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Jonathan Rosenbaum
Tomatometer-approved critic
(Photo Credit: Claude Medale/ Contributor/ Corbis Entertainment /Getty Images)
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Home Alone (1990) |
The movie is quite enjoyable as long as it explores the fantasy of a neglected little boy having an entire house of his own to explore and play in, and it still manages to be fun when he exhibits superhuman ingenuity and resourcefulness. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Nov 29, 2023
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Smoke Signals (1998) |
Good-natured but haunting, elliptical and repetitive as narrative but extremely likable, this is a poignant and sometimes funny story. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Nov 08, 2023
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Atanarjuat the Fast Runner (2001) |
This totally absorbing 172-minute feature, winner of the Camera d’Or at Cannes, is exciting not as ethnography but as storytelling, as drama, and as filmmaking. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Nov 08, 2023
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The Great New Wonderful (2005) |
Tries way too hard to be clever and shrewd. Danny Leiner (Dude, Where’s My Car?, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) directed a script by Sam Catlin, and though both have their moments, they’re rarely the same moments. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Sep 12, 2023
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Y tu mamá también (2001) |
A genuine rarity: a sex comedy with brains. Even rarer, one with smart politics -- so unobtrusive you may not notice -- and wonderful acting. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Sep 09, 2023
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When a Man Loves a Woman (1994) |
Apart from a confusing and unnecessary beginning and slick and corny Hollywood ending, this is a fairly serious and honest tearjerker about the delicate and subtle relationship between a family’s dysfunctionality and the wife’s alcoholism. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Sep 01, 2023
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La Haine (1995) |
Though some of this might seem a bit old to Americans, Kassovitz has some things of his own to say -- and he says them with nuance, feeling, and authority. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jul 20, 2023
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Mulholland Dr. (2001) |
I’m still trying to decide if this piece of hocus-pocus is David Lynch’s best feature between Eraserhead and Inland Empire. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jul 10, 2023
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Kandahar (2001) |
Thanks to the shifting tone and manner of Kandahar, we wind up responding in many different ways at once, and if the overall effect is still scattered, the burden of making sense of it all–as art and as reality–reverts to us. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Aug 12, 2022
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What Time Is It There? (2001) |
It’s Tsai's own way of thinking globally, of finding hope in the midst of despair, of seeing a profound connectedness in the midst of alienation, and it carries a lift that could enlighten us all. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Aug 12, 2022
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Minority Report (2002) |
Minority Report does offer a few issues to ponder, and given the mindlessness of most summer action specials, it’s something of an intellectual feast, even if it’s all hors d’oeuvres. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Aug 10, 2022
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Secret Ballot (2001) |
I see Payami as creating a formal relationship between his audience and subject that encourages us to be open-minded: neither of the two main characters can be seen as all right or all wrong... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Aug 10, 2022
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The Luzhin Defence (2000) |
I realize that every film adaptation of a good novel involves some sort of trade-off and that fair exchanges are few and far between. But this movie takes away a good two-thirds... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 22, 2022
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Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) |
One of the key lessons of The Blair Witch Project that’s completely lost on Book of Shadows is that disorientation can take place only after some orientation is established. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 22, 2022
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Mr. Zhao (1998) |
Lu Yue is one of the best cinematographers in mainland China. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 16, 2022
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El Valley Centro (1999) |
Though I had a nice time watching this movie overall, I’m sure I would have enjoyed it more if I’d had more of a sense of logical progression–or regression–from one shot to the next. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 16, 2022
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It Happened Here (1964) |
The film is much more interested in the everyday details of what she encounters than in constructing a consciousness-raising polemic. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 16, 2022
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Winstanley (1975) |
The framing, lighting, and editing of both films show how much Brownlow absorbed from silent cinema, though this influence is much more pronounced in Winstanley... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 16, 2022
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Eighteen Springs (1997) |
At this point I don’t think it’s a masterpiece–though that doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t see it. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 16, 2022
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Six O'Clock News (1997) |
This Boston-based North Carolinian is known as an independent autobiographer, yet what I’ve come to appreciate most in his work are those moments when autobiography leads him away from himself to other people. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 16, 2022
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Jazz '34 (1996) |
Jazz ’34 does have a loose, episodic narrative–moving from early morning to night to dawn to what appears to be late afternoon–and even a certain moral development... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 16, 2022
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Other Voices, Other Rooms (1995) |
The strength in Other Voices, Other Rooms is above all stylistic and atmospheric... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 16, 2022
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Four Corners (1998) |
One thing I like about Benning is that he knows how to look at things, places as well as paintings. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 16, 2022
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Inventing the Abbotts (1997) |
Apart from the script, it’s the actors who make this a film worth seeing; all of them look and sometimes even act like real people rather than types or icons. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 15, 2022
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Beautiful Girls (1996) |
Beautiful Girls would have us believe being a guy is hard, confusing, nay, downright torturous. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 15, 2022
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Twister (1996) |
The engineering of the special effects is fairly impressive, and the sight of so many objects and creatures being buffeted about carries a certain apocalyptic splendor. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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The Trigger Effect (1996) |
A commendable but ultimately perplexing failure. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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A Time to Kill (1996) |
In order to enjoy this mediocre John Grisham courtroom drama, labeled as top-notch entertainment by many of my colleagues, you have to accept an ersatz, cartoonish version of the deep south... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995) |
Alas, most of the surprise and the wit to be found here ends with the title. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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The Spitfire Grill (1996) |
If one can put up with these cliches, and with Marcia Gay Harden’s overacting, there are some nice compensations here, including most of the other performances and the location shooting... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Small Faces (1995) |
The problem may be that I’ve had it up to here with movies about youth gangs... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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The Rock (1996) |
Very entertaining action hokum that benefits hugely from the uses made of the three stars. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Phenomenon (1996) |
Moribund, dopey stuff. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Manny & Lo (1996) |
A rather tedious kidnapping movie by writer-director Lisa Krueger, despite the novelty of the kidnappers... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Lone Star (1996) |
A well-constructed but rather unthrilling mystery thriller by John Sayles. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Kingpin (1996) |
This bad-taste comedy about bowling champs, from the dudes who brought you Dumb and Dumber, decides to go scummy and scummier by blatantly ripping off several scenes... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (1996) |
I think it’s supposed to be a comedy. Perhaps because no one in the cast adjusted his performance style to the big screen, I may have thought about laughing three times over the 90-some minutes. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Kansas City (1996) |
Charlie Parker and his mother are gratuitously shoehorned into the plot, though some of the movie’s other strategies for imparting flavor work; what doesn’t work here is the flip cynicism, which by now, alas, has become Altman’s debilitating trademark. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Jane Eyre (1996) |
One more reason why I may never get around to reading the Charlotte Bronte novel. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) |
John Frankenheimer is credited as director, but given the scrambled, multiple agendas at play here, he seems to function more like a bemused traffic cop. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Heavy (1995) |
The performances are strong (my favorite is that of Deborah Harry as an older waitress) and the sense of eroded as well as barely articulated lives is palpable. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Flirting With Disaster (1996) |
The results are watchable enough–sometimes funny, sometimes over the top–and fairly fresh, though also a bit calculated. Leoni has an interesting comic presence one would like to see in toothier material, though this certainly has a few bites. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Eraser (1996) |
A few of the set pieces are fussy or overly extended, but the rest is tolerable bone-crunching diversion. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Courage Under Fire (1996) |
What emerges may not be quite as cut-and-dried as the movie’s structure sometimes implies. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Celestial Clockwork (1993) |
Nothing cuts very deep, and at times the film seems to be all over the place (Torres worked with five others on the script); but the surface glitter–aided by Ricardo Aronovich’s cinematography–keeps it fetching. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Alaska (1996) |
The vistas are spectacular and some of the suspense is effective, but the story is egregiously dumb, and the polar bear becomes so improbably resourceful that one fully expects it to fly everyone home and then script the sequel. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Cyclo (1995) |
Part of Cyclo’s voluptuous mystery is that it unravels simultaneously like a documentary and an expressionist or surrealist vision. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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I Am Curious (Blue) (Jag är nyfiken - en film i blått) (1968) |
...the only documentary reviewed here that was made by a film critic, which gives it an attentiveness to film history and form not found in most of the other works... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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Typically British (1995) |
I think I’m fully entitled to conclude, bollocks to Frears. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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The Voice of the Moon (1990) |
The film’s visual organization perhaps owes more to lyrical poetry than to narrative prose, at least in the excuses it uses for getting from one thing to another. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted Jun 09, 2022
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