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Review Film Review

Review Film Review is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): CJ Sheu.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
Sinners (2025) CJ Sheu It’s a fascinating genre film executed so well that it feels like it’s pushing the boundaries of what a genre film can be, though the only thing that actually does this is the epic oner.
Posted Nov 06, 2025  Edit critic review
Much Ado About Nothing (2012) CJ Sheu an aesthetic spectrum from Amy Acker’s performance as Beatrice and Whedon’s modern acting direction for his Shakespearean lines (good), to the bleached-out images caused by the unholy marriage of flat all-natural lighting and the poorly chosen digital
Posted Nov 03, 2025  Edit critic review
PTU (2003) CJ Sheu It’s irony-poisoned beauty.
Posted Jun 29, 2025  Edit critic review
The Terrorizers (1987) CJ Sheu [W]hat I’m calling the main subplot, about depressed novelist Zhou Yufen (Cora Miao) and medical laboratory scientist husband Li Lizhong (China-appeasing actor-comedian Lee Li-chun), ... is a very accurate and tragic portrait of the Taiwanese STEM bro[.]"
Posted Apr 28, 2025  Edit critic review
Like You Know It All (2009) CJ Sheu The patriarchal dichotomization of women makes an apparent equal a rara avis, makes men desperate to keep her, to own her—and also makes them weak in her eyes and less likely to succeed. As the title suggests, Goo knows nothing.
Posted Jan 10, 2025  Edit critic review
Ida (2013) CJ Sheu It’s a religious test, as suggested when Wanda replies to Ida’s request to seek her buried parents, “What if you find there’s no God?” Well, there is a God, and He’s lovingly observing Ida through the film’s perfectly framed static compositions[.]
Posted Jun 12, 2024  Edit critic review
The Fall Guy (2024) CJ Sheu We *notice* the action artifice, and it draws our attention to the unseen real-life stunt doubles performing the action we’re seeing—this, of course, being a key theme of the film, a love letter to stuntpeople. Our reality makes the artifice authentic.
Posted May 13, 2024  Edit critic review
Dune: Part Two (2024) CJ Sheu Denis Villeneuve uses Dune: Part Two (2024), cowritten with Jon Spaihts, to examine the experience of being set before the prophecy, knowing you’re its intended subject. [... T]his narrative structure is famously hinted at in the Gospels.
Posted Mar 11, 2024  Edit critic review
Monolith (2023) CJ Sheu [L]inking to the outside world only through audio makes every development a surprise, keeping us on our toes, ready for anything. So the fact that everything visual happens so incredibly slowly is a major mindf*ck.
Posted Mar 03, 2024  Edit critic review
The Ascent (1977) CJ Sheu [Director Larissa] Shepitko demanded that every word, action, gesture, and camera movement be internally motivated, and it shows!
Posted Jan 23, 2024  Edit critic review
Evan Almighty (2007) CJ Sheu But most of these faults are due to the film’s commitment to the philosophical bit. Also, they named the Noah-character’s wife “Joan” (Lauren Graham) because her husband is building an ark.
Posted Nov 10, 2023  Edit critic review
The Conference (2022) CJ Sheu The film is a tad boring, intentionally so.
Posted Jun 21, 2023  Edit critic review
White Balls on Walls (2022) CJ Sheu The proceedings keep you on tenterhooks, but nuanced discussions and good faith see them through. ... Vos ... felt it necessary to play devil’s advocate to heighten conflict. Why can’t we just watch a group of conscientious people doing something nice?
Posted Apr 22, 2023  Edit critic review
20th Century Women (2016) CJ Sheu Mike Mills’s 20th Century Women (2016) is a masterpiece of intuitive plotting. The one part that doesn’t feel complete is Jamie’s (Lucas Jade Zumann) arc.
Posted Apr 20, 2023  Edit critic review
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) CJ Sheu The real instigator isn’t whimsy, but an encroaching modernity and its sense of linear history.
Posted Apr 04, 2023  Edit critic review
At Long Last Love (1975) CJ Sheu [F]un, witty, captivating. ... As is extremely evident, the actors are all having a ball, especially Shepherd. ... It’s great fun all around[.]
Posted Jan 10, 2023  Edit critic review
Deep Impact (1998) CJ Sheu It’s a melodrama more than an action thriller. The surprise is that it does melodrama so well.
Posted Sep 05, 2022  Edit critic review
Becoming Iconic (2018) CJ Sheu Don’t watch it.
Posted Aug 30, 2022  Edit critic review
Inconceivable (2017) CJ Sheu Baker was given only fifteen days to shoot, [...] so it’s a miracle we have such an entertaining film at all, artistry be damned. At the end of the day, if the only significant valid complaint is a bad wig, that’s not too shabby for a first outing.
Posted Aug 30, 2022  Edit critic review
Top Gun: Maverick (2022) CJ Sheu After Cruise and McQuarrie perfected the action thriller with Mission: Impossible—Fallout (2018), now they’re back (along with [director Joseph Kosinski and] some other screenwriters and story originators) to perfect the hero’s farewell.
Posted Aug 29, 2022  Edit critic review
Margaret (2011) CJ Sheu [This] is probably the closest we’ll ever get to a William Gaddis adaptation, [...] [in which people] talk to each other and to Lisa [an astounding Anna Paquin], and Lisa talks to them, but nobody’s listening.
Posted Jul 07, 2022  Edit critic review
Pleasure (2021) CJ Sheu [The film] makes her journey more cautionary tale than character study. [...] If it exposes anything, it’s the [adult film] industry’s over-reliance on explicit consent as the minimum requirement.
Posted Jun 01, 2022  Edit critic review
The Draughtsman's Contract (1982) CJ Sheu By focusing only on what the camera sees, we miss the bigger picture, despite nagging intuitions that something's amiss. [...] <i>Draughtsman</i> is thus a warning to the arrogant interpreter.
Posted May 30, 2022  Edit critic review
Practical Magic (1998) CJ Sheu Few films have such warmth and purity of heart, which are buoyed by its fabular storybook quality[.]
Posted May 29, 2022  Edit critic review
Bo Burnham: Inside (2021) CJ Sheu Burnham has proven himself a master director. [...] If he’s really reached the zenith of his musical comedy, I hope he jumps into film with both feet.
Posted May 07, 2022  Edit critic review
Deep Water (2022) CJ Sheu It doesnt work, because the ambiguity of the characters is misapportioned.
Posted Mar 22, 2022  Edit critic review
Café Society (2016) CJ Sheu Its all right, an average dramedy with a touch of old world (and Jewish) idiosyncrasy. ... The ending doesn't work. ... Here fantasy hits a brickwall.
Posted Feb 26, 2022  Edit critic review
All the Light in the Sky (2012) CJ Sheu Instead of solidarity, the film offers solace..as aging deprives women of the potential to fulfill male (sexual) standards, it also frees them from having to try, and they can then begin to take life on its own terms, whatever happens..women may disagree.
Posted Feb 22, 2022  Edit critic review
Silver Bullets (2011) CJ Sheu When lines get blurry, you need to maintain balance, and Silver Bullets has a solid center of gravity between multiple axes.
Posted Jan 11, 2022  Edit critic review
Spencer (2021) CJ Sheu Everything in the film is done well, and for explicable reasons. But justifications do not a masterpiece make.
Posted Nov 28, 2021  Edit critic review
Bright Star (2009) CJ Sheu Everything is simple and understated, allowing the big moments their space. ... [Whishaw's] line readings are disastrous. ... Cornish is a revelation[.]
Posted Nov 09, 2021  Edit critic review
The Painter and the Thief (2020) CJ Sheu Genre-mixing, and not just boundary-blurring, has finally come to documentaries.
Posted Oct 05, 2021  Edit critic review
J.T. LeRoy (2018) CJ Sheu Identity is overrated. If Nicolas Bourbaki can do it for math, why can't JT for literature?
Posted Oct 05, 2021  Edit critic review
A Dark Song (2016) CJ Sheu A Dark Song is catchy, but no aria.
Posted Oct 05, 2021  Edit critic review
A Quiet Passion (2016) CJ Sheu It's not just a record of a life, it succeeds at doing what every biopic aspires to: It reanimates.
Posted Oct 05, 2021  Edit critic review
American Made (2017) CJ Sheu [The movie] is phenomenal. ... This is brilliant casting ... It's Gleeson's performance as the institutional representative that sells the film's recklessly excessive 80s vibe.
Posted Oct 05, 2021  Edit critic review
High-Rise (2009) CJ Sheu What makes this film worth writing about is the viewer reaction to the interviewees' basic belief in the value of privacy, space, and proximity to nature.
Posted Oct 05, 2021  Edit critic review
Speak (2004) CJ Sheu The film's entirely commendable message is to believe women; I just wish I could believe the film.
Posted Oct 05, 2021  Edit critic review
Another Round (2020) CJ Sheu Mikkelsen is hilarious as a sleepwalking history teacher-cum-history teacher trying to keep himself upright and steady
Posted May 26, 2021  Edit critic review
She's Lost Control (2014) CJ Sheu Kudos to casting director Allison Twardziak, because Bloom is perfect in the role.
Posted May 26, 2021  Edit critic review
The Lighthouse (2006) CJ Sheu [W]e don't really get a sense of individual character. ... This turns the war ... into a symbol for all the demographic pressures working against rural life
Posted May 26, 2021  Edit critic review
Barwy ochronne (1977) CJ Sheu [Camouflage] is the closest thing to a Jean-Paul Sartre play I've ever seen on screen ... It's brilliant.
Posted May 26, 2021  Edit critic review
Unrelated (2007) CJ Sheu It's an amazing film, let alone debut.
Posted May 26, 2021  Edit critic review
All the Vermeers in New York (1990) CJ Sheu Vermeer itches to explore its storyworld, to follow the tangents inevitably discarded. Many scenes simply observe a character's daily life.
Posted May 26, 2021  Edit critic review
An Affair of Love (1999) CJ Sheu It's an actor's showcase, and the two leads are phenomenal.
Posted May 26, 2021  Edit critic review
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001) CJ Sheu [The film] is highly uneven. ... On the flip side, the good parts are simply stellar. ... Only when you see Spike fighting do you feel like you really know him.
Posted May 26, 2021  Edit critic review
The Kid Detective (2020) CJ Sheu It's as if a kiddie flick starred a clever (but only clever) manchild ... the main draw is observing when and how [the tone] veers into seriousness.
Posted May 26, 2021  Edit critic review
Daydreams (2016) CJ Sheu As the film nears its close, a sense of doom pervades, and the plot tries to make everything make sense. It still doesn't, of course. But it was fun while it lasted.
Posted Oct 19, 2020  Edit critic review
The Aviator's Wife (1981) CJ Sheu [T]hough the meandering has a certain (non-whimsical) charm, and [Anne-Laure] Meury [as Lucie] is innocently captivating, the film takes too long to reveal its coherence.
Posted Oct 19, 2020  Edit critic review
War Book (2014) CJ Sheu War Book suggests that democracy can be killed by unstoppable momentum.
Posted Sep 10, 2020  Edit critic review
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