorn action. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 11, 2019
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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 15, 2019
3/5	60%	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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 4, 2019
2.75/5	78%	Skin (2019)	A gripping interpersonal drama that nevertheless only scratches the surface of its weighty social themes. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 29, 2019
	84%	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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 24, 2019
	95%	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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 23, 2019
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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 23, 2019
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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
1.5/5	38%	Backstabbing for Beginners (2018)	Takes an unsexy geopolitical scandal and makes it even more drab. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
2.5/5	67%	10x10 (2018)	Opts for a melodramatic thriller angle rather than psychological horror. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
3/5	93%	The Endless (2018)	The Endless ends up going more "Twilight Zone" than Heaven's Gate. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
1.75/5	17%	Dear Dictator (2018)	Appropriates and then drains all subversion out of its punk and revolutionary trappings in favor of contrived, melodramatic pap. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
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 EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
2.5/5	76%	Goldstone (2018)	Goldstone's scattershot themes are too unfocused and its characters too underdeveloped to hit home. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
2/5	70%	Double Lover (L'amant double) (2018)	Like much of Ozon's oeuvre, Double Lover is as visually pristine as its subject matter is depraved, but here the kinky psychological angle simply feels banal. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
	50%	Holidays (2016)	Shoots for cheap shock value and nothing more. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
2.75/5	58%	Please Stand By (2018)	Checking off all the autism boxes rather than imbuing an unconventional character with additional depth ultimately dooms Please Stand By to mediocrity. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
1.5/5	68%	Humor Me (2018)	As flat as day-old cream soda. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
3/5	89%	Mary and The Witch's Flower (2018)	May not reach the heights of Ghibli's best but nevertheless marks a mildly auspicious start to the Studio Ponoc offshoot. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
2.5/5	56%	The Strange Ones (2018)	This moody, visually-compelling film doesn't do enough psychological heavy-lifting to earn its indulgence in sensationalized taboo - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
3.75/5	62%	Kaleidoscope (2017)	Kaleidoscope is a micro-budget gem that adds a decidedly 21st century bent to Hitchcockian suspense. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
3/5	87%	My Friend Dahmer (2017)	Emphasizes a very human sense of loneliness in Jeff, but it doesn't explore the sadistic element of domination with which his desire for companionship was entwined. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
2.5/5	30%	Leatherface (2017)	Most egregiously, it attempts to chart a rational evolution of an incomprehensible monster. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
4.25/5	87%	Blade Runner 2049 (2017)	By syncing so many moving parts into a seamless, spellbinding whole, Blade Runner 2049 is both heady speculative fiction and action thriller at its finest. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
1.75/5	25%	Woodshock (2017)	Woodshock is as tedious as its punny title is nonsensical. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
2.5/5	85%	Loving Vincent (2017)	A nearly unforgivable missed opportunity in bringing van Gogh's paintings to life only to relegate the artist to the past tense. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
3/5	88%	Anti Matter (2017)	Succeeds in raising questions about the nature of identity and exploring the implications of technology. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
1/5	20%	Temple (2017)	Makes little effort to transcend threadbare scary movie clichés while trotting out listless J-horror tropes - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
2.5/5	56%	Lemon (2017)	Lemon's tonal inconsistency ultimately overshadows its faint, offbeat appeal. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
2.75/5	78%	Atomic Blonde (2017)	Peel back the fetishized fight scenes, neon lights and '80s soundtrack, and you're not left with much. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
2.5/5	88%	Lady Macbeth (2017)	Lady Macbeth feels like gussied-up exploitation incapable of wringing any actual substance out of its lurid trappings. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
2.25/5	47%	Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)	A city of a thousand planets shouldn't end up feeling so hollow and lifeless. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
	No Score Yet	Evil Bong (2006)	A painfully inane comedy-horror cheapie. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
4/5	98%	The Big Sick (2017)	The Big Sick is that rare film that reminds us, through both wry humor and understated poignancy, that life's most meaningful moments often occur when we veer off script. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
2.5/5	10%	Kill Switch (2017)	The parallel world created in Kill Switch may not be devoid of life, but it might as well be. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
2.5/5	18%	Baywatch (2017)	Amid all the glistening skin, requisite chase scenes, low-brow gross-out gags and, at one point, literal fireworks, Baywatch is content to simply tread water. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019
2.75/5	74%	Wakefield (2017)	Voyeurism channeled through a character so bereft of decency and filled with such a false sense of superiority only serves to leave the viewer feeling a little dirty. - Spectrum Culture EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 20, 2019