Richard von Busack

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.

Favorites:

This year it was: Late Marriage, Spider-Man, World Traveller, Y Tu Mama Tambien...

Publications: MetroActive, Pacific Sun (San Rafael, CA), North Bay Bohemian

Critics' Group: San Francisco Film Critics Circle

Location: East of the San Francisco Bay

Movie Reviews Only

Movies
TV

T-Meter	Title \| Year	Review
94%	Us (2019)	Home invasion terror isn't always elegant, but it's always effective. Peele is a genial shocker. Unlike most doorbusters, these hell creatures aren't interested in sex. Comic relief settles in between never-too-horrible mayhem. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 25, 2019
45%	Captive State (2019)	The top-notch, poorly titled Captive State by Rupert Wyatt of Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the first feature film to acutely deliver the mood of fear in the Trump era. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 21, 2019
78%	Captain Marvel (2019)	Despite some starchy Louisiana heartland sequences, this is an effective fantasy of power used with grace and without arrogance. - North Bay Bohemian EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 13, 2019
55%	Greta (2019)	Like the Chopin and Liszt performed during the course of Greta, the film is well-played, invigorating, full of sentimental associations and a bit overfamiliar. When the end game arrives, it's a satisfactory homage to a more genteel age of thrills. - Pacific Sun (San Rafael, CA) EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 12, 2019
89%	To Dust (2019)	A comedy like this functions or fails depending on the way the pair get and stay together; Broderick and Rohrig have a harmony in their matched styles in forlornness. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 28, 2019
66%	Suspiria (2018)	The wit of David Kajganich's script is that organized religion, even the satanic Old Religion, is just politics by other means. Suspiria takes The Red Shoes or Black Swan to the next level of horror. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 13, 2019
100%	They Shall Not Grow Old (2019)	This film is an achievement, but one feels that something is lost in translation, and it's because of the narration... It's invaluable but has little immediacy -- a strangely placid look at something that happened so long ago. - Pacific Sun (San Rafael, CA) EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 7, 2019
77%	Fyre Fraud (2019)	Fyre Fraud convincingly identifies the fraud-fest as just one more chimera of modern times, a 24-hour game of "let's pretend," in which one cannot tell if someone is a delusional liar or the smartest person in the room. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 1, 2019
91%	Fyre (2019)	It doesn't question the necessity of the fest. The Fyre Festival didn't work, but wouldn't it have been insanely cool if it had?... Thus, the Netflix doc may be a stepping stone to the inevitable exculpatory whitewashing feature film. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 1, 2019
No Score Yet	Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration (2019)	Shows both the range of her music and the affection that the world of music has for her. - Pacific Sun (San Rafael, CA) EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 31, 2019
93%	Stan & Ollie (2019)	J‌on S. Baird's biopic Stan & Ollie has a certain inflationary quality, regarding the appeal of a comedy team in their sunset years. But in lovingly recreating Laurel and Hardy's mid-1950s tour of Britain, it's a film with lots of charm. - North Bay Bohemian EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 23, 2019
92%	Cold War (Zimna wojna) (2018)	Cold War has the heart of an epic, a smart one, burrowing into its settings, and describing the bitter flavor of two different brands of moral crumble. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 17, 2019
95%	If Beale Street Could Talk (2019)	James and Layne emote the kind of pure ethereal love that was there at the beginning of the movies and will be there at the end of them. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 10, 2019
66%	Vice (2018)	Misanthropy rarely gets this unfunny. Here, even Cheney's sullen wiliness looks uninspired. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 4, 2019
65%	Aquaman (2018)	James Wan's Aquaman has way too much going on. It's all three Lord of the Rings underwater, with a grand finale giant fish war that's like the largest tureen of bouillabaisse ever cooked. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 20, 2018
63%	Mary Queen of Scots (2018)	In college they warn you against the kind of history where things had to happen because they happened the way they happened. Thus we miss the question of what kind of plotting Mary had been up to -- real or imaginary. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 20, 2018
53%	Across the Universe (2007)	What a bloody mess. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 14, 2018
96%	Roma (2018)	Roma, the film of the year, is an exquisitely tender work, and a deeply layered historical re-creation. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 13, 2018
97%	Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)	It runs long but it never fails to impress with its confidence, its angles, its sensational color and its sense of bringing animation into a new century. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 13, 2018
79%	At Eternity's Gate (2018)	Dafoe is very pure here. The rawboned face hides nothing, showing lucidity even in the torment of his madness. - Pacific Sun (San Rafael, CA) EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 7, 2018
78%	Green Book (2018)	It's excerpt-ready for the Oscars, with the little blocks of conflict quickly precipitated and solved in a fast minute. The self-congratulation is thick. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 6, 2018
93%	The Favourite (2018)	The bluntness in Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara's screenplay isn't wit. The script defeats the actors. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 6, 2018
68%	Beautiful Boy (2018)	The eclectic soundtrack (everything from the hippie-days prog band Pavlov's Dog to Gorecki) adds to the movie's formlessness rather than defining it. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 28, 2018
88%	Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)	The highly witty original was about learning and appreciating the groove you're in; the sequel seems stuck in it. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 26, 2018
91%	The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)	The Coen brothers' new anthology film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, portrays the frontier as a place of death so sudden and terrible that the word "ironic" is too fancy for it. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 21, 2018
89%	Prospect (2018)	Thatcher is a strong, resolute heroine, and this is an impressive debut, both solid and atmospheric. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 15, 2018
91%	The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)	If the Coens' Hail, Caesar! seemed like inside baseball, this savage assault on the milk-drinking cowboys of yesterday delves even deeper into semi-forgotten movies. - North Bay Bohemian EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 14, 2018
40%	The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018)	Alvarez escapes the doleful and unbelievable realism of the series to date, and makes it fun... This Lisbeth is just one mask and two pointed ears away from being Catwoman. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 8, 2018
82%	The Other Side of the Wind (2018)	In this evocative satirical drama, Welles demonstrates a last magic act. He was still ahead of his time even at the end of his career. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 8, 2018
98%	Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)	Ornery and salty as the film is, it has a cool counterpoint of loneliness to it. And it shows how lost even the recent past is. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 25, 2018
79%	Halloween (2018)	Halloween isn't scary, but like the film that started it, it's moody. What does survive is the malice endemic to the genre. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 25, 2018
91%	Mandy (2018)	Mandy tries and sometimes succeeds to be the kind of movie you should only see after midnight, but a slow pace is fatal to grindhouse. The changes of emphasis and time that are so fearfully disorienting in Lynch are more like dead air here. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 18, 2018
87%	First Man (2018)	First Man isn't a session of hero worship, but it does help one understand the otherness of Neil Armstrong, the seeming nervelessness that still exemplifies bravery in this age of scoundrels. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 11, 2018
39%	Hell Fest (2018)	Honoring the knife-wielding maniac multiplex fodder of the 1980s, this mostly scare-free thriller lets you admire the hard work of the art directors and designers. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 4, 2018
89%	A Star Is Born (2018)	This A Star Is Born is like movie night at the rehab clinic: all the shame of drunkenness and none of the elation. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 4, 2018
96%	The Atomic Cafe (1982)	The Atomic Cafe is a true horror comedy, with a wealth of death's-head humor that even Dr. Strangelove can't match. - Pacific Sun (San Rafael, CA) EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 27, 2018
76%	Bad Reputation (2018)	While the testimonials for Jett abound, particularly from Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill, we don't get very deep into her inner life. It's a warm film, though. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 20, 2018
81%	Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018)	Fahrenheit 11/9 is a buffet movie -- you take some of it and leave the rest. Moments throughout justify it handsomely. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 20, 2018
32%	The Predator (2018)	The script for The Predator does approach the rampage of a crab-faced superalien from the Howard Hawks' point of view... But the problem is that it isn't always possible to go comic, and Black tries it anyway. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 13, 2018
83%	Juliet, Naked (2018)	Subjects that would seem like rom-com contrivance in lesser movies are sturdy and thoughtful here. It's a well-filled romance. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 6, 2018
74%	Bernard and Huey (2018)	This is mid-century comedy masquerading as millennial, and the mask keeps slipping. - Pacific Sun (San Rafael, CA) EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 6, 2018
92%	Searching (2018)	It's neither the first nor the best movie about living (and dying) online, but San Jose-raised filmmaker Aneesh Chaganty's thriller Searching is an absorbing picture. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 29, 2018
85%	The Wife (2018)	What makes The Wife insufferable soap is the masochistic insistence that the men are all crushers, and that that's all that's possible for them to do. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 29, 2018
94%	The Dark Knight (2008)	The Dark Knight always ought to be played on the biggest screen possible, and played loud, like a Led Zepplin song. Director Christopher Nolans' skyscapes, the helicopter shots and views from the 200th floor, are IMAX at its best. - Pacific Sun (San Rafael, CA) EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 23, 2018
46%	The Meg (2018)	The Meg's target audience, the bloody-minded kid who wishes shark week was every week, isn't over served with guts and chum... There's neither speedy fun or much emotional investment in this. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 13, 2018
100%	Rock Rubber 45s (2018)	Garcia's autobiographical documentary Rock Rubber 45s is a delight - this 50-something man of many talents is a born ambassador. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 8, 2018
96%	BlacKkKlansman (2018)	This is a big movie from Lee, warm and smart. It's not essentially radical, unless the subject of self-defense is radical. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 8, 2018
49%	The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)	McKinnon brings in the franticness, but it's not the same thing as chemistry. This is the kind of buddy movie that has the characters telling each other how much they love each other, instead of letting us feel it. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 2, 2018
76%	Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot (2018)	A story of recovery such as this usually isn't as balanced between the scary fun of carousing and the time spent in contemplation and making amends. The movie offers a sense of place as well as a sense of play. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 26, 2018
97%	Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)	Mission: Impossible - Fallout gives one nothing to suffer over except for the winching of nerves during one of its expert fight sequences, it's rousing soundtrack by Lorne Balfe and it's soaring mountain and cityscapes. - MetroActive EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 26, 2018