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Akiva Gottlieb

Akiva Gottlieb's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at Tomatometer-approved publication(s).
Biography:

In late 1998, I found myself to be a nervous wreck in the wonderful city of Los Angeles. I would go to the cinema twice or so a week, (usually) wasting money, skipping homework and having to put up with my parents' doubts. I desperately needed to convey my emotions! But I couldn't, so I became a film critic instead. I gave myself a reason to see what is now 3 or 4 films per week. Critics like Michael Dequina helped me move up the ranks, and in January 2000 I started a website called Picture Show (http://pictureshow.8m.com), which I share with 3 other wonderful young critics. I also am entertainment editor and resident film critic at L.A. publication Boiling Point. I love to write, but my real aspiration is filmmaking. I am currently directing a short film called "Yellow Brick Road", starring Robert Coppola Schwartzman ("Virgin Suicides"), Max Goldblatt ("My Giant") and fellow OFCS-member Michael Dequina. I am honored to be in the OFCS.

Favorites:

Top 11 of 1999 (in no particular order)- American Beauty, The Insider, Magnolia, Run Lola Run, Fight Club, Three Seasons, The Matrix, Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl, Being John Malkovich, Boys Don't Cry, Eyes Wide Shut

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Summer Hours (2008) 94% 3.5/4 EDIT “The last thing I expected from the mad genius behind Boarding Gate is a Chekhovian chamber drama whose mantra could be essentially reduced to: posterity cares.” – Slant Magazine May 8, 2009 Full Review The End of America (2008) 80% 2.5/4 EDIT “The End of America gives author and public intellectual Naomi Wolf an Inconvenient Truth-style platform to remind Americans about the Bush administration's assault on our civil liberties.” – Slant Magazine Dec 3, 2008 Full Review Let's Talk About the Rain (2007) 74% 2/4 EDIT “A question: If you spend an entire career chronicling power relationships among the incurably self-absorbed, is that not in itself a form of self-absorption?” – Slant Magazine Oct 15, 2008 Full Review Four Nights With Anna (2008) 67% 1.5/4 EDIT “Four Nights with Anna is one part funny ha-ha to 99 parts funny-strange.” – Slant Magazine Oct 13, 2008 Full Review Married Life (2007) 56% 1/4 EDIT “When the characters in Married Life cry out for help, the entire mise-en-scène stifles them with irony.” – Slant Magazine Oct 19, 2007 Full Review Paranoid Park (2007) 76% 3.5/4 EDIT “A fully subjective probe into the consciousness of a young man and a generous display of artistic empathy.” – Slant Magazine Oct 11, 2007 Full Review Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) 89% 3/4 EDIT “Most of Before the Devil Knows You're Dead works so well as a fatalistic, post-Tarantino neo-noir that the last third's attempt to frame the drama as King Lear-level tragedy plays as an unnecessary reach.” – Slant Magazine Oct 8, 2007 Full Review The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (2007) 68% 2/4 EDIT “To borrow the film's vernacular, the words never stab into the soul.” – Slant Magazine Sep 26, 2007 Full Review The Ringer (2005) 40% EDIT “An uncomfortable intermingling of message movie and gross-out comedy, a sporadically funny vehicle that indicts its audience for laughing. Come on, guys. You can't have your fun and eat it too.” – Village Voice Dec 28, 2005 Full Review The Comedians of Comedy (2005) 44% EDIT “Watching the quartet doing laundry, playing arcade games, or getting haircuts evokes the banality of road life far too accurately, and at 105 minutes, the film hardly leaves us wanting more.” – Village Voice Nov 8, 2005 Full Review Loggerheads (2005) 73% EDIT “Unexpectedly resonant.” – Village Voice Oct 11, 2005 Full Review Going Shopping (2005) 41% EDIT “Henry Jaglom's latest study of contemporary female obsessions among a noxious clan of West L.A. bourgeoisie is of more pathological than cinematic interest.” – Village Voice Sep 27, 2005 Full Review Loudmouth Soup (2005) 17% EDIT “Loudmouth Soup perpetuates the same shallow myths about Los Angeles that it pretends to indict.” – Village Voice Sep 20, 2005 Full Review Campfire (2004) 88% EDIT “The timelier elements of Campfire, which cleared house at Israel's Academy Awards this year, are too salient to dismiss.” – Village Voice Sep 6, 2005 Full Review Formula 17 (2004) 30% EDIT “Mark my words: There is no way an innocent like Tien and a Meat Loaf-style heartthrob like Bai could ever make a love thing happen.” – Village Voice Aug 23, 2005 Full Review King of the Corner (2004) 71% EDIT “This is a story about the benefits of just showing up. Even at its most sentimental, Riegert's pet project possesses a lived-in integrity that nearly offsets the staleness of the material.” – Village Voice Aug 17, 2005 Full Review Valiant (2005) 32% EDIT “As education by anthropomorphism goes, Maus this ain't.” – Village Voice Aug 16, 2005 Full Review Four Brothers (2005) 53% 2.5/4 EDIT “A crackerjack B-movie.” – Slant Magazine Aug 11, 2005 Full Review Just One Look (2002) 75% EDIT “A paean to cinephilia that might goad viewers into questioning the value of film itself.” – Village Voice Jul 26, 2005 Full Review Hustle & Flow (2005) 83% 2/4 EDIT “Talent and practice isn't enough to realize your dreams. To get on MTV, sometimes you gotta shoot somebody.” – Slant Magazine Jul 13, 2005 Full Review Dallas 362 (2003) 56% 2/4 EDIT “plays more like a vanity project from a rich kid who never got to do his share of macho posturing.” – Slant Magazine Jun 21, 2005 Full Review Second Best (2004) 44% EDIT “An ugly, amateurish film that champions mediocrity in a meta-attempt to justify its own ineptitude.” – Village Voice May 24, 2005 Full Review Rock School (2005) 81% 2/4 EDIT “There's something unsettling and downright Dickensian about Green's hard-knocks method and proprietary stance.” – Slant Magazine May 22, 2005 Full Review Stolen Childhoods (2005) 58% EDIT “As cinema, this is standard, on-the-nose PBS fluff, but it's the grade school principal's perfect guilt inducement tool for slackers who arrive late to class.” – Village Voice May 17, 2005 Full Review The Interpreter (2005) 57% 2.5 EDIT “Subversive, maybe, but hardly explosive.” – Slant Magazine Apr 19, 2005 Full Review
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