Stephen Dalton

Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications:
Hollywood Reporter,
Sight and Sound,
Times (UK),
Scotsman,
Uncut Magazine [UK]
Movie Reviews Only
T-Meter | Title | Year | Review | |
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4.5/5 | 98% | David Byrne's American Utopia (2020) |
Spike Lee's film of Byrne's sold-out Hudson Theater run is respectfully faithful to the stage performance, with a few deft embellishments. - Uncut Magazine [UK]
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| Posted Jan 14, 2021
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No Score Yet | The Last Ones (Viimeiset) (2020) |
A flawed but compelling psychodrama set in Europe's wild north. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 12, 2021
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No Score Yet | Gorbachev. Heaven (2020) |
A poetic portrait of a poignant political afterlife. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Dec 19, 2020
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No Score Yet | In the Mirror (2020) |
A lively, witty fairy-tale remix. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Dec 8, 2020
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60% | A Christmas Carol (2020) |
Technically impressive but dramatically flat. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Dec 4, 2020
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100% | Radiograph of a Family (2020) |
Immersive and lyrical. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Dec 1, 2020
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95% | Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan (2020) |
A richly detailed portrait of a self-destructive talent. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Nov 10, 2020
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93% | O Som ao Redor (Neighbouring Sounds) (2012) |
It is a rare film that makes open-ended ambivalence so explosively gripping, but Filho pulls it off with great panache and even greater promise. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Nov 3, 2020
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93% | Pixie (2021) |
Pixie is a lively caper, and intermittently good fun on a trashy escapism level. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Oct 24, 2020
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80% | Ultraviolence (2020) |
Ultraviolence is only a small contribution to a huge ongoing debate, but these unresolved tales of injustice deserve to be amplified and interrogated... - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Oct 14, 2020
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89% | Supernova (2021) |
Plenty to admire here, if only this tasteful tearjerker lived up to its title with a few more explosive fireworks instead of settling for timid twinkles, ending not with a bang but a whimper. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 22, 2020
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93% | Another Round (Druk) (2020) |
It makes for an appealing ensemble piece overall, as well as a great vehicle for Mikkelsen's vulpine beauty and nimble dance moves. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 13, 2020
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89% | Limbo (2020) |
A timely feel-good fable about the kindness of strangers. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 12, 2020
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48% | Unhinged (2020) |
Unwatchable. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jul 30, 2020
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No Score Yet | Dark Fortune (Finsteres glück) (2016) |
A classy and engrossing package overall, Dark Fortune reels viewers in with slow-burn suspense and psychological complexity... - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jun 15, 2020
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100% | Dede (2017) |
Feminism meets fatalism in this starkly beautiful Georgian melodrama. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jun 11, 2020
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91% | What Richard Did (2013) |
If What Richard Did is sometimes a little too understated for its own good, this is still a classy piece of work which convincingly captures the emotionally complex, morally murky texture of real life. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Apr 30, 2020
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85% | DAU. Natasha (2020) |
A disappointingly conventional, small-scale, low-voltage character study at heart. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Feb 26, 2020
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No Score Yet | High Ground (2020) |
A gripping, visually spectacular revenge thriller that makes superb use of stunning landscapes while also addressing the lingering scars of colonial-era racism. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Feb 23, 2020
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50% | Uppercase Print (Tipografic majuscul) (2020) |
Austere but affecting. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Feb 22, 2020
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95% | Mogul Mowgli (2020) |
Thoughtfully crafted and thematically rich, even if it feels a little too opaquely personal in places. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Feb 21, 2020
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No Score Yet | The Steed (2019) |
Classy ingredients are not enough to save The Steed from its overly sentimental, heavy-handed elements. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 3, 2020
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No Score Yet | Kontora (2019) |
Its sluggish tempo and bloated running time undermine the intrigue-driven plot in places, but there is enough offbeat charm here to reward patient viewers. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Dec 30, 2019
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100% | Zana (2020) |
Matoshi's impressively internalized performance conveys a lot with very little, her impassive features telegraphing submerged grief with scant trace of melodrama. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Dec 30, 2019
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100% | Muscle (2019) |
Fruitfully blending thriller, comedy and horror elements, Muscle is essentially a two-hander set in a claustrophobic, ultra-masculine world. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Dec 25, 2019
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No Score Yet | Truth and Justice (Tõde ja õigus) (2019) |
Truth and Justice is deluxe period soap opera at heart. But young writer-director Tanel Toom's handsome adaptation is also finely crafted and superbly acted, a fatalistic meditation on the human condition splashed across a broad historical canvas. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Dec 21, 2019
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75% | The Gentlemen (2020) |
Ritchie's homecoming is a fairly familiar affair, but also refreshingly funny and deftly plotted, with more witty lines and less boorish machismo than his early work. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Dec 19, 2019
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No Score Yet | Isaac (2019) |
A visually dazzling, Kafkaesque murder mystery. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Dec 11, 2019
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100% | Looted (2019) |
Pannevis combines elements of social realism, crime thriller and coming-of-age character study in this lyrical low-budget drama. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Dec 4, 2019
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100% | White Riot (2019) |
An engaging historical story with timely contemporary echoes. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Nov 1, 2019
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80% | In Full Bloom (2020) |
An impressively polished debut feature, admirably ambitious and elegantly crafted. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Oct 31, 2019
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97% | Tell Me Who I Am (2019) |
Gripping and moving, despite some tricksy narrative twists. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Oct 17, 2019
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No Score Yet | Somebody Up There Likes Me (2019) |
For serious rock scholars and fans of quality documentaries in general, this lightweight vanity project will feel disappointingly thin and perfunctory. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Oct 14, 2019
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50% | Earthquake Bird (2019) |
A fairly flat treatment of over-familiar plot elements, and fatally low on the key psycho-thriller elements of suspense, surprise and dread. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Oct 10, 2019
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100% | Sid & Judy (2019) |
[A] conventional but briskly entertaining TV bio-doc... - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Oct 10, 2019
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91% | Leap of Faith (2019) |
The 84-year-old veteran director remains an articulate and forceful presence onscreen, refreshingly unburdened by modesty and clearly keen to display his highbrow cultural smarts. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Oct 7, 2019
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44% | Cuck (2019) |
While clearly limited in budget and a little too blunt in its hectoring message, Cuck also has an agreeably cultish intensity and newsworthy urgency. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Oct 2, 2019
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26% | Gemini Man (2019) |
The disappointing end result feels less than the sum of the talents involved, a weak script and thin high-concept plot only just held together by smart visual wizardry. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 26, 2019
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No Score Yet | Volare (Tutto il mio folle amore) (2019) |
At times, it is almost indigestible in its sugary sentimentality and facile life-is-sweet message. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 19, 2019
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No Score Yet | Silent Days (Hluché dni) (2019) |
An artful, lyrical treatment of gritty subject matter. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 18, 2019
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100% | Black Conflux (2019) |
A haunting, humane twist on thriller conventions. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 17, 2019
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55% | The Antenna (Bina) (2020) |
A stylish, surreal shocker. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 11, 2019
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90% | White Lie (2019) |
Nervy and kinetic, it succeeds as a small-scale psychological thriller. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 9, 2019
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84% | Lingua Franca (2020) |
While Sandoval's hard-working dedication is admirable, and her semi-autobiographical story full of latent dramatic potential, Lingua Franca is ultimately an underpowered, amateurish disappointment. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 6, 2019
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88% | Scales (Sayidat Al Bahr) (2019) |
A timeless magical realist fable with a contemporary feminist message. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 3, 2019
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100% | Sole (2019) |
Essentially a two-hander, Sole feels skimpy and underpowered at first, but it blossoms into a moving, quietly absorbing character study. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Aug 29, 2019
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No Score Yet | Scandinavian Silence (Skandinaavia vaikus) (2019) |
An elegant two-hander about mute siblings struck dumb by dark secrets. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jul 29, 2019
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73% | The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019) |
Ticks plenty of lightweight fun boxes for its prime target audience of younger children, with just enough adult humor to keep parents from yawning too. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jul 29, 2019
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100% | The Father (Bashtata) (2019) |
The story may test the limits of plausibility in places, but overall this off-the-map road movie is a humane, compassionate, character-driven delight. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jul 10, 2019
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No Score Yet | A Certain Kind of Silence (Tiché doteky) (2019) |
With its artfully muted Scandi-chic color palette, painstakingly framed architecture porn and almost subliminal drone-driven score, A Certain Kind of Silence is a gorgeous aesthetic experience. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jul 10, 2019
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