Dan Callahan
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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The Blue Caftan (2022) |
Every scene and every close-up of a stitch in “The Blue Caftan” feels like an eternity. - TheWrap
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| Posted Feb 10, 2023
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Rotting in the Sun (2023) |
So lost in Silva’s solipsistic and wishy-washy negativity that nothing gets shaped. If you’re going to be as negative as Silva is being in this movie, then you need to go all the way with it and be extremely negative and specific. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jan 23, 2023
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Cassandro (2023) |
A triumph for Bernal and for Williams and all his collaborators, a film that takes on very fresh territory and suffuses all of its frames with love for all of the people in it. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jan 21, 2023
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It's Only Life After All (2023) |
The most serious flaw of “It’s Only Life After All” is that Bombach has us spend so much time with these women, yet we learn so little about them. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jan 20, 2023
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In from the Side (2022) |
So padded out at 134 minutes with both rugby games and sex scenes that the final effect is numbing, and writer-director Matt Carter doesn’t bother much with either plot or character to fill out his narrative. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jan 17, 2023
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Beautiful Beings (2022) |
Guðmundsson shows us Addi embracing Konni and stroking his hair without a trace of self-consciousness. But where the film eventually goes with this strand of the narrative feels evasive and confusing, as if Guðmundsson doesn’t want to deal with it fully. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jan 11, 2023
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The Quiet Girl (2022) |
Marks the first narrative feature from director Colm Bairéad, who concentrates for long stretches on visual effects with light that soon start to feel repetitive and pictorial rather than illuminating of character or story. - TheWrap
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| Posted Dec 15, 2022
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"Sr." (2022) |
Offers touching father-son scenes predicated on forgiveness and love. - TheWrap
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| Posted Dec 01, 2022
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Spoiler Alert (2022) |
Many of the scenes here seem to have been shot in a spirit of tense desperation; the comedy doesn’t land, the romance takes too long to get going, and the tearjerking scenes are spoiled by a meta framework that makes Showalter’s job even more difficult. - TheWrap
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| Posted Nov 28, 2022
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The Independent (2022) |
Parter's basic structure is fairly solid and his characters are well chosen, but all of his dialogue consists of the sort of hyperbolized declarations of plot exposition that only gets by on guilty-pleasure TV shows. - TheWrap
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| Posted Nov 01, 2022
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Is That Black Enough for You?!? (2022) |
There is a sense of celebration and discovery that lets us see a whole world of lesser-known films just waiting to be viewed, re-viewed and appreciated in new ways. - TheWrap
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| Posted Oct 10, 2022
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Sidney (2022) |
It leans far more towards one-dimensional inspiration than insight. Important questions are sometimes raised here by the interview subjects, but they are almost always evasively dropped. - TheWrap
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| Posted Sep 22, 2022
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Catherine Called Birdy (2022) |
This film adaptation of the book retains the setting but filters everything through Dunham’s very narrow modern sensibility. The result is listless, plodding and self-congratulatory. - TheWrap
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| Posted Sep 11, 2022
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Private Desert (2021) |
Enters the dangerous realm of fantasy and wish-fulfillment, revealing that the makers of this film are as recklessly naïve and morally questionable as their protagonists. - TheWrap
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| Posted Sep 08, 2022
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See How They Run (2022) |
Proves far too complicated to execute for director Tom George and writer Mark Chappell, who resort to clumsy flashbacks and pointless split-screen sequences without ever finding the right tone for their movie. - TheWrap
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| Posted Sep 07, 2022
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When the Waves Are Gone (2022) |
Has enough memorable images to make it an imperfect but haunting experience. - TheWrap
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| Posted Sep 05, 2022
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Monica (2022) |
Pallaoro trusts that we can read between the lines and that Lysette can carry many silent scenes where Monica is existing in closed spaces and trying to find some kind of peace. - TheWrap
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| Posted Sep 03, 2022
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Peter von Kant (2022) |
But filmmaking for Fassbinder was always a matter of life and death; there was a sense that he would kill himself to finish a movie. Ozon too often treats moviemaking like a hastily planned party he’s giving with a starry guest list. - TheWrap
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| Posted Sep 02, 2022
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They/Them (2022) |
What makes Logan’s writing so effective in “They/Them” is that he gives the villains such persuasive-sounding dialogue, which cannot easily be shrugged off. - TheWrap
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| Posted Aug 02, 2022
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Anything's Possible (2022) |
If only “Anything’s Possible” had been content to depict this relationship in all its newness onscreen without burdening these two appealing characters with a pile-on of issues more suited to a newspaper editorial than a narrative feature. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jul 15, 2022
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Marx Can Wait (2021) |
A crucial and profound addition to the filmography of one of the greatest living filmmakers, and it ends with a loving reconciliation with the past that is so moving and so convincing because it is so hard-won. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jul 14, 2022
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All Man: The International Male Story (2022) |
Manages to cover a lot of territory in a compact 83-minute running time, while striking the same balance between sexy and peculiar that makes the catalog such a hard-to-parse artifact of its era. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jun 13, 2022
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God Save the Queens (2022) |
Filled with unearned dramatic posturing and no comic sense whatsoever. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jun 11, 2022
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Halftime (2022) |
Even if you are not a particular fan of Lopez, she is likely to win you over in “Halftime,” which suggests that she has it in her to become an elder stateswoman like one of her idols, Rita Moreno. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jun 10, 2022
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18 1/2 (2021) |
Attempts to be part cloak-and-dagger thriller, part romantic comedy, part screwball comedy, and part mood piece, and its plotting is slapdash, to say the least. - TheWrap
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| Posted May 26, 2022
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Firebird (2021) |
The dominant creative force is cinematographer Mait Mäekivi, who gives the blues and reds of the uniforms and the flags on display an early-Technicolor sort of gleam. - TheWrap
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| Posted Apr 28, 2022
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Seriously Red (2021) |
Gradually reveals itself as a fairly serious examination of how confidence can be gained through such impersonation, but only up to a point. - TheWrap
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| Posted Mar 14, 2022
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Great Freedom (2021) |
The style of iGreat Freedom/i is cool, measured, and austere, with near-invisible editing and barely any score. - TheWrap
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| Posted Mar 03, 2022
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The Sky is Everywhere (2022) |
Director Josephine Decker leans into the fantastical elements of the material, and this results in a poorly structured narrative that always rushes past any moment that could give the film a deeper resonance. - TheWrap
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| Posted Feb 10, 2022
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Alice (2022) |
Ver Linden never goes the commercial route here with her high-concept idea. Like Palmer, she stays true to her goal but does give the audience several satisfying moments that call for applause. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jan 24, 2022
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TikTok, Boom. (2022) |
The story of TikTok is still being written, but it will certainly provide ample material for comedies, thrillers and sociopolitical analysis in the years to come, and this movie is an engrossing opening salvo. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jan 24, 2022
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The Pink Cloud (2021) |
Gerbase shows talent here, but viewing The Pink Cloud requires nerves of steel that might not be available to even the strongest among us at this particular point in time. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jan 11, 2022
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Last Words (2020) |
Nossiter has clearly not considered the implications of his narrative - such as it is - when it comes to Kal, who is ordered around and even raped by the older white characters and just keeps smiling through it all. - TheWrap
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| Posted Dec 18, 2021
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All Is Forgiven (2007) |
For those who are already taken with Hansen-Løve's sensibility, this debut can be seen as a confident first step in her development, a film that manages to be precise yet still highly open to interpretation. - TheWrap
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| Posted Nov 03, 2021
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Minyan (2020) |
Levine made his first impact on stage in The Inheritance, but his talent comes across more clearly on film because the camera can go in close enough to see the subtle play of emotions on his face. - TheWrap
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| Posted Oct 18, 2021
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The Many Saints of Newark (2021) |
The new characters are all one-dimensional, and we learn nothing new about the old characters from the series. - TheWrap
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| Posted Sep 21, 2021
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Little Girl (2020) |
Lifshitz's touch here is so delicate that it makes most American talking-heads documentaries look particularly crude and formulaic by comparison. - TheWrap
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| Posted Sep 18, 2021
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The Capote Tapes (2020) |
The most enjoyable thing is hearing the distinctiveness of the voices from a bygone American era, the way that a friend of Capote's named Phoebe Pierce says the word "weekend" with just a slight emphasis on the second syllable. - TheWrap
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| Posted Sep 08, 2021
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The Hand of God (2021) |
It might be hoped that the passage of time could give him some fond or melancholy distance from such material, but Sorrentino serves up his memories in an unappealingly inert and flat manner. - TheWrap
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| Posted Sep 02, 2021
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Dramarama (2020) |
The young actors in Dramarama are all touchingly fresh and spontaneous and ideal for their roles, and they carry all this pop-culture dialogue and give it a chance of seeming natural. - TheWrap
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| Posted Aug 12, 2021
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Swan Song (2021) |
With his pellucid blue eyes and haughty presentation, Kier is so physically striking that he barely needs to do anything to hold the screen. - TheWrap
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| Posted Aug 05, 2021
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Pray Away (2020) |
Such visual reenforcement is constant, as we see footage of many so-called "ex-ex-gays" when they were being tortured by their ministries alongside footage of them looking far happier after they escaped. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jun 17, 2021
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Wolfgang (2021) |
The most impressive element of Wolfgang is the amount of ground it manages to cover in 78 minutes without ever seeming to rush over anything. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jun 14, 2021
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The Kids (2021) |
A rebuke to the way that movie was perceived when it came out, as a truthful portrait of a lost generation devoted to sex and drugs. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jun 14, 2021
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Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story (2021) |
Lady Boss offers the story of a woman with a lot going against her... and struck a blow for women seeking pleasure for its own sake. Her fight to achieve that goal often makes for a compelling story in its own right. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jun 12, 2021
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Changing the Game (2019) |
That rare documentary about a social issue that is not preaching to the choir. If someone is uncertain or on the fence about this issue, this movie should allow them to make a logical conclusion about it. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jun 01, 2021
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(undefined) |
King Vidor's Bird of Paradise puts the emphasis on flesh. - ToxicUniverse.com
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| Posted May 02, 2021
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Two of Us (2019) |
The perplexing thing about Two of Us is that it seems to be set in the present day, yet Nina acts as if telling Madeleine's children about their love for each other is an impossibility. - TheWrap
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| Posted Feb 04, 2021
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Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn (2019) |
When she is not trying to set up a "good guy/bad guy" dynamic between Cohn and her father, Meeropol jumps all over the place, trying to cram in too many stories and pieces of information, many of which lead to dead ends. - TheWrap
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| Posted Jun 16, 2020
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Almost Love (2019) |
Many chatty, amorphous scenes in which characters yammer on about their problems in a way that suggests that even they don't care about them. And if they don't care about their own problems, then there is no reason why we should either. - TheWrap
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| Posted Apr 02, 2020
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