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Salt Lake Tribune

Tomatometer-approved publication.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
3/4
Alien Resurrection (1997) Sean P. Means Alien Resurrection ultimately transforms the action movie the way it transforms Ripley. You may think you know what to expect -- but that's when the movie, like the new Ripley, is likely to turn and bite you.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
3.5/4
The Waterdance (1992) Terry Orme If this sounds self-righteous and loaded with pity, nothing could be further from the truth. The Waterdance speaks with wit and dark humor.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
2.5/4
Far and Away (1992) Terry Orme There's something flat and unfulfilling about Far and Away, as though Mr. Howard bit off more than he could chew.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
1.5/4
Alien 3 (1992) Terry Orme Alien 3 banks on the success of the earlier films. It has to, for it has little to offer of its own.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
Aliens (1986) Terry Orme The makers of Aliens have not done what one expects of Hollywood during these days of sequelmania. Instead of concocting a blood-and-guts ripoff, they've made a film that expands upon and complements the original.
Posted Jul 30, 2024
4/4
Twister (1996) Sean P. Means A thrill ride that engages the brain and solar plexus simultaneously. As summer movies go, Twister has the stuff to blow them all away.
Posted Jul 16, 2024
When Harry Met Sally... (1989) Terry Orme Reiner and company have come up with a wonderful concoction, a humorous, perceptive and completely engaging movie about the possibilities of love and commitment in the '80s.
Posted Jul 11, 2024
Jaws (1975) David L. Beck Jaws is an action picture that offers the simple virtue of professionalism, right down the line. This is not to be scorned: skill is what makes content work. And Jaws works.
Posted Jul 02, 2024
3/4
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 (2024) Sean P. Means What Costner puts on the screen in these first three hours is often impressive, and a reminder that … there are few filmmakers alive who intuitively understand the iconography of the Hollywood Western like he does.
Posted Jun 28, 2024
Steel Magnolias (1989) Terry Orme Steel Magnolias is a joyful, affirmative movie. It celebrates the strength of friendship.
Posted May 03, 2024
3/4
Planet of the Apes (2001) Sean P. Means The movie's title is its destiny: On this "Planet," the apes command the screen.
Posted Apr 30, 2024
Postcards From the Edge (1990) Terry Orme Fisher, who wrote the screenplay, is up to more than merely harpooning life in La La Land, although she does a thorough job of that. Postcards is about second chances about forgiving, if not forgetting.
Posted Apr 29, 2024
1/4
I Think I Do (1997) Sean P. Means A relentlessly boring comedy built on a mountain of outdated conceits.
Posted Apr 17, 2024
Spaceballs (1987) Terry Orme With his new movie Spaceballs, Mel Brooks proves that he's still the master of both sophisticated hilarity and comic overkill.
Posted Apr 12, 2024
Little Women (1994) Sean P. Means The film captures the simple joys and travails of sisterly love, of shared secrets and petty jealousies, of happy holidays and sad grieving.
Posted Apr 11, 2024
4/4
Almost Famous (2000) Sean P. Means Almost Famous reminds us of an era when we thought music could change the world. In doing so, Crowe gives us hope that movies can, too.
Posted Mar 26, 2024
3.5/4
The Shawshank Redemption (1994) Sean P. Means Part character study, part survival drama and part con game, The Shawshank Redemption is all absorbing and compelling.
Posted Mar 02, 2024
3.5/4
Forrest Gump (1994) Sean P. Means Forrest Gump takes its own sweet time getting where it wants to go. But it's a journey worth taking, with a traveling companion you'll never forget.
Posted Mar 01, 2024
4/4
Pulp Fiction (1994) Sean P. Means What writer-director Quentin Tarantino serves up in Pulp Fiction is an all-out thrill ride -- like careening through a Raymond Chandler anthology, with Robert Altman and Dennis Miller in the back seat in a '64 Mustang doing Warp 9.
Posted Feb 29, 2024
4/4
Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) Sean P. Means Four Weddings and a Funeral is a delight because it contains what the best romantic comedies have: the ring of truth.
Posted Feb 29, 2024
Dune (1984) Terry Orme By remaining faithful to the book, however, Lynch chose the more difficult row to hoe. If his film is less than successful, it's because he aimed his sights too high.
Posted Feb 15, 2024
4/4
Quiz Show (1994) Sean P. Means Quiz Show ultimately succeeds by making us care about a scandal that, by today's tabloid-traumatic standards, is nickel-and-dime stuff.
Posted Feb 13, 2024
Grease (1978) Sean P. Means What makes Grease such fun, then and now, are the musical numbers. "Summer Lovin" and the climactic "You're the One that I Want" still have bounce and energy.
Posted Feb 06, 2024
2.5/4
Ed Wood (1994) Sean P. Means What happens when a good filmmaker tries to make a great film about a terrible filmmaker. In the case of Tim Burton's Ed Wood, you get an odd and oddly unsatisfying film with occasional flourishes of brilliance.
Posted Jan 19, 2024
4/4
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) Sean P. Means The Hudsucker Proxy will have people saying "they don't make 'em like that anymore." Of course, with the Coens' simultaneously sage and silly vision, they never made 'em like that to begin with. The Hudsucker Proxy is a singularly spectacular film.
Posted Jan 18, 2024
3/4
Heat (1995) Sean P. Means Cops and robbers have seldom been as stylish, as engrossing or as long as Heat.
Posted Dec 20, 2023
Birdy (1984) Terry Orme Director Parker does a masterful job of letting us see inside Birdy's head, and Cage, as Al, is the tool he uses.
Posted Dec 16, 2023
3/4
The Last of the Mohicans (1992) Terry Orme It feels like a roller-coaster adventure barreling through early American history. It is exciting and beautiful to watch, but the characters of Hawkeye and Cora get short shrift.
Posted Dec 14, 2023
Home Alone (1990) Terry Orme The film bombards us with gag and gimmicks. It's fun escapism, but not emotionally engaging.
Posted Nov 29, 2023
Cocoon (1985) Terry Orme It's a rarity these days to see a movie about people over 60, and this talented cast takes the opportunity and runs with it.
Posted Nov 12, 2023
3/4
Smoke Signals (1998) Sean P. Means Alexie draws on the sharp observational humor found in his short stories (he incorporated four tales from his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven into the screenplay).
Posted Nov 08, 2023
3.5/4
Atanarjuat the Fast Runner (2001) Sean P. Means With its juxtaposition of day-to-day events and epic storytelling, the movie makes this culture seem both ancient and vibrantly current.
Posted Nov 08, 2023
Goodfellas (1990) Terry Orme [Martin Scorsese] has constructed a perceptively human drama. Based on a true story, GoodFellas has the immediacy and force of life itself.
Posted Oct 18, 2023
Lost Souls (2000) Sean P. Means Lost Souls is a plodding and obvious movie, undermining its own tension as surely as The Exorcist builds it.
Posted Sep 28, 2023
The Exorcist (1973) Sean P. Means Director William Friedkin builds up the overlapping stories so slowly and deliberately that one might mistake this for a dramatic character study rather than a goose-pimpled thriller. But the goose pimples form anyway.
Posted Sep 28, 2023
4/4
Lone Star (1996) Sean P. Means There isn't a bad performance in the crowd, thanks partly to insistence on investing even the smallest part with a rich biography.
Posted Sep 06, 2023
4/4
Traffic (2000) Sean P. Means Traffic sometimes preaches, but it scarcely needs to. Its clear-eyed look at the failure of American drug policy, of a system that helps those it aims to harm and vice versa, is indictment enough.
Posted Sep 06, 2023
3/4
Selena (1997) Sean P. Means Taken as the airbrushed Hollywood portrait that it is, Selena is a movie with everything going for it -- a rags-to-riches story with romance, family togetherness and ethnic identity, bolstered by a solid central performance by Jennifer Lopez.
Posted Sep 05, 2023
4/4
Moulin Rouge (2001) Sean P. Means It takes a big cinematic appetite to enjoy a magnificent gumbo of movie styles -- old-fashioned musical, techno-rave rock show, open-eyed romance, slapstick farce, tragic drama -- in a gorgeous spectacle that moves at speed.
Posted Sep 05, 2023
3.5/4
When a Man Loves a Woman (1994) Sean P. Means With its dark themes of addiction and recovery, When a Man Loves a Woman is no walk in the park. But its strength, and its message of love through adversity, will move you as few movies will.
Posted Sep 01, 2023
2.5/4
White Men Can't Jump (1992) Terry Orme Although the movie does not reach the heights of Bull Durham, it is saved by the chemistry of its leads.
Posted Aug 31, 2023
Moscow on the Hudson (1984) Terry Orme The supporting cast adds energy and life to this colorful story. Particularly good are Maria Conchita Alonso and Cleavant Derricks as the people who take Vladimir under their wings and share what meager possessions they have with him.
Posted Aug 21, 2023
3.5/4
Hard-Boiled (1992) Sean P. Means Woo's treatment of these action sequences is masterful, combining quick-cut editing with fluid tracking shots. But all that style would be useless without Chow Yun-Fat's soulful performance to humanize it.
Posted Jul 27, 2023
Batman (1989) Terry Orme All the incredible sets and effects can't mask a half-baked story. The atmosphere is dazzling; the narrative, which sometimes lurches along, is forgettable.
Posted Jul 25, 2023
3/4
La Haine (1995) Sean P. Means Harsh and powerful stuff, one of the darkest tales ever told of the City of Light.
Posted Jul 19, 2023
2.5/4
In the Mood for Love (2000) Sean P. Means Wong casts a hypnotic spell in In the Mood for Love, but it's a spell that even he can't keep intact forever. The movie's final half-hour becomes rather diffuse.
Posted Jul 15, 2023
3.5/4
Magnolia (1999) Sean P. Means Magnolia is far from being a perfect movie. Good thing, too, because perfect is boring.
Posted Jul 14, 2023
3/4
The Matrix (1999) Sean P. Means Any description of this smart futuristic thriller is inadequate in conveying the striking visual wonders within.
Posted Jul 11, 2023
3/4
Armageddon (1998) Sean P. Means Armageddon delivers the goods for an action-starved audience. It just doesn't deliver any surprises.
Posted Jun 21, 2023
2.5/4
Patriot Games (1992) Terry Orme Directed by Australian Phillip Noyce, Patriot Games has flashes of brilliance and stretches of pedestrian predictability. The violet set-pieces are visceral stunners.
Posted Jun 06, 2023
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