Rob Humanick
Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications:
Slant Magazine,
Suite101.com,
Projection Booth,
Stranger Song,
House Next Door,
The Berks-Mont News
Critics' Group:
Online Film Critics Society
Movie Reviews Only
T-Meter | Title | Year | Review | |
---|---|---|---|
B+ | 67% | Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972) |
Among the most efficient and exciting of the series since the 1954 original. - Projection Booth
EDIT
Read More
| Posted May 24, 2019
|
C | 57% | Godzilla Vs. Monster Zero (1970) |
The lip flapping English of the American version is only negligibly more entertaining. - Nerdist
EDIT
Read More
| Posted May 21, 2019
|
2/4 | 55% | J.T. LeRoy (2019) |
It's disappointing that so much of the film feels like mere tilling of the soil. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Apr 24, 2019
|
4/5 | 81% | Staub (Dust) (2007) |
For those most curious about the world around them, Dust is a revelation. - Suite101.com
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Apr 6, 2016
|
A- | 100% | Rebels of the Neon God (2015) |
One of the great films about modern unrest and the pangs of youth. I can't wait to watch it again. - Projection Booth
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jun 12, 2015
|
3/4 | No Score Yet | The World According to Sesame Street (2006) |
Anyone who doubts the socially and culturally shaping powers of television, film or any other medium of expression need only look to Sesame Street in order to dispel their skepticism. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted May 21, 2015
|
3/4 | 89% | Remote Area Medical (2014) |
Despite the subdued anger and drawn-out suffering on display, the documentary is primarily a work of hope. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Nov 26, 2014
|
29% | Extraterrestrial (2014) |
A knowing mélange of recognizable genre tropes bordering on shopworn cliché, with little else introduced to the equation to justify its existence. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Nov 19, 2014
|
|
72% | Interstellar (2014) |
While [...] imperfect in many ways, the whole proves to be far more than the sum of its parts. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Nov 8, 2014
|
|
93% | Love Is Strange (2014) |
Molina and Lithgow are a marvelous presence, establishing such potent chemistry that it remains tangible during their long stretches apart. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Nov 6, 2014
|
|
3/4 | 92% | Pelican Dreams (2014) |
The film is spare, empathic, and deeply introspective, and its imagery, such as a pelican fascinated by its own reflection, is so sublime in its kookiness as to be worthy of Werner Herzog. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Nov 6, 2014
|
2.5/4 | 63% | Private Peaceful (2014) |
By modestly embracing its inherent minimalism and finding the emotions underlying even the most schematic of scenarios, the film taps into something unmistakably human. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Oct 29, 2014
|
90% | X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) |
Alternately thought-provoking, philosophical, and politically conscious. It's also seriously cool. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Oct 17, 2014
|
|
2/4 | 81% | Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead (Død snø 2) (2014) |
By formally acknowledging the material's inherent silliness ad nauseam, the filmmakers have distanced themselves from the spirit of the parody, robbing it of its gruesome pleasures. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Oct 7, 2014
|
90% | Obvious Child (2014) |
Beneath the film's frequently sardonic front [...] is a sobering maturity, one contextualized with quotidian poetry. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Oct 6, 2014
|
|
4/4 | No Score Yet | Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968) |
"Just as brilliant, beautiful, and entertaining as Romero's first zombie masterpiece." - Projection Booth
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Sep 30, 2014
|
17% | Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) |
"...an excruciatingly monotonous plunge through the id of our cultural subconscious, which means that it might even be a decent allegory in spite of itself." - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Sep 28, 2014
|
|
72% | The Hornet's Nest (2014) |
"...little more than lip service to the horrors, and ethical challenges, of modern war." - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Sep 24, 2014
|
|
2.5/4 | 77% | Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart (2014) |
The film is at once enabled and hindered by its utter strangeness, an intrinsic quality surely exacerbated in its English-language release. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Sep 21, 2014
|
2.5/4 | 75% | Pump (2014) |
The doc does a good job of avoiding partisan caterwauling, limiting its argument to a clear thesis and well-articulated supporting statements. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Sep 17, 2014
|
76% | Godzilla (2014) |
This new Godzilla [...] walks a fine line, and that it never loses balance is something of a miracle. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Sep 15, 2014
|
|
1.5/4 | 43% | Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) |
Becomes full-on parody without even necessarily recognizing it. - Projection Booth
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Sep 12, 2014
|
66% | The Rover (2014) |
Might be described as an anti-High Noon. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Sep 9, 2014
|
|
88% | Venus in Fur (2014) |
"Revels in deception." - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Sep 8, 2014
|
|
2.5/4 | 71% | Forrest Gump (1994) |
It might hit you right in the feels, even as your eyes are rolling. To quote one of Forrest's truest pieces of wisdom: Maybe both is happening at the same time. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Sep 4, 2014
|
83% | The Double (2014) |
Despite its pleasures, the film proves ultimately little more than an echo, forgoing a thorough exploration of its themes for a more literal approach that treads close to lip service. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Aug 25, 2014
|
|
51% | The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) |
There's a purely visual element to the storytelling that escapes many films of the genre - or, at least, everything but their action scenes. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Aug 24, 2014
|
|
96% | Blue Ruin (2014) |
A prismatically efficient thriller. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Aug 12, 2014
|
|
1/4 | 69% | Ragnarok (2014) |
In the end, any and all potential B-movie fun is extinguished by Ragnarok's depressingly listless anonymity. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Aug 12, 2014
|
90% | Locke (2014) |
Hardy's introspective intensity helps to achieve and sustain and level of intimacy that's more thrilling than many films with 100 times the budget. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Aug 11, 2014
|
|
97% | Boyhood (2014) |
For all of its contained and implied profundities, Boyhood succeeds in large part thanks to a virtually unnoticeable sleight of hand. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Aug 11, 2014
|
|
.5/4 | 58% | Hercules (2014) |
The film fluctuates haphazardly between semi-serious reverence and tongue-in-cheek camp, with no shortage of opportunities for the inevitable Rifftrax accompaniment. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jul 26, 2014
|
2/4 | 12% | Rage (2014) |
It's sobering conclusions are heartfelt, but ultimately unearned. - Projection Booth
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jul 22, 2014
|
85% | Only Lovers Left Alive (2014) |
It isn't too soon to add Only Lovers Left Alive to the list of the greatest vampire films. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jul 21, 2014
|
|
85% | The Immigrant (2014) |
As haunting, and haunted, as any of [James Gray's] prior achievements. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jul 21, 2014
|
|
94% | Snowpiercer (2014) |
Merits near-hyperbolic praise. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jul 15, 2014
|
|
98% | Life Itself (2014) |
Emotionally raw, visually spare, and poetic, even in its imperfections. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jul 15, 2014
|
|
0/4 | 8% | America: Imagine the World Without Her (2014) |
Beholden to the same plethora of taboos, half-truths, and outright lies traded en masse by mainstream conservatism for the last seven years. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jul 1, 2014
|
82% | The Unknown Known (2014) |
It is, by definition, nonfiction, but at times suggests a horror movie. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jun 30, 2014
|
|
96% | Ida (2014) |
A painterly act of contemplation and one to compare with any of the greatest films made about the nature of faith. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jun 27, 2014
|
|
98% | Ernest & Célestine (2014) |
Were the film made 30 years ago, it would be the kind many families would have worn thin from endless VHS repeats. I can't wait to watch it again. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jun 16, 2014
|
|
91% | Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow (2014) |
This film would have been well-made regardless of its casting, but the pairing of Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt is an inspired one. - The Berks-Mont News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jun 12, 2014
|
|
3/4 | 51% | The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) |
If [the film] ultimately resolves without quite plumbing its own depths as much as I'd have preferred, I'm still more than impressed with where it opts to go in the first place. - Projection Booth
EDIT
Read More
| Posted May 4, 2014
|
4/4 | 84% | Under the Skin (2014) |
Under the Skin doesn't just affirm the movies' ability to draw us out of our worldview: it raises the bar. I can't wait to watch it five or six more times, at least. - Projection Booth
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Apr 30, 2014
|
1.5/4 | 47% | That Demon Within (Mo Jing) (2014) |
It rarely feels like anything more than an effort to pander to the kind of audiences that enjoy Quentin Tarantino's films for all the wrong reasons. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Apr 17, 2014
|
1.5/4 | 84% | The Short Game (2013) |
This window into the world of youthful competition almost entirely disposes of social awareness in favor of routine drama. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Sep 19, 2013
|
1.5/4 | 19% | Winnie Mandela (2013) |
The film's tonal inconsistencies speak less to the struggles of its titular subject than to its own grasp-exceeding ambitions. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Sep 6, 2013
|
3.5/4 | 90% | Out of the Clear Blue Sky (2013) |
By de-emphasizing politics in favor of humanitarianism, Danielle Gardner's work also suggests how Americans might yet unify even as the world around them threatens to tear itself apart. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Sep 6, 2013
|
1.5/4 | 40% | American Made Movie (2013) |
The documentary's refusal to challenge the comfort zones of its target audience is apparent throughout. - Slant Magazine
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Aug 26, 2013
|
61% | Clear History (2013) |
Clear History's shorthanded characterizations and ethical vacuum prove so flaccid that it fails even if one views it as a nihilistic statement. - Projection Booth
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Aug 10, 2013
|