Verne Gay

Verne Gay
Verne Gay's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s): Newsday
Publications: Newsday

Movie Reviews Only

T-Meter Title | Year
2.5/4 95% Between the World and Me (2020) Beautifully done, but ultimately overdone. The book is better. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 18, 2020
4/4 70% Driving While Black (2018) Essential viewing. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 13, 2020
A- 68% The Sunset Limited (2011) Grim, but a chance to see two magnificent actors at the peak of their powers. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 6, 2020
B+ 70% The Girl (2012) Film lovers will -- possibly against their better judgment -- love Jones' "Hitch." - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 4, 2020
3/4 96% John Lewis: Good Trouble (2020) Engaging portrait of the Civil Rights icon. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 2, 2020
A 61% Cinema Verite (2011) Not a dull or wasted moment, and Lane may have just turned in the one of the best performances of her career. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 3, 2020
B- 49% Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012) Stellar production, famous leads. What's missing? Heart. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 1, 2020
87% Viral: Antisemitism in Four Mutations (2020) As a guide through this hellscape, Goldberg is calm, rational, humane. At least someone is. Someone has to be. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted May 22, 2020
3/4 92% Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (2019) Davis is demystified and deconstructed in this corrective - and excellent - portrait. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 24, 2020
2/4 47% The Chaperone (2019) If "The Chaperone" accomplishes anything, that will be to send viewers scrambling to Google to learn more about this extraordinary woman. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 22, 2019
4/4 91% El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019) Massively enjoyable wrap to the Jesse Pinkman story, and better still, the right one. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 11, 2019
45% Camp Rock (2008) This is a hit and has been carefully crafted by Disney to become one. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 11, 2019
86% Wanda Sykes: I'ma Be Me (2009) You're not about to hear here for the first time that Wanda Sykes is an immensely gifted stand-up who controls and commands and slays both stage and audience like a bantamweight dominatrix. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 2, 2019
C+ 90% Amy Schumer: Live From the Apollo (2015) Fans should be pleased. As usual, everyone else will be appalled. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 31, 2019
95% Louis C.K.: 2017 (2017) The usual C.K. show - fresh, funny, smart, bleak, offensive, entertaining - with one minor demerit, for an overlong finish. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
3/4 84% Aziz Ansari: Right Now (2019) Risky show, risky strategy and both pay off. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 10, 2019
50% Amy Schumer: The Leather Special (2017) Too much of the carnal Amy, not enough of the smart, cultural critic Amy. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 9, 2019
3.5/4 100% The Cold Blue (2019) Fine tribute film to a Wyler semi-classic and the men of the Eighth Air Force. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 5, 2019
3/4 98% Deadwood: The Movie (2019) Just when Al threatens to become irremediably softened - a New Age man for a New Age Deadwood - he gets the one line that proves otherwise. Fans have waited 13 years for this line. It's almost worth the wait. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted May 29, 2019
100% Ken Burns: The Civil War (2015) Burns, his brother Ric and longtime writer and collaborator, Geoffrey C. Ward, accomplished exactly what Burns had always intended -- a visceral, deeply felt film on a long-distant war that lived on in hearts and minds. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted May 24, 2019
88% Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear's 'All in the Family' and 'The Jeffersons' (2019) Of the two live episodes, "The Jeffersons" was easily the better, and also made the unexpected case that it was possibly the better series all along. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted May 23, 2019
3.5/4 100% The Last Survivors (2019) Short on perspective, but long on one essential message -- never forget. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 29, 2019
2.5/4 62% Native Son (2019) An especially thoughtful film - that's already a given - but an unexpectedly inert one. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 3, 2019
4/4 78% The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019) It's so high-gloss -- so weirdly hypnotic -- that neither Gibney nor "The Inventor" can get to the real human behind the image. A shortcoming of the film? Sure, but the only one. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 21, 2019
2.5/4 79% Amy Schumer Growing (2019) Mostly solid material that yokes the old Schumer with the new. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 19, 2019
3.5/4 100% Sammy Davis, Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me (2017) A fascinating tribute to the consummate performer, this doc also sets the record straight on his politics and civil rights record. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 18, 2019
3.5/4 78% Watergate (2019) Ferguson's "Watergate" in fact is a marvel of obsession, full of endless details...and enough footage to swamp even the wonkiest of Watergate junkies. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 18, 2019
3/4 92% Ellen DeGeneres: Relatable (2018) Irony wins and Ellen rules. Fury has had nothing to do with DeGeneres' triumph or enduring appeal. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 18, 2018
3.5/4 No Score Yet Superb, but not for the casual viewer. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 30, 2018
2/4 83% My Dinner with Hervé (2018) Dinklage turns in a fine performance, but his passion project is otherwise a standard-issue biopic. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 18, 2018
99% The Tale (2018) Jenny's reluctance to stare down the horror gives "The Tale" an ineluctable psychological power. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 23, 2018
3/4 100% If I Leave Here Tomorrow: A Film About Lynyrd Skynyrd (2018) Excellent portrait of a legendary band that gets to the heart of why it's endured -- that tragedy notwithstanding. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 15, 2018
3/4 67% Freaky Friday (2018) A colorful Friday with the Disney touch, while Zuehlsdorff and Blickenstaff shine. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 8, 2018
2.5/4 94% Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind (2018) Come Inside My Mind valiantly tries to penetrate the silence. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2018
2/4 33% Fahrenheit 451 (2018) Flat, slow and turgid, no one - neither Jordan nor Shannon - can stir this gluepot. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted May 15, 2018
3.5/4 No Score Yet A luminous adaptation, with Hawke as one more memorable "Jo" in a long and glorious line of them. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted May 9, 2018
2.5/4 No Score Yet Kevin James: Never Don't Give Up (2018) Amusing, fast, inoffensive -- for the most part. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 24, 2018
3.5/4 70% Paterno (2018) Brilliant as ever, [Al] Pacino is the master trickster who manages to both demonize and humanize Paterno. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 19, 2018
No Score Yet GI Jews: Jewish Americans in World War II (2017) Moving, vivid, important. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 9, 2018
3.5/4 100% Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert (2018) Alice Cooper as Herod blew the roof off the Armory. Or was it perhaps that atomic tangerine lamé suit that did all the destruction? In any event, poor Armory. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 1, 2018
3.5/4 No Score Yet Hope & Fury: MLK, the Movement and the Media (2018) Some fleeting segues to the Black Lives Matter movement feel obligatory and woefully incomplete -- but they don't derail this otherwise excellent program. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 25, 2018
3/4 100% Chris Rock: Tamborine (2018) There's a new world order out there. Looks like Chris Rock -- yes, Rock -- got the memo, too. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 14, 2018
2.5/4 89% May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers (2017) But what "May It Last" never adequately explores is where that desolation and pain came from. The result is a celebration, without much in the way of revelation. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 29, 2018
2/4 No Score Yet I Am Sam Kinison (2017) With friends, family and admirers all lined up here, they attest to a good man who was deeply troubled. What they can't quite get to is who exactly that man was. He briefly comes into focus, then recedes. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 17, 2017
2.5/4 94% The Newspaperman: The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee (2017) Warm, genial portrait of a great editor, but not much else. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 5, 2017
3/4 90% The Problem with Apu (2017) A congenial and persuasive argument for why Apu must go. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 20, 2017
3.5/4 100% Baltimore Rising (2017) Excellent you-are-there film that takes viewers -- and Baltimore -- from despair to hope. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 19, 2017
3/4 No Score Yet Beyond a Year in Space (2017) Brisk informative overview of Kelly's life back on the ground, but leaves a few questions unanswered, including this one: How long before that first trip to Mars? - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 14, 2017
3/4 95% Jerry Before Seinfeld (2017) Seinfeld-before-"Seinfeld" fans will especially enjoy this congenial, familiar hour special. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 18, 2017
B+ 72% To the Bone (2017) The performances are mostly excellent, Collins' above all. - Newsday EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 17, 2017