Karl French
Karl French's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Financial Times
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Iron Man (2008) |
Still, if the film is ultimately disappointing it is in part because it begins so well, and there is a lot to enjoy before the over-the-top final act. - Financial Times
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| Posted Oct 07, 2018
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P2 (2007) |
It is like a Michael Haneke film but without the intellectual underpinnings and is therefore just pointlessly plain and, in one long scene of torture, unwatchably sadistic. - Financial Times
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| Posted Oct 07, 2018
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Made of Honor (2008) |
An abysmal fusion of When Harry Met Sally and My Best Friend's Wedding with an unwelcome Caledonian twist. - Financial Times
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| Posted Oct 07, 2018
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Nim's Island (2008) |
This film wants to be cute but is instead nauseatingly twee, and features what is by a great distance the weakest performance of Foster's career. - Financial Times
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| Posted Oct 07, 2018
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Tovarisch: I Am Not Dead (2007) |
Tovarisch, I Am Not Dead is a documentary that has been nearly 20 years in the making, but anyone wanting a rounded, resolved story will be a little disappointed by this odd, in many ways impressive film. - Financial Times
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| Posted Oct 07, 2018
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Jonas Brothers: The Concert Experience (2009) |
Accompanying parents can don blindfolds and ear-plugs and indulge in the sweet fantasy that they are somewhere, anywhere, else. - Financial Times
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| Posted May 29, 2009
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Fugitive Pieces (2007) |
There are fleeting moments of poignancy and poetry, significantly when the script features narration taken almost directly from the novel, but this is clunkily written and poorly edited. - Financial Times
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| Posted May 29, 2009
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Fermat's Room (2007) |
An ingenious Spanish thriller. - Financial Times
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| Posted May 29, 2009
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Fireflies in the Garden (2008) |
Consistently watchable and sometimes rather moving, although it is a rather slighter piece than the film-makers seem to think. - Financial Times
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| Posted May 29, 2009
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Drag Me to Hell (2009) |
Hokum and trash, but very entertaining hokum and a classy kind of trash. - Financial Times
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| Posted May 29, 2009
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Pierrot le Fou (1965) |
At times infuriatingly indulgent but is also an intoxicating, wildly inventive picaresque fantasy. - Financial Times
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| Posted May 22, 2009
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Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) |
This is designed to appeal to attention-deficit youngsters but will irritate or exhaust more discerning cinephiles. - Financial Times
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| Posted May 22, 2009
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Awaydays (2009) |
Script, editing and some poorly staged fight sequences render this inchoate and almost unforgivably uninteresting. - Financial Times
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| Posted May 22, 2009
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Tormented (2009) |
Tormented is a neat, stylish British horror film which, while not quite as resonant as last year's Eden Lake, still packs a punch. - Financial Times
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| Posted May 22, 2009
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Mark of an Angel (2008) |
There are flaws in plotting and pacing but this is always interesting. - Financial Times
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| Posted May 22, 2009
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A Girl Cut in Two (2007) |
By the time the story springs to life and becomes the thriller, of sorts, that it seems set up to be, we have had to sit through 90-odd minutes of turgid melodrama. - Financial Times
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| Posted May 22, 2009
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Blind Loves (2008) |
It's hard to define what kind of film Blind Loves is, but whether you categorise it as animated docu-drama or perhaps as docu-fantasy, it is a peculiar, affecting piece. - Financial Times
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| Posted May 22, 2009
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Everlasting Moments (2008) |
Although punctuated with moments of shocking violence, this is a quiet, slow-moving film but it is also involving and at times deeply moving. - Financial Times
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| Posted May 22, 2009
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Fighting (2009) |
It's lively, relentlessly cliché-ridden and, for no good reason - this certainly doesn't contribute to an air of authenticity - presented in a succession of apparently and often uncomfortably semi-improvised scenes. - Financial Times
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| Posted May 15, 2009
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French Film (2008) |
The treatment of French cinema is rather facile, and ultimately this is no more substantial than a half-decent television sitcom, or one of the slight, love-themed sketches in Scenes of a Sexual Nature, writer Aschlin Ditta's previous credit. - Financial Times
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| Posted May 15, 2009
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City Rats (2009) |
An inane urban drama with a strong cast - Susan Lynch and James Lance among them - and big themes - death, art, love, sex - but no discernible point. - Financial Times
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| Posted Apr 25, 2009
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Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009) |
The film resembles nothing so much as an indifferent and wildly over-stretched episode of space sitcom Red Dwarf. - Financial Times
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| Posted Apr 24, 2009
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The Uninvited (2009) |
Its most intriguing quality is that its final five minutes are so much more interesting than anything that goes before. - Financial Times
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| Posted Apr 24, 2009
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From Russia With Love (1963) |
The narrative is plodding, time has not been kind to set-pieces that were once so thrilling and now seem oddly perfunctory, and 007's misogyny and casual slapping of several women is more than faintly repellent. - Financial Times
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| Posted Apr 24, 2009
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Outlander (2008) |
Howard McCain's film comes perilously close to being risible at times, but it is never dull. - Financial Times
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| Posted Apr 24, 2009
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Shifty (2008) |
It is all done with conviction, is well acted, particularly by the two leads, and is a brisk, promising debut for Creevy. - Financial Times
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| Posted Apr 24, 2009
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Encounters at the End of the World (2007) |
A compelling film that is by turns thought-provoking and very funny. - Financial Times
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| Posted Apr 24, 2009
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The Grocer's Son (2007) |
In its slow-moving, at times uncomfortable way, this is a heartwarming film. - Financial Times
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| Posted Apr 24, 2009
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State of Play (2009) |
This is a smart, knowing addition to the great tradition of 1970s paranoid political thrillers, and as such includes several references to Watergate as well as featuring, as it had to, a tense sequence in an underground car-park. - Financial Times
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| Posted Apr 24, 2009
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Not Easily Broken (2009) |
rather crude, occasionally risible, if never actively dislikeable melodrama. - Financial Times
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| Posted Apr 17, 2009
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I Love You, Man (2009) |
A strong supporting cast and at least half a dozen good laughs may be insufficient reward for some longueurs, several gags involving dog excrement, and perhaps rather too many scenes that are more excruciating than amusing. - Financial Times
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| Posted Apr 17, 2009
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The Pink Panther 2 (2009) |
A comedy with no redeeming features that may be, in what is now a depressingly competitive field, Martin's worst film to date. - Financial Times
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| Posted Feb 12, 2009
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King of the Hill (2007) |
Is more disturbing and more intelligent than Friday the 13th. - Financial Times
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| Posted Feb 12, 2009
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Friday the 13th (2009) |
Technically rather better than its predecessors, to whose storyline it refers, but the moral thrust remains the same. - Financial Times
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| Posted Feb 12, 2009
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Notorious (2009) |
It's a dim, poorly executed, eccentrically cast film and you'd be better off seeking out Nick Broomfield's 2002 documentary Biggie and Tupac. - Financial Times
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| Posted Feb 12, 2009
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Fuck (F*ck) (2005) |
A moderately amusing documentary about the second most offensive word in the English language. - Financial Times
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| Posted Feb 12, 2009
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Hotel for Dogs (2009) |
The premise is sound but the script is rather clunky and the film suffers from an uncertainty of tone. - Financial Times
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| Posted Feb 12, 2009
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Under the Sea (2009) |
If you have children who might be diverted by 40 minutes of natural wonders, and you can get to an Imax cinema, then Under the Sea 3D is a treat. - Financial Times
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| Posted Feb 12, 2009
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Three Monkeys (2008) |
So long as you can adjust to the singular pace of the story-telling, then this film, which won Ceylan the best director award at Cannes last year, is a powerfully affecting piece. - Financial Times
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| Posted Feb 12, 2009
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A Bloody Aria (2006) |
It's supposedly an essay on the nature of human brutality and there is a certain amount of narrative deftness at play, but whether in the sequences of dialogue or violence, in both cases extended, the film is not merely unattractive but also uninteresting - Financial Times
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| Posted Oct 24, 2008
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Chocolate (2008) |
A bizarre, often tasteless, but never dull Thai martial arts movie. - Financial Times
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| Posted Oct 24, 2008
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High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008) |
A bit of bloodshed would have enlivened proceedings enormously in the anodyne High School Musical 3. - Financial Times
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| Posted Oct 24, 2008
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Incendiary (2008) |
Michelle Williams is a fine and versatile actor but even she has her limits and is never really convincing as a working-class Londoner struggling with guilt and grief. - Financial Times
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| Posted Oct 24, 2008
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Ghost Town (2008) |
It is so nearly a ghost-themed remake of Groundhog Day that you can't help but think how much more interesting it would have been reworked by Harold Ramis with Bill Murray in the lead role. - Financial Times
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| Posted Oct 24, 2008
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Quiet Chaos (2008) |
This is a slow-burning, very well acted film that contains, almost disconcertingly, a graphic sex scene, a strange star-cameo very late on, and something close to a Hollywood ending. - Financial Times
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| Posted Oct 24, 2008
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Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007) |
An endearing effort that will appeal to under-10s with its slight tale of the three all-talking, all-singing rodents. - Financial Times
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| Posted Dec 21, 2007
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St. Trinian's (2007) |
no girl or boy over the age of 12 would be attracted by anything so puerile, while its UK certificate and occasionally risqu subject matter rule out under-12s. - Financial Times
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| Posted Dec 21, 2007
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I'm Not There (2007) |
This works so well that long before the end you don't merely accept the use of these wildly diverse personae, but you may also even wonder whether Dylan's story could properly be told any other way - Financial Times
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| Posted Dec 21, 2007
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Death at a Funeral (2007) |
A staggeringly inept farce. - Financial Times
Read More
| Posted Nov 02, 2007
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The Brothers Solomon (2007) |
A dismal gross-out comedy. - Financial Times
Read More
| Posted Nov 02, 2007
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