Richard von Busack
Richard von Busack's reviews (from any publication) always count toward the Tomatometer
because this critic is a Tomatometer-approved critic.
| Biography: |
Born in Los Angeles, von Busack attended school at UC Santa Cruz and went on to be the lead film critic at Metro Newspapers, the Silicon Valley-based chain of weeklies.
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| Favorites: |
This year it was: Late Marriage, Spider-Man, World Traveller, Y Tu Mama Tambien...
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| Publications: | MetroActive |
| Critics' Group: | San Francisco Film Critics Circle |
| Location: | East of the San Francisco Bay |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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| 93% | A Quiet Passion (2017) |
Dickinson's struggle against lifelong underestimation had its light side. Sometimes wrenchingly sad, A Quiet Passion is a funny movie, by far Davies' funniest.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted May 19, 2017
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| 71% | Alien: Covenant (2017) |
There's more monster for the buck than there was in the previous Prometheus, but the human hosts don't make an impression. I'll walk that back. Katherine Waterston makes an impression, a negative one.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted May 19, 2017
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| 28% | King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword (2017) |
The cockney-dickhead approach to Arthurian lore has never been tried before.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted May 12, 2017
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| 85% | My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (2017) |
It's a veritable Poseidon Adventure for a new century. The school may be wet, but Shaw's writing style is dry, having the tang of brilliant, bored high school kid comedy to them.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted May 5, 2017
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| 81% | Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) |
There are a lot of morsels here -- dozens, really -- and it starts off the summer with a bang.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted May 5, 2017
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| 48% | The Promise (2017) |
The script here is more than problematic, uneasy with levity ("Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder," says Myers, telling a joke already centuries old in 1915). It's ready for mawkishness.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Apr 28, 2017
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| 59% | Cezanne and I (Cézanne et Moi) (2017) |
The historical back and forth wears out this film.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Apr 21, 2017
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| 66% | The Fate of the Furious (2017) |
Autos cascade like a waterfall from the top of a parking garage; sometimes their on-board computers are cyber-jacked so that they besiege midtown Manhattan in an attack wave of shiny expensive plastic and chrome.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Apr 21, 2017
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| 66% | Tommy's Honour (2017) |
Connery excels in showing the changing of times, the shifting from the early to the middle Victorian era over the course of the young Tommy's short life.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Apr 14, 2017
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| 89% | The Curse of the Cat People (1945) |
Despite the snazzy title... Curse of the Cat People has as much pity and tears in it as chills.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Apr 14, 2017
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| 52% | The Boss Baby (2017) |
It's vibrantly colorful, delightfully odd and seriously under the influence of Looney Tunes.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Apr 7, 2017
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| 45% | Ghost in the Shell (2017) |
ScarJo breaks a lot of real and synthetic bones, but the movie doesn't break any new ground.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Apr 7, 2017
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| 68% | Life (2017) |
It's unclear this movie has a reason to exist, beyond the reason of showing what a sucker's game it is to try to top Alien.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Apr 6, 2017
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| 95% | After the Storm (Umi yori mo mada fukaku) (2017) |
Even Kore-eda's lesser movies show a Japan that doesn't appear much in the movies, and After the Storm is one of his best.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Apr 6, 2017
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| 79% | Personal Shopper (2017) |
Very sexy and very scary.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Mar 23, 2017
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| 88% | My Scientology Movie (2017) |
My Scientology Film's novelty is it finds a bleak humor in the problems of a reporter trying to crack a stone wall.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Mar 16, 2017
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| 71% | Beauty and the Beast (2017) |
One of the blandest, most nervous and most cluttered fairy tale movies that Disney has ever released -- Bill Condon's redo is a rococo La La Fantasyland, complete with sort-of dancing and autotuned singing.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Mar 16, 2017
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| 76% | Kong: Skull Island (2017) |
The witty and energetic director Jordan Vogt-Roberts corrals hallucinatory megafauna, who attack with viscera-splattering violence.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Mar 9, 2017
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| 97% | Kedi (2017) |
In 80 minutes, the city and the cats never get stale. Torun's marvelous film is capped with a soundtrack of '60s Turkish rock, as if the cats were living the old hippie dream of life without responsibility and sustenance without work.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Mar 2, 2017
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| 92% | Logan (2017) |
With dignity and grace, Jackman says sayonara to this signature role. It's clear how much physicality and humor he passed on to this mashup of comic book action and political allegory, in his portrait of the ronin with six swords.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Mar 2, 2017
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| 90% | The Lego Batman Movie (2017) |
A movie that's like watching a really bright kid playing with the snap-together toys while talking to himself.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Feb 17, 2017
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| 98% | I Am Not Your Negro (2017) |
Raoul Peck's tremendous documentary I Am Not Your Negro shows great intelligence and relevance. Rather than a rehash of the 1960s struggle, it's a demonstration that the struggle never ended.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Feb 17, 2017
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| 84% | 1984 (1984) |
It's the linguistic cargo - the story of "Newspeak," the outlining of the censor's calling - that makes this tale still fearful.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Feb 10, 2017
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| 97% | The Salesman (Forushande) (2017) |
Farhadi's melodrama-free drama impresses with the bewildering hunt for truth amid chronic falseness and religious hypocrisy.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Feb 2, 2017
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| 92% | Toni Erdmann (2016) |
Loveable if not ordinarily hilarious, Toni Erdmann explores both sides of a situation familiar to many.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 26, 2017
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| 84% | The Founder (2017) |
There probably was a good movie in this story, but it's not on screen.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 26, 2017
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| 89% | 20th Century Women (2017) |
It may not be the movie about the cusp of the '70s and the '80s, but it gets so much so right that it's immersive: a bittersweet reminder of a lost world.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 20, 2017
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| 85% | Silence (2017) |
Martin Scorese's dream project, Silence, is done at last, and it's one large, dry hunk of crisis of faith. ‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 12, 2017
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| 83% | Julieta (2016) |
Julieta's color is phenomenal.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 12, 2017
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| 100% | Things to Come (L'avenir) (2016) |
Things to Come has a philosopher's precision and a poet's sensitivity.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 5, 2017
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| 93% | Hidden Figures (2017) |
It's clear that Hidden Figures is a story that demands to be told, and it's a pity it wasn't told better.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 5, 2017
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| 83% | Lamb (2016) |
The movie is a kind of feat for Partridge as director, but it's Laurence who consistently surprises the viewer with an understanding that goes far beyond her years.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2017
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| 93% | Anomalisa (2015) |
Touching but transitory.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2017
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| 98% | Mustang (2015) |
Erguven's is a limber, vigorous style of filmmaking.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2017
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| 89% | Jackie (2016) |
A movie like this stands or falls by its lead performance. Fall it does.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2017
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| 89% | Loving (2016) |
Nichols returns to images of Loving bricklaying at work: appropriate for the brick by brick quality of how justice is sought, built upon and finally delivered.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2017
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| 46% | Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016) |
On the whole, it's a worthwhile film, often sage, sometimes sweet, and you'd have to be half-way drunk to consider it a dumb flag-waver, though that's how it looks in the previews.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2017
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| 92% | Certain Women (2016) |
The third tale tops it all, thanks to a sweet, tough performance by Lily Gladstone.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2017
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| 72% | The Birth of a Nation (2016) |
For its weaknesses, Birth of a Nation is an important corrective, necessary since such serious nonsense is still talked about slavery more than 150 years since it ended.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2017
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| 35% | Max Rose (2016) |
[Max Rose] gives [Lewis] a chance to dwell in a favorite realm, the world of hurt, betrayal and rancor.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2017
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| 82% | Indignation (2016) |
Despite occasional (brief) flashes of resistance, when a personality threatens to surface, Marcus is so passive, he's practically inert.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2017
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| 40% | Morgan (2016) |
In essence, Morgan is a heinously overproduced student film, complete with a scad of actors who are too good for it.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2017
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| 95% | Gimme Danger (2016) |
Gimme Danger demonstrates reverence for a one-of-a-kind collective of musicians.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2017
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| 19% | Inferno (2016) |
Inferno is more interesting than its predecessors, though it's just as preposterous.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Dec 31, 2016
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| 97% | Aquarius (2016) |
Aquarius is a tribute to Braga. It's a Brazilian vacation with a civics lesson on the side.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Dec 31, 2016
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| 85% | Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) |
It's all action, hopping from planet to planet and blasting all the way. That makes it faster and more serious than anything in the series.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Dec 31, 2016
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| 83% | Denial (2016) |
Middling yet entertaining.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Dec 31, 2016
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| 96% | Manchester by the Sea (2016) |
People are praising Casey Affleck's acting in Manchester By the Sea, and he'll probably get the Oscar for it-it's a solid, often surprising, sometimes monotonously drilling performance.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Dec 31, 2016
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| 90% | Doctor Strange (2016) |
The movie is very much Harry Potter for adults.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Dec 31, 2016
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| 93% | Fences (2016) |
His Troy Maxon breaks away from this commercial work. It's the performance of the year, and maybe the performance of Washington's career.‐ MetroActive
Read More | Posted Dec 31, 2016
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