Wally Hammond

Wally Hammond's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Time Out
Time Out Sydney
Biography:
Time Out film critic.
Publications:
Time Out,
Time Out Sydney
Movie Reviews Only
T-Meter | Title | Year | Review | |
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93% | Pandora's Box (1929) |
GW Pabst's extraordinary, erotic and tragic adaptation/conflation of two Wedekind plays, 'Pandora's Box', owes to the electrifying, photogenic and iconic presence of Louise Brooks - Time Out
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| Posted Jun 16, 2020
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No Score Yet | Handsworth Songs (2011) |
An essay that is as full of subtle, rich and allusive argument as it is devoid of empty didacticism and stridency. - Time Out
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| Posted Jun 5, 2020
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100% | Tongues Untied (1989) |
At heart, it's a celebratory film which buzzes with intelligence, unashamed emotion, adrenalin, and that strange tenderness forged in suffering. - Time Out
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| Posted May 20, 2020
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100% | Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1990) |
It's a gentle, sensitive film, the fierce anger felt by its makers evident only in the use of statistics and media snippets which build up to a damning indictment of the social and political response to the AIDS crisis. - Time Out
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| Posted May 18, 2020
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4/5 | 55% | The Craft (1996) |
... deliciously dangerous excursions into adolescent self-discovery. - Time Out
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| Posted Dec 5, 2018
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24% | Van Helsing (2004) |
What's left is a world of industrial Gothicism, nightmare morphing effects, ahistoric gadgetry and Breughel-lite grotesquerie. - Time Out
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| Posted Nov 1, 2018
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100% | We Went To War (2012) |
Something of an exemplary documentary on the effects of combat on three individuals with experience of one specific war. - Sight and Sound
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| Posted Jul 31, 2018
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85% | You've Been Trumped (2012) |
The very smallness, independence and even parochialism of Baxter's film seems suitable and never detracts from its considerable ability to inform and, surprisingly, move. - Sight and Sound
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| Posted Jul 31, 2018
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5/5 | 93% | Contempt (1964) |
A knowing, tragic-comic aria for love and moviemaking. - Little White Lies
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| Posted Dec 29, 2015
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4/5 | 97% | Goodbye, Children (Au Revoir Les Enfants) (1987) |
Not the director's best work, but far, far from being his worst either. - Little White Lies
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| Posted Jan 29, 2015
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2/5 | 69% | A Magnificent Haunting (Magnifica presenza) (2012) |
In the Ozpetek canon, this one is non-essential. - Little White Lies
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| Posted Oct 24, 2013
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5/5 | 81% | Something in the Air (2013) |
This might just be Assayas' masterpiece. - Little White Lies
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| Posted May 23, 2013
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4/5 | 82% | De jueves a domingo (Thursday Till Sunday) (2012) |
What distinguishes Castillo's film is the facility and accuracy with which she understands, remembers and recreates the fish-bowl vistas and claustrophobic intimacy of a long car-bound journey. - Time Out
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| Posted Apr 4, 2013
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4/5 | 68% | Keyhole (2012) |
A bravura journey into a noirish nightmare world and a lock that even paid-up Maddinites won't be able to pick on a single viewing. - Little White Lies
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| Posted Sep 13, 2012
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5/5 | 96% | The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1928) |
One for Hitch fans, one for thriller fans, one for cinema fans. Do not miss. - Little White Lies
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| Posted Aug 9, 2012
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4/5 | 93% | The Apartment (1960) |
Directed by Wilder with attention to detail and emotional reticence that belie its inherent darkness and melodramatic core, it's lifted considerably by the performances. - Time Out
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| Posted Jun 8, 2012
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5/5 | 97% | The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) |
Staggering and heartbreaking. Still. - Little White Lies
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| Posted May 17, 2012
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3/5 | 85% | Angel & Tony (Angèle et Tony) (2010) |
This is a sprightly and economical debut from French former journalist and writer-director Alix Delaporte. - Time Out
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| Posted May 3, 2012
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2/5 | 73% | Hadewijch (2010) |
- Time Out
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| Posted Feb 16, 2012
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3/5 | 89% | Waitress (2007) |
Funny, gentle, unpatronising, if occasionally naive and quirky. - Time Out
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| Posted Nov 18, 2011
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5/5 | 88% | I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2007) |
- Time Out
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| Posted Nov 18, 2011
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3/5 | 67% | The Incredible Hulk (2008) |
A more satisfactory adaptation of the spirit of Stan Lee's Marvel character. - Time Out
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| Posted Nov 18, 2011
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4/5 | 77% | Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) |
Performances are more mature, the soundtrack (by Nicholas Hooper) less grandiose, and Yates executes some thrilling set-pieces. - Time Out
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| Posted Nov 17, 2011
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3/5 | 85% | Frownland (2007) |
- Time Out
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| Posted Nov 16, 2011
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4/5 | No Score Yet |
- Time Out
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| Posted Nov 16, 2011
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3/5 | 80% | I Served the King of England (2008) |
- Time Out
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| Posted Nov 16, 2011
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92% | Drive (2011) |
A more or less conventional Los Angeles-set hot-rod/getaway-driver movie with neo-noir decoration -- albeit satisfying enough on its own terms. - Sight and Sound
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| Posted Sep 27, 2011
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4/5 | 88% | Post Mortem (2012) |
Larraín's clever use of almost humorously unconventional framings, expressively washed-out colour tones and mysterious low-key performances brings together human comedy and historical tragedy to unique, and surprisingly emotional, effect. - Time Out
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| Posted Sep 7, 2011
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4/5 | 84% | Gianni e le donne (The Salt of Life) (2012) |
Wittily observed, humorously understood and keenly felt. - Time Out
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| Posted Aug 9, 2011
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2/5 | 86% | Kill The Referee (les Arbitres) (2010) |
Even for footy fans, the film's a game of guesswork. - Time Out
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| Posted Aug 3, 2011
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3/5 | 91% | Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (2009) |
No, not a Toho creature feature, but a diverting, slightly meandering, mini- DV-shot documentary on the Japanese love for insects. - Time Out
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| Posted Jun 28, 2011
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94% | Animal Kingdom (2010) |
An ambitious and effective thriller. - Sight and Sound
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| Posted Mar 1, 2011
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3/5 | 50% | The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010) |
Provides rousing enough young family entertainment - though there's less to engage maturer Lewis fans and possible disappointment for older teenagers. - Time Out
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| Posted Dec 9, 2010
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2/5 | 65% | Tamara Drewe (2010) |
The dullness of British mainstream cinema is epitomised by this Stephen Frears -- didn't he used to be an auteur? -- adaptation of Posy Simmonds's gently teasing 2005-2007 Guardian comic strip about rural goings-on. - Time Out
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| Posted Sep 8, 2010
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3/5 | 83% | Black Dynamite (2009) |
The portentous dialogue, two-track-recorded soundtrack (by Adrian Younge) and eager performances are all highly diverting. - Time Out
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| Posted Aug 12, 2010
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4/5 | 97% | Rapt (2011) |
A tense hostage-thriller with a difference. - Time Out
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| Posted Jul 15, 2010
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3/5 | 91% | London River (2011) |
In the film's latter stages, Blethyn's heart-on-the-sleeve acting style finally combines with the marvellous Kouyaté's watchful intelligence and frail dignity to moving effect. - Time Out
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| Posted Jul 8, 2010
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4/5 | 90% | Colossal Youth (Juventude Em Marcha) (2006) |
You need a bit of patience with director Pedro Costa. - Time Out
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| Posted Jul 6, 2010
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4/5 | 55% | The Killer Inside Me (2010) |
This again-atypical film from Winterbottom is a much more sober affair than its early, controversial press might suggest. - Time Out
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| Posted Jun 2, 2010
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4/5 | 40% | The Killer Inside Me (1976) |
This again-atypical film from Winterbottom, the genre-swapping director of A Mighty Heart, Genova and The Road to Guantanamo, is a much more sober affair than its early, controversial press might suggest. - Time Out
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| Posted Jun 2, 2010
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2/5 | 27% | Remember Me (2010) |
Be warned, if you're vulnerable to outrageous, cringe-inducing implausibilities -- not least the ludicrous stand-up row between Tyler and his father in the latter's Twin Towers boardroom -- you'd best give this one a miss. - Time Out
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| Posted Apr 1, 2010
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3/5 | 76% | Tony (2009) |
Not a reassuring vision, for sure, and no tourist plug for Dalston, Hackney or Haggerston, but the film's a fair calling card for Johnson's talent. - Time Out
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| Posted Feb 5, 2010
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2/5 | 55% | Edge of Darkness (2010) |
Scriptwriters William Monahan and Andrew Bovell have sadly sacrificed some of the original's cultural specificity and its slow-burn quality. - Time Out
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| Posted Feb 2, 2010
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3/5 | 75% | OSS 117: Rio ne répond plus (Lost in Rio) (2010) |
It's the grooving to composer Ludovic Bource's fab xylophone beats and Dujardin's hyena laugh and heroic self-regard you'll remember. - Time Out
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| Posted Jan 15, 2010
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2/5 | 41% | 44 Inch Chest (2010) |
Aiming for black comedy and a redemptive satire on self-deluding male machismo, ham fisted debut director Malcolm Venville instead gives his cast enough rope to hang themselves rather than the characters they play. - Time Out
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| Posted Jan 15, 2010
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4/5 | 95% | Hofshat Kaits (My Father My Lord) (2008) |
You could say this film is at once a secular fable on a religious dilemma and an almost religious parable about an all-too-human tragedy. - Time Out
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| Posted Jan 5, 2010
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5/5 | 100% | Tokyo Story (Tôkyô monogatari) (1953) |
This remains one of the most approachable and moving of all cinema's masterpieces. - Time Out
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| Posted Jan 5, 2010
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3/5 | 52% | Disney's A Christmas Carol (2009) |
Cinematographer Robert Presley and the design team provide many instances of graphical triumph, influenced by silent cinema. - Time Out
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| Posted Nov 6, 2009
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4/5 | 96% | BirdWatchers - La terra degli uomini rossi (2008) |
Writer-director-producer Marco Bechis's absorbing story of struggle and survival carries its committed ethnographic and political passions lightly. - Time Out
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| Posted Sep 18, 2009
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3/5 | 63% | Chiko (2008) |
Impressive directorial skills, if a trite plotline, are on offer in Turkish-German writer-director Özgür Yildirim's occasionally violent debut feature. - Time Out
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| Posted Aug 21, 2009
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