Witney Seibold
Tomatometer-approved critic
| Publications: | IGN Movies, CraveOnline, TheWrap, Movies.com, Nerdist, Legion of Leia |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3/10 | No Score Yet | Dark Crimes (True Crimes) (2018) |
This common cop-becomes-obsessed dynamic is not new; it can be seen in just about every episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent.‐ IGN Movies
Read More | Posted Apr 19, 2018
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| 5/10 | 20% | Sherlock Gnomes (2018) |
It contains nothing that is offensive, challenging, or complex, nor does it contain any great deal of wit, color, or imagination.‐ IGN Movies
Read More | Posted Mar 23, 2018
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| 8.2/10 | 37% | The Strangers: Prey At Night (2018) |
While the film does posses its share of admittedly cheap jump scares - those masks! - Prey at Night gets far more traction from its mood, its pacing, and its overall skillful filmmaking than many other horror films of its ilk.‐ IGN Movies
Read More | Posted Mar 8, 2018
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| 7.5/10 | 70% | The Ritual (2017) |
The Ritual is by no means a new classic; its novelty and skill can only elevate its predictable set-up so far. But it does do everything you want a horror film to do with notable efficiency and a great deal of mood.‐ IGN Movies
Read More | Posted Feb 28, 2018
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| 7.5/10 | 82% | Love and Saucers (2017) |
Here is a man who experienced something terrible and strange, and who has been using his art as a method of exploring his psyche. That's very human.‐ IGN Movies
Read More | Posted Jan 25, 2018
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| 7/10 | 91% | Kickboxer: Retaliation (2018) |
Solid, exploitation movie fun.‐ IGN Movies
Read More | Posted Jan 23, 2018
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| 4.5/10 | 28% | Proud Mary (2018) |
If you have Taraji P. Henson, the wherewithal to invoke the badass funk films of the '70s, and the willingness to murder a pile of bad guys, then why not have some fun with it? Such a pity.‐ IGN Movies
Read More | Posted Jan 12, 2018
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| 4/10 | No Score Yet | Olaf's Frozen Adventure (2017) |
Friendly to the point of near-annoyance, and starring a character one might dislike, Olaf's Frozen Adventure is nothing more than a sticky sweet, substance-free stop-gap between Frozen features.‐ IGN Movies
Read More | Posted Dec 26, 2017
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| 6.1/10 | 69% | Beyond Skyline (2017) |
You'll certainly find better alien mayhem films than Beyond Skyline, but some creative special effects, interesting fights, and fun, alien brain-sucking will keep you moderately -- but solidly -- entertained.‐ IGN Movies
Read More | Posted Dec 13, 2017
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| 6.5/10 | 12% | Geostorm (2017) |
Geostorm cannot be defended in terms of striking originality, wit, or even basic intelligence, but its affable slickness make it a bad film that is surprisingly consumable.‐ IGN Movies
Read More | Posted Oct 26, 2017
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| 8.5/10 | 80% | Tragedy Girls (2017) |
Tragedy Girls is a gleeful blast of subversive energy in a landscape populated by too much safety; One's horror films should feel a little over the edge.‐ IGN Movies
Read More | Posted Oct 19, 2017
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| 69% | mother! (2017) |
God and religion are simply the stage on which Aronofsky's anti-patriarchy message is set. ‐ Legion of Leia
Read More | Posted Oct 19, 2017
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| 5.5/10 | 29% | Amityville: The Awakening (2017) |
Amityville: The Awakening has a good cast, and, if viewed by a group of rowdy friends late at night, may certainly do its due diligence in periodically startling you for 87 minutes‐ IGN Movies
Read More | Posted Oct 13, 2017
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| 97% | Lost in America (1985) |
Brooks explodes the Kerouac fantasy by depicting two of the most uptight, urban people in the world trying to live it out. ‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Aug 9, 2017
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| 100% | Stalker (1979) |
A bleak sleepwalk into the heart of darkness.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Aug 9, 2017
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| 96% | L'Argent (1983) |
L'Argent is one of the most damning litanies of human evil one may encounter. It's also one of the better films.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Aug 9, 2017
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| 49% | Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) |
A bracing, unique, vivacious, visually glorious sci-fi adventure that gleefully vibrates with impish life... It's the best science fiction film of the year,‐ Legion of Leia
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2017
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| 67% | Alien: Covenant (2017) |
When the creatures are finally allowed to go hogwild on the bleeding meat hanging off of our lead characters, there is a certain anarchic thrill, but one can't help but immediately acknowledge that we're just watching a pretty surface on a limp skeleton.‐ Legion of Leia
Read More | Posted May 12, 2017
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| 75% | Kong: Skull Island (2017) |
It's a lightning-quick, bright, dumb, slyly silly, unapologetically clichéd pulp adventure that, despite it all, is a rip-roaring good time.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Mar 8, 2017
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| 96% | The Exterminating Angel (El Ángel Exterminador) (1967) |
'The Exterminating Angel' is a confrontation. Not only because of its clear political underpinnings, but because of a weird undercurrent of human sympathy.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Jan 25, 2017
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| 97% | The Asphalt Jungle (1950) |
The characters are no mere cold symbolic avatars in a world gone stylistic; Huston breaks down that intellectual barrier, and allows the characters to shine in all their glorious dumb pathos.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Jan 25, 2017
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| 98% | His Girl Friday (1940) |
'His Girl Friday' is more feminist than it even gets credit for.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Jan 25, 2017
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| 95% | Black Girl (La noire de...) (1966) |
Black Girl - often called the first important African feature film - can be interpreted as a mere penetrating personal drama, but it's impossible to look at this film apolitically.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Jan 25, 2017
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| 99% | Under The Shadow (2016) |
'Under the Shadow' is one of the more technically graceful and emotionally important films to come out of the genre this year.‐ Legion of Leia
Read More | Posted Dec 29, 2016
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| 95% | The Handmaiden (Ah-ga-ssi) (2016) |
A wonderfully twisted web of rococo theatrics, melodramatic twists, and deliciously lurid storytelling.‐ Legion of Leia
Read More | Posted Dec 29, 2016
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| 94% | Arrival (2016) |
No writer or wordsmith or anyone who has studied language will be able to resist this film. In the eyes of Arrival, language can do more than connect disparate peoples, but change our very perspective on everything.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Nov 8, 2016
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| 74% | Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) |
Russ Meyer's ultra-lurid 1970 magnum opus, infamously penned by a young Roger Ebert, remains a towering achievement. What it achieves, however, is difficult to define.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Oct 27, 2016
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| No Score Yet | The Executioner (El verdugo) (1963) |
The satire is not demonstrative. It has its point to make, but it's going to first make you wade through a painful, sometimes frantic, sometimes funny, but ultimately grueling realist drama about getting by in life.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Oct 27, 2016
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| 83% | Godzilla Resurgence (Shin Godzilla) (2016) |
[The new Godzilla] might serve as a deliberate middle finger to Legendary Pictures' current efforts to Americanize a famously Japanese monster. If one has to pick a side, I side with 'Shin Godzilla.'‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Sep 23, 2016
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| 86% | Sully (2016) |
It's impressive that Eastwood, at age 86, has managed to become more lively and humane a director. But his politics may be unduly coloring his films, and it's becoming distracting.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Sep 13, 2016
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| 92% | The Immortal Story (1968) |
Perhaps Welles, in playing a man who doesn't understand art, was embodying his more vitriolic critics. He was presenting ever more complex art to critical agents, and was constantly met with confusion and literal interpretations. ‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Sep 5, 2016
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| 100% | Woman in the Dunes (Suna no Onna) (1964) |
'Woman in the Dunes' is much more than a sumptuous visual experience. It is also a supremely unnerving fable of deterioration and purgatorial breakdown.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Aug 24, 2016
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| 88% | A Taste of Honey (1961) |
[There are] no weeping martyrs or brave romantic souls. It deals with real people, complete in their human complexity, their dumb choices, their damaging outbursts, their illogical desires, and their emotional honesty.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Aug 18, 2016
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| 27% | Suicide Squad (2016) |
Suicide Squad is a hasty gathering of admittedly fun characters, all jammed haphazardly into a familiar and dumb cartoon tale, handily squandering its potential for edge, daring, or originality.‐ Legion of Leia
Read More | Posted Aug 3, 2016
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| 62% | The New World (2005) |
The filmmakers are very wise to make this New World, and the people in it, seem untouched, immediate, and present. There may be a small amount of cultural foreboding, but it is heard distantly, like an echo of lamentation.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2016
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| 85% | Star Trek Beyond (2016) |
'Star Trek Beyond' is not a grand return to form, nor is it a stellar life-affirming entertainment. But it is a modest step in the right direction.‐ Legion of Leia
Read More | Posted Jul 21, 2016
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| 85% | Carnival of Souls (1962) |
The workmanlike approach only serves to highlight its spectral qualities. It's like a kitchen sink version of 'The Shining.'‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Jul 20, 2016
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| 100% | Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) (1955) |
Alain Resnais' seminal 1955 documentary... remembers the confusion, and still feels the blind, hurt outrage at humanity's betrayal of itself.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Jul 20, 2016
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| 70% | Café Society (2016) |
Allen constructs his romance like an Old Hollywood prestige picture, equating lost love with a longing for a time when Hollywood was, perhaps, as pure as it ever was.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Jul 14, 2016
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| 73% | Ghostbusters (2016) |
A high concept and a big budget - not to mention stratospheric expectation - turned into a middling, somewhat entertaining summer fling.‐ Legion of Leia
Read More | Posted Jul 10, 2016
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| 99% | Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) |
'Dr. Strangelove' may have worked as a serious thriller, but Kubrick knew better.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Jun 30, 2016
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| 75% | The BFG (2016) |
'The BFG' possesses a magical sense of oddball wonderment all its own.‐ Legion of Leia
Read More | Posted Jun 28, 2016
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| 46% | Free State of Jones (2016) |
In terms of cinematic narrative, one may consider this to be dry - and it is, to a noticeable degree - but for a largely unknown, not to mention incredibly fascinating chapter in American history, this approach is appreciated. ‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Jun 23, 2016
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| 100% | La Chienne (1931) |
Any discussion of the film's actual story can only be a discussion of how life imitates art. This is a bit of a pity, because 'La Chienne' is actually a tragic, appealingly melodramatic tale of deep humanity.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Jun 20, 2016
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| 62% | Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016) |
What the filmmakers conceived of was, perhaps unwittingly, one of the more feminist statements you may encounter from within an R-rated college comedy, a genre notoriously known for its casual misogyny.‐ Legion of Leia
Read More | Posted Jun 20, 2016
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| 88% | Fantastic Planet (1973) |
There is a strange, dreamlike placidity that hangs - like a silent, terrifying fog - over René Laloux's 1973 animated sci-fi classic.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Jun 20, 2016
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| 37% | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016) |
Out of the Shadows has one important element that lacks from many of its nostalgia-based blockbuster peers: It possesses the conviction of its own silliness.‐ Legion of Leia
Read More | Posted Jun 3, 2016
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| 92% | Paris Belongs to Us (Paris Nous Appartient) (1960) |
[Rivette] doesn't as fervently abandon conventional narrative in the same way Godard was so fond of, making for New Wave-flavored thrillers that are far more casual and certainly more watchable.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Jun 3, 2016
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| 98% | The Manchurian Candidate (1962) |
"The Manchurian Candidate" is striking in its hard edge. This is not a slick, subtle dissection of modern politics. This is a fist to the face.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Jun 3, 2016
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| 86% | A Poem Is A Naked Person (2015) |
Blank seems to have a natural, in-born respect for the lives of these people, and sees not yokels or "simple" country folk, but a vibrant and living community of artists and music-makers.‐ CraveOnline
Read More | Posted Jun 3, 2016
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