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Robert Horton

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Robert Horton is a member of the National Society of Film Critics, and the longtime film critic for the Herald (Everett, WA), and Seattle Weekly. He is a regular contributor to Film Comment magazine, and the author of Frankenstein (Columbia University Press) and Billy Wilder: Interviews (U. Press of Mississippi). He also co-authored the graphic novel Rotten (Moonstone Books). He has been a Fulbright Specialist (Romania, 2016); adjunct professor at Seattle University; the curator of the "Magic Lantern" film program at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle; instructor at the Architectural Association in London; past president of the Seattle Film Society; and a speaker with Smithsonian Journeys. He served two terms as a speaker with Humanities Washington, traveling Washington state and lecturing on film history. He is currently a board member at Scarecrow Video and leads the yearlong Scarecrow Academy project there. As a member of FIPRESCI (International Society of Film Critics) he has served on juries at film festivals in Odesa, Ukraine; Ljubljana, Slovenia; and Seattle. His work is linked at the website The Crop Duster (roberthorton.wordpress.com).

Favorites:

30 fave films, in chronological order: Un Chien Andalou; M; Monkey Business (Marx Bros. version); Freaks; The Wizard of Oz: The Great Dictator; Cat People (Jacques Tourneur version); A Matter of Life and Death; The Lady From Shanghai; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; The Third Man; The Quiet Man; Sansho the Bailiff; The Night of the Hunter; Rebel Without a Cause; Rio Bravo; Some Like it Hot; North by Northwest; Jules and Jim; Jason and the Argonauts; Help!; Masculin-Feminin; The Wild Bunch; Two English Girls; Duel; Chinatown; Barry Lyndon; The American Friend; Cutter's Way; Local Hero.

Location:

Seattle

Official Website:

http://roberthorton.wordpress.com

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
The Testament of Ann Lee (2025) 88% 2.5/4 EDIT “These musical sequences are exhilarating, dark and buoyant at the same time, as mad as their leadership. (A sect that discourages its adherents from having a sexual life had better have something else seductive going for it.)” – The Scarecrow Jan 23, 2026 Full Review Marty Supreme (2025) 93% 3/4 EDIT “This movie hurtles through kitchen-sink realism and soaring near-surrealism, and it clicks because you believe in this world—not as reality, but as a fully-imagined movie construct.” – The Scarecrow Jan 23, 2026 Full Review 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) 92% 3/4 EDIT “With Fiennes, the immense craft of the British acting tradition suits the character perfectly; he's a Shakespearian who wandered into the world of George Romero, and concluded that this isn't so far from Titus Andronicus anyway.” – The Scarecrow Jan 16, 2026 Full Review The Sure Thing (1985) 84% 3.5/4 EDIT “The thing that lifts this above the average road-trip movie is the beautiful feeling for being on the road—the oddball trading posts and motels, the weird characters who turn up, the junk food consumed as a staple along the way.” – The Scarecrow Dec 20, 2025 Full Review Frankenstein (2025) 85% 2.5/4 EDIT “Is it possible that del Toro spent too many years thinking about everything he wanted to pour into a Frankenstein movie? Because this one—as handsomely dressed as you would expect—is crammed with ideas, yet curiously lacking in there-ness.” – The Scarecrow Dec 12, 2025 Full Review Die My Love (2025) 74% 3.5/4 EDIT “Calling it a "country house" is akin to calling the Overlook in The Shining a "resort hotel." There's a lot more going on there.” – The Scarecrow Dec 5, 2025 Full Review Blue Moon (2025) 90% 4/4 EDIT “Ethan Hawke nails the sentiment so wonderfully that in that moment actor, filmmaker, and long-dead lyricist seem to be speaking in one passionate voice.” – The Scarecrow Dec 5, 2025 Full Review One Battle After Another (2025) 94% 3.5/4 EDIT “The people onscreen unabashedly exist at a near-cartoon level. But it's hard not to love the movie in pieces, or to savor Anderson's sneaky subversion, the sense that the caricatures and Strangelovian doublespeak is in service to something real.” – The Scarecrow Oct 11, 2025 Full Review Sorry, Baby (2025) 97% 2.5/4 EDIT “Victor is in some ethereal zone between Bud Cort in Harold and Maude and Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love, and the performance itself carries the film through its more pedestrian passages.” – The Scarecrow Jul 11, 2025 Full Review 28 Years Later (2025) 88% EDIT “Good enough for a zombie chapter, and even Kipling might've appreciated the "Will which says to them, 'Hold on!'" displayed in our hero's coming-of-age grit.” – The Scarecrow Jun 20, 2025 Full Review The Life of Chuck (2024) 80% 2.5/4 EDIT “Strange movie—neither fish nor fowl, neither shaw nor shank, and just a little too much uplift for this skeptic.” – The Scarecrow Jun 14, 2025 Full Review The Phoenician Scheme (2025) 77% 2.5/4 EDIT “It goes on, and it's funny, and then you realize that it's wrapping up and that's going to be all, and Anderson comes up with a tender final sequence that would be an absolute knockout if the preceding film built more toward this moment.” – The Scarecrow Jun 6, 2025 Full Review Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) 80% 2.5/4 EDIT “Both the culmination and gravestone of the movie thriller. The culmination argument is obvious enough: This movie is giddy in its absurdly over-the-top action sequences, which all but demand we declare that "this is why we go to the movies."” – The Scarecrow May 23, 2025 Full Review Sinners (2025) 97% 2/4 EDIT “I feel almost churlish saying the movie is all over the place when "all over the place" is clearly a goal. But the flailing genre-mashing seen here plays closer to the chaos of Everything Everywhere All at Once than the surgical attack of Get Out,” – The Scarecrow Apr 25, 2025 Full Review When Fall Is Coming (2024) 97% 3.5/4 EDIT “Almost perfectly balanced between Douglas Sirk-style melodrama, near-subliminal humor, and out-and-out camp. In short, Ozon is getting close to prime Almodovar territory.” – The Scarecrow Apr 11, 2025 Full Review The Penguin Lessons (2024) 78% 2/4 EDIT “With Coogan lending his acerbic persona (and presumably a collection of one-liners) to the project, The Penguin Lessons has moments that lift it out of the realm of formula.” – The Scarecrow Mar 28, 2025 Full Review The Apprentice (2024) 82% 3/4 EDIT “The Apprentice doesn't craft its tale with subtlety, but what exactly is the point of delicacy in a world where the rise of Donald Trump has destroyed the usefulness of subtlety, or really any kind of satire? ” – The Scarecrow Feb 14, 2025 Full Review Wolf Man (2025) 48% 1.5/4 EDIT “"The starkness of the setting leads to monotony, and the themes are so prominent they remove any real mystery from the air."” – The Scarecrow Jan 17, 2025 Full Review A Complete Unknown (2024) 82% 3.5/4 EDIT “Does something that is unconventional, maybe even radical, in this age of popular art that must explain genius. It does not explain.” – The Scarecrow Dec 27, 2024 Full Review The Brutalist (2024) 93% 3.5/4 EDIT “There are many ideas in The Brutalist, and they do go on a bit. My first reaction to this big film is that it feels more literary in its conception than cinematic.” – The Scarecrow Dec 20, 2024 Full Review Trap (2024) 56% 3/4 EDIT “This suspense mechanism is so deftly handled it almost brings tears to your eyes, at least if you have any feeling for film form.” – The Scarecrow Aug 23, 2024 Full Review Last Summer (2023) 87% 3.5/4 EDIT “Suggests that despite Catherine Breillat's reputation (this is a director known for using sex in cinema like a French chef lays on the butter in an omelet), she is less interested in sex as a subject than existential discontent.” – The Scarecrow Aug 9, 2024 Full Review The Way We Speak (2024) 93% 3/4 EDIT “Fabian is terrific here. He sprays the dialogue around with abandon, and he has the on-his-toes balance of an athlete. In this role, you never doubt Simon’s need for validation, nor his buzzy self-regard.” – The Crop Duster Jul 22, 2024 Full Review Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024) 67% 1/4 EDIT “A grisly spectacle.” – The Scarecrow Jul 12, 2024 Full Review Green Border (2023) 94% 3.5/4 EDIT “These stories, and the dramatic incidents, would be powerful in a lesser film, as a sort of Grapes of Wrath of modern Europe. But Green Border is abuzz with cinematic force, propulsive in its rhythm and haunting in its images. ” – The Scarecrow Jul 5, 2024 Full Review
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