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Dennis Harvey
Tomatometer-approved critic
Film Critic, San Francisco Bay Guardian and Variety
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Thine Ears Shall Bleed (2023) |
While Bigelow’s vision isn’t as inspired as one might ideally like, it does earn credit for not taking the road-fork that leads to jump scares and other stock devices dominating a majority of franchise-heavy horror at present. - Variety
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| Posted Jul 12, 2024
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Longlegs (2024) |
Fans of mainstream thrills will lament precisely the qualities of ambiguity and restraint that make Longlegs more creepy than splashy. But those who don't need to be prodded awake every ten minutes will find this a satisfyingly unsettling 100 minutes. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jul 12, 2024
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Once Upon a Time in America (1984) |
A bad movie at any length, swimming in the syrup of Morricone's score. But hey, some call it a masterpiece. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jul 12, 2024
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The Year of the Cannibals (1970) |
An adventurous mix of radical politics and ancient Greek tragedy. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jul 12, 2024
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Touch (2024) |
Touch is an unusually intelligent, artful love story that earns the tears eventually jerked. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jul 11, 2024
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National Anthem (2023) |
It’s an attractive tableau…but just as superficial as Strange Way of Life, the gay western Pedro Almodovar made last year that was pretty much a half-hour commercial for Yves Saint Laurent. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jul 11, 2024
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The Convert (2023) |
It provides a solid narrative context for Tamahori to demonstrate his skill at large-scale storytelling, staging action, and eliciting strong performances. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jul 11, 2024
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Green Border (2023) |
Green Border is a pretty blunt indictment of cruelty and cowardice... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jul 11, 2024
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Last Summer (2023) |
Though Breillat has pushed the envelope of graphic content much further before, this is one of her most successful narratives... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jul 05, 2024
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MaXXXine (2024) |
West simultaneously over-relies on Goth. Stuffed with too many ideas that go undeveloped, MaXXXine is not dull, but it’s a bit of a hot mess. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jul 05, 2024
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Taking Venice (2024) |
More conventionally crafted than the disruptive art it chronicles, Taking Venice nonetheless uses plentiful archival materials and latter-day interviews to tell a fascinating story. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jul 05, 2024
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The Devil's Bath (2024) |
The film is beautifully crafted, yet the mill of torments it puts Plaschg through becomes something of a dirge, monotonous and overlong at 121 minutes. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jul 05, 2024
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This Closeness (2023) |
This Closeness looks at first like your classic “normal couple menaced by maladjusted weirdo” thriller setup, but it has different goals. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jul 05, 2024
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Chestnut (2023) |
Like the summertime flirtations depicted, Cron’s film as a whole does feel like an authentic representation of youthful impulses suspended between infatuation, uncertainty, and evolving self-knowledge. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jul 05, 2024
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Janet Planet (2023) |
Their movie sneaks up on you, then lingers in the mind long after. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jul 05, 2024
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Boneyard (2024) |
This trashy trawl through a fictionalized version of the “West Mesa Murders" is the kind of dubiously moralizing exploitation exercise that makes Sound of Freedom look like a noble class act by comparison. - Variety
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| Posted Jul 01, 2024
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Tramps! (2022) |
Tramps!—a title that never makes much contextual sense—shows the New Romantics to have been a lot more compelling than the cultural footnote they fast got reduced to. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 25, 2024
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Fancy Dance (2023) |
Though their movie could be a little more assertive in its storytelling, the people it portrays are all credible, complex, and worth meeting. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 25, 2024
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Chuck Chuck Baby (2023) |
Janis Pugh’s crowdpleasing drama gains novelty from being a sort of karaoke musical—characters periodically break into songs by artists as diverse as The Cascades, Neil Diamond, and Janis Ian. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 25, 2024
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Go Fish (1994) |
A resourcefully no-budget, B&W ensemble romp of romantic entanglements. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 25, 2024
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Helen and the Bear (2024) |
Blair’s film is a surprisingly moving portrait of two strong personalities who have remained devoted to each other despite considerable differences. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 25, 2024
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High Tide (2024) |
Sexy yet not your stock frivolous gay romcom, Marco Calvani’s feature poignantly deals with depression, prejudice, and the difficulties of being a sensitive soul in a milieu of short-attention-spanned barflies. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 25, 2024
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Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero (2023) |
A part-concert, part-backstage portrait of the envelope-pushing pop sensation... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 25, 2024
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Trigger Warning (2024) |
Indonesian director Mouly Surya’s well-crafted first English-language feature is too formulaically contrived to qualify as “elevated genre” or to boast the personal stamp of her prior work. Still, it’s an entertaining, pacey action melodrama. - Variety
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| Posted Jun 21, 2024
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Bound (1996) |
1996’s Bound has Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly as co-conspirators and lovers in what’s not just one of the great neo-noirs, but way up there amongst mainstream Hollywood depictions of lesbian love and lust. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 13, 2024
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Sabbath Queen (2024) |
This fast-paced, well-shot doc does place its finger on the quickening pulse of an ever-wider gap between liberalizing Western social values and the Orthodox sphere that believes they are antithetical to Judaism. - Variety
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| Posted Jun 11, 2024
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A Desert (2024) |
sense of unpinnable but pervasive evil is something the film would like to communicate, but lacks the stylistic finesse to achieve. The narrative ultimately vanishes down a rabbit’s hole. - Variety
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| Posted Jun 11, 2024
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Songs of Earth (2023) |
The scenery conveys a degree of timelessness in which mankind is perhaps a comparatively fleeting presence. But the frequent sound of cracking ice, and snowpacks groaning towards avalanche, remind that this, too, may pass, and sooner than later. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 07, 2024
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Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara (2023) |
It's a grotesque story in which the shock of institutionalized bigotry is cushioned by the smug complacency... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 07, 2024
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A Poem Is a Naked Person (1974) |
Les Blank left a lasting influence on the Bay Area’s still-busy documentary filmmaking scene, perhaps even more so on the entire genre of music docs that go beyond performance footage to capture entire subcultures. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 07, 2024
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The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists (1995) |
[It] spilled into appreciation of regional cuisine, and additional creative expressions... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 07, 2024
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All in This Tea (2007) |
Lovely [and] globe-trotting... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 07, 2024
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Burden of Dreams (1982) |
It is the rare “making-of” document that many consider better than the completed project itself. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 07, 2024
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Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980) |
It is the rare “making-of” document that many consider better than the completed project itself... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 07, 2024
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The Boy and the Heron (2023) |
It was a graceful summing-up of themes and motifs he’d begun making familiar even before co-founding Studio Ghibili in 1985... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 07, 2024
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British Sounds (1970) |
Lacking the aesthetic appeal of his equally didactic prior La Chinoise, Sounds (which eventually got a tiny theatrical release as See You At Mao) is a curio for completists… but who wouldn’t want to see all of 1960s Godard? - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 07, 2024
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I Used to be Funny (2023) |
In the end, this ambitious, imperfect drama does pull off a complex thematic mix, encompassing issues from grief to sexual assault, with a generous helping of humor to lend its darkness some light. - Variety
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| Posted Jun 07, 2024
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23 Mile (2024) |
Its recent-history flashback plays like a queasy preview of national discord... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 05, 2024
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Narrow Path to Happiness (2023) |
On a more overtly political tip, there are some sobering missives... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 05, 2024
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Who is Michael Jang? (2024) |
Who Is Michael Jang? profiles the titular shutterbug whose remarkable photos of life in SF and beyond from the 1960s onward have only belatedly gotten much recognition. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 05, 2024
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The Donn of Tiki (2024) |
Unlike myriad imitators who followed in his wake, Beach was interested in preserving elements of authentic Polynesian culture, not just making a kitschy buck from its vulgarization. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Jun 05, 2024
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Gasoline Rainbow (2023) |
Their film is casual, but not self-indulgent, and crafted with care to make its somewhat wayward joyride sans specific destination (geographic or otherwise) feel like a journey that's worth taking. - 48 Hills
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| Posted May 21, 2024
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I Saw the TV Glow (2024) |
While the fadeout retains ambiguity, it raises the pitch of no-exit dread high enough to provide a satisfactory sense of climax. - 48 Hills
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| Posted May 21, 2024
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Sweet Dreams (2023) |
Contrastingly becalmed -- if sinister -- is this blackly comedic indictment... - 48 Hills
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| Posted May 21, 2024
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The Last Stop in Yuma County (2023) |
Last Stop doesn't just strike a pose—it really is clever, in both writing and execution. - 48 Hills
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| Posted May 10, 2024
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H2: The Occupation Lab (2022) |
There's no overt case-pleading in the dispassionate assembly of materials here. But a furious gist emerges still... - 48 Hills
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| Posted May 10, 2024
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Terrestrial Verses (2023) |
If you’re one of those people who’s felt guilty about finding some Iranian cinema a little too ascetic and “pure,” this short, sharp feature will prove their stripped-down approach can be devastatingly effective. - 48 Hills
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| Posted May 10, 2024
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Evil Does Not Exist (2023) |
In the end, Evil struck me as a good movie flawed by an unnecessarily pretentious approach to a fairly simple allegory. Nonetheless, its story gist maintains interest, and there are aspects of real beauty in Yoshio Kitagawa’s cinematography... - 48 Hills
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| Posted May 10, 2024
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The Black Cat (1934) |
A nutty 66-minute wonder whose ridiculous script Ulmer lifts into a zone of black comedy—not in the giddy tenor of James Whale, but something more coldly ironical... - 48 Hills
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| Posted May 10, 2024
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And So It Begins (2024) |
And So provides more chilling proof that fascism seems to be the rising political flavor of preference around the world, and that resistance is desperately needed. - 48 Hills
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| Posted May 10, 2024
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