
Tomas Hachard
Movies reviews only
Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Citizen Ruth (1996) |
The movie's most charming characteristic is, in fact, its irreverence: It bears the tell-tale signs of a young director taking aim at, and then laughing off, the absurdities of the world he grew up in. - Esquire Magazine
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| Posted Oct 17, 2018
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Qissa (2013) |
Qissa is most captivating when it treats Kanwar's identity dilemma head on; its best scenes are intimate ones that portray the tempestuous inner turmoil wracking its protagonist. - Cinema Scope
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| Posted Oct 16, 2017
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Ningen (2013) |
By its close, Ningen has become tangled in digressions. - Cinema Scope
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| Posted Oct 16, 2017
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Caught in the Web (2012) |
There's a stiffness to the actors' performances that reinforces the film's ambiguous tone. And Chen's use of jump cuts is jarring and arbitrary, their ubiquity upping the ante on the film's already tiring hyperactivity. - NPR
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| Posted Jun 08, 2016
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Tangerines (2013) |
Because the conflict between Abkhazians and Georgians is so sketchily drawn, the ultimate heartwarming tone of the film seems not so much unearned as unspectacular. - NPR
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| Posted Apr 21, 2015
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Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) |
A work of many moving parts, one to take apart and put back together again repeatedly. - NPR
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| Posted Apr 09, 2015
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Effie Gray (2014) |
Thompson largely succeeds at giving Effie a voice, much as Fanning succeeds at beautifully bringing it to life. But the world around Effie remains crudely drawn, and in that respect the film can only do so much justice to her story. - NPR
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| Posted Apr 02, 2015
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Batched (2014) |
It's all quite superficial, but never less than gripping, and is aided by an ending that at least doesn't compromise too much-the movie finishes with a smirk more than a smile. - NPR
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| Posted Mar 26, 2015
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Jauja (2014) |
The film is expansive, pushing the ideas that Alonso has probed in the past further than he has ever taken them. - NPR
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| Posted Mar 19, 2015
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It Follows (2014) |
Can one perfectly-executed shot redeem the less successful earlier attempts? In this case, after the initial awe wears off, the effect is the opposite: it only makes you realize how much more there was to mine from Mitchell's premise all along. - NPR
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| Posted Mar 12, 2015
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Two Men in Town (2014) |
The movie's melancholic, atmospheric tone, coupled with a muted performance from Whitaker, offers a new way into the material. - NPR
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| Posted Mar 05, 2015
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Wild Canaries (2014) |
It's evident that the film is largely a lark, that Levin is having fun creating comic sparks by smashing a murder mystery together with a group of self-centered detectives, plot details be damned. - NPR
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| Posted Feb 26, 2015
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Approaching the Elephant (2014) |
It's a visceral, experiential, and absorbing viewing experience, not an educational issue doc. - NPR
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| Posted Feb 19, 2015
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Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014) |
It's tempting to call the film muddled and be done with it, but there's an inventiveness and beauty to Lee's visuals here ... and an experimentation in the execution that's hard to ignore. - NPR
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| Posted Feb 12, 2015
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The Duke of Burgundy (2014) |
Strickland hides much beneath the surface in The Duke of Burgundy, but the movie is also a delight to look upon ... - NPR
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| Posted Jan 22, 2015
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Mommy (2014) |
For a director whose characters regularly display an abundance of melodramatic sentiment, Xavier Dolan leaves himself plenty of emotional cover in his movies. - House Next Door
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| Posted Jan 21, 2015
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Human Capital (2013) |
Human Capital's principled outrage against the wealthy is overwhelming. But it's not particularly useful ... - NPR
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| Posted Jan 15, 2015
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La última película (2013) |
ltima pelcula becomes a movie about finality, about the ways we stand in awe of end-times even as they strike fear in us ... - NPR
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| Posted Jan 08, 2015
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A Most Violent Year (2014) |
It bears all the hallmarks of depth except for actual wisdom. - NPR
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| Posted Dec 31, 2014
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If You Don't, I Will (2014) |
Many of the jokes, like the ones launched at the expense of Mellie's son's psychomotor problems, aim at the easiest targets, leaving the final products simplistic if not offensive. - NPR
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| Posted Dec 18, 2014
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Little Feet (2013) |
Far from being precisely molded to elicit an emotional response, Little Feet is content to let the pieces fall more haphazardly and to seek resonance in small moments rather than grand, dramatic gestures. - NPR
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| Posted Dec 11, 2014
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Before I Disappear (2014) |
Before I Disappear is ultimately hampered not by a messy plot but by bland characters who, for the most part, don't so much talk to each other as they monologue at each other. - NPR
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| Posted Dec 05, 2014
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Dying of the Light (2014) |
The rushed and often inchoate execution means there's little in the film that gets the benefit of more than a moment's reflection. - NPR
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| Posted Dec 05, 2014
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A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) |
Girl Walks Home manages to be a wholly original work while containing nary a unique thought or idea. - NPR
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| Posted Nov 20, 2014
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Rosewater (2014) |
The result neither portrays the suffering of Bahari's incarceration adequately nor lampoons the absurdities of the situation. - NPR
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| Posted Nov 13, 2014
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Miss Meadows (2014) |
Perhaps Karen Leigh Hopkins's intent was to subtly suggest the surreal aspects of the story, but ultimately she underplays her hand. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Nov 10, 2014
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The Great Invisible (2014) |
The film acknowledges [the] instinct toward simplistic polarization, but then softly, compellingly tries to push against it. - NPR
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| Posted Oct 30, 2014
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Nightcrawler (2014) |
Nightcrawler lives by Gyllenhaal's great performance, but it dies by the limits of his character. - House Next Door
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| Posted Oct 28, 2014
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The Heart Machine (2014) |
A movie that's neither ostentatious nor superficial. - NPR
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| Posted Oct 24, 2014
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Listen Up Philip (2014) |
Despite Philip and Ike's deep-set stubbornness, however, the experience of watching Listen Up Philip feels like a revelation. - NPR
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| Posted Oct 20, 2014
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Rudderless (2014) |
It unnecessarily hampers itself for over an hour for the sake of a gotcha moment before finally allowing its actors to explore something more than generic grief. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Oct 13, 2014
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Whiplash (2014) |
Ultimately, what keeps Whiplash from becoming a joyride whose effects last only as long as its adrenaline rush are Simmons and Teller's performances and Chazelle's insight into Andrew's personality. - NPR
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| Posted Oct 09, 2014
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The Blue Room (2014) |
The Blue Room pieces together the details of its plot like a jigsaw puzzle, but seeing the final picture is not its principal pleasure. - NPR
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| Posted Oct 02, 2014
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The Two Faces of January (2014) |
The Two Faces of January feels shot too tight and cut too tight; it doesn't push forward at a bewilderingly fast pace, but its story and its performances still feel like they need more room to breathe. - NPR
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| Posted Sep 25, 2014
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Good People (2014) |
It only overcomes its deficiencies and gains a modicum of entertainment value precisely when it commits to its illogical storylines and exaggerated plot twists. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 22, 2014
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The Zero Theorem (2013) |
For the most part, Gilliam's visual eye drowns out his actor's performances, and in this case the effect is marred by a distinct familiarity to his imagined world. - NPR
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| Posted Sep 19, 2014
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Stray Dogs (2013) |
In its most evocative moments offers images that will stick in your mind even longer than they stay on the screen. - NPR
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| Posted Sep 12, 2014
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The Tribe (2014) |
The film's second half descends into increasingly explicit and shocking displays of violence, and, in fact, all of The Tribe is defined by either overheated emotions or extreme actions. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 09, 2014
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The Face of an Angel (2014) |
Winterbottom delivers the thoughts so stiffly, within such an insistently dark and brooding atmosphere, that one longs for the more traditional true-crime approach hinted at whenever any character offers their theory about who committed the murder. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 08, 2014
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The Look of Silence (2014) |
Much of Look of Silence, like The Act of Killing, represents a fight for history, a struggle to properly acknowledge the million Indonesian dead. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 08, 2014
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Manglehorn (2014) |
David Gordon Green is attracted to those who seem resigned to tired lives, but only as a symbol for why we must struggle against resignation. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 07, 2014
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St. Vincent (2014) |
Theodore Melfi's debut feature, St. Vincent, is a heartwarmer that never insults--exactly the opposite of what its protagonist is supposed to be: a disgruntled drunk who nobody likes. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 07, 2014
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Laggies (2014) |
It's hard not to watch Laggies without thinking back to Your Sister's Sister, in which Shelton made rom-com tropes feel spontaneous and fresh. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 05, 2014
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Kelly & Cal (2014) |
The film is mostly proof that changing the gender and details in a premise doesn't do much good if the presentation is conventional in nearly every other way. - NPR
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| Posted Sep 05, 2014
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Force majeure (2014) |
Ruben Östlund masterfully manages the marital tensions that drive the film's plot forward while imbuing the scenario with these carefully layered philosophical reflections. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 04, 2014
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Leviathan (2014) |
The end result is a film that, after offering a number of potentially heroic narratives, takes pleasure in undercutting each of their claims to supremacy. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 04, 2014
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The Congress (2013) |
While always detailed in its visual execution, each new aspect of the film's world remains conceptually hollow, growing ultimately into a Matrix-style allegory for the nature of truth ... - NPR
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| Posted Aug 28, 2014
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The One I Love (2014) |
It begins by exploring how fantasy intrudes on and affects our perceptions of reality; it ends by trying too hard to convince us that its fantasies could, somehow, be real. - NPR
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| Posted Aug 21, 2014
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Are You Here (2013) |
The female characters on Mad Men are probably the show's strongest asset, but here they're hollow to the point of insult. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Aug 17, 2014
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Frank (2014) |
That Fassbender plays the role of the disguised rocker fits well with the movie's tone: putting one of the biggest actors in Hollywood behind a mask lends a further rebellious streak to an already sardonic film. - NPR
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| Posted Aug 14, 2014
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