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Manuel Betancourt
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Eno (2024) |
More than a biographical documentary, Eno emerges as a brilliant and endlessly inspiring creative manifesto. - AV Club
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| Posted Aug 04, 2024
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Sisi & I (2023) |
Hüller is fantastic. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Aug 03, 2024
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Mother, Couch (2023) |
I don't know if it all comes together, but everyone is so entrancing that you just want to keep watching to see what the hell is going to happen next. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Aug 03, 2024
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Faye (2024) |
If you know Faye Dunaway, you should watch this. If you don't know Faye Dunaway, you should watch this. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Aug 03, 2024
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Crossing (2024) |
[Director Levan Akin] shoots his characters with such love, gentleness, and such an empathetic lens that you truly feel like you're being allowed into intimate spaces you maybe shouldn't be allowed to see. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Aug 03, 2024
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Twisters (2024) |
It's all a bit too familiar. The film isn't quite a beat for beat remake of the 1996 film, but it's not that far off. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Aug 03, 2024
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Oddity (2024) |
What promise this horror fable squanders from the get-go. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Jul 23, 2024
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Longing (2024) |
No character functions like a human being. None of them make decisions or tell you things, and the dialogue is so sterile. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Jul 13, 2024
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Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything (2023) |
Fable-like, literary, long and luscious. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Jul 13, 2024
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Rowdy Girl (2023) |
It has a message, delivers it with the bluntness of a hammer, and doesn't go beyond that. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Jul 13, 2024
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Maestra (2023) |
A little baggy and a little long... But it was fascinating. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Jul 13, 2024
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Flipside (2023) |
Easily my favorite film of the week... A documentary about failed endeavors and learning to let go. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Jul 13, 2024
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Am I OK? (2022) |
It's very endearing. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Jul 13, 2024
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Robot Dreams (2023) |
I adore this film. It is so inventive and gorgeous. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Jul 13, 2024
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Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024) |
It delivers exactly what it wants to deliver. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Jul 13, 2024
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Daddio (2023) |
Given its premise and set-up (a chat between two characters in a moving car presented all but in real time), Daddio has the whiff of a stylistic exercise—one which Johnson and Penn attack with requisite self-seriousness. - AV Club
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| Posted Jun 25, 2024
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I Am: Celine Dion (2024) |
The simplicity of the documentary’s bilingual title (I Am: Celine Dion / Je Suis: Céline Dion) gets at the simple if elusive question that concerns it: Who is the Grammy-winning singer without her voice, without her stage, without her audience? - AV Club
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| Posted Jun 24, 2024
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Cora Bora (2023) |
“Cora Bora” plays like a funny, fleshed-out character portrait of a flailing young woman trying to understand why her equally abrasive and aloof demeanor are doing her no favors. - Variety
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| Posted Jun 14, 2024
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The Blue Angels (2024) |
The moments of cinematography and [their choreography] are thrilling and exciting. When the documentary lands and tries to do their day-to-day, it loses me. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Jun 08, 2024
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Thelma the Unicorn (2024) |
There was a handful of things that I enjoyed, but ultimately I thought it was empty. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Jun 08, 2024
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Gasoline Rainbow (2023) |
The movie takes off in the last third, when it comes together as a portrait of a wayward optimism that a lot of us lose. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Jun 08, 2024
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Back to Black (2024) |
It never figures out what it wants to say about Amy Winehouse. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Jun 08, 2024
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Babes (2024) |
Great physical comedy and witty one-liners throughout. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Jun 08, 2024
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IF (2024) |
A tonal misfire. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Jun 08, 2024
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Solo (2023) |
As the film’s title reminds us, at the center of Solo is the question not just of what can Glory Gore achieve as a solo performer up on stage but of what Simon can become when he stands on his own (alone, if not lonely) in his life. - AV Club
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| Posted May 29, 2024
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Backspot (2023) |
It is Jacobs’ performance that makes “Backspot” such an exciting watch, even as it hits well-known beats and otherwise expected character arcs - Variety
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| Posted May 29, 2024
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A Prince (2023) |
Creton’s vision of unruly desires in the French countryside is literate and oblique perhaps to a fault, its erotic sensibility feeling more intellectual than visceral. - Variety
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| Posted May 11, 2024
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Mother of the Bride (2024) |
As if fueled by an algorithm that’s inserting scenes that borrow from the much funnier flicks it will now sit alongside in Netflix’s many-themed rows of content, Waters’ film fails to muster any memorable set-pieces. - AV Club
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| Posted May 09, 2024
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Slow (2023) |
Playing with the genre trappings of a modern-day romance, “Slow” demands we assess what those familiar beats reveal about how it is we understand such seemingly self-evident concepts like “love,” “desire” and “commitment.” - Variety
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| Posted May 03, 2024
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Kim's Video (2023) |
There's so much here, but ultimately it's a mess and doesn't quite do justice to what I imagine Kim's Video and its legacy is supposed to have. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Apr 17, 2024
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Música (2024) |
A great calling card for Mancuso. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Apr 17, 2024
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Scoop (2024) |
Perfectly fine... [But] there's a lot of telegraphing of what we already know. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Apr 17, 2024
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Housekeeping for Beginners (2023) |
A gorgeously messy and humane portrait of a found family. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Apr 17, 2024
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Girls State (2024) |
Girls State tries to do the same thing [as Boys State], but of course it ends up being about how difficult it is to be a woman, and to be a girl that's being empowered in very condescending ways... An indictment of the American system and misogyny. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Apr 17, 2024
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The Greatest Hits (2024) |
I found it so charming and grounded as a low-fi, sci-fi rom-com. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Apr 17, 2024
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The Beast (2023) |
Both Seydoux and MacKay are fantastic... There's a lot to love here and grapple with. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Apr 17, 2024
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The First Omen (2024) |
As a horror cinema agnostic, I was entertained... A fascinating entry into what appears to now be The Omen-verse. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Apr 17, 2024
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Femme (2023) |
Within that funhouse mirror of an erotic-thriller premise, “Femme” proves to be a gorgeously mounted meditation on queer and queered performance. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Apr 17, 2024
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The People's Joker (2022) |
A trans coming-of-age tale, a probing meditation on abusive relationships and a visually inventive reminder of the queer art of camp appropriation. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Apr 16, 2024
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We Grown Now (2023) |
Baig’s latest feature further establishes itself as a gorgeous gem of a film with a distinct and engrossing sense of place. - AV Club
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| Posted Apr 16, 2024
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Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024) |
Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is a mouthful of a title. And one that’s surprisingly hard to parse out on its own, especially as it suggests more of a brand collab between those famed cinematic monsters than anything else. - AV Club
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| Posted Mar 28, 2024
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As We Speak: Rap Music on Trial (2024) |
A fascinating documentary about something that I didn't know much about. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Mar 22, 2024
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Stopmotion (2023) |
As an exercise in tension, it's very affecting. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Mar 22, 2024
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Ennio (2021) |
As a film, it felt more like a "masterclass" than a documentary... I don't know that someone who doesn't know Morricone would find [this] interesting. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Mar 22, 2024
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Io Capitano (2023) |
It really puts us in the mind space of how far would you go and how hard would your life need to be to uproot yourself. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Mar 22, 2024
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About Dry Grasses (2023) |
It's very patient storytelling, but I really enjoyed it... He's not a particularly likable character, but the movie does a great job of showing you where he's coming from. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Mar 22, 2024
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The Arc of Oblivion (2023) |
I just love that I never knew where it was exactly going to go. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Mar 22, 2024
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Ordinary Angels (2024) |
I gather that, because it was based on a true story, the script didn't feel the need to explain why any of these character motivations made any sense. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Mar 22, 2024
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Drive-Away Dolls (2024) |
They all seem to be having a great time, but I wish there was some more discipline so that the comedy would land better. - FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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| Posted Mar 22, 2024
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Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) |
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire makes for a serviceable entry in this now four-decade-running franchise. - AV Club
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| Posted Mar 20, 2024
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