Eugene Novikov
Tomatometer-approved critic
Newtown, Pennsylvania
http://www.filmblather.com
Movies reviews only
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Nebraska (2013) |
One of Payne's better films. - Film Blather
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| Posted Sep 02, 2013
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Gravity (2013) |
'Gravity' tries so hard to add emotional heft to its simple survival story, but its attempts are labored, unconvincing, and frankly downright dumb. This gorgeous, exciting film didn't need them. - Film Blather
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| Posted Sep 01, 2013
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12 Years a Slave (2013) |
A more conventional effort than 'Hunger' or 'Shame,' but it's every bit as searing and tough-minded, and hardly less challenging. - Film Blather
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| Posted Sep 01, 2013
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All Is Lost (2013) |
All the drama we need is in the moment, and that's where the movie stays. - Film Blather
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| Posted Aug 31, 2013
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Under the Skin (2013) |
What we used to call a 'visionary achievement' -- mesmerizing nightmare fuel in the vein of vintage Cronenberg, with the same sleek, disorienting gloss that Glazer put on his extraordinary 'Birth.' - Film Blather
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| Posted Aug 31, 2013
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Starred Up (2013) |
This isn't Mackenzie's most interesting work, but you could do much worse for an issue movie. - Film Blather
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| Posted Aug 30, 2013
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Labor Day (2013) |
Reitman feels the need to amp up the drama, and unloads a honking dump of backstory that's contrived and maudlin in a mode that I had thought was the exclusive province of Nicholas Sparks. - Film Blather
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| Posted Aug 30, 2013
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2 Guns (2013) |
In a summer of lumbering, unwieldy blockbusters sanitized and sucked free of nuance for consumption in China, it's a lively, quirky, lived-in delight. - Film Blather
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| Posted Aug 02, 2013
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At Any Price (2012) |
Though Bahrani may be moving toward the mainstream here, he remains an empathetic, nuanced chronicler of the American working class. - Film Blather
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| Posted Jul 24, 2013
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Pacific Rim (2013) |
Why did this consummate labor of love have to be so dumb - so clunky and hollow and poorly-acted? Why does it feel so incomplete? - Film Blather
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| Posted Jul 12, 2013
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Man of Steel (2013) |
Look, this is an often-stunning event film. It's big and bold, with a scope and scale that's virtually unparalleled in the genre. But so much of that work is squandered on stuff that doesn't matter. - Film Blather
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| Posted Jun 13, 2013
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The Kings of Summer (2013) |
Knows how to be funny, but it can also be a bit too studiedly random, e.g. in generating Biaggio's vaguely creepy non sequiturs and in indulging long digressions about giant wontons and avocado meat. - Film Blather
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| Posted Jun 01, 2013
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What Maisie Knew (2012) |
An almost uncomfortably plausible depiction of the effects of bad parenting on a fragile psyche. - Film Blather
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| Posted May 25, 2013
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Fast & Furious 6 (2013) |
The set-up here is so sparse it almost plays as a joke, a sneer at the notion that a film with this many car crashes could need something so snobbish as a story. - Film Blather
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| Posted May 24, 2013
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Pain & Gain (2013) |
The film is so inept and hateful that asking what it thinks about anything seems like dividing by zero. - Film Blather
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| Posted Apr 26, 2013
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Oblivion (2013) |
If Kosinski wants to keep making these elaborate techno-dystopias, I'm down. But he needs to find a better framework for his visual ideas. - Film Blather
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| Posted Apr 19, 2013
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42 (2013) |
'42' won't teach you a thing, but for a film that couldn't have been very good, it's not bad. - Film Blather
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| Posted Apr 12, 2013
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The Host (2013) |
An alien invasion movie that consists of Saoirse Ronan and Disembodied Voice of Saoirse Ronan arguing with each other over whether and when and with whom the body of Saoirse Ronan should get it on. - Film Blather
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| Posted Mar 29, 2013
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The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) |
Try to imagine 'Crash' as written and directed by James Gray and you might come close to conceptualizing this beguiling film. - Film Blather
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| Posted Mar 29, 2013
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The Lords of Salem (2012) |
One alluring thing about Zombie is that it's hard to know how much of all this is a put-on. I spent a lot of time squinting at it, which is more fun than being bored. - Film Blather
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| Posted Mar 13, 2013
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Mud (2013) |
So good - so incredibly good; a classic in the making - that I promise you won't miss the metaphor and abstraction of 'Take Shelter'. - Film Blather
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| Posted Mar 10, 2013
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Haunter (2013) |
The biggest pleasures here come from how thought-through and rigorous this weird little universe is; how Natali and King commit fully to their story and follow it through to a satisfying conclusion. - Film Blather
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| Posted Mar 10, 2013
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Prince Avalanche (2013) |
David Gordon Green seems to have found a happy medium between the laid-back sincerity of his earlier work and the puerile stoner comedy he's favored since 'Pineapple Express'. - Film Blather
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| Posted Mar 10, 2013
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Cheap Thrills (2013) |
There's no big twist here, but the film's sustained thoughtfulness is as surprising as any plot development. - Film Blather
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| Posted Mar 09, 2013
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Evil Dead (2013) |
It's a tremendous technical achievement. - Film Blather
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| Posted Mar 09, 2013
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The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013) |
Even when this lovably half-baked effort really started to whiff, I couldn't bring myself to be too annoyed. - Film Blather
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| Posted Mar 09, 2013
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Snitch (2013) |
The bulk of 'Snitch' is a lumbering drag, a sanitized PG-13 rendition of a season of 'The Wire' that feels rushed even as it refuses to end. - Film Blather
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| Posted Feb 21, 2013
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Beautiful Creatures (2013) |
It's 'Twilight' with the sexes reversed, yes, but if 'Beautiful Creatures' becomes a four-sequel, screaming-tween-assault phenomenon I'll at least be able to understand it, if not quite buy in. - Film Blather
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| Posted Feb 13, 2013
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2-Headed Shark Attack (2012) |
- Film Blather
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| Posted Jan 22, 2013
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Mama (2013) |
Muschietti doesn't have the chops to sustain tension once he ditches the parts of his story that are conceptually intriguing. Once the film becomes a conventional horror show, it deflates fast. - Film Blather
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| Posted Jan 17, 2013
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On the Road (2012) |
The protagonists' aimless drug- and sex-fuelled adventures have neither a seductive pull nor the weight of tragedy. They're just grimy and a little boring. - Film Blather
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| Posted Jan 12, 2013
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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) |
One possibility is that the main thing to recommend the film is nostalgia. But so be it. - Film Blather
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| Posted Dec 13, 2012
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Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) |
An aimless, mind-numbing prestige picture with uneasy undertones it seems desperate to deny. - Film Blather
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| Posted Dec 08, 2012
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Rise of the Guardians (2012) |
A dumb, blandly sloganeering love letter to blind faith and willful denial. - Film Blather
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| Posted Nov 20, 2012
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Life of Pi (2012) |
Built around a revelation and thematic punchline that is such specious nonsense that nothing else it says or does or shows us really matters. - Film Blather
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| Posted Nov 20, 2012
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Lincoln (2012) |
A studied and stunningly wonky meditation on compromise. - Film Blather
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| Posted Nov 08, 2012
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The Sessions (2012) |
The movie methodically punts each time it comes across anything interesting. - Film Blather
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| Posted Oct 19, 2012
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Sinister (2012) |
A well-engineered scare machine, as the people sitting next to me at the screening can attest; at a certain level, one is hard-pressed to argue with soiled underpants. - Film Blather
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| Posted Oct 12, 2012
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Looper (2012) |
The most robust pure sci-fi in years - tighter and more fun than even 'Inception', if not as dizzyingly ambitious in its engineering. - Film Blather
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| Posted Sep 28, 2012
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Trouble With the Curve (2012) |
Schematic and beyond stupid, mindlessly lionizing the geezers that 'Moneyball' spent two hours justly laughing at. It's an embarrassment. - Film Blather
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| Posted Sep 20, 2012
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) |
Feels warm and genuinely affectionate in a way that's impossible to manufacture. You've seen this story before, but maybe not populated with personalities this fully realized and alive. - Film Blather
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| Posted Sep 20, 2012
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Dredd (2012) |
What 'Dredd' feints at, before retreating to action flick convention, is the first real successor to Alex Proyas' 'Dark City'. - Film Blather
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| Posted Sep 20, 2012
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Rust and Bone (2012) |
So enthrallingly bizarre that despite a penchant for aggressively taking notes on festival films I managed to jot down almost nothing over its 2+ hour running time. - Film Blather
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| Posted Sep 06, 2012
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The Iceman (2012) |
A drab, remedial gangster film. - Film Blather
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| Posted Sep 02, 2012
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A Royal Affair (2012) |
Features Mads Mikkelsen in the most straightforwardly positive role I've ever seen him in, and he turns out to have an expressive impassiveness to rival Ryan Gosling's. - Film Blather
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| Posted Sep 01, 2012
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No (2012) |
A fascinating exercise in historical fill-in-the-blanks. - Film Blather
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| Posted Sep 01, 2012
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Argo (2012) |
An intelligent, expertly-made thriller with glimmers of the extraordinary. - Film Blather
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| Posted Sep 01, 2012
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Premium Rush (2012) |
May be my favorite New York movie since Raimi's 'Spider-Man'. - Film Blather
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| Posted Aug 23, 2012
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The Bourne Legacy (2012) |
If the overarching story is silly, on the ground Gilroy's approach is the opposite: brainy and logistics-obsessed. - Film Blather
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| Posted Aug 09, 2012
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Chonmage purin (A Boy and His Samurai) (2010) |
But while the American version of this story might have involved Kevin James and a lot of farting, this justly acclaimed Japanese family film is magical and totally unexpected. - Film Blather
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| Posted Jul 27, 2012
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