Lisa Schwarzbaum
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Lucky (2011) |
The concept, perilously high, is further overloaded by performances that are perilously broad, particularly from Graynor and an ill-used Ann-Margret as Ben's mother. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Aug 09, 2021
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The Decalogue (1989) |
The stories are shocking, tender, sometimes funny, with a soap-opera abundance of plot. Always, the camera stares, respectfully neutral about ordinary people grappling with the ordinary mysteries of being human. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted May 01, 2021
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Splendor in the Grass (1961) |
With his ripe lips, flirty eyes, and pre-Calvin Klein-era androgynous appeal, the 24-year-old Warren is utterly believable as a boy who drives Natalie Wood plumb insane with sexual frustration in William Inge's overheated melodrama. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jun 28, 2019
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Don Juan DeMarco (1995) |
What a bizarro trio! - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Mar 04, 2019
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Ghetto (2002) |
Nothing is exceptional about Shanghai Ghetto, a documentary by Dana Janklowicz-Mann and Amir Mann, except the story itself. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jan 29, 2019
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The Portrait of a Lady (1996) |
This ain't no Merchant Ivory party, [Campion] announces from the outset. This ain't no Masterpiece Theatre disco. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Oct 26, 2018
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Inside Out (2015) |
The brilliance of Inside Out... is in the gentle, almost cheery way in which it celebrates sadness as a useful, hardworking, perfectly normal, and perfectly lovable aspect of how a girl grows up. - Refinery29
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| Posted Jun 27, 2017
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Applause (2009) |
[Steen] brings a thrilling emotional nakedness and an astringent, unsentimental honesty to the part. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Apr 07, 2016
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Where to Invade Next (2015) |
In the more than 25 years since the bracing brashness of Roger & Me, why are Moore's documentary-making skills and aesthetic interests stuck with such an exasperating case of arrested development? - TIME Magazine
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| Posted Dec 24, 2015
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James White (2015) |
With the camera close on his expressive face, Abbott finds power in explosions of self-destruction and glimpses of vulnerable soul within the character. - TIME Magazine
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Victoria (2015) |
A mad, handheld feat of propulsive movie bravado. - TIME Magazine
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| Posted Oct 08, 2015
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The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) |
A movie of (increasingly rare) truly indie sensibility, made by women who are confident about healthy feminine resilience. - TIME Magazine
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| Posted Aug 06, 2015
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The Wolfpack (2015) |
Everything about The Wolfpack is extraordinary, beginning with the subjects of Crystal Moselle's mesmerizing documentary. - TIME Magazine
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| Posted Jul 17, 2015
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Spy (2015) |
Feig keeps his Spy machinery cranking so smoothly that nothing said or done feels as outrageous as, in fact, it is. The truth serum Spy drops into our fizzy drinks makes us feel so good that we don't even realize we've been schooled. - TIME Magazine
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| Posted Jul 17, 2015
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Trainwreck (2015) |
In the way of most Apatow films, Trainwreck is a little too long, a little too shaggy and a little too conservative in insisting that all's square in love and war. - TIME Magazine
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| Posted Jul 16, 2015
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Brothers in Arms (2004) |
The vets tell the truth, by any reasonable measure, and then the filmmaker stirs the elements as filmmakers always do, whether partisan or neutral. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted May 05, 2015
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Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) |
The movie Fifty Shades of Grey is considerably better written than the book. It is also sort of classy-looking, in a generic, TV-ad-for-bath-oil way. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Feb 10, 2015
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56 Up (2012) |
We're now at 56 Up,, and with each passing calendar leap, the experience of watching has only become more soul-stirring. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jan 01, 2014
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Kill Your Darlings (2013) |
Radcliffe - hair permed into Ginsbergy college curls, full of vitality - holds the emotional center as a young artist in art and in life. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Sep 14, 2013
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The Eel (1997) |
- Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted May 23, 2013
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Lore (2012) |
This striking, slow-building drama ... uses fractured, impressionistic imagery as a mirror of moral dislocation as the children make their way through an unfamiliar landscape. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Feb 13, 2013
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A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III (2012) |
The execution ... is perilously self-absorbed ... - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Feb 13, 2013
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A Good Day to Die Hard (2013) |
Die Hard 5 leaves room for McClane to make a few jokes about his thinning hair and to rue that he wasn't a better father when his kids were growing up. Oh, boo-hoo. Now go kill some more scumbags. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Feb 13, 2013
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No (2012) |
Explores the power of popular dissent, and the coordinated persuasions of media, marketing, and targeted advertising in shaping the word no to invigorate a populace pessimistically conditioned to think that nothing will ever change for the good. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Feb 13, 2013
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The Gatekeepers (2012) |
A feat - of access and of passionate and appropriately unsettling political commentary. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Feb 06, 2013
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Identity Thief (2013) |
Of the many qualities I adore about Melissa McCarthy as a comedian and as a dramatic actor, the best is how fully she gives herself to every character she plays. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Feb 06, 2013
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Warm Bodies (2013) |
Warm Bodies is a funnier and pleasantly cheaper-grade movie than Twilight that aims to draw in both Bella & Edward lovers and haters. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Feb 03, 2013
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Parker (2013) |
The movie is a morals-free procession of bang bang bang! and blood blood blood!, and men slamming each other with blunt objects and slicing each other with blades. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jan 25, 2013
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Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) |
- Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jan 22, 2013
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Monumental: In Search of America's National Treasure (2012) |
- Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jan 22, 2013
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Fairhaven (2012) |
Personal tenderness combines with a good sense of composition and a naturalistic storytelling style to give a small, familiar premise a nice lilt. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jan 16, 2013
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Outside Satan (2011) |
Dumont's rigorous, serious attention to the mysteries of good, evil, and faith rewards those willing to be confounded. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jan 16, 2013
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Struck by Lightning (2012) |
Some charming, buzzy talents pitch in on this short little lark ... - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jan 09, 2013
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Quartet (2012) |
Quartet knows just the tune to soothe its mature target audience ... - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jan 09, 2013
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Silver Linings Playbook (2012) |
A crazy beaut of a comedy that brims with generosity and manages to circumvent predictability at every turn. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jan 04, 2013
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The Impossible (2012) |
Say a prayer that The Impossible is the closest that you or I or anyone anywhere will get to the kind of catastrophe that makes this movie so harrowing, riveting -- and uneasily "uplifting." - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jan 03, 2013
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Not Fade Away (2012) |
Rock & roll is here to stay. And David Chase gets some well-deserved satisfaction. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Jan 02, 2013
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The Guilt Trip (2012) |
Streisand is her own once-in-a-lifetime trip, looking gawjuss with that divine voice and those killer fingernails. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Dec 17, 2012
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Jack Reacher (2012) |
Jack Reacher stumbles around looking for a unifying narrative tone, while the star soldiers on, offering up his generic action-hero stance of calm, opaque concentration. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Dec 14, 2012
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Les Misérables (2012) |
This fake-opulent Les Miz made me long for guillotines ... - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Dec 12, 2012
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Heleno (2011) |
Jos Henrique Fonseca's handsome black-and-white, impressionistic bio-drama goes very Raging Bull-ish, to tell a piece of the story of Heleno de Freitas, a Brazilian soccer star with matinee-idol charisma. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Dec 05, 2012
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Save the Date (2012) |
A basically plotless, made-for-millennials rom-com ... - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Dec 05, 2012
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California Solo (2012) |
There's a lovely gravity and specificity to the story that transcends instances of bumpy filmmaking. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Nov 28, 2012
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The Flat (2011) |
I will salute the deftness and intelligence with which Goldfinger observes the reactions of the living to the revelations of the dead. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Nov 28, 2012
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Craptastic! (2011) |
[A] hapless, clueless, necrophiliac documentary ... - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Nov 28, 2012
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Red Dawn (2012) |
Take that, screaming North Koreans with no agenda! - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Nov 21, 2012
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Life of Pi (2012) |
Everything looks beautiful in Life of Pi. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Nov 21, 2012
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The Central Park Five (2012) |
[A] patient, righteous documentary ... - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Nov 20, 2012
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Barrymore (2011) |
Plummer is marvelous, flitting between reminiscence and Shakespearean recitation as a gifted artist aware of his own wretchedness. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Nov 20, 2012
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Starlet (2012) |
A strikingly unsentimental study in female friendship between unmoored souls in L.A.'s bleached, glamour-challenged San Fernando Valley. - Entertainment Weekly
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| Posted Nov 20, 2012
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