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Rob Blackwelder

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Once upon a time, Rob was the entertainment editor at a small community college with a kick-*** journalism program. One day he graduated and realized that he could not give up writing about movies, even if he had to hold a day job to do it. Through a friend he got a peanut-paying freelance gig at a podunk newspaper in an overgrown farm town in Northern California, writing one review a week. It wasn't pretty, but it kept him on the mailing lists at the publicity houses. Soon Rob started a web site called Movieolla and before long was being chased by lawyers for the people who make the Moviola editing equipment that is the film industry work horse for cutting and splicing. Hmm, thought Rob, splicing! And thus was born SPLICEDwire (http://www.splicedwire.com), the web site for SPLICEDwire Content Services, which provides movie reviews and features to newspapers, web sites, and other media outlets. Rob was named one of the 10 Best Film Critics of 2003 by the Critic Doctor (http://www.criticdoctor.com/toptenlists/2003.html).

Favorites:

RECENT #1 FILMS: 2003: "Lost in Translation" 2002: "Chicago" 2001: "Amelie" 2000: "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" 1999: "Run Lola Run" 1998: "Buffalo '66" 1997: "Titanic" 1996: "Breaking the Waves" 1995: "Othello" Robio's FAVORITES list:

  • Breaking the Waves" (1996, Lars VonTrier)
  • "What's New Pussycat" (1965, Clive Donner)
  • "The Thin Man" (1934, Woodbridge S. VanDyke)
  • "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981, Stephen Spielberg) [*} (tie) "His Girl Friday" (1940, Howard Hawks)
  • "The Seven Year Itch" (1955, Billy Wilder)
  • "Laura" (1944, Otto Preminger)
  • "Gilda" (1946, Charles Vidor)
  • "The Usual Suspects" (1995, Bryan Singer)
  • "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" (1991, Pedro Almodovar)
  • "Dangerous Liaisons" (1988, Stephen Frears)
  • "The Philadelphia Story" (1940, George Cukor)
  • "Bound" (1996, Wachowski Bros.)
  • "Moon Over Miami" (1941, Walter Lang)

    • Location:

    Oakland, CA

    Official Website:

    http://www.splicedwire.com

    Reviews

    Movies TV Shows
    The Portrait of a Lady (1996) 48% 2/4 EDIT “Throughout Portrait there is a nagging sensation that makes one want to ask, "But where is all this going?"” – SPLICEDWire Oct 26, 2018 Full Review Anna (1993) 2.5/4 EDIT “” – SPLICEDWire Apr 4, 2011 Full Review Ghost Rock (2003) 2/4 EDIT “” – SPLICEDWire Sep 23, 2006 Full Review House of D (2004) 10% 1.5/4 EDIT “” – SPLICEDWire May 27, 2006 Full Review Don't Move (2004) 47% 2.5/4 EDIT “” – SPLICEDWire May 27, 2006 Full Review A History of Violence (2005) 88% 2/4 EDIT “David Cronenberg is out of his element in A History of Violence, and it shows.” – SPLICEDWire Sep 23, 2005 Full Review Dear Wendy (2005) 35% 2.5/4 EDIT “The film's last act almost completely self-destructs, falling into blind, metaphor-baiting machinations.” – SPLICEDWire Sep 22, 2005 Full Review Roll Bounce (2005) 66% 2.5/4 EDIT “Director Malcolm D. Lee has a gift for finding gold nuggets of personality and comedy in the tailings of over-mined plots.” – SPLICEDWire Sep 21, 2005 Full Review Flightplan (2005) 36% 2/4 EDIT “The third act begins with another twist - but this one is so arduous, absurd and out of character for the film that the entire plot, stretching back to Scene One, is sabotaged” – SPLICEDWire Sep 21, 2005 Full Review Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005) 85% 3/4 EDIT “Blessed with memorably iconic characters and a creative, if fairly predictable plot, Corpse Bride is quick, droll, and destined to be a perennial Halloween favorite.” – SPLICEDWire Sep 21, 2005 Full Review Just Like Heaven (2005) 54% 2/4 EDIT “When it comes to romantic chemistry, they never quite mesh, no matter what twinkle effect Waters puts on the screen when Ruffalo's hand touches Witherspoon's ethereal plane.” – SPLICEDWire Sep 15, 2005 Full Review Clueless (1995) 82% 3/4 EDIT “The movie's simple yet spot-on characters and performances make the laughs timeless, no matter how firmly the film is set in 1995.” – SPLICEDWire Sep 9, 2005 Full Review The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) 46% 2.5/4 EDIT “Part spine-tingling horror movie, part unorthodox courtroom drama, Emily Rose runs into trouble because it's ironically more credible as the former than the latter.” – SPLICEDWire Sep 8, 2005 Full Review The Thing (1982) 85% 4/5 EDIT “” – SPLICEDWire Sep 8, 2005 Full Review The Man (2005) 12% 1/4 EDIT “A boring, all-you-can-regurgitate buffet of buddy-movie/cop-movie banality, it would collapse under the weight of its own generic stupidity (without) Jackson and Levy.” – SPLICEDWire Sep 8, 2005 Full Review The Candidate (1972) 89% 4/5 EDIT “” – SPLICEDWire Sep 8, 2005 Full Review The Sting (1973) 93% 4/5 EDIT “” – SPLICEDWire Sep 8, 2005 Full Review An Unfinished Life (2005) 53% 2.5/4 EDIT “Another sleepy, sweeping soft-serve melodrama from director Lasse Hallstrom...the story arc seems to have been drawn on graph paper rather than written in a script.” – SPLICEDWire Sep 8, 2005 Full Review Alice in Wonderland (1951) 83% 3/5 EDIT “” – SPLICEDWire Sep 2, 2005 Full Review The Alzheimer Affair (2003) 84% 2/4 EDIT “The only thing that prevents The Memory of a Killer from seeming 100-percent Hollywood is the characters' speaking in subtitled Dutch.” – SPLICEDWire Sep 2, 2005 Full Review A Sound of Thunder (2005) 6% 0.5/4 EDIT “A catastrophe of bad acting, ludicrous science and conspicuously cheap special effects that can't even follow its own internal logic from one scene to the next.” – SPLICEDWire Sep 1, 2005 Full Review Transporter 2 (2005) 52% 0.5/4 EDIT “Few bad movies are more aggravating than a sequel that betrays everything which made its predecessor entertaining.” – SPLICEDWire Aug 31, 2005 Full Review The Constant Gardener (2005) 83% 3/4 EDIT “A preachy but gripping socio-political thriller...directed by Fernando Meirelles with the same unblinking, sweaty, ground-level grittiness he brought to City of God.” – SPLICEDWire Aug 30, 2005 Full Review Pretty Persuasion (2005) 33% 1/4 EDIT “Puerile social satire, stinging only insomuch as its unsophisticated wit and overwhelming smugness are painful to sit through.” – SPLICEDWire Aug 26, 2005 Full Review Undiscovered (2005) 6% 1/4 EDIT “Can somebody tell me why we're supposed to care about these one-dimensional MTV-spawned caricatures? Writer John Galt and director Meiert Avis sure haven't offered any clues.” – SPLICEDWire Aug 26, 2005 Full Review
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