Sam Weisberg

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
80% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 28, 2018
58% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 14, 2018
100% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 6, 2018
96% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 3, 2018
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 19, 2018
90% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 19, 2018
100% Little Woods (2019) Nia DaCosta's absorbing debut is laced with urgent dread, experienced by characters you care deeply about. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 19, 2018
86% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 19, 2018
68% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 19, 2018
85% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 28, 2018
60% Ramen Heads (2018) As demonstrated by this exquisite documentary, the preparation of Japan's national dish is an arduous affair ... - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 14, 2018
96% November (2018) [A] bone-chilling, hallucinatory tour de force ... - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 21, 2018
75% Frank Serpico (2017) Frank Serpico, though sprawling and seething, isn't a hagiography. It probes instead into Serpico's personal agonies. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 1, 2017
75% The Exception (The Kaiser's Last Kiss) (2017) Whenever Plummer is onscreen, The Exception is scintillating entertainment. Unfortunately, it gets bogged down ... - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted May 31, 2017
65% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted May 3, 2017
71% Flames (2017) Flames, though energetically crafted, erotic, and at times heartfelt, is an exasperatingly esoteric meditation on love. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 27, 2017
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 15, 2017
86% Nakom (2017) The film ... transcends its familiar "career vs. home obligations" conflict. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 1, 2017
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 14, 2016
90% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 30, 2016
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 27, 2016
No Score Yet Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer - 30th Anniversary (2016) A gruesomely riveting sucker punch of a movie. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 20, 2016
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 12, 2016
50% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 5, 2016
82% La Notte (1961) Ennui and eroticism make an oddly alluring combo in Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2016
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 24, 2016
95% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 17, 2016
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 1, 2016
82% Unlocking the Cage (2016) Unlocking the Cage is a genuine rarity: a rather happy documentary about a losing battle for justice. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted May 25, 2016
55% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 8, 2016
10% Point Break (2015) Stiff, humorless, tension-free ... - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 29, 2015
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 24, 2015
98% Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words (Jag är Ingrid) (2015) Vivid and enlightening ... - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2015
63% Rock In The Red Zone (2015) Bialis's growing immersion in the town is poignant, even admirable. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2015
76% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2015
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 3, 2015
87% In The Shadow of Women (2016) Merhar saves In the Shadow of Women with the simplest of gestures: a smile. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 6, 2015
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 3, 2015
100% How to Smell a Rose: A Visit with Ricky Leacock at his Farm in Normandy (2015) Fitfully captivating, though plenty amusing. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 11, 2015
91% Metropolitan (1990) It might make you long for a return to movies in which teens have a greater vocabulary than their parents. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 4, 2015
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2015
100% Famous Nathan (2015) Terrific documentaries are a dime a dozen; ones this multifaceted are to be cherished. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2015
79% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 14, 2015
65% Days of Grace (2015) Most of this frantic moviemaking is more disorienting than riveting. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 28, 2015
45% The Road Within (2015) It ultimately succumbs to the bland, sentimental uplift we've come to expect from such outings. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 14, 2015
20% Supremacy (2015) [A] dour, dreary drama ... - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 27, 2015
53% Pioneer (2014) The tension never lets up. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 3, 2014
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 2, 2014
93% Little Hope Was Arson (2014) Theo Love's mesmerizing documentary Little Hope Was Arson is as evenhanded as it is unsettling. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 18, 2014
100% Sex And Broadcasting (2014) A funny, woozy, infectiously cheery look at a still-persevering (though struggling) national treasure. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 18, 2014