Duane Dudek
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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The Bodyguard (1992) |
There is no archetype so wooden or narrative so predictable that it can't be improved upon by a sense of style. But director Mick Jackson merely moves the pieces in a static and linear way toward a stalemate. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Sep 09, 2020
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Rosewater (2014) |
The real-world events being portrayed were powerful and important. "Rosewater" is less so. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Nov 13, 2014
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Interstellar (2014) |
A thought experiment writ large. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Nov 06, 2014
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Laggies (2014) |
The characters are not the only "Laggies" involved. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Nov 06, 2014
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Big Hero 6 (2014) |
The artistry of state-of-the-art commercial digital animation has become a foregone conclusion. Then again, it's a kids' film, and that audience will enjoy it. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Nov 06, 2014
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Citizenfour (2014) |
Whatever the meaning of "the greater good" in a post-Sept. 11 world, "Citizenfour" posits - and it's hard to argue otherwise - that the right to privacy is an essential component of it. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Nov 06, 2014
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Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) |
The ambiguous line it walks between them may prove frustrating to some. But anyone who prefers their film fare to be anything but off the rack should prepare to be dazzled. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Oct 30, 2014
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Nightcrawler (2014) |
Both main performances are hand-in-glove terrific, with Russo id to Gyllenhaal's ego. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Oct 30, 2014
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Whiplash (2014) |
There is a "Raging Bull" physicality to Teller's performance, along with a touch of Asperger syndrome, and Simmons brings a "The Great Santini" psychological intensity unlike anything in his nice-guy insurance commercials. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Oct 30, 2014
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The Blue Room (2014) |
Part Alfred Hitchcock razor's edge and part Douglas Sirk sadness. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Oct 24, 2014
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St. Vincent (2014) |
There is little real sense of risk, reward or redemption. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Oct 23, 2014
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Dear White People (2014) |
It holds a comic lens up to the love-hate relationship between the races in all its contradictions. And it is a portrait of post-racial America as the symbiotic clashing of opposite polarities. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Oct 23, 2014
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Hamlet A.D.D. (2014) |
It is the hybrid episode of Dr. Who and Star Trek Shakespeare never wrote. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Oct 20, 2014
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Fury (2014) |
The stirring, grim and brutally realistic "Fury" portrays not the folly of war, but its cost. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Oct 16, 2014
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We Are the Best! (2013) |
"We Are the Best!" captures the chaos of youth with a funny and profane energy. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Oct 10, 2014
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Kill the Messenger (2014) |
While leaving room for doubt, the filmmakers clearly take his side and are persuasive in their reporting. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Oct 09, 2014
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The Judge (2014) |
There are reasons that films like these keep getting made. One is that, when they work, they are broadly entertaining. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Oct 09, 2014
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Gone Girl (2014) |
However readers may have seen the story in their minds - the unshaven and rumpled Affleck is about a decade older than I imagined, but effectively seedy - Fincher crafts its scenes of a broken marriage into a convincing mosaic. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Oct 03, 2014
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The Zero Theorem (2013) |
It is another flawed and meandering mini-masterpiece from a visionary filmmaker whose febrile and fertile imagination never met a narrative it can't mangle into incoherence. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Sep 25, 2014
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The Boxtrolls (2014) |
Technically stunning but aesthetically ill-conceived ... - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Sep 25, 2014
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The Skeleton Twins (2014) |
Fails to find or strike many original notes. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Sep 24, 2014
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Tusk (2014) |
It's great that Smith is still in the game, but here's hoping for more the next time he steps to the plate. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Sep 18, 2014
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Love Is Strange (2014) |
From the first scene, where the pair spoon in a crowded double bed and go about their morning ablutions, the actors convincingly communicate the familiarity of longtime companions. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Sep 11, 2014
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The Trip to Italy (2014) |
Some second courses are delicious, others an acquired taste. This pasta-filled follow-up to "The Trip" is a little of both. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Aug 28, 2014
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Land Ho! (2014) |
What the result lacks in polish, it makes up for in charm and originality. It breaks no new ground, but the ground it travels looks and feels freshly tilled. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Aug 14, 2014
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Calvary (2014) |
"Calvary" [is] a parable and gives Gleeson's earthly journey the ring of spiritual truth. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Aug 14, 2014
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Magic in the Moonlight (2014) |
There are many kinds of magic. This is none of them. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Aug 07, 2014
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Boyhood (2014) |
A portrait of the process of becoming who we are, and the people and events that pingpong across our path during it. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jul 31, 2014
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Get On Up (2014) |
The hardest-working musical biopic in show business. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jul 31, 2014
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Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) |
"Guardians of the Galaxy" is pop film-making at its purest. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jul 31, 2014
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A Most Wanted Man (2014) |
The story by Andrew Bovell, who wrote "Edge of Darkness," feels true to the novel by John le Carré, with perhaps more emphasis on Hoffman's spy chief. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jul 24, 2014
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Lucy (2014) |
It is tightly wound and briskly told, but, like Besson's other films, veers wildly from serious to fantastic to ridiculous. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jul 24, 2014
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Wish I Was Here (2014) |
The screenplay Braff co-wrote with his brother is said to be semi-autobiographical but rarely feels real. Emotions are stitched onto contrived situations - piled onto them, actually - to manipulate a response. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jul 24, 2014
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The Grand Seduction (2013) |
Warmhearted and, thanks to Gleeson, laugh-out-loud funny. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jul 18, 2014
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Venus in Fur (2013) |
"Venus in Fur," the disturbing and provocative Roman Polanski film of David Ives' Broadway play, portrays a power struggle between the object of obsession and the eye of the beholder. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jul 17, 2014
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Begin Again (2013) |
No matter how thin the drama, or thick the performances, the film's firefly-in-a-jar, midsummer night's whimsy and heart-on-its-sleeve optimism hath charms ... - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jul 10, 2014
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Life Itself (2014) |
Even Ebert might have felt James' candid and compassionate assessment runs a bit long. But such is the consequence of a life lived, and told, in full. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jul 10, 2014
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Third Person (2013) |
The dreary "Third Person" could also legitimately be called "Help, I'm Trapped in a Literary Conceit." - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jul 10, 2014
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Snowpiercer (2013) |
"Snowpiercer" is a welcome curiosity in a season of formula-driven, copycat genre films. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jul 02, 2014
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America: Imagine the World Without Her (2014) |
D'Souza asks softball questions of those he agrees with ("What is your American dream?" he asks U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz) and leading questions of others, and his narration is peppered with generalities, platitudes and truisms. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jul 02, 2014
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Tammy (2014) |
Melissa McCarthy is no underachiever, but she may not be living up to her potential. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jul 02, 2014
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Obvious Child (2014) |
It is unlikely to change any hearts or minds in our perpetually and permanently polarized times, but the film has the courage of its convictions, which likely limits appeal to a like-minded audience. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jun 26, 2014
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Jersey Boys (2014) |
While [Eastwood's] minimalist tendencies can be simplistic and reductive, sometimes they and the story they are telling successfully meet in the middle. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jun 19, 2014
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Ida (2013) |
Within the visually cold and austere film is an emotional richness and complexity planted there by co-writer and director Pawel Pawlikowski. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Read More
| Posted Jun 12, 2014
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Citizen Koch (2013) |
A fluid recap of familiar events through a partisan lens. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jun 12, 2014
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The Fault in Our Stars (2014) |
It is an optimistic reminder that your whole life is ahead of you, even if you're dying. And aren't we all? - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jun 08, 2014
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Edge of Tomorrow (2014) |
I liked it well enough, but felt like I had seen it before, again and again. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted Jun 05, 2014
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Belle (2013) |
Its "Downton Abbey" settings, dresses like tiered and frosted wedding cakes, romance-novel décolletage, men in powdered wigs and elaborate 18th-century courtship rituals may be the stuff of Jane Austen, but the story is decidedly not. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted May 22, 2014
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Chef (2014) |
Favreau returns to his "Swingers"-style indie film roots for an emotionally nourishing and music-filled labor of love about food, family and a man's quest to restore and refresh his reputation with both. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted May 22, 2014
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Under the Skin (2013) |
"Under the Skin" is so baffling and riveting that when a reel was skipped the first time I saw it I never batted an eye. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| Posted May 15, 2014
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