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Mark Pfeiffer
Tomatometer-approved critic
Columbus, OH
http://reeltimes.blogspot.com
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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The Hitcher (2007) |
Too silly and stupid to be scary, The Hitcher speeds along with no regard for logic. - NightsAndWeekends.com
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| Posted Apr 27, 2020
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Frances Ha (2012) |
Frances Ha provides a sharp, fleet, and very funny look at female friendship and the acceptance of adult responsibilities. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Jun 05, 2013
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Killer Joe (2011) |
McConaughey is funny and fearsome in the title role, the devil holding the family accountable for their choices. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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Mama (2013) |
Within the context of a modern Brothers Grimm fairy tale Mama considers the range of maternal instincts from dutiful indifference to selfish sheltering. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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The Last Stand (2013) |
The Last Stand doesn't find [Schwarzenegger] in peak form, but it'll suffice as a sturdy exhibition of his talents. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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Django Unchained (2012) |
This bloody, hilarious, shocking, and righteously angry film is the kind of great art and great trash [Tarantino] aspires to make. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012) |
Underneath It's Such a Beautiful Day's simple surface and droll humor is a philosophical core as dense as any film's. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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The Impossible (2012) |
The Impossible doesn't turn a blind eye to the physical and emotional devastation, but the comparatively uncomplicated path it follows to arrive at a reassuring conclusion minimizes the impact. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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Promised Land (2012) |
The makers of Promised Land clearly object to fracking but attempt, not always successfully, to explore the issue without stacking the deck in favor of its viewpoint. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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The Deep Blue Sea (2011) |
The character is a victim of her own decisions, but Weisz's bruised performance in The Deep Blue Sea yields empathy for being battered by doomed romanticism. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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This Is 40 (2012) |
This is 40 works better as light drama than comedy, with humor defusing the bombs being lobbed in the marriage. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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Zero Dark Thirty (2012) |
Bigelow's great achievement is stripping down the action from the exaggerated theatrics in movies and television shows so the missions feel no less exciting and immediate. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) |
The Perks of Being a Wallflower flutters with the excitement and terror that comes in being young and trying to find your way. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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Hitchcock (2012) |
Ultimately Hitchcock comes off as a glib film about a great film. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012) |
It's a far cry from what Van Damme and Lundgren were doing twenty years ago, but in the end this film comes off like a band that claims all of the 'right' influences in interviews but can't synthesize good taste into work of merit. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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Silver Linings Playbook (2012) |
On the surface Silver Linings Playbook is a raucous romantic comedy, but its real interests are superstition and delusion. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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Anna Karenina (2012) |
Anna Karenina plays like the ultimate CliffsNotes, which is both testament to Stoppard's exceptional adaptation and abridgement of Tolstoy's novel and acknowledgment of the film's somewhat superficial center. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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Skyfall (2012) |
Skyfall proves that a long-standing series can deliver the expected fundamentals while keeping the new films fresh and unpredictable. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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Head Games (2012) |
The film struggles with the contradiction of knowing the serious risks while enjoying the games as participant and spectator. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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My Neighbor Totoro (1988) |
As a hangout movie for kids, My Neighbor Totoro pleases with its easygoing pace, curiosity about the natural world, and sweet spirit. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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Cloud Atlas (2012) |
Cloud Atlas is prone to sappiness and threatens to disappear up its own tail like The Matrix trilogy, but it builds to an irresistible final act celebrating the human spirit. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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The Tall Man (2012) |
The Tall Man comes as close as anything in recent years at matching the better monster-of-the-week episodes of The X-Files. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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Sinister (2012) |
It owes more than a debt of gratitude to The Shining and The Ring, among others, but Derrickson processes the chilling influences into an eerie experience mindful of the significance of projected images watched alone in the dark. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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Seven Psychopaths (2012) |
Seven Psychopaths doesn't knuckle down and decide how to answer everything tossed out for consideration, but even when it feels like little more than intellectual, postmodern spitballing, it satisfies as an exercise in storytelling. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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Taken 2 (2012) |
Taken 2 is content to play out as a familiar and lesser version of its predecessor. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012) |
What to Expect When You're Expecting provides a snapshot of contemporary anxieties about imminent parenthood, but it may be more worthwhile as a document for future pop culture scholars to use to understand what was trendy in 2012. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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Compliance (2012) |
Compliance functions as a fascinating and mortifying glimpse at how readily and illogically people will submit to authority, whether it's law enforcement or a boss. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 04, 2013
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Warm Bodies (2013) |
Combining Shakespeare and zombies creates the expectation that the text will be treated with some irreverence, but to a baffling degree Warm Bodies is played mostly straight. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 01, 2013
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Hit & Run (2012) |
Hit & Run isn't always a smooth ride, but the quirks and misfires make it as distinctive as the actor behind many of the film's creative choices. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 01, 2013
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The Expendables 2 (2012) |
The movies that many of these guys made in the 1980s and '90s were hardly bulletproof, but this is a cynical exercise in settling for what is expected to be passable. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Feb 01, 2013
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Holy Motors (2012) |
Holy Motors is gloriously alive with experimentation and the centrality of human involvement regardless of what form the end product of their efforts takes. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Nov 21, 2012
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360 (2011) |
According to 360 the world is united in broken dreams and wounded hearts. It's too bad that playing R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" on a two-hour loop could have expressed the sentiment more effectively. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 29, 2012
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Under African Skies (2012) |
Under African Skies takes what could have been a puff piece glossing over the protestations related to Graceland and teaches the controversy. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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The Queen of Versailles (2012) |
Although director Lauren Greenfield documents several instances in which it's apparent that the Siegels' lifestyle is so alien from the vast majority that they might as well call Mars home, she hasn't set out to eat the rich. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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Total Recall (2012) |
A solidly entertaining blast of summer movie spectacle. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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I Wish (2011) |
I Wish excels at evoking a child-like state of mind in all of its wonders and concerns because of Kore-eda's astuteness in following how kids make sense of the world and change their perspectives. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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The Iron Lady (2011) |
With everything, including the most pivotal moments, rendered in shorthand, The Iron Lady diminishes the accomplishments of the person whose story it tells and the actress working so hard to offer a well-rounded embodiment of her. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) |
Alfredson's marvelous precision in showing how an agent might do difficult espionage work is as thrilling as any overblown James Bond setpiece. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011) |
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo can't quite transcend its junk foundation or...the familiar beats of the other adaptation. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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War Horse (2011) |
While made with great technical proficiency, War Horse is determinedly old-fashioned in how Spielberg tells the story, which is a fitting creative strategy considering that the film studies the convergence of the old and the modern. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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Mirror Mirror (2012) |
The ill fit between Mirror Mirror's screenplay and its director's sensibilities dooms the comedic fairy tale from the outset. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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Wrath of the Titans (2012) |
Even if it isn't saying much, Wrath of the Titans stands as a minor improvement to its predecessor. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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21 Jump Street (2012) |
21 Jump Street is a smartly stupid buddy comedy that plays with the ridiculousness of its set-up. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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House of My Father (2012) |
After awhile Casa de mi Padre begins to play as a conceptual exercise rather than a legitimately funny movie in its own right. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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Trollhunter (2010) |
Trollhunter adopts the form of a found footage documentary, which translates as lots of banal conversations, abundant shots of the Scandinavian countryside, and competent but shaky handheld camerawork. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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John Carter (2012) |
Once John Carter gets past laying out the specifics of the various Martian cultures and tensions, it settles into a pleasant groove that recalls the old Saturday afternoon serials. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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A Better Life (2011) |
A Better Life's sense of place and eye for detail are strong, but the too-smooth style and rushed dramatics are at odds with the hardscrabble existence on display. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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Wanderlust (2012) |
Wanderlust has a freewheeling, improvisational aesthetic that doles out enough solid jokes, even if it does so erratically. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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This Means War (2012) |
Love is a battlefield in This Means War, and the three likable leads are the casualties. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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Big Miracle (2012) |
Big Miracle is invested with solid craftsmanship and a nuanced view of how idealism, pragmatism, and politics intersect. - Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
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| Posted Aug 17, 2012
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