Fernando F. Croce
Tomatometer-approved critic
Cupertino
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) |
Capra [is] not out of his element but rather in a sustained state of discovery. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Apr 24, 2023
|
|
|
|
Diabolique (1955) |
Clouzot's clammy virtuosity builds to a scabrous coup de théâtre with a rattling typewriter ahead of The Shining, unmistakably emulated in Young's Wait Until Dark. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
|
Frankenstein (1931) |
"The great ray that first brought life into the world" lends a divine elation quickly faded, what's left is the wrathful bewilderment of the shunned offspring, a magnificent pantomime by Karloff. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Jan 12, 2023
|
|
|
|
The Lady Eve (1941) |
A comedy of famous perfections, of the pratfall that seasons the shimmering repartee, of the magical character actors who crowd the frame as if in a Phiz illustration. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Dec 28, 2022
|
|
|
|
The Seventh Continent (1989) |
Michael Haneke could be cinema’s Debbie Downer, if only he had any sense of humor. - Slant Magazine
Read More
| Posted Dec 16, 2022
|
|
|
|
King Kong (1933) |
An inexhaustible fountain of pulp poetry, erected by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack on the divide between documentarian and fantasist. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Nov 08, 2022
|
|
|
|
Stalag 17 (1953) |
The road ahead leads to The Bridge on the River Kwai on one side, MASH on the other. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Nov 04, 2022
|
|
|
|
Cobra Woman (1944) |
Smack in the middle of this gaudy artifice, a cinéma-vérité portrait of the inept diva blissfully playacting, a queen in her own mind. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Sep 20, 2022
|
|
|
|
(undefined) |
With Rio Grande and Wagon Master, the last third of John Ford's unofficial musical trilogy of 1950 - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Apr 08, 2021
|
|
|
|
Moon Over Harlem (1939) |
A ragged wonder. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Jan 26, 2021
|
|
|
|
The Man With the Golden Arm (1955) |
A midpoint for [Preminger] between noir impressionism and hot-button topicality. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Dec 22, 2020
|
|
|
|
The Champ (1931) |
Not a "weepie" but an emotive examination of tangled milieus. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Dec 08, 2020
|
|
|
|
Haxan (1922) |
[Häxan alternates] between grave compassion and zesty exploitation. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Oct 08, 2020
|
|
|
|
The Mummy (1932) |
The most meditative of classic frights is an unanswerable drift of obsession, laid out by Karl Freund as a fugue of stillness and movement, indelibly embodied by Karloff as a decrepit vessel pulled onward by a wandering spirit's erotic torment. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Oct 08, 2020
|
|
|
|
Joan the Maid: The Battles (1994) |
A sublime corporeality informs Bonnaire's portrayal. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Jul 15, 2020
|
|
|
|
Joan the Maid: The Prisons (1994) |
A sublime corporeality informs Bonnaire's portrayal. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Jul 15, 2020
|
|
|
|
Flesh & Blood (1985) |
Religion and marriage and the very idea of heroism are hurled into Verhoeven's bestial pyre, his direction has the gift of overabundance -- the Spanish locations and castles teem with putrid lushness. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Mar 20, 2020
|
|
|
|
The Cheat (1915) |
[Cecil B. DeMille] understands the cinematic zones where the dueling impulses of prudery and titillation meet. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Nov 12, 2019
|
|
|
|
La Caza (1966) |
Shotguns and pistols, scopes and binoculars, rock 'n' roll and martial drums. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Sep 10, 2019
|
|
|
|
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1982) |
Nancy Dowd's blueprint has scrappy traces of The Girl Can't Help It (and the seeds of Madonna, Courtney, Britney...), Lou Adler's direction has an exhausted band wrangler's acquaintance with waves and fads. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Apr 11, 2019
|
|
|
|
2,000 Maniacs (1964) |
Having picked up a modicum of craft since Blood Feast, Lewis integrates the gruesome money-shots less maladroitly into the story. Still, his sideshow-barker shamelessness remains undimmed. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Mar 30, 2019
|
|
|
|
Robot Monster (1953) |
Let the dullards have their Most Amusingly Bad contests and Golden Turkey trophies, the cinephile will receive Tucker's surrealism with pleasure and notice the sketches for The Man Who Fell to Earth. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Dec 28, 2018
|
|
|
|
Lucia (1968) |
Sprawling canvas to Alea's intimate inquiry, Humberto Sols' political-personal epic locates the characters posed on the shifting historical tectonics - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Jun 19, 2018
|
|
|
|
Paranoia (1968) |
Umberto Lenzi takes the smooth Chabrolian veneer and spreads a little grime over it - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Jan 30, 2018
|
|
|
|
Hugo (2011) |
Scorsese luxuriates in artifice, but at its generous best Hugo offers a lovely instance of technology made human and spun from one generation to the next. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Jan 09, 2018
|
|
|
|
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) |
It's lucid, ingenious filmmaking, at least until the action motor slows down and the paint-by-numbers handling of flesh and bone turns glaring. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Jan 09, 2018
|
|
|
|
War Horse (2011) |
All the sumptuous pomp and sweep add up to little more than an inflated remake of Lassie Come Home, a step backwards from his mostly splendid mature films that feels closer to the labored and hollow Spielberg pastiche of Super 8. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Jan 09, 2018
|
|
|
|
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) |
Lynne Ramsay's third feature is a mishmash of soiled diapers, leaden musical cues and underlined soul-sickness. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Jan 09, 2018
|
|
|
|
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) |
When the herky-jerky camera zips into the barrels of a musket or spins through the gears of a cannon, is it visualizing the mercurial mindset of the inquisitive character or merely the lack of confidence of the antsy filmmaker? - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Jan 09, 2018
|
|
|
|
The Hunter (2011) |
Pitts's striking visual control ensures that the divide between institutionalized injustice and personal revenge remains volatile, thorny terrain. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Jan 09, 2018
|
|
|
|
House of Bamboo (1955) |
[House of Bamboo] is an example of the iconoclastic filmmaker's ribald eye for cinematic collisions of characters and forms. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Jan 09, 2018
|
|
|
|
The Double Hour (2009) |
As directed by Giuseppe Capotondi with little more than a chilled eye for sleek surfaces, the rug-pulling games make for mental chewing gum that quickly loses its flavor. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Jan 09, 2018
|
|
|
|
Bridesmaids (2011) |
The director is sitcom vet Paul Feig but the auteur is star and co-writer Kristen Wiig, who takes center stage after displaying flashes of fuzzy brilliance. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Jan 09, 2018
|
|
|
|
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) |
The newest chapter has a mermaid rampage shot like Ovidian Piranha outtakes, variously mummified cameos by Ponce de León and Keith Richards, and heightened contrasts between sandpapery skin and powdered perukes. In 3D! And it's entirely useless. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Jan 09, 2018
|
|
|
|
The Hangover Part II (2011) |
An obnoxious installment in an obnoxious franchise, The Hangover Part II is also (intentionally or not) fascinatingly bent on disconcerting its target audience. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Jan 09, 2018
|
|
|
|
Summer (1986) |
Le rayon vert is one of ric Rohmer's greatest studies of light, voices, and mercurial human sensation. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Dec 15, 2017
|
|
|
|
(undefined) |
But what of the miracle (is there another word for it?) of the transcendental finale? - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Dec 15, 2017
|
|
|
|
Polytechnique (2009) |
A well-meaning memoriam designed to revisit still-aching wounds only to tastefully dull them, the film aims for a combination of requiem and nightmare but, like Incendies. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Dec 15, 2017
|
|
|
|
Leap Year (2010) |
Leap Year may be too narrow a scenario to sustain the allegories of cultural bondage Rowe is aiming for. There's no denying, however, his eye for the bold and subtle body language of his main actress, and for evocative visuals - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Dec 15, 2017
|
|
|
|
The Ward (2010) |
The result is a trim, scrubbed work, as strange and distilled as a mid-1930s Tod Browning chiller. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Dec 15, 2017
|
|
|
|
Super 8 (2011) |
No film this year opens more promisingly and ends more dismally than J.J. Abrams' Super 8. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Dec 15, 2017
|
|
|
|
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) |
And yet, by now it all comes together into a personal vision, imbecilic and undeniably whole. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Dec 15, 2017
|
|
|
|
Terri (2011) |
Terri examines the freakery and geekery of puberty not with Miguel Arteta's clamminess but with the serene, compassionate excruciation that's become Jacobs' distinctive timbre. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Dec 15, 2017
|
|
|
|
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) |
Paced like a rocket but de-politicized and de-poeticized, adorned with sprawling camera movements yet trapped in shallow screen space, the film clomps through with a flatness that makes its vision of the beginning of mankind's end seem weirdly soothing. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Dec 15, 2017
|
|
|
|
Attack the Block (2011) |
Attack the Block is a prime example of what Kent Jones perceptively noted regarding John Carpenter's They Live, the B-movie's ability to penetrate working-class strife while working within unpretentious genre frames. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Dec 15, 2017
|
|
|
|
Bellflower (2011) |
A striking debut. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Dec 15, 2017
|
|
|
|
The Future (2011) |
How much further July can push her blend of whimsy and pain remains to be seen, but this is arguably the strangest study of artistic and parental anxiety since Eraserhead. - MUBI
Read More
| Posted Dec 15, 2017
|
|
|
|
A Short Film About Killing (1988) |
The obscured-vision effects of Slawomir Idziak's dirty-sepia filters -- characters encircled by soiling irises -- suggest isolated realities clashing appallingly in the most excruciating murder since Torn Curtain's farmhouse killing. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Apr 05, 2017
|
|
|
|
A Short Film About Love (1988) |
A moral tract, like Krzysztof Kieslowski's other Dekalog expansion, though physical contact here revolves around the brutality of emotion, rather than killing -- the results are no less visceral. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Apr 05, 2017
|
|
|
|
Lola (1961) |
The Ophls question ("Quelle heure est-il?") is always in the air, along with the tilting, craning and tracking that link and sever feelings. - CinePassion
Read More
| Posted Mar 01, 2017
|