Sam Weisberg

Sam Weisberg's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
L.A. Weekly
Village Voice
Publications:
L.A. Weekly,
Village Voice
Movie Reviews Only
T-Meter | Title | Year | Review | |
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67% | Invisible Hands (2018) |
Invisible Hands lacks focus. Rather than targeting its rage at the most egregious megacorporations, calling for specific boycotts, it swipes broadly at consumerism as a whole. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Nov 28, 2018
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59% | Mobile Homes (2018) |
In Vladimir de Fontenay's Mobile Homes, Imogen Poots gives a performance of such multifaceted distinction that it might be hard to believe you're watching the same actress from frame to frame. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Nov 14, 2018
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92% | The Grief of Others (2018) |
Working with deliberately limited resources, writer-director Patrick Wang revels in technical gaucherie that would hinder lesser filmmakers. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Nov 6, 2018
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97% | Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable (2018) |
Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable is an elegant, tender ode to Winogrand, but it's no hagiography. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Oct 3, 2018
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No Score Yet | No Greater Law (2018) |
At long last, here is a documentary about religious fanatics that, while certainly critical, doesn't treat any of its subjects with a trace of condescension. - Village Voice
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| Posted Apr 19, 2018
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92% | Netizens (2018) |
Cynthia Lowen, who produced the disturbing 2011 doc Bully, scores another infuriating triumph with her directorial debut, Netizens, which follows three victims of online sexual harassment and defamation. - Village Voice
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| Posted Apr 19, 2018
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95% | Little Woods (2019) |
Nia DaCosta's absorbing debut is laced with urgent dread, experienced by characters you care deeply about. - Village Voice
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| Posted Apr 19, 2018
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93% | The Feeling of Being Watched (2018) |
Boundaoui's exposé of her own near-Sisyphean quest for justice is a searing snapshot of an ongoing battle with seemingly no end in sight. - Village Voice
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| Posted Apr 19, 2018
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67% | The Seagull (2018) |
Bening has played so many high-intensity mothers by now, you'd think she'd have exhausted her resources. But she's a firecracker in Michael Mayer's spirited adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, as the aging, boastful actress Irina. - Village Voice
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| Posted Apr 19, 2018
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86% | Love After Love (2018) |
Harbaugh, with his subtle approach, renders this trio likable. He knows just when to burrow the camera in for jittery effect and when to relent. - Village Voice
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| Posted Mar 28, 2018
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65% | Ramen Heads (2018) |
As demonstrated by this exquisite documentary, the preparation of Japan's national dish is an arduous affair ... - Village Voice
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| Posted Mar 14, 2018
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96% | November (2018) |
[A] bone-chilling, hallucinatory tour de force ... - Village Voice
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| Posted Feb 21, 2018
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75% | Frank Serpico (2017) |
Frank Serpico, though sprawling and seething, isn't a hagiography. It probes instead into Serpico's personal agonies. - Village Voice
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| Posted Nov 1, 2017
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73% | The Exception (The Kaiser's Last Kiss) (2017) |
Whenever Plummer is onscreen, The Exception is scintillating entertainment. Unfortunately, it gets bogged down ... - Village Voice
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| Posted May 31, 2017
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70% | Take Me (2017) |
While the film, to its credit, doesn't become a trite morality play, the ending is thin and contrived nonetheless. - Village Voice
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| Posted May 3, 2017
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75% | Flames (2017) |
Flames, though energetically crafted, erotic, and at times heartfelt, is an exasperatingly esoteric meditation on love. - Village Voice
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| Posted Apr 27, 2017
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81% | Actor Martinez (2017) |
Whether the real-life Martinez is this hotheaded and quick-tempered is left a mystery, but it matters not a whit, because even five minutes in the company of this Martinez is excruciating. - Village Voice
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| Posted Mar 15, 2017
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88% | Nakom (2017) |
The film ... transcends its familiar "career vs. home obligations" conflict. - Village Voice
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| Posted Mar 1, 2017
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No Score Yet | Rooted In Peace (2017) |
The film is not without its trenchant moments, most rooted not in peace but in science. - Village Voice
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| Posted Dec 14, 2016
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87% | Bobby Sands: 66 Days (2016) |
Byrne never resorts to such cheap tricks as matching the imagery to what the interviewees are saying, and the film is no hagiography. - Village Voice
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| Posted Nov 30, 2016
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82% | By Sidney Lumet (2016) |
Shares the flaws of Lumet's own movies: It's workmanlike and impassioned, but ultimately preaching to the choir. - Village Voice
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| Posted Oct 27, 2016
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No Score Yet | Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer - 30th Anniversary (2016) |
A gruesomely riveting sucker punch of a movie. - Village Voice
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| Posted Oct 20, 2016
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100% | Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang (2016) |
The film, in the end, is a celebration of a humble artist who easily could have been - and perhaps deserves to be - a megalomaniac. - Village Voice
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| Posted Oct 12, 2016
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53% | London Town (2016) |
It's extremely likable, but sentimental is the last thing a tale about growing up poor and angry in working-class, late-1970s England should strive to be. - Village Voice
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| Posted Oct 5, 2016
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84% | La Notte (1961) |
Ennui and eroticism make an oddly alluring combo in Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte. - Village Voice
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| Posted Sep 16, 2016
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38% | Is That You? (2016) |
This is a maudlin, manipulative film, and while it's never aggressively annoying, that's only because it severely lacks energy. - Village Voice
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| Posted Aug 24, 2016
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96% | Spa Night (2016) |
There are no haters here, no bullies, and the only real enemy is the self-repression that plagues the shy, closeted Korean Angeleno teenager at its center. - Village Voice
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| Posted Aug 17, 2016
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88% | The Thoughts That Once We Had (2016) |
We don't just learn about Deleuze; we learn it is possible to love blues music, Maria Montez, Communist propaganda films, and Cheech and Chong in equal measure. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jun 1, 2016
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83% | Unlocking the Cage (2016) |
Unlocking the Cage is a genuine rarity: a rather happy documentary about a losing battle for justice. - Village Voice
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| Posted May 25, 2016
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57% | Hyena Road (2016) |
Viewers are graced with a few disappointingly subdued action scenes, two humdrum romantic subplots, and a virtual museum of bad acting. - Village Voice
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| Posted Mar 8, 2016
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11% | Point Break (2015) |
Stiff, humorless, tension-free ... - Village Voice
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| Posted Dec 29, 2015
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No Score Yet | Iraqi Odyssey (2015) |
Heartrending throughout, Iraqi Odyssey is everything you want in a documentary - informative, involving, and eager to decipher complex, often paradoxical historical conundrums. - Village Voice
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| Posted Nov 24, 2015
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98% | Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words (Jag är Ingrid) (2015) |
Vivid and enlightening ... - Village Voice
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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63% | Rock In The Red Zone (2015) |
Bialis's growing immersion in the town is poignant, even admirable. - Village Voice
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| Posted Nov 10, 2015
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75% | Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans (2015) |
We've seen many an insider doc about films destroyed by their creators' chutzpah (Overnight, Lost in La Mancha), but what's most wrenching here is McQueen's displays of vulnerability and tenderness. - Village Voice
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| Posted Nov 10, 2015
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95% | Palio (2015) |
While Spender spends enough time with both new and retired jockey legends to collect a gold mine of macho, bullheaded rapport, you wish she delved deeper into the more sinister, behind-the-scenes wheelings and dealings. - Village Voice
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| Posted Nov 3, 2015
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87% | In The Shadow of Women (2016) |
Merhar saves In the Shadow of Women with the simplest of gestures: a smile. - Village Voice
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| Posted Oct 6, 2015
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88% | Until the End of the World (Bis ans Ende der Welt) (1992) |
Before, one left the theater befuddled; one now leaves the theater equally befuddled but also moved, even genuinely disturbed. - Village Voice
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| Posted Sep 3, 2015
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100% | How to Smell a Rose: A Visit with Ricky Leacock at his Farm in Normandy (2015) |
Fitfully captivating, though plenty amusing. - Village Voice
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| Posted Aug 11, 2015
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93% | Metropolitan (1990) |
It might make you long for a return to movies in which teens have a greater vocabulary than their parents. - Village Voice
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| Posted Aug 4, 2015
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71% | I Am Chris Farley (2015) |
The movie is saccharine. The tone is set from the get-go by that lazy, obsequious title - it sounds like some bogus self-help seminar that one of Farley's characters would have smashed to smithereens. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jul 28, 2015
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100% | Famous Nathan (2015) |
Terrific documentaries are a dime a dozen; ones this multifaceted are to be cherished. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jul 16, 2015
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83% | A Hard Day (2015) |
In a very frenetic two hours, Kim demonstrates every conceivable way in which one grown man can injure another. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jul 14, 2015
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65% | Days of Grace (2015) |
Most of this frantic moviemaking is more disorienting than riveting. - Village Voice
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| Posted Apr 28, 2015
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45% | The Road Within (2015) |
It ultimately succumbs to the bland, sentimental uplift we've come to expect from such outings. - Village Voice
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| Posted Apr 14, 2015
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27% | Supremacy (2015) |
[A] dour, dreary drama ... - Village Voice
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| Posted Jan 27, 2015
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55% | Pioneer (2014) |
The tension never lets up. - Village Voice
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| Posted Dec 3, 2014
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89% | Red Knot (2014) |
Red Knot exhibits such spot-on, heartbreaking honesty about behaviors that tear many couples apart ... that it's easy to forgive Cohen his metaphorical excesses. - Village Voice
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| Posted Dec 2, 2014
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93% | Little Hope Was Arson (2014) |
Theo Love's mesmerizing documentary Little Hope Was Arson is as evenhanded as it is unsettling. - Village Voice
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| Posted Nov 18, 2014
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100% | Sex And Broadcasting (2014) |
A funny, woozy, infectiously cheery look at a still-persevering (though struggling) national treasure. - Village Voice
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| Posted Nov 18, 2014
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