Jonathan Rosenbaum

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Chicago Reader
For 1,935 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 42% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 56% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 4.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Jonathan Rosenbaum's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 Breathless
Lowest review score: 0 Bad Boys
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 961 out of 1935
  2. Mixed: 744 out of 1935
  3. Negative: 230 out of 1935
1935 movie reviews
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    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Flags of Our Fathers
    It's a noble undertaking, and Eastwood is stylistically bold enough to create a view of combat based mainly on images that are clearly manufactured. (As with "Saving Private Ryan," the movie's principal source is "The Big Red One," whose director, Samuel Fuller, actually experienced the war.) But this is underimagined and so thesis ridden that it's nearly over before it starts.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Bright Leaves
    One reason Bright Leaves is McElwee's best film since "Sherman's March" is the richness of his reflections on this multifaceted material.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    The Winslow Boy
    He doesn't lose his stylistic identity either: in addition to the very Mamet-like delivery of unfinished sentences, his command of rhythm and flow remains flawless throughout.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Before Sunrise
    Richard Linklater goes Hollywood (1995) -- triumphantly and with an overall intelligence, sweetness, and romantic simplicity that reminds me of wartime weepies like The Clock.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Look at Me
    The French title is Comme une image ("like an image"), but Tennessee Williams's phrase "the catastrophe of success" seems more appropriate.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Lone Star
    The whole thing's so worthy that I wish I liked it more. It makes time pass agreeably, but Square John still seems about as innocent of fresh ideas (aesthetically and otherwise) as most of his characters, and for this kind of leftist multiplot I found his "City of Hope" more engaging.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    The Five Obstructions
    In short, it's amusing only if you agree not to think very much about it.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Wings of Desire
    The conceit gets a little out of hand after one of the angels falls in love with the trapeze artist and decides to become human; but prior to this, Wings of Desire is one of Wenders's most stunning achievements.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    After Life
    Though it comes across as labored in spots, it also yields a good many beautiful and suggestive moments, and an overall film experience of striking originality.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 88 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    The Gunfighter
    One of the earliest and best antiwesterns, made before the subgenre became self-conscious about critiquing the standard myths. Some that followed are merely contrary; this has the ring of truth.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Control Room
    Shot during the March 2003 invasion and the early stages of the American occupation, it tells us more about how the channel decides what to report than we probably know about most American newscasts.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    The People vs. Larry Flynt
    Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski's script may in spots be as much of a skim job as their one for "Ed Wood," but it's almost as sweet and as likable, and if the movie can't ever practice what it and its hillbilly hero preach--the only "beaver" shot in the movie involves a corpse--its heart is certainly in the right place.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Phantom
    Reminded me most of Jean Genet's "Un chant d'amour," with bondage and latex replacing incarceration and cigarettes. This is not to say that it's equally good or poetic, but the eroticizing of a whole universe is no less apparent.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Number 17
    Most of the film is set in an abandoned house, where enjoyably murky intrigues abound, and the last ten minutes feature a chase sequence with miniatures that is almost as much fun.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Ju Dou
    Visually stunning, with ravishing uses of color and beautifully modulated lap dissolves, Ju Dou may not be the most formally striking Chinese film I’ve seen...but it certainly is the most effective and dramatic in terms of commercial moviemaking, both as spectacle and as story telling.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Pat and Mike
    One of the better Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn comedies—not so much for the screenplay by Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, which lacks the bite and sophistication of Adam's Rib, as for the relaxed and graceful interplay of the stars.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Thieves
    An exquisite, haunting movie for grown-ups about love and family ties.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Underground
    However one chooses to take its jaundiced view of history, it's probably the best film to date by the talented Kusturica (Time of the Gypsies, Arizona Dream), a triumph of mise en scene mated to a comic vision that keeps topping its own hyperbole.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport
    To my taste, the only serious drawback to this absorbing film is Harris's unimaginative adherence to documentary convention, which obliges him to "illustrate" the voice-overs even when the material matches the narratives only in fictional terms.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Affliction
    A brave effort to stare down the specter of American failure, it gets off on the wrong foot by pretentiously turning the doomed hero into a Christ figure--a traffic cop with arms extended in crucifixion mode--before the story even gets started.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Chats perchés
    I can't think of a better portrait of contemporary Paris or the zeitgeist of 2001-'04 than Chris Marker's wise and whimsical 58-minute 2004 video...no one can film people in the street better than Marker or combine images with more grace and finesse.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    High Heels
    Those who miss the wildness of his premainstream work will probably be only partially appeased.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Keane
    Kerrigan returns with his best work to date, at least in terms of narrative drive and suspense.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Va Savoir (Who Knows?)
    Lacks the scariness, the mystery, and even much of the curiosity of Rivette's better work.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Zodiac
    In some ways, for better and for worse, this is even more about Graysmith (Jake Gyllehaal)--who became obsessed with solving the Zodiac killings that terrorized northern California in the late 60s--than about the murderer.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    The Thin Blue Line
    The larger considerations and film noir overtones detract too much from the facts of the case, and what emerges are two effective half-films, each partially at odds with the other.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Brand Upon the Brain!
    Enhanced by Jason Staczek's superb score, this is characteristically intense and, unlike most of Maddin's silent-movie models, frenetically edited.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Run Lola Run
    About as entertaining as a no-brainer can be--a lot more fun, for my money, than a cornball theme-park ride like "Speed," and every bit as fast moving. But don't expect much of an aftertaste.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Bird
    Clint Eastwood's ambitious 1988 feature about the great Charlie Parker (Forest Whitaker) is the most serious, conscientious, and accomplished jazz biopic ever made, and almost certainly Eastwood's best picture as well.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Jonathan Rosenbaum
    Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
    This is a fascinating and easy-to-take set of musings on a fascinating artist.
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