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Bruce Newman

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Film Critic, San Jose Mercury News

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Star Trek (2009) 94% EDIT “Writers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman manage to morph the new actors into the general outlines of the original crew, but even as they slip into the old character molds, they immediately start to break out of them.” – San Jose Mercury News May 6, 2009 Full Review The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) 43% 1/4 EDIT “Chadwick and Morgan have cooked up a potboiler, the sort of thing that might have been fun to watch with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as the Boleyn sisters, while Charles Laughton lasciviously eyed the backs of their necks as Henry.” – San Jose Mercury News Feb 29, 2008 Full Review Semi-Pro (2008) 23% 2.5/4 EDIT “Ferrell is capable of a great deal more than he's been delivering. It might surprise him to learn that white men can jump. But first they have to try.” – San Jose Mercury News Feb 29, 2008 Full Review Vantage Point (2008) 34% 1.5/4 EDIT “The bones of a good idea for a conspiracy thriller lie buried in the corpse of Vantage Point. It feels more like a movie with a personality disorder.” – San Jose Mercury News Feb 21, 2008 Full Review Jumper (2008) 15% 2/4 EDIT “The only force on Earth so dense that it apparently can't be moved even by the movie's special effects is Christensen's wooden acting.” – San Jose Mercury News Feb 15, 2008 Full Review Definitely, Maybe (2008) 71% B- EDIT “The picture does have a certain unimpeachable charm.” – San Jose Mercury News Feb 13, 2008 Full Review In Bruges (2008) 84% 3.5/4 EDIT “It somehow manages to never stop being brutally funny, while also becoming tragically bleak.” – San Jose Mercury News Feb 7, 2008 Full Review 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) 96% 4/4 EDIT “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 days feels like a kind of appendix -- and a bursting one at that -- to Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue.” – San Jose Mercury News Jan 31, 2008 Full Review Untraceable (2008) 16% 2.5/4 EDIT “Untraceable often seems to go out of its way to tip off what's coming, so that it's hard to tell whether the film's writers are lazy, clumsy or just painfully obvious.” – San Jose Mercury News Jan 25, 2008 Full Review Nanking (2007) 96% 4/4 EDIT “Anyone who sees Nanking should know going in what a brutal story it is, but no one should miss it because of a restrictive rating.” – San Jose Mercury News Jan 17, 2008 Full Review Cloverfield (2008) 78% 3/4 EDIT “Cloverfield is the ultimate movie for people who don't feel a cataclysm has really happened until they can videotape it, upload it and stream it live to the rest of the world.” – San Jose Mercury News Jan 17, 2008 Full Review The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) 94% 4/4 EDIT “Director Julian Schnabel uses his skill as a painter to assemble a collage of fantastical images to reveal the exquisite physical wreck that Bauby has become.” – San Jose Mercury News Jan 4, 2008 Full Review The Great Debaters (2007) 80% 3.5/4 EDIT “Even when it's just one person standing at a lectern, the frame is never static, the tension never slack.” – San Jose Mercury News Dec 26, 2007 Full Review The Kite Runner (2007) 65% 3/4 EDIT “By the time it arrives at its final kite-flying scene back in the Bay Area, The Kite Runner has soared occasionally, but remains too grounded for its own good in the book from which it was supposed to spring.” – San Jose Mercury News Dec 20, 2007 Full Review Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) 75% 3/4 EDIT “Milks the pat formulations of its brethren, such as Walk the Line, for all the laughs they're worth. And then some.” – San Jose Mercury News Dec 20, 2007 Full Review Charlie Wilson's War (2007) 82% 3.5/4 EDIT “All of a sudden, Hoffman is having one of the most spectacular years any movie actor ever had.” – San Jose Mercury News Dec 20, 2007 Full Review Atonement (2007) 83% 2.5/4 EDIT “In its first 45 minutes, Atonement achieves a kind of perfection rare even for big Oscar-bait movies. Every facet of the filmmaking is the equal of any picture released this year. The rest of the movie isn't so bad.” – San Jose Mercury News Dec 13, 2007 Full Review I Am Legend (2007) 68% 2/4 EDIT “Even with Smith acting up a storm, what starts out as a potentially fascinating picture about an apocalyptic plague soon devolves into yet another special-effects laden zombie movie.” – San Jose Mercury News Dec 12, 2007 Full Review The Golden Compass (2007) 42% 3/4 EDIT “There is enough fire in Dakota Blue Richards' first film performance to make you eager for the next installment in the series.” – San Jose Mercury News Dec 6, 2007 Full Review I'm Not There (2007) 76% 2.5/4 EDIT “Tiresome and plodding.” – San Jose Mercury News Nov 20, 2007 Full Review No Country for Old Men (2007) 93% 4/4 EDIT “Working from a Cormac McCarthy novel that has the heedless, headlong force of an action movie screenplay, Joel and Ethan Coen have improved upon the original by giving it a visual lyricism to match McCarthy's verbal barrage.” – San Jose Mercury News Nov 16, 2007 Full Review Southland Tales (2006) 41% 2/4 EDIT “By the time the movie rolls into its third hour, it's exhausted most of its comic energy, leaving you disoriented and unable to remember much of what you just saw.” – San Jose Mercury News Nov 16, 2007 Full Review Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (2007) 39% 1/4 EDIT “Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium is what happens when too many sappy sweet instincts chase too few original ideas.” – San Jose Mercury News Nov 16, 2007 Full Review Beowulf (2007) 71% 3/4 EDIT “Beowulf is being released in standard 2-D and a non-Imax 3-D version, neither of which I've seen, and neither of which I would recommend as long as there is an opportunity for the sensory overload of Imax 3-D.” – San Jose Mercury News Nov 15, 2007 Full Review American Gangster (2007) 81% 2.5/4 EDIT “In its title character, the movie has created a murdering, dope-slinging millionaire from the streets that even Denzel Washington has managed to make boring.” – San Jose Mercury News Nov 2, 2007 Full Review
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