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Jim Lane
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Ghetto (2002) |
- Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Jan 29, 2019
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Holmes & Watson (2018) |
The smell of flop-sweat permeates the movie like real sweat in a locker room. It's too bad to be offensive, too inert to be annoying. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Jan 10, 2019
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Second Act (2018) |
The cast is good enough -- if not to pull it off, at least to make it go down painlessly. Charlyne Yi supplies fun as half-phobic, half-kinky office drone. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Jan 10, 2019
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Aquaman (2018) |
It's campy and miles over the top, but fun in its loopy wouldn't-it-be-cool-to-breathe-under-water way. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Dec 27, 2018
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Mary Poppins Returns (2018) |
Sure to charm all but the most churlish cynic, it is, like Mary Poppins herself, practically perfect in every way. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Dec 27, 2018
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Welcome to Marwen (2018) |
It's technically brilliant and very well-acted -- especially by Leslie Mann as Hogancamp's new neighbor and latest crush -- but it never quite attains the emotional punch it's aiming for. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Dec 27, 2018
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The Mule (2018) |
As we might expect from an 88-year-old superstar filmmaker with nothing left to prove, the movie has an elegiac, farewell quality to it, and Eastwood moves gingerly through it with an air of leathery frailty. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Dec 27, 2018
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Green Book (2018) |
Take a true story, add a super-smart script, brilliant turns by the two stars, and matching support from Linda Cardellini as Mortensen's wife, and you get a bullseye crowd-pleaser. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Dec 13, 2018
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Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) |
[Rowling's] script here is the worst thing she's ever written -- incomprehensible if you haven't seen Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, saddling the actors with endless pages of indigestible exposition, an inert, lifeless set-up for the next movie. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Nov 29, 2018
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Robin Hood (2018) |
"Forget history," says the narration, "Forget what you think you know." Better advice would be to forget this godawful movie. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Nov 29, 2018
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Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018) |
It's all too clever by half -- or rather, by about 20 minutes; its feathery charms are hard put to support nearly two hours' running time. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Nov 29, 2018
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Widows (2018) |
Davis' powerhouse presence is complemented by Rodriguez and Debicki (in a starmaking turn), plus an equally powerhouse supporting cast. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Nov 29, 2018
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Dr. Seuss' The Grinch (2018) |
The smoothly animated result isn't as dreadful as the Jim Carrey live-action version, but it's almost as wrong-headed. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Nov 15, 2018
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The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018) |
Alvarez doesn't let us linger to make sense of it all; he keeps the action set-pieces coming, and if we're never fully engaged, at least we're never bored. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Nov 15, 2018
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Instant Family (2018) |
The movie has amusing moments, but they feel prepackaged with everything but a sitcom laugh track. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Nov 15, 2018
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The Happy Prince (2018) |
Everett the writer sometimes overplays things, while Everett the director lurches from one martyrdom to the next in a sort of pity-party promenade. But Everett the actor, in a role he was born to play, never makes a false move. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Nov 15, 2018
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The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018) |
Either desperate rewrites by Tom McCarthy and reshoots with director Joe Johnston taking over from Lasse Hallström didn't help -- or the movie must have been really awful before. Now it's a grab bag of remnants from far better books and movies, - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Nov 08, 2018
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Nobody's Fool (2018) |
Writer-director Tyler Perry throws all kinds of ideas at us, but he never manages to get over the basic problem at the center of his script: Sumpter's character is shallow and unlikeable, while Haddish's... wears out her welcome in record time. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Nov 08, 2018
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Hunter Killer (2018) |
Muscular direction by Donovan Marsh keeps the action tense and clipping along, compensating somewhat for a tendency of minor characters to blur together. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Nov 01, 2018
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Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) |
A standard musical biopic with all the conventions in place... Still, the music is electrifying, and Malek is a stellar presence, as is Lucy Boynton as Mary Austin. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Nov 01, 2018
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Beautiful Boy (2018) |
Dramatically flat and frankly monotonous. On the plus side, Carell and Chalamet give fearless performances. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Nov 01, 2018
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Johnny English Strikes Again (2018) |
I said that such James Bond spoofs were an exhausted genre and had worn out their welcome. Now I have to take it back; here's an inspired bullseye. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Nov 01, 2018
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Van Helsing (2004) |
By the final scene, all we care about is when Sommers will wrap up his magic act and let us all go home. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Oct 31, 2018
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Halloween (2018) |
It was sadistic schlock in 1978 and it's more sadistic and schlockier than ever now. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Oct 25, 2018
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Bad Times at the El Royale (2018) |
Writer-director Drew Goddard gets off to a stylish start, with a burst of Tarantino-esque narrative energy and a garishly beautiful retro-'60s look... But Goddard can't sustain it past the first 25 minutes. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Oct 18, 2018
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First Man (2018) |
Ultimately, the movie is proficient but unsatisfying -- we leave the theater feeling like we know less about Armstrong than we did going in. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Oct 18, 2018
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Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (2018) |
The novelty has worn off, and Lieber and Sandel offer nothing to replace it. It's stupefyingly humdrum, with none of the first movie's scares, laughs or charm. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Oct 11, 2018
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The Hate U Give (2018) |
Strikes a perfect balance between coming-of-age story and social-justice-warrior manifesto, never resorting to slogans, clichés or cardboard characters. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Oct 11, 2018
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The Old Man & the Gun (2018) |
The whole movie has a loose-limbed, shambling, unpretentious charm, not unlike the matter-of-fact bemusement of Grann's original New Yorker piece. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Oct 11, 2018
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Night School (2018) |
With six writers (including Hart) and Malcolm D. Lee's call-action-and-step-next-door-for-coffee direction, the movie can hardly help being what it is: a half-baked, disconnected parade of gags and undeveloped episode ideas. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Oct 08, 2018
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Smallfoot (2018) |
This animated time-killer is better than it has any right to be-but it's just barely good. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Oct 08, 2018
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The House With a Clock in Its Walls (2018) |
This unabashed Harry Potter clone is enjoyable enough, thanks to Black's campy theatricality and Blanchett's sly minimalism. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Oct 08, 2018
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Colette (2018) |
Knightley and West head a pitch-perfect cast, and Westmoreland (aided by cinematographer Giles Nuttgens and designer Michael Carlin) flawlessly recreates Belle Époque France. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Oct 08, 2018
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The Bookshop (2017) |
Writer-director Isabel Coixet paces her tale with subdued dignity that borders at times on a dogged plod, but which makes it all the more effective in those rare moments when somebody finds it necessary to raise their voice. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Sep 20, 2018
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A Simple Favor (2018) |
An impish throwback to the stylish glam-thrillers of the early 1960s with a 21st century sass to go with all the twists and turns of the plot. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Sep 20, 2018
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Life Itself (2018) |
Fogelman pretends to offer the random kaleidoscope of real life, but his movie is riddled with the rankest Dickensian contrivances -- without Dickens' flair for vivid characters. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Sep 20, 2018
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Peppermint (2018) |
Rehashes tropes from better (though not necessarily good) movies. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Sep 20, 2018
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The Little Stranger (2018) |
Neither a horror movie nor a ghost story, it's just a lot of atmosphere and earnest acting looking in vain for a story. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Sep 10, 2018
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Operation Finale (2018) |
Unfortunately, the movie lacks the ring of truth because much of it isn't... False details abound, clouding the effect of decent performances. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Sep 06, 2018
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Juliet, Naked (2018) |
Jesse Peretz's direction smooths out any wrinkles in the text, and the movie draws a nervous, energetic charm from Byrne's performance. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Sep 06, 2018
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The Happytime Murders (2018) |
The puppet work is brilliant, the jokes (however tasteless) are often funny, and McCarthy and Barretta have a strong chemistry. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Aug 30, 2018
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A-X-L (2018) |
Didn't anyone notice that the story made no sense, that it was just remnants of Short Circuit, E.T., WarGames and other better movies, strung together more or less at random? - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Aug 30, 2018
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Mile 22 (2018) |
A low-class Mission: Impossible wannabe. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Aug 23, 2018
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Alpha (2018) |
Give director Albert Hughes an A for ambition, but a C for cornball achievement. As a piece of prehistory, the movie is maybe a cut above One Million Years B.C., but with cheesier visual effects. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Aug 23, 2018
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Crazy Rich Asians (2018) |
Chu's career has been a tad uneven in the past, but he shows a sure hand here, drawing fine performance from a large ensemble - especially Wu, Golding, Awkwafina and Michelle Yeoh. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Aug 23, 2018
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Slender Man (2018) |
This tawdry, shoddy stinker is a movie of rare and total incompetence, literally unwatchable thanks to some of the worst cinematography in film history. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Aug 16, 2018
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BlacKkKlansman (2018) |
It's entertaining and angrily thought-provoking, with Lee at the top of his game - even if he can't stay off the soapbox and piles on too many endings. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Aug 16, 2018
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The Darkest Minds (2018) |
If you've seen The Hunger Games, Divergent or The Maze Runner, there are no surprises in this low-rent X-Men knockoff. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Aug 09, 2018
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The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018) |
Kunis has a nice flair for comedy, but she gets shoved aside by McKinnon - who, like the movie at large, is obnoxious and funny in a roughly 60-to-40 ratio. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Aug 09, 2018
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Christopher Robin (2018) |
Earnest acting, brilliant CGI and a few good lines can't conceal that the script is a half-hour's worth of stale whimsy dragged out to 104 minutes, directed at a plod by Marc Forster and murkily photographed by Matthias Koenigswieser. - Sacramento News & Review
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| Posted Aug 09, 2018
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