Mark Jenkins
Mark Jenkins's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer when
published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Washington Post,
Orlando Weekly,
NPR.org,
NPR
| Publications: | Washington Post, Orlando Weekly, NPR.org, NPR |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 71% | Dave Made a Maze (2017) |
Although it's a scrappy indie, the movie has something in common with many platinum-plated CGI blockbusters: The visuals are as strong as the script is feeble.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Aug 17, 2017
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| 2.5/4 | No Score Yet | The Adventurers (2017) |
While the basic ingredients are familiar, Fung endows them with panache and speed, and he punctuates the action with humor.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Aug 17, 2017
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| 97% | After Love (L'économie du couple) (2017) |
[A] perceptive drama ...‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Aug 10, 2017
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| 2/4 | 40% | Once Upon a Time (2017) |
The imaginative visuals upstage the battle scenes and amorous intrigues.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Aug 10, 2017
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| 98% | Columbus (2017) |
Despite Richardson and Cho's assured performances, their characters, dialogue, and relationship are never fully believable.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Aug 3, 2017
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| 31% | From the Land of the Moon (Mal de pierres) (2017) |
From the Land of the Moon could have been a story of a woman's maturation, or a relationship's evolution. Instead, it just moons about love so lost that it may never have existed at all.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Jul 27, 2017
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| 51% | Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) |
Valerian is exuberant, extravagant, and generally likable. Yet many parts of the movie just don't work. Sticklers for things like acting and dialogue are likely to be dissatisfied.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Jul 20, 2017
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| 2/4 | 20% | Misfortune (2016) |
Viewers ... will find the setup more rewarding than the payoff.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jul 20, 2017
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| 2/4 | 13% | Hare Krishna! The Mantra, The Movement And The Swami Who Started It All (2017) |
For viewers who aren't hostile to mysticism, vegetarianism and endless chanting, it's a stirring story.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jul 13, 2017
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| 3/4 | 91% | Our Time Will Come (2017) |
As usual in Hui's films, the personal and the political are stitched tightly together.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jul 6, 2017
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| 2.5/4 | 86% | Moka (2017) |
"Moka" is a stark, moody mystery that doesn't actually contain much mystery. Instead, it excels as a character study and a dynamic face-off between two formidable actresses: Emmanuelle Devos and Nathalie Baye.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jul 6, 2017
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| 86% | Pop Aye (2017) |
[An] affecting low-key drama ...‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Jun 29, 2017
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| 2/4 | 43% | Reset (2017) |
Breakneck chases, high-altitude jeopardy and split-second rescues upstage everything save for a flowery moral: No technological breakthrough is more disruptive than a mother's love.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jun 29, 2017
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| 68% | The Journey (2017) |
The Journey ponders nothing less than the intractability of political violence. Which means it's pertinent far beyond Belfast.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2017
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| 2/4 | 78% | Past Life (2017) |
Nesher has adapted a real-life memoir - Baruch Milch's "Can Heaven Be Void?" - into an overly contrived dramatic scenario. It's also something of a tease.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2017
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| 78% | The Hero (2017) |
Most of its plot elements are overly familiar, but they're invigorated by Elliott's easygoing performance and the way Haley deploys them in explicit homage to his muse.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Jun 8, 2017
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| 2.5/4 | 83% | Megan Leavey (2017) |
This movie is rarely more than merely competent, but it should stir lovers of justice as well as dog fanciers.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jun 8, 2017
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| 2.5/4 | 88% | God of War (2017) |
Sweeping and dynamic, if mostly unsurprising.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jun 1, 2017
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| 2.5/4 | 84% | The Wedding Plan (2017) |
The film's structural shortcomings will matter less to most viewers than the personality of the central character, Michal.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted May 25, 2017
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| 92% | Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2017) |
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail is a compelling non-fiction thriller. It should engross most viewers, even those who've resisted learning what a subprime mortgage is.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted May 18, 2017
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| 28% | King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword (2017) |
While making a hash of a national legend, Ritchie is at least enough of a patriot to have filmed King Arthur entirely in the U.K.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted May 11, 2017
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| 1.5/4 | 58% | Urban Hymn (2017) |
Music redeems an at-risk teen in "Urban Hymn," a social-problem melodrama whose other major characters don't fare so well.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted May 11, 2017
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| 100% | Last Men in Aleppo (2017) |
Last Men balances the visceral and the melancholy.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted May 4, 2017
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| 2.5/4 | 67% | This Is Not What I Expected (2017) |
From the sizzling griddle that opens the story to a hallucinogenic trip triggered by blowfish toxin, this engagingly goofy romantic comedy speaks the international language of food.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted May 4, 2017
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| 100% | BANG! The Bert Berns Story (2017) |
The documentary may not have widespread appeal, but should engross viewers who know the songs but not the man behind them.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Apr 27, 2017
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| 62% | Slack Bay (Ma loute) (2017) |
Slack Bay is a comedy primarily in theory. More intriguing than involving, the movie uses the conventions of slapstick to undermine the rich as well as the poor.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Apr 20, 2017
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| 2/4 | 50% | The Promise (2017) |
Attempting to make an atrocity palatable to a mainstream audience, "The Promise" delivers the history, but undercuts its impact.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Apr 20, 2017
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| 89% | Norman (Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer) (2017) |
Cedar is well attuned to the Manhattan-Jerusalem-Tel Aviv nexus. He gets excellent performances from Gere - playing partway against type as a charmer who's unnervingly hot rather than reassuringly cool - and the rest of the cast.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Apr 12, 2017
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| 80% | Colossal (2017) |
The longer the movie runs, the more its novelty fades. The tone wavers, and plot holes that appeared small at the halfway point start looking like chasms.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Apr 6, 2017
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| 60% | Cezanne and I (Cézanne et Moi) (2017) |
Working with cinematographer Jean-Marie Dreujou, Thompson contrasts the widescreen format with a restless handheld camera and many closeups, so the movie feels both sweeping and intimate.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Mar 30, 2017
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| 46% | Wilson (2017) |
Harrelson is as engaging as the man's personality allows. But Wilson struggles with tone, shifting from monotonously bleak to predictably satirical to improbably sanguine.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Mar 23, 2017
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| 90% | Frantz (2017) |
A young woman's emergence is a recurrent Ozon theme, and Beers embodies the transformation luminously, if not so flashily as some of the director's Gallic leading ladies.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Mar 16, 2017
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| 2.5/4 | 93% | Donald Cried (2017) |
"Donald Cried" succeeds on its own modest terms, but watching its title character can be painful. This is not a movie for people who'd just as soon forget their own teenage mortifications.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Mar 16, 2017
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| 90% | Raw (2017) |
Ducournau's movie is as tiresome as it is scandalous. Rather than tell a story, Raw merely administers a series of shocks.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Mar 9, 2017
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| 45% | Rock Dog (2017) |
Once again, Chinese and American filmmakers pool their resources, only to find that having more money doesn't make it talk any more persuasively.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Feb 23, 2017
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| 35% | The Great Wall (2017) |
While the stagiest sequences are visually impressive, much of the movie is not.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Feb 16, 2017
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| 17% | The Space Between Us (2017) |
The corn is fertilized by a ponderous score and a handful of bland folkie-rock tunes.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Feb 2, 2017
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| 97% | The Salesman (Forushande) (2017) |
Although The Salesman's plot is unbelievable, most of the movie occurs in a recognizably genuine world: dirty and battered, but bedeviled by compromise and self-interest, not pure evil.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Jan 26, 2017
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| 94% | The Red Turtle (La tortue rouge) (2017) |
The animators don't overplay the loveliness, preferring subdued colors punctuated by the occasional vivid blue. Red rarely appears, and the many dream sequences are as gray as the night from which they emerge.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2017
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| 57% | Claire in Motion (2017) |
In a mostly severe mode, Brandt carries the film well. But there's only so much she can do with the open-ended, underwritten script.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Jan 12, 2017
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| 52% | The Ardennes (D'Ardennen) (2017) |
Much of the action is grimly predictable and clearly derivative. It replays bits of Pulp Fiction in a Miller's Crossing setting.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Jan 5, 2017
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| 96% | Paterson (2016) |
The movie is a charmer, as sweet as it is slow. But even some sympathetic viewers may find it nothing more than an almanac of neat stuff, less dramatized than merely cataloged.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Dec 27, 2016
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| 84% | Silence (2017) |
The director's most punishing film since Raging Bull.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Dec 23, 2016
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| 83% | The Brand New Testament (Le tout nouveau testament) (2016) |
A satire whose whimsies and sight gags frequently click, but whose philosophical impact is negligible.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Dec 8, 2016
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| 2.5/4 | 64% | Sword Master (2016) |
The emphasis is on deep-focus 3-D spectacle, not psychology.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Dec 8, 2016
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| 95% | Old Stone (Lao Shi) (2016) |
For all its ugly self-interest, Old Stone is also beautiful, and not just in its use of red lights in black night.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Dec 1, 2016
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| 81% | Mifune: The Last Samurai (2016) |
Mifune: The Last Samurai is a relatively short film that would have benefited from additional voices, as well as more Kurosawa-like sweep and Mifune-style verve.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Nov 24, 2016
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| 74% | Nocturnal Animals (2016) |
Boasts some gripping scenes and a few stabs at satire, but ultimately offers little beyond its assured sense of style.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Nov 17, 2016
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| 3/4 | 84% | I Am Not Madame Bovary (2016) |
Although it's intended as a satire, director Feng Xiaogang's movie has a literary tone, a leisurely pace and relatively few laugh-out-loud moments.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Nov 17, 2016
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| 78% | The Monster (2016) |
The Monster offers solid performances and a real-world subtext. But those virtues aren't enough to keep the movie from getting stalled in some big bad woods, miles short of profundity.‐ NPR
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2016
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