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
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4/5 | 80% | Staub (Dust) (2007) |
For those most curious about the world around them, Dust is a revelation.‐ Suite101.com
Read More | Posted Apr 6, 2016
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| 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
Read More | Posted Jun 12, 2015
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| 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
Read More | Posted May 21, 2015
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| 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
Read More | Posted Nov 26, 2014
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| 30% | 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
Read More | Posted Nov 19, 2014
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| 71% | Interstellar (2014) |
While [...] imperfect in many ways, the whole proves to be far more than the sum of its parts.‐ The Berks-Mont News
Read More | Posted Nov 8, 2014
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| 94% | 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
Read More | Posted Nov 6, 2014
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| 3/4 | 95% | 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
Read More | Posted Nov 6, 2014
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| 2.5/4 | 64% | 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
Read More | Posted Oct 29, 2014
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| 89% | X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) |
Alternately thought-provoking, philosophical, and politically conscious. It's also seriously cool.‐ The Berks-Mont News
Read More | Posted Oct 17, 2014
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| 2/4 | 83% | 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
Read More | Posted Oct 7, 2014
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| 90% | Obvious Child (2014) |
Beneath the film's frequently sardonic front [...] is a sobering maturity, one contextualized with quotidian poetry.‐ The Berks-Mont News
Read More | Posted Oct 6, 2014
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| 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
Read More | Posted Sep 30, 2014
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| 18% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 28, 2014
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| 72% | The Hornet's Nest (2014) |
"...little more than lip service to the horrors, and ethical challenges, of modern war."‐ The Berks-Mont News
Read More | Posted Sep 24, 2014
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| 2.5/4 | 75% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 21, 2014
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| 2.5/4 | 79% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 17, 2014
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| 75% | Godzilla (2014) |
This new Godzilla [...] walks a fine line, and that it never loses balance is something of a miracle.‐ The Berks-Mont News
Read More | Posted Sep 15, 2014
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| 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
Read More | Posted Sep 12, 2014
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| 66% | The Rover (2014) |
Might be described as an anti-High Noon.‐ The Berks-Mont News
Read More | Posted Sep 9, 2014
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| 88% | Venus in Fur (2014) |
"Revels in deception."‐ The Berks-Mont News
Read More | Posted Sep 8, 2014
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| 2.5/4 | 72% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 4, 2014
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| 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
Read More | Posted Aug 25, 2014
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| 52% | 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
Read More | Posted Aug 24, 2014
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| 96% | Blue Ruin (2014) |
A prismatically efficient thriller.‐ The Berks-Mont News
Read More | Posted Aug 12, 2014
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| 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
Read More | Posted Aug 12, 2014
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| 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
Read More | Posted Aug 11, 2014
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| 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
Read More | Posted Aug 11, 2014
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| .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
Read More | Posted Jul 26, 2014
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| 2/4 | 12% | Rage (2014) |
It's sobering conclusions are heartfelt, but ultimately unearned.‐ Projection Booth
Read More | Posted Jul 22, 2014
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| 84% | 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
Read More | Posted Jul 21, 2014
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| 85% | The Immigrant (2014) |
As haunting, and haunted, as any of [James Gray's] prior achievements.‐ The Berks-Mont News
Read More | Posted Jul 21, 2014
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| 94% | Snowpiercer (2014) |
Merits near-hyperbolic praise.‐ The Berks-Mont News
Read More | Posted Jul 15, 2014
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| 97% | Life Itself (2014) |
Emotionally raw, visually spare, and poetic, even in its imperfections.‐ The Berks-Mont News
Read More | Posted Jul 15, 2014
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| 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
Read More | Posted Jul 1, 2014
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| 82% | The Unknown Known (2014) |
It is, by definition, nonfiction, but at times suggests a horror movie.‐ The Berks-Mont News
Read More | Posted Jun 30, 2014
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| 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
Read More | Posted Jun 27, 2014
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| 97% | 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
Read More | Posted Jun 16, 2014
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| 90% | 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
Read More | Posted Jun 12, 2014
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| 3/4 | 52% | 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
Read More | Posted May 4, 2014
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| 4/4 | 85% | 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
Read More | Posted Apr 30, 2014
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| 1.5/4 | 50% | 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
Read More | Posted Apr 17, 2014
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| 1.5/4 | 83% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 19, 2013
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| 1.5/4 | 17% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 6, 2013
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| 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
Read More | Posted Sep 6, 2013
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| 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
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2013
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| 59% | 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
Read More | Posted Aug 10, 2013
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| 3/4 | No Score Yet | Postales (Postcards) (2010) |
Throughout the film, writer-director Jash Hyde avoids Paul Haggis's patronizing white liberal attitude toward class warfare. ‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Jul 25, 2013
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| 1.5/4 | 64% | Nicky's Family (2013) |
This is a powerful chapter in our human history, but it's made melodramatic and dull through Matej Minac's indulgence of hokey reenactments and sound-augmented archival footage.‐ Slant Magazine
Read More | Posted Jul 18, 2013
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| 85% | Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) |
Suggests someone painting by numbers with Herculian intensity, and the effect is hollow and dispassionate.‐ The Berks-Mont News
Read More | Posted Jul 7, 2013
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