Barry Hertz
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) |
Far too often, especially during the film’s first 90 minutes, the action pauses for stiff, semi-serious scenes unpacking the underworld arcana that the first three films built up with increasing ponderousness. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Mar 21, 2023
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You Can Live Forever (2022) |
For all its aches and pains, the heart of You Can Live Forever doesn’t so much beat as skip, haltingly and disconcertingly, as it tries to keep its own lifeblood pumping. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Mar 20, 2023
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Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023) |
The experience of watching this new Shazam! is akin to watching an exceptionally wealthy but ultimately sweet and innocent child smash their toys together for 130 minutes. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Mar 16, 2023
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Riceboy Sleeps (2022) |
This is a tender, ambitious, meticulous and deeply empathetic work. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Mar 15, 2023
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Tenzin (2023) |
Toronto’s Little Tibet deserves its big moment in the spotlight. But Tenzin’s glow is ultimately too dim, flickering on and off until it simply fades. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Mar 15, 2023
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Brother (2022) |
The spirit of what Scarborough represents – for Chariandy, and for Clement – is undoubtedly present in every lovingly composed frame of Brother. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Mar 14, 2023
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Scream VI (2023) |
Scream VI doesn’t reinvent the blade – though for a hot minute it half-convinces itself that it has done just that – but it does deliver the goods, quickly and efficiently and oh-so-sharply. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Mar 08, 2023
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Inside (2023) |
Dafoe is captivating as always, but not even his slinking, slippery presence can save the film from turning into a rather torturous endurance test. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Mar 06, 2023
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Creed III (2023) |
Creed III tells a story that takes the best parts of the Rocky franchise and blends them into a sort of rock-’em-sock-’em comfort food, so fighting-form slick it slides down your gullet like a raw-egg smoothie. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Mar 02, 2023
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Return to Seoul (2022) |
One of the more exciting, invigorating dramas to come along so far this year. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Mar 01, 2023
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Queens of the Qing Dynasty (2022) |
Both the most unexpected and perfect follow-up that any fan of Ashley McKenzie, one of this country’s most exciting filmmakers, could possibly anticipate. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Feb 28, 2023
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We Have a Ghost (2023) |
We Have a Ghost is a desperate mix of feel-good sentimentality, watered-down surreality, and comedy as transparent in its hackiness as the film’s title spook. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Feb 24, 2023
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BlackBerry (2023) |
A riotous, fiery kind of comedy whose subterfuge is so subtly stage-managed that you don’t see the cans of gas fuelling the flames higher and higher. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Feb 18, 2023
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Sharper (2023) |
Caron’s feature debut has the look and feel of a classic con movie. But not the cold, calculating soul. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Feb 15, 2023
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Marlowe (2022) |
A detective movie so pulpy that it will make you choke. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Feb 14, 2023
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Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania (2023) |
Both a dispiriting reminder that the MCU has abandoned wit and that even the most clever and idiosyncratic of filmmakers can be steamrolled by the unstoppable obligations of corporate storytelling. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Feb 14, 2023
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Knock at the Cabin (2023) |
Shyamalan’s sensibilities are given a boost, in all the right ways, by his decision to join forces here with Dave Bautista. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Feb 02, 2023
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Alice, Darling (2022) |
Alice, Darling does so much right that it is acutely painful when it goes wrong. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Jan 30, 2023
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Infinity Pool (2023) |
The entire thing swallows you whole. There is no more delightful way to drown. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Jan 26, 2023
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You People (2023) |
The familiar and facile elements are drowned out – often, and loudly – by the impeccable comedic talents of Hill and Murphy, two performers whose very different styles clash and complement one another. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Jan 25, 2023
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Saint Omer (2022) |
Diop’s film revels in the enigmatic power of uncertainty. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Jan 16, 2023
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Living (2022) |
[It] should not work. Yet it does, ultimately, thanks to the magnificent talents of its leading man, Bill Nighy. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Jan 16, 2023
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Door Mouse (2022) |
A series of motions, bumps, swerves, dodges and turns, all deployed for a journey to nowhere special. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Jan 12, 2023
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Plane (2023) |
It is all such gloriously smart stupidity that you cannot help but applaud everyone involved for sticking the landing. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Jan 11, 2023
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A Man Called Otto (2022) |
It becomes depressingly clear that A Man Called Otto will unfold exactly as you suspect, with no surprises (let alone effort) necessary. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Jan 03, 2023
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Broker (2022) |
Song offers Kore-eda a slippery presence that keeps the rest of the film on its toes. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Dec 26, 2022
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No Bears (2022) |
If watching a Jafar Panahi film is something of a political act, then it is also a soul-nourishing one. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Dec 22, 2022
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The Whale (2022) |
The Whale is not a cruel spectacle – it is just a dull, repetitive one. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Dec 21, 2022
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Babylon (2022) |
Yes, Babylon is, as its title more than hints at, A LOT. And I loved nearly every one of its unbelievable 188 minutes. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Dec 19, 2022
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Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) |
The Way of Water is the kind of tremendously entertaining, spectacularly ambitious, not-a-little-bit-silly epic that only James Cameron can, and should, make. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Dec 15, 2022
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Palm Trees and Power Lines (2022) |
Dack’s film refuses to offer tidy answers, pushing the story into uncomfortable places that feel genuine and boundary-challenging. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Dec 13, 2022
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Confess, Fletch (2022) |
One of the year’s best comedies... - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Dec 13, 2022
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Happening (2021) |
A film of international importance, told with empathy, sincerity and anger. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Dec 13, 2022
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Geographies of Solitude (2022) |
Poetic and ultimately powerful... - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Dec 12, 2022
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Emancipation (2022) |
The film constantly shifts its aim from moment to moment, with only one Smith’s presence left to anchor the goings on at any one given second. But that is a mighty impressive presence to have. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Dec 08, 2022
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Framing Agnes (2022) |
With only Garfinkel’s archives to go on, Drucker is able to give a sly, necessarily mysterious air to Agnes’s life. And, yes: the format is quite fun to watch, too. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Dec 07, 2022
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Empire of Light (2022) |
There is a certain odour wafting out of writer-director Sam Mendes’s Empire of Light that approximates the stomach-churning scent of scalding, rancid butter ladled atop stale popcorn. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Dec 05, 2022
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White Noise (2022) |
[An] ambitious, thrilling and necessarily messy adaptation... - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Nov 30, 2022
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All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022) |
I imagine, and perhaps hope, that Poitras and Goldin may never collaborate again. But we should be grateful that their art, and their activism, were brought together this one time. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Nov 29, 2022
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Bones and All (2022) |
Bones and All is beautiful and unhinged all in the same bite. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Nov 23, 2022
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The Fabelmans (2022) |
The Fabelmans did not touch my heart, and it did not touch my mind. It only poked me in the eye, and kicked me in the shins. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Nov 23, 2022
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Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022) |
One of the purest pop pleasures of the season, the kind of irresistible crowd-pleaser that balances its franchise obligations with a clear sense of wit and creative purpose. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Nov 22, 2022
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Strange World (2022) |
The promises of Strange World are almost as big as its disappointments. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Nov 21, 2022
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The Menu (2022) |
An eat-the-rich satire that would go rotten without its supremely overqualified cast, The Menu is as much fun as it is ephemeral. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Nov 16, 2022
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Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022) |
Is success a burden? Can you be both professionally accomplished and personally fulfilled? To have such problems is, according to Bardo, an immeasurably profound dilemma. This is swaggery storytelling that screams me me me. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Nov 15, 2022
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Holy Spider (2022) |
At once exploitative and contemplative, thrilling and disgusting, the film makes a bloody mess of itself before coming close to solving its own case. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Nov 15, 2022
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Sugar (2022) |
Set aside the fact that Sugar’s screenplay is filled with holes, that its characters are as loathsome as they are thinly sketched... and we are still left with a movie that is barely competent on a technical level. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Nov 14, 2022
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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) |
This might not all be so deflating if Wakanda Forever worked, simply, as an action spectacle. But very little here pops. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Nov 08, 2022
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My Policeman (2022) |
There are enough secrets, lies and tepidly chaste sex scenes – both of the straight and same-sex variety – to fill a hundred kitchen sinks. But the resulting drama is all drips and drops, no deluge. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Nov 01, 2022
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Armageddon Time (2022) |
[Gray] has never made a film so deeply personal, so intentionally and uncomfortably autobiographical, as his wonderful new movie, Armageddon Time. - Globe and Mail
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| Posted Nov 01, 2022
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