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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Sansón and Me (2022) |
...it’s still an exceptionally vivid capture of how the system (on either side of our southern border) seems to ensure some lives prosper, while others are deemed throwaways. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 20, 2023
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The Virgin Suicides (1999) |
Sofia Coppola’s first (and still best) feature... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 20, 2023
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The Love Witch (2016) |
Anna Biller’s campy retro-exploitation homage... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 20, 2023
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Born in Flames (1983) |
A landmark in the fertile U.S. independent landscape of the 1980s... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 20, 2023
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My Sister, My Love (1978) |
Imperfect but strikingly memorable in many ways... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 16, 2023
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Hard Times (1975) |
So often a monolithic actor in mediocre films, Bronson’s beady-eyed smirk in this context acquires a droll dignity suggesting graduation from the school of million hard knocks, and every supporting role is colorfully filled. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 16, 2023
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Money Shot: The Pornhub Story (2023) |
Money Shot’s 94 minutes tell a very complicated, fast-paced, somewhat confusing story with only a side-serving of titillation—this is ultimately all about the serpentine mechanizations of business, and politics. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 16, 2023
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Tropical Malady (2004) |
Indeed, that magically strange mix of implied romantic attraction between two men and mystic happenings in a jungle—with only minimal connection between the two elements—may remain his most indelible achievement... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 15, 2023
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Salvation! (1987) |
[A] narrative feature that variously parodies televangelism... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 15, 2023
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Two Small Bodies (1993) |
[It] probes institutionalized gender power dynamics... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 15, 2023
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Linoleum (2022) |
Mixing the seemingly sweet with the dyspeptically sour—albeit more in a Donnie Darko kinda way, minus the vague undercurrent of horror—is Colin West’s sophomore feature, an intriguingly offbeat seriocomedy on the edge of fantasy... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 15, 2023
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I Like Bats (1986) |
I Like Bats uses lurid genre elements in a primarily comedic way - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 15, 2023
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Bloody Hell (2023) |
While imperfect, “Bloody Hell” does entertainingly offer food for thought via an important overall point made in non-preachy form... - Variety
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| Posted Mar 15, 2023
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Appendage (2023) |
Despite the grotesque premise, its attack is a little too blunt to make much impact, whether taken as thinly-veiled satire or straight fantasy thriller. - Variety
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| Posted Mar 12, 2023
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Punch (2022) |
It’s got that particular grating quality of a filmmaker trying to cram every idea and flourish into a magnum opus—as if they might never get the chance again—only to underline the material’s superficiality by overplaying it. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 10, 2023
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Lonesome (2022) |
Lonesome has a honed aesthetic that’s impressive without being self-conscious, and the performers are likewise attractive yet always thoughtful in expressing their roles’ inner conflicts. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 10, 2023
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Hide and Seek (1997) |
[Hide and Seek] takes various tacts to mix the political and the very personal. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 10, 2023
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Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (1977) |
Because almost nothing like it had existed before, it provided the first time many viewers had seen people recognizably like themselves onscreen. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 10, 2023
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Parting Glances (1986) |
One of the first movies to dramatize the AIDS era. While the Manhattan-set story’s focus is on a gay couple on the verge of breakup, the film is pretty much stolen whole by Steve Buscemi’s breakout turn... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 10, 2023
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Children of the Corn (2023) |
None of this makes much sense, and by all rights ought to be an unintentional-comedy bonanza. Yet its almost unbelievable awfulness is somehow more painful than fun. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 03, 2023
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Blueback (2022) |
A pleasant watch, with plenty of spectacular underwater photography and some good performances, especially from Mitchell. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 03, 2023
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Split at the Root (2022) |
The focus here is on a few representative cases, the frequently dismaying institutional challenges they face, and the dogged support offered by IFT personnel. The latter certainly prove that it is still possible to “make a difference..." - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 03, 2023
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The Quiet Girl (2022) |
The Quiet Girl is quietly heartbreaking, because it withholds almost all the usual sentimental pandering... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 03, 2023
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Ithaka (2021) |
Ithaka does make a strong argument for the notion that he’s being targeted precisely to nail shut any future leakage of inconvenient government secrets… never mind those pesky First Amendment protections. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 03, 2023
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Spoonful of Sugar (2022) |
It’s an interesting, accomplished attempt at something… I just couldn’t tell you what. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 03, 2023
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Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher (2005) |
This ingratiating movie exemplifies much of what’s attractive about Christianity, yet what it omits simultaneously underlines the kind of selective hypocrisy that continues to erode faith in its institutions. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 03, 2023
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Jesus Revolution (2023) |
...appealing in its relative non-preachiness, nostalgic tenor, and for its reminder that the New Testament’s Jesus was an inclusive, giving, forgiving type... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 03, 2023
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Cocaine Bear (2023) |
This movie isn’t bad, but its title will retain golden pop-culture-reference status long after everyone has forgotten the details of these 95 passably-amusing minutes. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Mar 03, 2023
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The Year Between (2022) |
Achieves a degree of poignancy and depth within a distinctive sensibility you might call Midwestern Sardonic. - Variety
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| Posted Mar 02, 2023
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Only in Theaters (2022) |
There’s plenty of familiar yak about the magic of the big screen and the communal moviegoing experience. But there’s not enough here that’s interestingly specific enough to justify 93 minutes, when 10 or 20 would have done just fine... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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Other People's Children (2022) |
A somewhat lighter if still bittersweet note. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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Shttl (2022) |
As such communities have long since been eradicated from the region, the filmmakers constructed an elaborate shetl set... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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The Forger (2022) |
The antic, caper-ish tone can feel a bit incongruous given the life-or-death stakes, but this slick film’s fadeout does bring the horrors of the Holocaust home. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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Do I Need This? (2022) |
A humorous meditation on materialism from hoarding to Marie Kondo-style ascetism... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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A House Made of Splinters (2022) |
Crafted if sometimes wrenching look at... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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The First Fallen (2021) |
Given the degree to which that era—indelible to those who lived through it—has largely vanished from awareness for younger generations, The First Fallen still provides a vivid microcosmic history lesson. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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Magoado (2023) |
There is something beguiling about its combination of storytelling simplicity and retro travelogue-like pictorial appeal, recalling neorealist films of yore. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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Nostalgia (2022) |
Weaving in flashbacks to the protagonists’ teen years in the 1970s, Martone’s film hovers between crime thriller and character drama—both its hero and the viewer aren’t sure just which way it’s ultimately gonna fall until the final scene. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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Free Tibet (1998) |
It had a pretty awesome, uber-Nineties lineup... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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Wattstax (1973) |
It’s a memorable display of African-American pride—and extravagant 1970s sartorial style—that also makes room for such leading Black cultural figures of the moment as Richard Pryor, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee and Melvin Van Peeble... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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The Elephant 6 Recording Co. (2022) |
A definitive screen history to date of the collective that put the psychedelic twee back in rock-pop... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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CB4 (1993) |
This freewheeling satire is uneven but always entertaining, and frequently hilarious. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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Der Fan (1982) |
Der Fan maintains icy decorum even when it moves into horror territory. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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Jesus Revolution (2023) |
One of the most appealing faith-based big-screen entertainments in a while, polished and persuasive without getting too preachy. - Variety
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| Posted Feb 23, 2023
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Marlowe (2022) |
All these things would be OK if they worked. But the anachronisms and eventual near-complete abandonment of the novel’s storytelling never feel purposeful so much as arbitrary... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 16, 2023
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The Wounded Man (1983) |
Increasingly obsessive desire runs headlong into “mixed signals” to a maddening degree, in one of the medium’s great, tortured portraits of sexual frustration. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 16, 2023
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The Integrity of Joseph Chambers (2022) |
This isn’t a bad movie, per se, and I might even have considered it a stylistically daring, fairly-good one if made by other filmmakers. But it’s a big letdown coming from this crew. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 16, 2023
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Godland (2022) |
This 143-minute minimalist epic has a hypnotic otherness that carries you through its sometimes mystifying perspective on a none-too-sympathetic protagonist. - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 16, 2023
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Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023) |
A rock-bottom joint that fails to meet even the most basic expectations set up by its conceptual gimmick. - Variety
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| Posted Feb 16, 2023
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Orchestrator of Storms: The Fantastique World of Jean Rollin (2022) |
...odd, sometimes tedious, sometimes hypnotic screen ouevre... - 48 Hills
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| Posted Feb 16, 2023
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