Ted Shen

Ted Shen
Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications: Chicago Reader
Critics' Group: Chicago Film Critics Association

Movie Reviews Only

T-Meter Title | Year
83% Chutney Popcorn (1999) The film runs out of comic situations after the first hour and resorts to too many senseless montages - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted May 29, 2020
100% Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise (1980) This celebratory 1980 documentary by Robert Mugge presents [Sun Ra] as both philosopher and inspired leader of his most famous band, the Arkestra. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 8, 2020
70% ABCD (Her Own Choice) (2001) Despite the familiar story, both kids are three-dimensional characters, and first-time director [Krutin] Patel embraces their generational dilemmas with feeling and wit. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 13, 2020
No Score Yet Love for All Seasons (2003) If Hong Kong comedy's infinite capacity for outlandish plot turns, lowbrow humor, and shameless consumerism doesn't wear you out, then you might be fitfully amused by this goofball item... - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 19, 2019
56% Salome (1923) Though the direction is attributed to Charles Bryant, the auteur was clearly Nazimova, with Natacha Rambova patterning the set and costumes after the Aubrey Beardsley illustrations that accompanied one edition of the play. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted May 29, 2019
33% History Lessons (2001) Devoid of voice-over commentary but still remarkably lucid, her gleeful reconstruction of the past also serves to celebrate the more progressive climate today. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 21, 2019
92% Sholay (1975) The plot is formulaic, the camerawork is slapdash, the male bonding borders on camp. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 20, 2017
93% Salaam Bombay! (1988) Like Hector Babenco's Pixote the film is unsparingly gritty, but with a woman's tenderness it also grants the characters an occasional moment of grace. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 29, 2015
94% My Neighbor Totoro (1988) Sheer enchantment. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 8, 2014
92% Insomnia (2002) Nolan uses visual pyrotechnics to pump up the tension and add to Pacino's sense of disorientation, but the feeling he evokes isn't as forlorn, creepy, or ambiguous as in the original (though the mountain wilderness is just as forbidding). - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 5, 2013
100% Marketa Lazarová (1967) Episodic in structure, the film proceeds like a folk saga, but its flashbacks, flash-forwards, and abrupt cuts give it a hallucinatory quality. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 17, 2013
81% Stuart Little 2 (2002) The film is fairly formulaic, though some of its puns and wisecracks are hilarious, especially those delivered by the Littles' lazy and cynical Persian cat. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 14, 2012
97% Spirited Away (2002) Enchanting and impressively crafted. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 25, 2011
16% Beautiful (2000) ally Field's direction is pedestrian, though she does manage to get shamelessly winning performances out of Driver and Eisenberg. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 12, 2010
No Score Yet Yeshou xingjing (Beast Cops) (1998) Unfortunately, the acting is wildly uneven, from Michael Wong's irremediably wooden performance as the clean cop to Anthony Wong's insightful portrayal of the dirty one, a man who treats the mobsters on his watch like blood brothers. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 7, 2010
83% Barbershop (2002) Some of the verbal jousts are hot, and a Laurel and Hardy routine involving a stolen ATM is fitfully hilarious, but this reminds me of a pilot for a cable sitcom. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 23, 2010
81% The Barbarian Invasions (Les Invasions barbares) (2003) Despite an uneven cast, Arcand finds a tonal balance between sentimental and cynical that keeps the conversations real and heart wrenching. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 23, 2010
89% Baran (2002) The film is remarkable for the naturalistic acting of its cast, particularly the tender performances of the two leads, Hossein Abedini and Zahra Bahrami. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 23, 2010
No Score Yet Backroads (1997) Director Shirley Cheechoo (who also plays one of the sisters) captures the dead-end existence of the insular community as well as the humor, the anxieties, and the resilience of her protagonists. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 5, 2010
80% Ghosts of the Abyss (2003) This hour-long feature, edited down from 900 hours of footage, is both a technical marvel and a heartfelt memorial to those who died when the ship sank in 1912. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 11, 2009
86% Lilo & Stitch (2002) Smart, poignant, and utterly beguiling. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 16, 2009
92% The Women (1939) The catty banter and Wildean aphorisms (some of them contributed by Anita Loos) are delivered with impeccable timing by a cast only MGM could have mustered. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 11, 2008
29% Hey Arnold! The Movie (2002) The simplistic drawing is closer to Peanuts than The Lion King, and the dialogue is strangely anachronistic. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted May 20, 2008
57% Like Mike (2002) [A] summer-weight but winsome basketball fantasy. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 25, 2008
96% Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998) A marvel for eye and ear. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 10, 2008
99% Finding Nemo (2003) [An] aquatic joyride. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 5, 2008
88% Freaky Friday (2003) The premise provides a fine showcase for the two appealing actresses, who appropriate each other's vocal and physical mannerisms with dead-on accuracy. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2007
57% Blade II (2002) Everything gets bogged down in one spectacularly gory action sequence after another. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 18, 2007
100% Black God, White Devil (Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol) (1964) The fusion of European and Afro-Brazilian elements -- dialogue, exquisite black-and-white images, and music by Villa-Lobos -- is startlingly original and poetical in conveying the hope and despair of the oppressed. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 11, 2007
10% Juwanna Mann (2002) The idea of transposing the story to the macho, greedy world of big-time sports is promising, but director Jesse Vaughan delivers only flat dialogue and predictable situations. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 27, 2007
59% Fulltime Killer (2003) Full of visual and verbal references to action and noir favorites, but burdened by a knotty story line and existential dialogue about fateful coincidences, it has trouble locating its own emotional core. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 9, 2007
50% Blossoms of Fire (2006) Gosling's schoolmarmish narration betrays the filmmakers' awestruck naivete toward the culture, which they seem to consider some sort of matriarchal utopia. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 6, 2005
67% Quality of Life (Against The Wall) (2006) A middling program of aggressively self-indulgent videos that focus on the sleazy side of life. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 22, 2005
38% God's Sandbox (Tahara) (2005) The lovers' seduction in the sand borders on laughable soft porn. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 14, 2005
41% Callas Forever (2004) Despite a faintly campy script by Martin Sherman, Zeffirelli captures the artistic imperative that drives both characters -- and deepens their loneliness. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 3, 2004
60% Scumrock (2004) The characters in this video, denizens of the San Francisco art fringe, seem like they're heavily sedated. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 17, 2004
No Score Yet Los Zafiros---Music from the Edge of Time (2002) The songs, exuberant or sad, speak for themselves, none of them more poignant than the one Cancio croons for Galban in a studio session, paying tribute to their time together. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 16, 2004
74% Robot Stories (2004) Accomplished 2002 quartet of vignettes about artificial human life. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 10, 2004
100% Krzysztof Kieslowski: I'm So-So... (1998) He comes across as a modest, wryly funny, and intensely intellectual man, and his comments on both the ethics of filmmaking and his own work, from Camera Buff to the Three Colors trilogy, are fascinating. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 10, 2004
73% Cremaster 2 (1999) A tantalizing melange of dreamlike riffs on the desolation of the American west, the empty poses of male ritual, and the blood lust of macho fetishism. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 12, 2003
64% By Hook or by Crook (2002) Remarkable debut feature. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 2, 2002
79% American Experience (2004) Poignant if familiar story of a young person suspended between two cultures. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 2, 2002
86% Rockers (1980) Sounds from the golden age of reggae pulse through this breezy 1978 drama. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2002
72% Intacto (2002) Far-fetched premise, convoluted plot, and thematic mumbo jumbo about destiny and redemptive love. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 23, 2002
50% Ocean Oasis (2001) The narration, although provided by an ecologist and a naturalist, is a redundant gush of New Age wonderment at sights better left to speak for themselves. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 10, 2002
94% Manito (2003) Eason captures with graphic realism the male rivalry, manic tensions, and social aspirations of a New York ethnic enclave. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 25, 2002
87% Under the Skin of the City (Zir-e Poust-e Shahr) (2003) Bani-Etemad's depiction of poverty and despair, approximating the tone and look of Italian neorealism, is stark and wrenching. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 22, 2002
89% Wild Style (2013) The pacing is slow -- inexcusable in a film about music -- except when hip-hop takes over, and Ahearn wisely gives plenty of screen time to the likes of Busy Bee, Rock Steady Crew, and Fab Five Freddy. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted May 11, 2001
68% La Ley de Herodes (Herod's Law) (2000) The actors are uniformly excellent, embracing their arch roles without succumbing to caricature. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 11, 2001
No Score Yet Entranced Earth (Terra em Transe) (1967) Rocha's frenzied mise-en-scene, which borrows from Fellini, Antonioni, and European avant-garde theater, is so stylized and self-referential that it probably appealed less to the masses than to the left-wing intelligentsia it scrutinizes. - Chicago Reader EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 1, 2000