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Miss FlickChick

Miss FlickChick is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Maitland McDonagh.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
Bonnie & Clyde vs. Dracula (2008) Maitland McDonagh It's one of the small gems that keep longtime horror buffs like me sifting through the slag.
Posted Sep 20, 2011  Edit critic review
Kalamity (2010) Maitland McDonagh A talented cast can't save this low-budget psychodrama about male malaise from its meandering screenplay.
Posted Nov 05, 2010  Edit critic review
Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) Maitland McDonagh The inevitable sequel to Oren Peli's $15,000 sleeper is actually a prequel, and it's a sharp little piece of genre filmmaking.
Posted Nov 05, 2010  Edit critic review
I Spit on Your Grave (2010) Maitland McDonagh The most shocking thing about this remake of one of the most notorious exploitation movies of the '70s is how dull it is.
Posted Nov 05, 2010  Edit critic review
Piranha (2010) Maitland McDonagh Coarse, crass and mind-boggling shameless? Hell, yeah! Alexandre Aja's remake of the Joe Dante/John Sayles' killer-fish movie flies its trash flag high.
Posted Sep 19, 2010  Edit critic review
Machete (2010) Maitland McDonagh Supremely self-aware and steeped in the aesthetics of vintage exploitation movies,Machete is a loving, blood-spattered homage to the gritty grindhouse action pictures of yesteryear.
Posted Sep 19, 2010  Edit critic review
Takers (2010) Maitland McDonagh The CliffsNotes version of Michael Mann's Heat... slick but forgettable.
Posted Aug 27, 2010  Edit critic review
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) Maitland McDonagh Like Billy Liar and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Scott Pilgrim is a pitch-perfect evocation of a youthful underachiever's thrilling inner life.
Posted Aug 13, 2010  Edit critic review
The Killer Inside Me (1976) Maitland McDonagh Anti-ingenue Susan Tyrell's performance as the feckless hooker who inadvertently unleashes a hellhound on a small mining town is so rawly effective it's painful to watch.
Posted Jul 24, 2010  Edit critic review
Predators (2010) Maitland McDonagh A cross between The Most Dangerous Game and The Twilight Zone with a touch of Cube... 'Predators vs. Humans,' anyone?
Posted Jul 14, 2010  Edit critic review
Rec 2 (2009) Maitland McDonagh It's more of the same, with an Exorcist spin, which isn't inherently a bad thing.
Posted Jul 14, 2010  Edit critic review
Edogawa ranpo taizen: Kyofu kikei ningen (Horrors of Malformed Men)(Horror of a Deformed Man) (1969) Maitland McDonagh Simultaneously utterly grotesque and surreally beautiful, Teruo Ishii's sexadelic freakout is a must-see for adventurous moviegoers with a taste for the macabre.
Posted Jul 03, 2010  Edit critic review
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010) Maitland McDonagh There's no middle ground with the Twilight saga: You either surrender to Stephenie Meyer's swoony tale of forbidden love, squeaky-clean teen style, or you just don't get it.
Posted Jun 30, 2010  Edit critic review
Robin Hood (2010) Maitland McDonagh Like the 2004 King Arthur, Ridley Scott's mud-spattered epic focuses on the man behind the legend. But it's the legend people have loved and kept alive for hundreds of years.
Posted May 14, 2010  Edit critic review
The Human Centipede (2009) Maitland McDonagh Dutch writer-director Tom Six's surgical horror flick is can-you-top-this filmmaking at its grossest, and no one needs to tell you whether or not it's your cup of tea.
Posted Apr 30, 2010  Edit critic review
Red Riding Trilogy (2010) Maitland McDonagh This dark set of brilliantly-acted, interlocking thrillers fails to live up to David Peace's novels, but still runs blood-red rings around the average American crime film.
Posted Apr 23, 2010  Edit critic review
Boogie Woogie (2009) Maitland McDonagh The art-world satire Boogie Woogie is a monumental piece of squandered potential, arch but not witty, mean without being perceptive, its most outrageous shocks little more than static sparks.
Posted Apr 23, 2010  Edit critic review
Pornography (2009) Maitland McDonagh Writer-director David Kittredge's spooky, ambitious thriller about the mysterious fate of a gay porn star is equal parts David Lynch, The Fluffer and 8mm.
Posted Apr 23, 2010  Edit critic review
Behind the Burly Q (2010) Maitland McDonagh Once-over-lightly history, but a fabulous showcase for the colorful recollections of dozens of burlesque dancers, comedians, chorus girls, musicians and novelty performers.
Posted Apr 23, 2010  Edit critic review
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009) Maitland McDonagh Even shorn of many of its darkly evocative subplots and characters, this adaptation of Swedish novelist Steig Larrson's lacerating thriller is true to the story's bitter heart.
Posted Apr 10, 2010  Edit critic review
The Runaways (2010) Maitland McDonagh Floria Sigismondi's flawed account of the rise and fall of short-lived, all-girl rock band The Runaways captures a genuine sense of the 1970s... the real '70s, not the wacky sitcom version.
Posted Apr 10, 2010  Edit critic review
The Black Waters of Echo's Pond (2009) Maitland McDonagh Feckless young people play a cursed board game that unleashes repressed desires, rips the scabs off festering wounds and brings seething resentments to a boil: Predictable slasher mayhem ensues.
Posted Apr 10, 2010  Edit critic review
Remember Me (2010) Maitland McDonagh The New Yorkers who inhabit this overwrought melodrama with a mega twist are so self-centered that the message -- life should be savored, not squandered -- gets lost.
Posted Mar 16, 2010  Edit critic review
Green Zone (2010) Maitland McDonagh A thriller designed to provoke discussion of America's involvement in Iraq, Green Zone will more likely fuel rants about Hollywood's liberal bias.
Posted Mar 16, 2010  Edit critic review
Monster Beach Party (2009) Maitland McDonagh Genre fans of a certain age and/or temperament will appreciate this painstaking recreation of low-budget, regional rock 'n' roll horror movies of the 1960s.
Posted Feb 16, 2010  Edit critic review
The Wolfman (2010) Maitland McDonagh ...pleasant surprise simply by virtue of not being as thoroughly awful as you expected. And yes, that's qualified praise. It means, nostalgic horror buffs give it a whirl and all others beware.
Posted Feb 16, 2010  Edit critic review
Veer (2010) Maitland McDonagh Bollywood superstar Salman Khan's dream project, this highly fictionalized account of the Pindari war against the British is bad history but pretty good entertainment.
Posted Jan 29, 2010  Edit critic review
The Hurt Locker (2008) Maitland McDonagh Criticism that Bigelow and Boal's relentless focus on the feverish intensity of living with constant danger and the rush that comes from beating the odds is as misguided as reading the movie's "war is a drug" tagline as an endorsement: The Hurt Locker is
Posted Dec 28, 2009  Edit critic review
Crazy Heart (2009) Maitland McDonagh I used to be somebody," sings washed up legend Bad Blake, "but now I'm somebody else." Like a C&W song, Crazy Heart makes cliches sound like eternal verites, and Jeff Bridges deserves all the credit.
Posted Dec 28, 2009  Edit critic review
Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year (2009) Maitland McDonagh A surprisingly sharp workplace comedy whose concerns should resonate with oppressed worker-bees everywhere. After all, who hasn't at one time or another been forced to weigh ideals against paying the electric bill?
Posted Dec 15, 2009  Edit critic review
Invictus (2009) Maitland McDonagh A modest, self-effacing movie about extraordinary events that chronicles one battle in Nelson Mandela's war against the past that threaten to destroy post-apartheid South Africa before it can find its feet.
Posted Dec 14, 2009  Edit critic review
The Lovely Bones (2009) Maitland McDonagh The story shuttles back and forth between a placid 1970s suburbia and an afterlife that looks disconcerting like the cover of a Yes album; both are bloodless, all look and no vitality.
Posted Dec 14, 2009  Edit critic review
Up in the Air (2009) Maitland McDonagh Hugely entertaining .... Reitman can turn bitter, unpalatable material into mainstream movies without stripping away all the bite
Posted Dec 05, 2009  Edit critic review
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) Maitland McDonagh A sly, witty and utterly enchanting adaptation of Roald Dahl's mordantly whimsical book about a thoroughly domesticated gentleman fox who pines for days when the world respected his wildness.
Posted Nov 12, 2009  Edit critic review
Eulogy for a Vampire (2009) Maitland McDonagh The gay-themed Eulogy for a Vampire is dead serious about its mix of eroticism and horror, but the more serious it tries to be, the campier it becomes.
Posted Nov 03, 2009  Edit critic review
Paranormal Activity (2007) Maitland McDonagh A campfire story for the cyber generation, a bogey tale wrapped in time codes and misplaced faith in the power of technology to banish ghosties, ghoulies and long-leggedy beasties.
Posted Nov 03, 2009  Edit critic review
Inglourious Basterds (2009) Maitland McDonagh A delirious pastiche of WWII movie tropes via the naughty Nazi pictures that flooded Italy in The Night Porter's wake ... Tarantino knows exactly how vulgar it is to spin pulp entertainment from the iconography of mass murderers, and how bracingly
Posted Aug 21, 2009  Edit critic review
District 9 (2009) Maitland McDonagh District 9 is a bracing breath of fresh air [that] wears its influences well, integrating them into a well thought-out drama about what it means to be human ... a drama with big guns, car chases and exploding cars.
Posted Aug 15, 2009  Edit critic review
I Sell the Dead (2008) Maitland McDonagh A fresh, darkly funny blend of crime [graverobbing, to be precise] and supernatural hijinks ... that delivers an offbeat but carefully balanced mix of shocks, homages and uneasy chuckles.
Posted Aug 07, 2009  Edit critic review
Deadgirl (2008) Maitland McDonagh A pitiless look at the worst aspects of teenage male horndog-dom ... if there weren't some poisonous kernel of truth in its grotesque, testosterone-poisoned "what if?" premise, no-one would be squirming.
Posted Jul 26, 2009  Edit critic review
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) Maitland McDonagh The impending magical apocalypse and the agonies of young love get equal time in this fantasy with its roots planted firmly in the realm of real human relationships and experience.
Posted Jul 16, 2009  Edit critic review
Munde U.K. De (2009) Maitland McDonagh This fish-out-of-water comedy about two UK-raised young men of Punjabi descent summering in India with one youth's aging grandfather is overlong and painfully cliched.
Posted Jul 02, 2009  Edit critic review
New York (2009) Maitland McDonagh Kabir Khan uses thriller conventions to address such issues as the suspension of civil liberties and the [US] government's ever-expanding power to harass, detain and deny due process to detainees.
Posted Jul 02, 2009  Edit critic review
Terminator Salvation (2009) Maitland McDonagh The trouble with Terminator: Salvation ... [is that] there's a yawning void where its emotional center should be.
Posted May 24, 2009  Edit critic review
Star Trek (2009) Maitland McDonagh Is the new Star Trek movie perfect? Absolutely not. But I went in an original Trek fan ... and came out feeling oddly elated, grateful for the things that worked and secure in the belief that the rough spots will work themselves out in the a
Posted May 10, 2009  Edit critic review
The Skeptic (2009) Maitland McDonagh This old-fashioned psychological ghost story ... repeatedly compels supposedly mature and intelligent people to do preposterous things in order to keep the plot moving.
Posted May 01, 2009  Edit critic review
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) Maitland McDonagh Upscale casting goes a long way towards elevating the pulpy material ... [but while] Wolverine tries hard, it never transcends its origins.
Posted May 01, 2009  Edit critic review
Alien Trespass (2009) Maitland McDonagh If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, It Came From Outer Space should be blushing like a schoolgirl, because this deadpan recreation of 1950s sci-fi movies is a tribute to its low-budget, high minded charms.
Posted Apr 29, 2009  Edit critic review
State of Play (2009) Maitland McDonagh When the newspaper thriller's obituary is written, State of Play may well be cited as the genre's last gasp.
Posted Apr 29, 2009  Edit critic review
Martyrs (2008) Maitland McDonagh You don't have to be Catholic to shudder at Pascal Laugier's bitterly apocalyptic Martyrs, but it helps.
Posted Mar 24, 2009  Edit critic review
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