Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| B- | 72% | The Wizard of Lies (2017) |
De Niro and Pfeiffer inhabit these roles so fully that you forget they're De Niro and Pfeiffer - no small feat considering their statures.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted May 18, 2017
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| A | 66% | The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2017) |
A beautiful, moving film, and Oprah (as usual) brings it.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Apr 20, 2017
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| A | 100% | Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg (2016) |
A movable, funny and very enjoyable feast.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Mar 29, 2017
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| A- | No Score Yet |
Raunchy, offensive, funny.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Mar 21, 2017
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| B | 100% | Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis (Our Friends) (2017) |
Emotional portrait of a frontman at the center of a horrific attack, but it doesn't feel quite complete.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Feb 13, 2017
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| A+ | 100% | Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds (2017) |
A beauty that will mostly make you laugh and, of course, cry.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Jan 6, 2017
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| 79% | Hairspray Live! (2016) |
NBC promised the most lavish live TV musical ever, spread across a couple of Universal lots. But instead, this often felt like some of those million-plus high school productions: crimped, dark, confined and spread across a few school stages.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Dec 8, 2016
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| B+ | 11% | Search Party (2016) |
Uneven, intelligent, weird, sometimes funny (more often not) - and almost consistently engaging.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Nov 22, 2016
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| B | No Score Yet | Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise (2016) |
As worthy, intelligent, sweeping and absolutely necessary as this four-hour film is - and caveat emptor, I've only seen the first two - "Black America" still often feels like a survey.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Nov 15, 2016
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| A- | 100% | Hamilton's America (2016) |
There's something viscerally inspirational about the Miranda on full display here. That's what's best too.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Oct 19, 2016
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| B- | 28% | The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do the Time Warp Again (2016) |
Dutiful, reverent, energetic, expertly crafted and yet utterly incapable of escaping the long shadow of its exotic midnight forbear. The capacity to entertain is still here. The capacity to shock is not.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Oct 18, 2016
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| B+ | 100% | Suited (2016) |
Often moving film about transgender identity - almost nothing about fashion.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Jun 17, 2016
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| D | 56% | Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? (2016) |
The movie is much ado about nothing, feeling desperately thin and pointless. At first promising campy fun, it's soon simply mystifying, then misguided, gross and finally tiresome in its look-at-me-ness.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2016
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| A | 100% | O.J.: Made in America (2016) |
Excellent, balanced, powerful, engaging, comprehensive perspective on the "trial of the century" and race. The first two parts are best.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Jun 9, 2016
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| A- | 87% | All the Way (2016) |
Cranston doesn't turn in one performance here, but at least a dozen. All of them, incidentally, are spectacular.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted May 19, 2016
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| A | 93% | Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015) |
Fine, judicious, generous portrait of a lady who sang the blues.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Apr 29, 2016
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| C+ | 80% | Confirmation (2016) |
Confirmation is really Affirmation. Little here challenges - or deepens - the record.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Apr 12, 2016
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| 67% | Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper (2016) |
Fascinating, disjointed, moving, tiresome, elegant, tacky, fast, slow. There's a little something for everyone here.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Apr 5, 2016
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| A- | 100% | Everything Is Copy (2016) |
A son's post humous gift to his mother - and often a fascinating one.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Mar 22, 2016
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| A- | 98% | Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck (2015) |
Morgen and his editors have simply done a remarkable job -- also an artful one -- in piecing together this residuum.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Jan 3, 2016
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| B | 78% | A Very Murray Christmas (2015) |
Sure, it's indulgent, but so were those old TV specials. Besides, Murray is a national treasure. He's earned the right.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Dec 4, 2015
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| B- | 89% | Bessie (2015) |
Well-made biopic absent a whole lot of music and -- as a result -- much emotional resonance.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Dec 3, 2015
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| 56% | Ferrell Takes The Field (2015) |
Would you rather me play nice here, given the auspices of what appears to be a highly laudable charity and Ferrell's efforts in support thereof? Or save you 49 minutes of precious time Saturday night, which might otherwise be devoted to (I dunno), sleep?‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Sep 11, 2015
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| F+ | 36% | Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (2015) |
Sure "Sharknado" is bad and -- sure -- we expect nothing less.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Jul 22, 2015
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| B+ | 81% | Nightingale (2015) |
Nightingale is really about David Oyelowo, a magnificent actor with astonishing range who draws viewers deep down into the darkness with his character.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted May 29, 2015
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| A+ | 95% | Last Days in Vietnam (2014) |
Authoritative and exhaustive. A must-watch.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Apr 30, 2015
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| B | 94% | Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (2015) |
Going Clear is a heat-seeking missile that doesn't take long to find the heat.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Mar 28, 2015
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| A | 100% | Night Will Fall (2014) |
Horrifying. Fascinating.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Jan 23, 2015
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| B | 62% | Whitney (2015) |
DaCosta, a former America's Next Top Model contestant, instead captures the butterfly -- or the one people fell in love with in the first place.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Jan 16, 2015
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| F+ | 61% | Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014) |
The Second One is also more predictable, silly and self-conscious of the legacy -- absurd as it might seem to use the word "legacy" anywhere near a review about Sharknado.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2014
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| A- | 94% | The Normal Heart (2014) |
Powerful, still full of anger, and hard to watch.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted May 22, 2014
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| A | 96% | Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton As Himself (2013) |
A hell of a lot of fun. George Plimpton would heartily approve.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted May 19, 2014
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| B | 85% | Hawking (2013) |
As billed, an intimate look at a genius, but the science gets a major haircut here.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Jan 29, 2014
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| B+ | 92% | Herblock: The Black & the White (2013) |
Loving, informative, often fascinating portrait. But it could've done without the re-enactments.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Jan 27, 2014
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| B | 40% | How Sherlock Changed the World (2013) |
A little long-winded in some stretches, not detailed enough in others but Holmes fans -- and fans of cop procedurals -- should like this.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Dec 17, 2013
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| B+ | 92% | The Challenger Disaster (2013) |
Hurt is genetically incapable of turning in a substandard performance -- whether in Damages, or name-your-favorite-Hurt-flick, or even in this quiet, intelligent film.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Nov 18, 2013
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| C+ | 56% | Killing Kennedy (2013) |
The even larger issue is familiarity. We already know too much and paradoxically too little about the JFK assassination. A TV movie needed to tell us something we don't know. No dice here.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2013
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| B- | 64% | Pandora's Promise (2013) |
Intelligent, possibly important, definitely counterintuitive -- but needs more reporting and context.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Nov 6, 2013
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| B | 100% | American Masters: Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train A Comin' (2013) |
Incredible footage, Paul McCartney and crisply told. But way too polite.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Nov 5, 2013
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| C | No Score Yet | JFK: The Smoking Gun (2013) |
Recycled theory with some fresh perspective -- but it still smells recycled.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Nov 1, 2013
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| A | 100% | Burton And Taylor (2013) |
Excellent actors playing excellent actors -- and largely succeeding.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Oct 18, 2013
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| B+ | 60% | Mockingbird Lane (2012) |
Outrageous, eccentric, funny, campy - and too creepy for small kids. A real shame this isn't sticking around.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Aug 14, 2013
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| B | No Score Yet | Gasland Part II (2013) |
Fox is on to something. But he's on to too much of something, and that sprawl -- which takes him from Dimock, Pa., to Dish, Texas, to Hollywood, to Queensland, Australia, to the bayou, to Washington, D.C. -- tends to dilute the story he set out to tell.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Jul 8, 2013
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| C- | 49% | Phil Spector (2013) |
A frustrating film that leaves the questions -- pretty much all of them -- unanswered.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted May 22, 2013
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| 95% | Behind the Candelabra (2013) |
An absorbing production that is morbidly fascinating from start to finish.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted May 22, 2013
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| B | 80% | The World According to Dick Cheney (2013) |
Not a lot new here, but Cheney gets a fair hearing -- even though a tougher one is occasionally warranted.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Mar 15, 2013
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| B- | 50% | Seal Team 6: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden (2012) |
Not great, not terrible -- just your standard-issue TV movie about a well-known historic event.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Nov 2, 2012
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| B+ | No Score Yet |
Miller's Hedren is cool, distant, humorless, whiny and reproving. She's the perfect block of ice.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Oct 22, 2012
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| B | 95% | Sing Your Song (2012) |
By far the best parts are the first two-thirds, with the star taking center stage in history as it unfolds.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Aug 30, 2012
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| A | 65% | Game Change (2012) |
A luminous and fully alive portrait by a first-rate actress.‐ Newsday
Read More | Posted Aug 3, 2012
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