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Mary F. Pols

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Film Critic, Contra Costa Times

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
We the People: The Market Basket Effect (2016) 78% EDIT “This material is too good to completely bungle in a documentary, although We the People includes some ill-advised moments.” – Portland Press-Herald Aug 1, 2018 Full Review Grandma (2015) 92% EDIT “Grandma is slender, plot-wise, and Weitz allows a few scenes to get too broad. But many charm with deadpan humor ... or vibrate with a vivid awkwardness.” – TIME Magazine Aug 20, 2015 Full Review Southpaw (2015) 59% EDIT “Southpaw is well made, but too conventional to skip the victorious ending or leave that kind of indelible impression. Gyllenhaal though? He's no lightweight.” – TIME Magazine Jul 21, 2015 Full Review Inside Out (2015) 98% EDIT “What makes the movie so rich and enlightening, even for an adult well acquainted with their own blue periods, is the depiction of emotions not as at war with each other but rather in a constant juggling act to keep their human going.” – TIME Magazine Jun 18, 2015 Full Review Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) 19% EDIT “The movie is like the play date from hell, the kind where a crew of children reduce your home to rubble and conduct endless bouts of loud war on the living-room floor while you ponder the propriety of opening a bottle of wine.” – TIME Magazine Jun 9, 2014 Full Review 42 (2013) 81% EDIT “It's not easy to play a stoic, but Boseman anchors the movie, and when he smiles, 42, already such a warm story of such cold times, gets even brighter.” – TIME Magazine May 7, 2014 Full Review Fruitvale Station (2013) 94% EDIT “Writer-director Ryan Coogler's [film is an] assured and evenhanded debut.” – TIME Magazine Dec 10, 2013 Full Review The Counselor (2013) 34% EDIT “Plays like a parody of a Cormac McCarthy adaptation...It's derivative nonsense.” – TIME Magazine Oct 24, 2013 Full Review Don Jon (2013) 80% EDIT “At least 80% of it is snappy, droll fluff, while the other 20% is what you get when you persuade Julianne Moore to be in your movie: in a word, better.” – TIME Magazine Sep 27, 2013 Full Review Enough Said (2013) 95% EDIT “A wry and moving look at a time in life that tends to get short shrift in U.S. cinema.” – TIME Magazine Sep 19, 2013 Full Review The World's End (2013) 89% EDIT “It overflows with middle-aged angst over lost youth. And laments the generic nature of our corporate-driven culture.” – TIME Magazine Aug 23, 2013 Full Review Jobs (2013) 27% EDIT “Not that the real man's career wasn't marked by conflict, but does Jobs have to be such a drag?” – TIME Magazine Aug 15, 2013 Full Review 2 Guns (2013) 64% EDIT “They're cute together, these two big stars, but the film around them, a sort of Tarantino lite, is desperately empty.” – TIME Magazine Aug 1, 2013 Full Review The Way, Way Back (2013) 83% EDIT “It's likely there will be many wet eyes in the theater as the screen goes to black.” – TIME Magazine Jul 8, 2013 Full Review Despicable Me 2 (2013) 75% EDIT “As a sequel [it] stands level with the first film (also directed by Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud), and may have the edge on it.” – TIME Magazine Jul 3, 2013 Full Review White House Down (2013) 52% EDIT “What makes White House Down not just tolerable but frivolously entertaining is its slapstick soul ...” – TIME Magazine Jun 27, 2013 Full Review This Is the End (2013) 82% EDIT “It is intensely raunchy and silly and joyous and tapped right into my inner teenager in a glorious way.” – TIME Magazine Jun 12, 2013 Full Review The Kings of Summer (2013) 76% EDIT “It's easy enough to drift along with this slight, quirky charmer and when the puffed-up dramatic stuff gives way to the central theme of a father and son reconnecting, the film really works.” – TIME Magazine May 31, 2013 Full Review Before Midnight (2013) 98% EDIT “If I were only allowed to see one movie this year, I'd want it to be Before Midnight. If I were only allowed two trips to a theater this year, I'd see it twice.” – TIME Magazine May 24, 2013 Full Review The Hangover Part III (2013) 21% EDIT “The Hangover Part III gives off such a stench of creative decay that it hardly seems possible that even Phillips or his co-writers have any use for the movie themselves.” – TIME Magazine May 23, 2013 Full Review Frances Ha (2012) 92% EDIT “Frances Ha is sharply focused on a genuine life issue that doesn't get much play in movies: the challenges of platonic love and of the complicated passions of friendship.” – TIME Magazine May 17, 2013 Full Review Love Is All You Need (2012) 75% EDIT “Dyrholm has an unusual magnetism, the kind of face that seems open and unguarded, yet you can't figure out just what it is she's thinking - she and Brosnan share an excitingly adult chemistry.” – TIME Magazine May 3, 2013 Full Review What Maisie Knew (2012) 86% EDIT “Some moviegoers may opt for an easier cinematic pleasure than this carefully crafted, discomforting look at familial misery in hyper drive, but it is the most provocative movie about parenting I've seen since The Kids Are All Right.” – TIME Magazine May 3, 2013 Full Review The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) 79% EDIT “Structured as a triptych, the movie is novelistic, earnest and somewhat exhausting - an ambitious effort that tries to be many things.” – TIME Magazine Mar 29, 2013 Full Review Room 237 (2012) 94% EDIT “Maybe they're all right. Or wrong. It can't be settled. What matters is that people are still crazy about the beauty of a beautiful movie about going crazy.” – TIME Magazine Mar 28, 2013 Full Review
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