Michael D. Reid

Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications:
Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
Official Websites:
canada.com/victoria/timescolonist
Movie Reviews Only
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3.5/4 | No Score Yet | Walking with Dinosaurs: Prehistoric Planet (2016) |
It's during such harrowing moments that you're reminded how fluidly integrated with real backgrounds the realistically rendered digital action can be. And, as in classic wildlife documentaries, reality can be unsettling. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted May 25, 2017
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2.5/4 | 83% | Amazon Adventure (2017) |
It's the kind of earnest, but increasingly patience-trying film, that will be best appreciated by viewers in search of an educational experience rather than a thrill ride. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Apr 21, 2017
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4/5 | No Score Yet | Franca: Chaos And Creation (2017) |
By turns dramatic and lighthearted, this documentary is as captivating as the fiercely independent woman it celebrates. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Apr 11, 2017
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3.5/5 | No Score Yet | The Hollow Child (2018) |
McLeod's performance is as much a highlight as the spooky spirit Lutter conjures, enhanced by Nelson and Graham Talbot's striking cinematography and David Parfit's sinister score. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Apr 11, 2017
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3.5/5 | No Score Yet | Riverhead (2016) |
Oakey's familiarity with the region's colourful characters, culture and landscape effectively complements his film's edgy drama. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Apr 11, 2017
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3/5 | 64% | Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge (2017) |
While the drama could have been more engrossing and substantive, the evocative period detail greatly enhances Noelle's selective and intimate portrait of a loving wife, mother and workaholic. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 14, 2017
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2/5 | No Score Yet | Roommates Wanted (Adopte un Veuf) (2016) |
Dussollier is amusing as the exasperated old loner who gets a new lease on life, but he's trapped by the material and his appeal can't compensate for the film's one-dimensional characters and predictable plot. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 14, 2017
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3/5 | 90% | After Love (L'économie du couple) (2017) |
An intimate variation on films from Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage to Kramer vs. Kramer, this moving domestic drama effectively captures the complexity of a dying relationship. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 14, 2017
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4/5 | 96% | The Salesman (Forushande) (2017) |
It becomes riveting, a testament to remarkable performances turned in by the leads. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 14, 2017
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2.5/5 | 91% | Frantz (2017) |
Suffice it to say complications ensue within what plays like classic melodrama highlighted by top-shelf art direction, some powerfully evocative sequences that reflect postwar anger and Beer's magnificent performance. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 10, 2017
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4/5 | 100% | Theater of Life (2016) |
Writer-director Peter Svatek has cooked up an epicurean documentary about food waste that is as mouth-watering as it is inspirational. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 10, 2017
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3/5 | 86% | The Girl With All the Gifts (2017) |
It's how Nanua conveys this young brainiac's humanity, however, that allows McCarthy's bleak morality tale and survival adventure to transcend genre clichés and a draggy midsection before survivors head for London. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 10, 2017
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4/5 | 89% | My Scientology Movie (2017) |
While much of what transpires behind closed doors and beyond at the Church of Scientology is no laughing matter, Theroux makes it so. The result is a film as funny as it is scary. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 9, 2017
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4/5 | No Score Yet | Gulistan, Land of Roses (2016) |
Embedded with this all-female brigade in the hills and deserts of Kurdistan, Akyol furnishes her nuanced portrayal of their camaraderie with striking imagery of this beautiful but dangerous landscape. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 9, 2017
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2/5 | 59% | The Skyjacker's Tale (2017) |
Loaded with cheesy re-enactments and archival footage that evoke a 1970s vibe, the film plays like a bad episode of Forensic Files. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 9, 2017
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5/5 | 84% | Like Crazy (La pazza gioia) (2017) |
[Writer-director Paolo Virzi] expertly balances tension, hilarity and an emotionally affecting finale that, as with so much in this film, defies expectations. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 9, 2017
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4/5 | 91% | Prevenge (2017) |
Gruesomely entertaining. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 6, 2017
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4/5 | 96% | I Called Him Morgan (2017) |
It's a by turns revealing, mystifying and selective recollection of an ill-fated relationship. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 6, 2017
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3/5 | 91% | Indivisible (Indivisibili) (2016) |
What this stylized diversion lacks in narrative depth and originality, it makes up with a dreamlike glow, courtesy of Ferran Rubio's stellar camerawork, and some colourful sequences that recall a Fellini movie. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 6, 2017
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4/5 | 95% | Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened... (2016) |
If you're a musical-theatre geek who once listened endlessly to Stephen Sondheim showtunes while gazing at framed playbills on your bedroom wall, this is the movie for you. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 6, 2017
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2/5 | 84% | Don't Blink - Robert Frank (2016) |
An intriguing, messy and off-putting portrait of the influential American photographer and experimental filmmaker Robert Frank. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 6, 2017
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3/5 | No Score Yet | Merci patron! (2016) |
Ostensibly inspired by Michael Moore's Roger & Me, playfully irreverent French activist Francois Ruffin takes aim at Bernard Arnault, the controversial billionaire CEO of LMVP. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 6, 2017
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4/5 | 94% | Old Stone (Lao Shi) (2016) |
This cynicism-laced film has much to say about the erosion of compassion in an increasingly institutional society. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 6, 2017
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4/5 | 88% | The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) |
A thought-provoking tapestry. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 6, 2017
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3.5/5 | 93% | Weirdos (2016) |
What's not to love about Canuck hipster Bruce McDonald's return to a genre of which he's a master -- the indie road movie with a distinctly Canadian flavour and endearingly peculiar characters? - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 3, 2017
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2.5/5 | 80% | Saint Amour (2016) |
Without a strong narrative foundation to link a succession of silly sight gags that give way to misplaced pathos, this meditation on wine, women and midlife crises prematurely self-destructs. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 3, 2017
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2.5/5 | 80% | Personal Shopper (2017) |
[A] disappointing, albeit intermittently spooky and eye-catching psychological thriller. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 3, 2017
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3/5 | 88% | Once I Was (The Matchmaker) (2012) |
[The Matchmaker] succeeds on two levels -- as a Middle East coming-of-age fable during a period of cultural change, and a rare view of Holocaust survivors in Israel learning to live and love again. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Oct 24, 2016
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2.5/5 | 39% | The Other Woman (2011) |
Uneven yet intermittently compelling. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Oct 24, 2016
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3/5 | 57% | Living in the Age of Airplanes (2015) |
Living in the Age of Airplanes is a gorgeously photographed travelogue intercut with some great aviation footage. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Jun 10, 2016
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2.5/5 | No Score Yet | Wonderland (Heimatland) (2015) |
While this arty omnibus is visually striking, the film is short on genuine tension and dramatic potency. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Mar 2, 2016
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4/5 | 92% | Virgin Mountain (Fúsi) (2015) |
Expectations are subtly defied at every turn in this humanistic diversion laced with dry humour, an undercurrent of melancholy and a protagonist with arrested development who recalls to some extent Ernest Borgnine's sympathetic Marty. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 29, 2016
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2/5 | No Score Yet | The Sea & The Flying Fish (Darya va mahi parande) (2015) |
The drama arising from attempts by humourless prison officials to erase the paintings and identify the creative culprit before the arrival of an inspector increasingly strains credulity. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 29, 2016
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4/5 | No Score Yet | Dan and Margot (2016) |
[Dan and Margot] is unsettling in that it reminds us how mercilessly pop culture has stigmatized [schizophrenia]... Yet it's also a hopeful and enlightening meditation on the potential to overcome it. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 29, 2016
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4/5 | No Score Yet | Hand Made with Love in France (Le Temps Suspendu) (2015) |
Director Julie Georgia Bernard's slight but fascinating behind-the-scenes fashion documentary is as irresistible as the French artisans whose under-appreciated contributions to haute couture the film affectionately celebrates. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 29, 2016
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4/5 | No Score Yet | The Roots Remain (2016) |
The filmmakers interweave their own evocative footage of Fonki's humbling journey, a sombre highlight being his visit to The Killing Fields memorial centre, with home videos of his exiled parents and grandparents recalling their traumatic history. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 29, 2016
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4/5 | 100% | Driving With Selvi (2016) |
This young mother and human-rights activist with a winning smile is a wonderful role model, living proof it's never too late to overcome adversity and achieve happiness on your own terms. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 17, 2016
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3/5 | 72% | Valley Of Love (2016) |
Nicloux extracts fine performances, particularly from Depardieu as the skeptic who unabashedly accepts his dissipated state. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 17, 2016
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3/5 | 27% | Five Nights in Maine (2016) |
[David Oyelowo and Dianne Wiest] bring impressive naturalism to their restrained performances. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 17, 2016
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2/5 | 83% | Men & Chicken (Mænd & høns) (2016) |
Enter this creepfest at your own risk. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 17, 2016
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3/5 | 33% | The Steps (2015) |
It's all amusingly diverting, yet strangely familiar. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 17, 2016
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2/5 | 63% | A Month Of Sundays (2015) |
This contrived exercise plays like a slow-burn variation on a Hallmark movie. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 17, 2016
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3/5 | 100% | Le coeur de madame Sabali (2015) |
This stylized, at times dreamlike diversion's quirkiness and eye-popping art direction, heavy on bold reds and yellows, transcends the narrative hiccups. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 12, 2016
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3/5 | 100% | Al Purdy Was Here (2015) |
An affectionate documentry that is captivating enough to make you want to learn more ab out this droll, beer-loving wordsmith. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Feb 12, 2016
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3/5 | No Score Yet | Magicarena (2015) |
You needn't be an opera lover to appreciate this ancient ampitheatre's backstage drama, the mind-boggling complexity and magnitude of the production that the filmmakers capture. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Jan 28, 2016
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5/5 | 84% | I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story (2015) |
It coalesces into a highly entertaining, surprise-packed and enjoyably nostalgic experience. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Mar 11, 2015
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3/5 | 93% | Dukhtar (2015) |
Pakistani filmmaker Afia Nathaniel tackles a difficult subject -- child marriages -- with admirable restraint in her impressive feature debut, as emotionally involving as it is visually spectacular. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Mar 11, 2015
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3/5 | No Score Yet | B for Boy (2013) |
[A] technically uneven and overlong (by about 20 minutes) but nonetheless engrossing cultural snapshot. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Mar 11, 2015
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5/5 | 75% | All The Time In The World (2015) |
[The film's] candid commentary adds humour to its stunning northern vistas, sunsets and other natural wonders. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Mar 11, 2015
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2.5/5 | 20% | An Eye for Beauty (Le règne de la beauté) (2014) |
While the film isn't painful to watch, and not just because it's easy on the eyes, it's a pointless affair. - Victoria Times Colonist (B.C., Canada)
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| Posted Mar 11, 2015
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