Paul Matwychuk
Paul Matwychuk's reviews (from any publication) always count toward the Tomatometer
because this critic is a Tomatometer-approved critic.
| Publications: | Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) |
| Official Websites: | vueweekly.com |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 95% | The Return (2003) |
The Return feels like an experiment designed to find out how much basic plot information you can withhold from an audience and still have an interesting movie.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 4, 2005
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| 48% | Saw (2004) |
Capped by a final plot twist so insane I almost feel obligated to salute it out of respect for its sheer lunacy.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 4, 2005
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| 38% | Birth (2004) |
Birth is the beigest, most suffocatingly tasteful film I've seen since Woody Allen's Another Woman.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 4, 2005
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| 64% | Stage Beauty (2004) |
Stage Beauty pretends to be a celebration of acting, but in fact it's saying you'll be happiest if you go through life playing the most conventional role you can find.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 4, 2005
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| 68% | Closer (2004) |
To quote the haunting Damien Rice song that bookends the film, you can't take your eyes off of it.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 4, 2005
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| 77% | The Machinist (2004) |
You can't stop thinking about how awful Bale looks-partly because his transformation is so unnerving, but also because the film doesn't give you anything else to think about. ‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 4, 2005
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| 71% | Gozu (2003) |
Anyone in the mood for a gender-bending yakuza comedy/horror film and who doesn't mind seeing a lot of bodily fluids spewing onto the screen ought to give Gozu a whirl.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 4, 2005
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| 59% | Enduring Love (2004) |
The notion that being stalked can lead to a spiritual rebirth is pretty goofy, but Enduring Love is skillful enough to make it seem like a reasonable proposition.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 4, 2005
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| 90% | Kinsey (2004) |
I don't think you could ask more from a biopic than what Bill Condon accomplishes with Kinsey.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 4, 2005
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| 96% | The Pianist (2002) |
There's a rock-solid authenticity to every scene of The Pianist that seems utterly unquestionable to me.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 23, 2003
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| 92% | Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002) |
Standing in the Shadows of Motown takes one of the great unknown stories in music history and translates it to the screen in the blandest way possible.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 19, 2003
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| 64% | Evelyn (2002) |
I can't say as I was surprised by a single scene in Evelyn, and yet, despite all the manipulations of the script, the film is so sincere and good-hearted that it won me over anyway.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 19, 2003
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| 84% | Margaret Cho - Notorious C.H.O. (2002) |
Notorious C.H.O. made me laugh as long and hard as any movie I've seen this year.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 19, 2003
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| 22% | The Hot Chick (2002) |
Couldn't someone take Rob Schneider and have him switch bodies with a funny person?‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 19, 2003
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| 72% | Happy Times (2002) |
Happy Times sounds like any of the dozens of heart-tugging comedies that Miramax seems to release every month, but it has such a peculiar premise and the central performance by Zhao Benshan is so winning that Zhang gets away with it by the skin of‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 19, 2003
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| 84% | Little Otik (2001) |
Like many Disney films, Little Otik is based on a classic European folktale, but while Disney cleans these stories up into candy-coloured moral fables ready to be adapted into breakfast cereals and ice shows, Svankmajer eagerly plunges into their d‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 19, 2003
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| 80% | Audition (Ôdishon) (1999) |
The Audition DVD includes a director's audio commentary for the final half-hour. You may as well turn the commentary on-you'll be clamping your eyes shut for most of it anyway.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Jan 19, 2003
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| 33% | The Truth About Charlie (2002) |
Never do you get the feeling that anybody is in any real danger, or that there's any real attraction between Newton and Wahlberg-and when you're making a caper film that doesn't have any suspense or romance in it, there's not a hell of a lot else left for‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Nov 29, 2002
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| 74% | Heaven (2002) |
Arthouse hokum.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Nov 29, 2002
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| 68% | The Grey Zone (2002) |
It's hard to imagine anybody ever being "in the mood" to view a movie as harrowing and painful as The Grey Zone, but it's equally hard to imagine anybody being able to tear their eyes away from the screen once it's started.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Nov 29, 2002
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| 75% | Igby Goes Down (2002) |
Writer/director Burr Steers displays a pitch-perfect sense of the way Igby is at once repelled by his family and his upbringing and yet an unmistakable product of it.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Nov 29, 2002
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| 66% | Solaris (2002) |
Solaris is what you'd call a "thinking person's sci-fi film," and it has all the strengths and weaknesses that that term implies.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Nov 29, 2002
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| 71% | The Ring (2002) |
Nothing in Gore Verbinski's previous résumé indicated he had the ability to create the lingering atmosphere of low-key dread he displays in The Ring.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Oct 17, 2002
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| 11% | American Psycho II: All American Girl (2002) |
One of the oddest and most inexplicable sequels in movie history.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Oct 10, 2002
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| 75% | Secretary (2002) |
Secretary isn't a movie about humiliation or depravity at all; it's a dizzy fairytale about two people who help each other to stop feeling ashamed of the very things that give them pleasure.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Oct 3, 2002
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| 38% | Sweet Home Alabama (2002) |
Reese Witherspoon is such a skilled comedienne that it's a shame that people seem to prefer seeing her in films like Sweet Home Alabama, which are completely unworthy of her talents.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Oct 3, 2002
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| 40% | Reign of Fire (2002) |
Reign of Fire contains several scenes in which the screen is filled with immense fire-breathing dragons, but you don't feel the slightest twinge of awe or fear for the size of these creatures or their incredible destructive powers.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Oct 1, 2002
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| 81% | Stuart Little 2 (2002) |
A small thing can have large significance: that's a nice theme for a children's film to have.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Sep 30, 2002
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| 92% | Mostly Martha (Bella Martha) (2001) |
The surprising thing about Mostly Martha is not that it dodges the clichés it sets up... but that its fulfillment of those clichés, and the warmth you feel as a result, seem so honestly earned.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Sep 17, 2002
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| 14% | Swimfan (2002) |
Amounts to little more than a waterlogged teenage version of Fatal Attraction.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Sep 17, 2002
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| 26% | Chelsea Walls (2001) |
This thing is virtually unwatchable.‐ Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Posted Sep 17, 2002
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