Eugene Novikov Movie Reviews & Previews

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Eugene Novikov

""Remember, you still have two out of three branches of government working for you and that ain't bad." --Mars Attacks!"

Agrees with the Tomatometer 69% of the time.

Publications:: AMCtv.com , Cinematical , eFilmCritic.com , Film Blather , rec.arts.movies.reviews
Critics' Group:: Online Film Critics Society

Total Reviews:: 1544
Total QuickRatings:: 9

Location:: Newtown, Pennsylvania

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 1544

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
C+	17%	The Lords of Salem (2013)	" One alluring thing about Zombie is that it's hard to know how much of all this is a put-on. I spent a lot of time squinting at it, which is more fun than being bored." — Film Blather Posted Mar 13, 2013
A	94%	Mud (2013)	" So good - so incredibly good; a classic in the making - that I promise you won't miss the metaphor and abstraction of 'Take Shelter'." — Film Blather Posted Mar 10, 2013
B	80%	Haunter ()	" The biggest pleasures here come from how thought-through and rigorous this weird little universe is; how Natali and King commit fully to their story and follow it through to a satisfying conclusion." — Film Blather Posted Mar 10, 2013
B	73%	Prince Avalanche ()	" David Gordon Green seems to have found a happy medium between the laid-back sincerity of his earlier work and the puerile stoner comedy he's favored since 'Pineapple Express'." — Film Blather Posted Mar 10, 2013
B	——	Cheap Thrills ()	" There's no big twist here, but the film's sustained thoughtfulness is as surprising as any plot development." — Film Blather Posted Mar 9, 2013
B-	76%	Evil Dead (2013)	" It's a tremendous technical achievement." — Film Blather Posted Mar 9, 2013
C+	38%	The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)	" Even when this lovably half-baked effort really started to whiff, I couldn't bring myself to be too annoyed." — Film Blather Posted Mar 9, 2013
C	56%	Snitch (2013)	" The bulk of 'Snitch' is a lumbering drag, a sanitized PG-13 rendition of a season of 'The Wire' that feels rushed even as it refuses to end." — Film Blather Posted Feb 21, 2013
B-	45%	Beautiful Creatures (2013)	" It's 'Twilight' with the sexes reversed, yes, but if 'Beautiful Creatures' becomes a four-sequel, screaming-tween-assault phenomenon I'll at least be able to understand it, if not quite buy in." — Film Blather Posted Feb 13, 2013
A-	——	2-Headed Shark Attack (2012)	— Film Blather Posted Jan 22, 2013
C	65%	Mama (2013)	" Muschietti doesn't have the chops to sustain tension once he ditches the parts of his story that are conceptually intriguing. Once the film becomes a conventional horror show, it deflates fast." — Film Blather Posted Jan 17, 2013
C	43%	On the Road (2012)	" The protagonists' aimless drug- and sex-fuelled adventures have neither a seductive pull nor the weight of tragedy. They're just grimy and a little boring." — Film Blather Posted Jan 12, 2013
B	65%	The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)	" One possibility is that the main thing to recommend the film is nostalgia. But so be it." — Film Blather Posted Dec 13, 2012
C	37%	Hyde Park on Hudson (2012)	" An aimless, mind-numbing prestige picture with uneasy undertones it seems desperate to deny." — Film Blather Posted Dec 8, 2012
D+	74%	Rise of the Guardians (2012)	" A dumb, blandly sloganeering love letter to blind faith and willful denial." — Film Blather Posted Nov 20, 2012
C	88%	Life of Pi (2012)	" Built around a revelation and thematic punchline that is such specious nonsense that nothing else it says or does or shows us really matters." — Film Blather Posted Nov 20, 2012
B+	89%	Lincoln (2012)	" A studied and stunningly wonky meditation on compromise." — Film Blather Posted Nov 8, 2012
C	94%	The Sessions (2012)	" The movie methodically punts each time it comes across anything interesting." — Film Blather Posted Oct 19, 2012
B-	63%	Sinister (2012)	" A well-engineered scare machine, as the people sitting next to me at the screening can attest; at a certain level, one is hard-pressed to argue with soiled underpants." — Film Blather Posted Oct 12, 2012
A	93%	Looper (2012)	" The most robust pure sci-fi in years - tighter and more fun than even 'Inception', if not as dizzyingly ambitious in its engineering." — Film Blather Posted Sep 28, 2012
D+	51%	Trouble with the Curve (2012)	" Schematic and beyond stupid, mindlessly lionizing the geezers that 'Moneyball' spent two hours justly laughing at. It's an embarrassment." — Film Blather Posted Sep 20, 2012
B	85%	The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)	" Feels warm and genuinely affectionate in a way that's impossible to manufacture. You've seen this story before, but maybe not populated with personalities this fully realized and alive." — Film Blather Posted Sep 20, 2012
C+	78%	Dredd (2012)	" What 'Dredd' feints at, before retreating to action flick convention, is the first real successor to Alex Proyas' 'Dark City'." — Film Blather Posted Sep 20, 2012
B	81%	Rust and Bone (2012)	" So enthrallingly bizarre that despite a penchant for aggressively taking notes on festival films I managed to jot down almost nothing over its 2+ hour running time." — Film Blather Posted Sep 6, 2012
C-	69%	The Iceman (2013)	" A drab, remedial gangster film." — Film Blather Posted Sep 2, 2012
B-	89%	A Royal Affair (2012)	" Features Mads Mikkelsen in the most straightforwardly positive role I've ever seen him in, and he turns out to have an expressive impassiveness to rival Ryan Gosling's." — Film Blather Posted Sep 1, 2012
B	93%	No (2013)	" A fascinating exercise in historical fill-in-the-blanks." — Film Blather Posted Sep 1, 2012
B	96%	Argo (2012)	" An intelligent, expertly-made thriller with glimmers of the extraordinary." — Film Blather Posted Sep 1, 2012
B-	76%	Premium Rush (2012)	" May be my favorite New York movie since Raimi's 'Spider-Man'. " — Film Blather Posted Aug 23, 2012
B	56%	The Bourne Legacy (2012)	" If the overarching story is silly, on the ground Gilroy's approach is the opposite: brainy and logistics-obsessed." — Film Blather Posted Aug 9, 2012
B+	——	Chonmage purin (A Boy and His Samurai) (2010)	" But while the American version of this story might have involved Kevin James and a lot of farting, this justly acclaimed Japanese family film is magical and totally unexpected." — Film Blather Posted Jul 27, 2012
B-	93%	Sleep Tight (2012)	" Suspenseful stuff, filmed with a lush, old-fashioned professionalism, occasionally leavened with some gallows humor. " — Film Blather Posted Jul 27, 2012
B	29%	Red Lights (2012)	" If you care at all about intelligent genre cinema that doesn't paint by numbers, you've got to buy a ticket to 'Red Lights', warts and all." — Film Blather Posted Jul 25, 2012
B	79%	Ruby Sparks (2012)	" This isn't some Michel Gondry magical-realist doodle: Calvin's fictional dream girl damn well really comes to life, with all the astonishment and potential institutionalization that entails." — Film Blather Posted Jul 25, 2012
B-	67%	Trishna (2012)	" A nice inversion of the star-cross'd lovers trope." — Film Blather Posted Jul 19, 2012
B+	87%	The Dark Knight Rises (2012)	" Though 'The Dark Knight' may be the better, shrewder film, its sequel improbably turns out to be more personal" — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jul 19, 2012
C+	51%	Savages (2012)	" 'Savages' falls apart, but it falls apart with a certain integrity - I think that Stone made more or less exactly the movie he wanted. I have a grudging respect for it." — Film Blather Posted Jul 5, 2012
C	73%	The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)	" It's not that 'The Amazing Spider-Man' is unnecessary, it's that it sucks - a pale, hollow imitation of a transcendent superhero trilogy. " — Film Blather Posted Jul 5, 2012
B	80%	Magic Mike (2012)	" The unease builds imperceptibly, until what seemed ecstatic and liberating early in the film becomes profoundly disquieting. The precision with which Soderbergh executes this shift is astounding." — Film Blather Posted Jun 29, 2012
B-	78%	Brave (2012)	" 'Brave' has a lot to recommend it - but there are a few things missing from its mix of playful comedy and sappy testament to family ties. " — Film Blather Posted Jun 22, 2012
C+	55%	Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)	" Sweet and droll and kind of inert." — Film Blather Posted Jun 21, 2012
B+	94%	Moonrise Kingdom (2012)	" 'Moonrise Kingdom' made a believer out of a long-time naysayer, and that's really something." — Film Blather Posted May 24, 2012
B	34%	Battleship (2012)	" I had considerably more fun watching Berg destroy Michael Bay at his own game than watching Joss Whedon try to please everyone in the universe with 'The Avengers.'" — Film Blather Posted May 19, 2012
C+	58%	The Dictator (2012)	" The Dictator having been stripped of the attention-grabbing reality-show dimension of its predecessors, we are left wondering just what it is that this gifted comic is trying to express." — Film Blather Posted May 15, 2012
A-	59%	Fightville (2012)	" An exhilarating sports documentary and a levelheaded, piercingly intelligent treatment of a touchy subject. " — Cinematical Posted Apr 24, 2012
D+	20%	The Lucky One (2012)	" Nicholas Sparks destroys everything." — Film Blather Posted Apr 19, 2012
B	92%	The Cabin in the Woods (2012)	" Toes the line between parody and deconstruction, but it transcends its subject matter rather than just subverting or co-opting it. " — Film Blather Posted Apr 15, 2012
D	44%	American Reunion (2012)	" Maybe most distressing is how retrograde the film feels. 'American Wedding' had the lovely scene where Stifler does a dance-off at a gay bar. 'American Reunion' is wall-to-wall gay panic jokes." — Film Blather Posted Apr 5, 2012
C	50%	Mirror Mirror (2012)	" This isn't exactly a new vision of 'Snow White.' It's more like a disorganized, ineffectual riff." — Film Blather Posted Mar 29, 2012

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