Robert Daniels
Tomatometer-approved critic
| Publications: | 812filmreviews |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.5/4 | 78% | Mid90s (2018) |
There's a level above pure documentation, above assembling the relics of a different era and cataloging them across the space of a screen, and Hill never reaches it.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Oct 21, 2018
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| 3.5/4 | 90% | What They Had (2018) |
What they Had is a pure actor driven film, equal parts stirring, heart breaking, and hilarious.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Oct 18, 2018
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| 100% | Diane (2018) |
Life is often meant to come undone, meant for the center to not hold...Diane is about loss and recovery, and the spinning of the world long after we die.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Oct 16, 2018
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| 2/4 | 81% | Sadie (2018) |
Sadie solely serves as a breakout performance from Sophia Mitri Schloss, who utterly disappears in the lead role.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Oct 12, 2018
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| 100% | United Skates (2018) |
The film is more than skating, more than the intricate and beautiful motions these skaters demonstrate. It documents community and racial pride, pride that comes from not only black culture, but from black owned businesses as well.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Oct 12, 2018
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| 4/4 | 89% | First Man (2018) |
First Man is a giant, powerfully, epic and perfect leap...and Damien Chazelle's best film.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Oct 11, 2018
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| 3.5/4 | 79% | 22 July (2018) |
22 July at its core, is about responsibility... [questioning] what responsibilities the survivors have to the diseased‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Oct 9, 2018
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| 3/4 | 93% | Private Life (2018) |
Private Life will stand as one of the high points of Giamatti and Hahn's respective careers. ‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Oct 5, 2018
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| 3/4 | 68% | Hold the Dark (2018) |
Saulnier's lens has become more defined and his pursuit of the shot intenser...Saulnier's pursuit of the shot gives the film not just an authenticity, but encapsulates the mood of the adapted screenplay.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Oct 4, 2018
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| 3/4 | 90% | A Star Is Born (2018) |
Cooper and Gaga both infuse an energy and authenticity within [their characters] that gives their blossoming relationship organic growth.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Oct 3, 2018
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| 2/4 | 86% | Colette (2018) |
Many of the film's best moments come at the expense of Colette, with Willy reaping the benefits.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Sep 28, 2018
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| 93% | If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) |
And while Jenkins delicately handles what seems to be an inexhaustible magic wand, the cast are fully committed to his and Baldwin's appeal to the heart, lineage, and love present in black history-a love that's rarely displayed on film.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Sep 26, 2018
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| 3.5/4 | 71% | Assassination Nation (2018) |
This attack on misogyny, mob rule, hypocrisy, and transphobia is a film that effectively taps the nerve of an angry, yet evolving country.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Sep 26, 2018
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| 2.5/4 | 79% | Quincy (2018) |
At its best, [Quincy] is an insightful skip down this man's memory and at its worst it's an hour long alter bowing to his accomplishments.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Sep 25, 2018
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| 3/4 | No Score Yet | Twin Flower (2018) |
Italian director Laura Luchetti's Twin Flower is a film that's ultimately at war with itself, yet still manages to have the right side win out.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Sep 25, 2018
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| 4/4 | 99% | Roma (2018) |
Aparicio provides color in the smallest, yet most tantalizing spectrum. She provides the hues that are rarely valued but should be taken for silver and gold. She provides the pallet of the everyday.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Sep 22, 2018
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| 2.5/4 | 87% | Love, Gilda (2018) |
Love, Gilda's weakest points are when it falls into the standard famous figure documentary format. Instead, the main draw of the film is Radner herself. ‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Sep 21, 2018
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| 84% | Destroyer (2018) |
A film that's languid in pace, yet saved by its pristine acting and exceptional score.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Sep 11, 2018
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| 3/4 | 97% | Coco (2017) |
In a country with an ever increasing Hispanic and Mexican population, a film like Coco should have come around a long time ago.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Sep 4, 2018
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| 3.5/4 | 99% | Lady Bird (2017) |
Greta Gerwig's directorial debut, Lady Bird, is the millisecond of possibility, the speck of unflinching nerve, which might only occur once in our lives.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Sep 4, 2018
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| 3.5/4 | 79% | The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) |
Has a doctor ever killed your father, and you used voodoo to get back him? Yea, me too. Yorgos Lanthimos's follow-up to The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, is every bit as creepy, dark, and ironic as the former.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Sep 4, 2018
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| 4/4 | 92% | Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) |
Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri unfolds as a typical revenge vigilantly ploy, and could have stayed so under normal direction and screenwriting. Instead, it gets turned into one of the best pictures of the year.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Sep 4, 2018
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| 3.5/4 | 97% | Mudbound (2017) |
Screenwriter and Director, Dee Rees makes a brilliant decision to focus on sharecropping. It's a profession that's rarely represented on film.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Sep 4, 2018
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| 3.5/4 | 91% | The Disaster Artist (2017) |
The Room falls under the category of "so bad it's good." The Disaster Artist, directed by James Franco, looks to capture everything that went wrong, and a few things that miraculously went right.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Sep 4, 2018
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| 3/4 | 84% | Darkest Hour (2017) |
Darkest Hour demonstrates the immense courage Churchill had. It doesn't fully absolve and deify him, rather humanizes.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Sep 4, 2018
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| 3.5/4 | 92% | The Shape of Water (2017) |
So, while we know Elisa has humanity, Del Toro has to plead his case for the fish-man.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Sep 4, 2018
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| 4/4 | 87% | Madeline's Madeline (2018) |
Decker stretches the medium, creating a film that is at once uncomfortable and brilliant in its examination of intellectual and emotional appropriation.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 31, 2018
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| 2/4 | 60% | Operation Finale (2018) |
The [Kingsley] and [Isaac] sequences aren't enough to make Operation Finale into what it desperately wants to be: a film that means something.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 28, 2018
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| 3.5/4 | 93% | Searching (2018) |
We become lost within the frame. We suspend our disbelief not to see a film on a screen, but a film framed to a screen.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 28, 2018
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| 3/4 | 95% | Call Me by Your Name (2018) |
Call Me By Your Name survives because of poignant screenwriting, keen directing, and tender acting.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 27, 2018
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| 3/4 | 76% | Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) |
The myriad of ways this sequel could have ended in disaster were obvious and ripe. Nevertheless, against all odds, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a good movie.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 27, 2018
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| 3/4 | 78% | All the Money in the World (2017) |
Getty could have easily been a shrill cold piece of shit. Instead, Plummer brings a warmness to the role. ‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 27, 2018
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| 4/4 | 90% | I, Tonya (2018) |
How much Harding knew or didn't know about the attack on Kerrigan is somewhat secondary, if that can be believed. ‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 27, 2018
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| 2/4 | No Score Yet | Pottersville (2017) |
Pottersville is one of two things, the worst Christmas movie ever or the best movie ever.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 27, 2018
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| 3.5/4 | 99% | Get Out (2017) |
Everything in Get Out seems innocuous on first blush.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 27, 2018
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| 3/4 | 96% | One of Us (2017) |
Filmmakers like Heidi and Rachel, are examples of why more female directors are needed.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 27, 2018
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| 3.5/4 | 70% | Damsel (2018) |
Throughout the film, Pattinson's control of his accent, his ability to add complexity to an imbecilic character, and his comedic timing are new signs that he is more than that Twilight dream boy.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2018
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| 3.5/4 | 91% | Phantom Thread (2018) |
Artistically, Phantom Thread might be the best film of the year. Nevertheless...‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2018
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| 3.5/4 | 91% | Good Time (2017) |
Good Time isn't an exuberant or happy-go-lucky emotional ride, rather it's the cruel irony of white privileged in even the lowest rungs of class.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2018
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| 2/4 | 72% | Hostiles (2018) |
The wants are grandiose, but the gains are minuscule.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2018
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| 3.5/4 | 87% | The Post (2018) |
It wouldn't be Spielberg without romanticism to the highest degree, and he'd probably plead guilty.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2018
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| 2/4 | 85% | Ingrid Goes West (2017) |
The people examined by the film are as paper thin as the pixels that make the images on their phones, and have as much depth as an evaporated gully.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2018
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| 3/4 | 83% | Patti Cake$ (2017) |
Patti Cake$ is the outsiders' plea for acceptance, even when those taste makers are deaf to the notes.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2018
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| 4/4 | 97% | Columbus (2017) |
Columbus becomes a dark meditative quasi-romance, as we consider the term, "modernism with a soul."‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2018
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| 3.5/4 | 84% | Loving Vincent (2017) |
As the colors shimmer and shake, we understand how the artist viewed the world, as not only static existence, but as vibrant action.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2018
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| 4/4 | 90% | On Body and Soul (A Teströl és Lélekröl) (2018) |
On Body and Soul is the power of dreams manifested, mixed with crushing reality of languid love, an emotion with as many mixed signals as the fantasies they're meant to evoke.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2018
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| 4/4 | 97% | Black Panther (2018) |
But Black Panther was a moment, not just for Marvel fans and Disney stans, but it was the rare instance of a film purporting itself to be a cultural movement, and succeeding.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2018
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| 1/4 | 44% | Pacific Rim Uprising (2018) |
Pacific Rim: Uprising is the skim atop your cooling soup: an unnecessary goop spoiling your appetizing meal.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2018
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| 1.5/4 | 41% | A Wrinkle in Time (2018) |
But for now, I'll have to sulk that A Wrinkle in Time isn't more.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2018
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| 3/4 | 86% | Thoroughbreds (2018) |
Sterile. Cerebral. Methodical. Those are the best words to describe Writer and Director Cory Finley's Thoroughbreds.‐ 812filmreviews
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2018
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