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Eve Tushnet
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) |
If that sounds like an unexpected subject for a Scorsese flick, that's one of the movie's strengths: the moment when you realize that this story is perfect for this director. - Patheos
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| Posted Nov 29, 2023
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Bottoms (2023) |
Of course I loved it! - Patheos
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| Posted Sep 28, 2023
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Dark Waters (1993) |
Atmospheric, but a bit empty... - Patheos
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| Posted Sep 21, 2023
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Threads (1984) |
I don’t know, what can you say about Threads? I knew its reputation and it lived up to it. - Patheos
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| Posted Sep 18, 2023
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Performance (1970) |
Unfortunately the film is mostly about the gangster, who lacks Jagger’s charisma and generally is no fun. And then the self-consciously disorienting style makes it even harder to care about what is happening. - Patheos
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| Posted Sep 18, 2023
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Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017) |
The fairy-tale, magical/horror elements are a little too constructive and strenuously uplifting. - Patheos
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| Posted Sep 18, 2023
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A Dark Song (2016) |
A slow and wrenching film which nonetheless lives up to the promise of its title. - Patheos
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| Posted Sep 18, 2023
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Candyman (1992) |
Candyman is perfectly shot, and its central characters are iconic. - Patheos
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| Posted Aug 21, 2023
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Hocus Pocus (1993) |
Hocus Pocus walks a fine line, where we get to enjoy witchy glee but also feel real emotions about their victims. - Patheos
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| Posted Aug 21, 2023
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I Like Bats (1986) |
I found it very hard to connect with the blank heroine or her generic blond doctor. - Patheos
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| Posted Aug 21, 2023
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Walker (1987) |
I think the movie doesn’t quite know what it wants to say about the idealism driving American military action. Unsurprisingly, it also has absolutely nothing to say about internal Nicaraguan politics... - Patheos
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| Posted Aug 16, 2023
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Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) |
The action is fine–Carpenter’s good at this, it’s all brisk, just enough characterization to make these feel like people who cast real shadows but no more than that. Carpenter did the music as well, and it’s fantastic. - Patheos
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| Posted Aug 16, 2023
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The Taking of Power by Louis XIV (1966) |
It's funny in a low-key way, and the scene with all the nobles watching the king eat or reject foods is memorable, but in the end I don't know that I needed to see this. - Patheos
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| Posted Aug 15, 2023
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The Scarlet Empress (1934) |
...it looks amazing, it is probably blasphemous, it’s in keeping with the movie’s overall fantasy of Savage Russia... - Patheos
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| Posted Aug 15, 2023
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Dark Days (2000) |
Dark Days is well-paced, knowing when to ramble and when to pull you up short. Great editing. Great choices of which stories to tell on camera. - Patheos
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| Posted Jul 31, 2023
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The Lady and the Duke (2001) |
What comes out in the storytelling is the way our actions emerge from a tangle of sympathies, personal loyalties or debts owed, preexisting relationships we take for granted, and professed ideologies. - Patheos
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| Posted Jul 31, 2023
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25th Hour (2002) |
There’s a clunkiness to the rant montage, and yet it is also so heartfelt, so loving. - Patheos
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| Posted Jul 31, 2023
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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) |
Thrillingly inventive visuals, an absolute can't-miss movie in spite of having not much to say and insisting on saying it anyway. - Patheos
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| Posted Jul 31, 2023
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They Cloned Tyrone (2023) |
This movie is so fun, so joyful in its plunge into a stylized Black cultural world that mixes nostalgia for the bad old Blaxploitation days and hypercontemporary references, that you almost don’t notice how much Afropessimism is in its DNA. - Patheos
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| Posted Jul 31, 2023
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Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) |
...rough-edged and willing to be weird; its interiors and lighting are more extreme, its characters are grittier... - Patheos
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| Posted May 24, 2023
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She-Devil (1989) |
A lot of the choices, from Streep’s acting to her pink-princess mansion, seem like they’re aiming for camp but don’t go hard enough. - Patheos
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| Posted May 24, 2023
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Cropsey (2009) |
Cropsey is really well-paced in doling out both large and small revelations. - Patheos
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| Posted May 24, 2023
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Flaming Ears (1992) |
I know you think that sounds fun, and it was at first, but the more it just accumulated in a heap, the less I cared. - Patheos
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| Posted May 24, 2023
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The Watermelon Woman (1996) |
Rambling, sweetly serious but also willing to do some self-deprecating satire, equal parts time capsule and still-relevant sheaf of questions. - Patheos
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| Posted May 24, 2023
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The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995) |
I was completely charmed by it... - Patheos
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| Posted May 24, 2023
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Thieves' Highway (1949) |
For me, the best things about this picture were the long and harrowing scene of Nick trying not to fall asleep at the wheel; the attentiveness, in general, to the physical tasks and risks of long-haul driving... - Patheos
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| Posted May 24, 2023
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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) |
The trains, especially, seemed to me like a representation of how it feels when you think that another life exists, but not for you. That feeling is usually false but it is very convincing. - Patheos
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| Posted May 24, 2023
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Pray Away (2020) |
I obviously am down for exposing the evils of conversion therapy, but as a work of art, this is pretty pedestrian, and as reportage, it’s mostly done better elsewhere. - Patheos
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| Posted Mar 24, 2023
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Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) |
The filmmakers try to load the entire weight of life, the universe, and everything onto their movie. This is too many things on a bagel. - Patheos
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| Posted Mar 24, 2023
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Losing Ground (1982) |
It didn’t quite work for me. - Patheos
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| Posted Mar 24, 2023
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Let the Fire Burn (2012) |
A must-watch if you’re interested in Black American history, post-1968 city governance, or documentary craft. - Patheos
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| Posted Mar 24, 2023
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Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. (2022) |
Unfortunately the movie mostly avoids the more surreal or mystical possibilities of its satire. I still enjoyed it, for sure, but there are missed opportunities. - Patheos
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| Posted Jan 31, 2023
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Black Widow (1987) |
Don’t let Winger’s mousy-for-Hollywood appearance fool you: This is definitely a game of cat and other cat! It’s silly and mostly notable for the explicit sapphic overtones. - Patheos
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| Posted Jan 31, 2023
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The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020) |
Snow Hollow is willing to name things like “toxic masculinity” and “anger issues” explicitly, but deft and subtle enough to show these abstractions emerging from and intersecting with the werewolf plot naturally. - Patheos
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| Posted Jan 31, 2023
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Bent (1997) |
There’s something too well-fed in that final moment... - Patheos
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| Posted Jan 31, 2023
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My Neighbor Totoro (1988) |
The creepy or eerie whimsy of the troll’s world is wonderful, but unlike in Spirited Away, the stakes feel really low–it felt like the movie kept making choices to reassure the imagined child-audience that the world is soft, not scary. - Patheos
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| Posted Jan 31, 2023
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Chameleon Street (1989) |
A surprise and a treat. - Patheos
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| Posted Dec 16, 2022
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Rachel Getting Married (2008) |
It is basically a perfect film. - Patheos
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| Posted Dec 16, 2022
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'R Xmas (2001) |
I always enjoy Ferrara’s low-slung sensibility (and an especially low-slung and sidelong camera here–lotta fragmentary or child’s-eye view shots), but I don’t know that I bought what this film was selling. - Patheos
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| Posted Dec 16, 2022
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Spinning Boris (2003) |
Goldblum is charming, as always. The cynicism is lighter and frothier than the subject probably deserves... - Patheos
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| Posted Dec 16, 2022
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The Final Solution (1983) |
The emotional or spiritual arc of the main black character (also based on a real person) is both simplistic and compressed.
- Patheos
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| Posted Dec 16, 2022
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Mandrake (2022) |
By the end I was on board, and could see how the mandrake fits the movie’s themes of bloody birth, something broken and desperate and amoral within maternity, but I’m circling around ways of saying, “This didn’t quite work for me, and I’m not sure why.” - Patheos
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| Posted Dec 16, 2022
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Next of Kin (1982) |
Spooky, lushly-colored, slight and pleasurable. - Patheos
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| Posted Dec 16, 2022
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The Last Unicorn (1982) |
The 1982 cartoon adaptation of The Last Unicorn blends genres and eras to bring the shocking challenge of beauty to the screen. - Patheos
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| Posted Dec 13, 2022
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Tár (2022) |
Field’s film is pulsing, prowling, it feels angry or at least charged with some wild energy: this film is in love with Tár, but also willing to take her to pieces, like a moth who rattles off the entire moral inventory of the flame right before diving in. - Patheos
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| Posted Nov 11, 2022
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Monsieur Vincent (1947) |
Nowadays it’d be one of those films that wins the Oscar for costuming (if it were American, I mean), but it is better and smarter than that. - Patheos
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| Posted Oct 21, 2022
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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) |
I did not care about these people and their problems even one tiny bit. - Patheos
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| Posted Oct 21, 2022
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Coal Miner's Daughter (1980) |
Unfortunately the back half of the film is rushed and overstuffed. - Patheos
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| Posted Oct 21, 2022
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Class of 1999 (1990) |
1984 has a certain grim conviction in spite of its soapiness; this felt more soulless, and the action bored me, but I admit I'm not really into that kind of movie as a rule. - Patheos
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| Posted Oct 21, 2022
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Collateral (2004) |
This was not quite Mann enough for me. - Patheos
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| Posted Oct 21, 2022
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