Dana Stevens Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Dana Stevens

Dana Stevens

Agrees with the Tomatometer 74% of the time.

Publications:: New York Times , Slate
Critics' Group:: New York Film Critics Online

Total Reviews:: 632

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 632

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T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
91%	Holy Motors (2012)	" If nothing else, you'll come out of it feeling perceptually refreshed, as if you'd just had a ride on an aesthetic and philosophical log flume." — Slate Posted Oct 21, 2012
94%	The Sessions (2012)	" This frank, funny, tender film both asks and receives more from its sex scenes than any movie I've seen in a long time." — Slate Posted Oct 18, 2012
85%	Seven Psychopaths (2012)	" All this narrative nesting and genre-skipping sounds very cerebral on the page, but in practice, Seven Psychopaths is as pleasurably kinetic as can be, full of double-crosses and gunplay and sun-kissed SoCal locations." — Slate Posted Oct 12, 2012
95%	Argo (2012)	" Argo is a rollicking yarn, easily the most cohesive and technically accomplished of Affleck's three films so far, but a part of me wishes the director hadn't cast himself in the lead role." — Slate Posted Oct 12, 2012
21%	Taken 2 (2012)	" So lazily put together that it relies on flashbacks from its predecessor for the majority of its character development." — Slate Posted Oct 5, 2012
70%	Wuthering Heights (2012)	" If you can slow down your movie metabolism enough to acclimate to its world, Arnold's naturalistic retelling grasps an elemental truth about the novel." — Slate Posted Oct 5, 2012
79%	The Deep Blue Sea (2012)	" [Weisz'] performance that transforms her from actress to movie star." — Slate Posted Oct 1, 2012
93%	Looper (2012)	" Looper felt to me like a maddening near-miss ..." — Slate Posted Sep 28, 2012
94%	Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel (2012)	" The movie is saved from feeling like a promotional puff piece by the legitimate fabulousness of Vreeland herself ..." — Slate Posted Sep 22, 2012
85%	The Master (2012)	" I left the theater not entirely sure what The Master was about. I can't wait to get back and see it again." — Slate Posted Sep 15, 2012
56%	Bachelorette (2012)	" A nasty little piece of work -- a phrase I use not with contempt but with grudging admiration." — Slate Posted Sep 14, 2012
72%	Hello I Must Be Going (2012)	" I hope Hello, I Must Be Going will introduce many new viewers to Lynskey's charms, and that at least of a few of them will be casting directors." — Slate Posted Sep 7, 2012
22%	The Words (2012)	" It would have been more fun if I'd brought something to throw at the screen." — Slate Posted Sep 6, 2012
56%	For a Good Time, Call... (2012)	" It's the movie's affectionate portrait of female friendship, along with Miller and Graynor's loose, playful performances, that make this whole imperfect souffl� rise as high as it does." — Slate Posted Sep 1, 2012
68%	Lawless (2012)	" There's something at the movie's heart that remains flimsy and inauthentic, a kid in his older brother's ill-fitting shoes." — Slate Posted Aug 30, 2012
89%	Robot & Frank (2012)	" A rueful and funny reflection on aging, death, parenthood, and technology." — Slate Posted Aug 17, 2012
89%	Compliance (2012)	" It's a deeply moral movie about the failure of morality, as grueling to watch as it is necessary." — Slate Posted Aug 17, 2012
65%	Cosmopolis (2012)	" I took a strange pleasure in submitting to this movie's stilted but weirdly poetic rhythms. But I freely acknowledge that for others, enduring Cosmopolis may be less fun than a backseat prostate exam." — Slate Posted Aug 16, 2012
58%	Red Hook Summer (2012)	" A movie that's alive and spontaneous and surprising is a rare enough thing to encounter-especially one that manages to address subjects as divisive and painful as inner-city black poverty without getting maudlin or preachy." — Slate Posted Aug 10, 2012
56%	The Bourne Legacy (2012)	" The movie's last hour or so squanders these rich narrative possibilities in an incoherently plotted, generically action-packed anticlimax." — Slate Posted Aug 10, 2012
30%	Total Recall (2012)	" This is a taut, serviceable sci-fi thriller with a couple of neat visual ideas, and if you're not familiar with either the Schwarzenegger version or the original story, the brain-bending twists alone will take you a reasonably long way." — Slate Posted Aug 3, 2012
76%	Killer Joe (2012)	" Plot twists that might have played as clever onstage feel false on screen, and while the individual actors are all gifted (if in some cases miscast), they never really come together as an ensemble." — Slate Posted Jul 27, 2012
79%	Ruby Sparks (2012)	" You find yourself wanting to go through Kazan's script with a red pen and indicate all the places where she could have let herself get darker, weirder, and braver." — Slate Posted Jul 26, 2012
87%	The Dark Knight Rises (2012)	" At over two hours and forty minutes long, with repeated scenes of bone-crunching violence and a maddeningly unrelenting percussive score by Hans Zimmer, The Dark Knight Rises is something of an ordeal to sit through." — Slate Posted Jul 18, 2012
86%	Easy Money (2012)	" Easy Money's big heist scene is the only action set piece so far this year that was so suspenseful I could feel my heartbeat in my ears." — Slate Posted Jul 13, 2012
77%	Katy Perry: Part of Me (2012)	" We're left with zero sense of what she's really like as a granddaughter, sister, boss, or friend." — Slate Posted Jul 6, 2012
73%	The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)	" This might be a fun summer blockbuster if only it even remotely needed to exist." — Slate Posted Jul 3, 2012
78%	Take This Waltz (2012)	" This romantic drama, starring the always-extraordinary Michelle Williams as a restless married woman contemplating an affair with her neighbor, is chock-full of individual moments of great power and beauty, including visual beauty." — Slate Posted Jul 2, 2012
79%	Magic Mike (2012)	" Half wish-fulfillment fantasy, half after-school special, Magic Mike is in many ways an unserious movie -- but like many of Soderbergh's slicker entertainments, it's not without its moments of substance." — Slate Posted Jun 28, 2012
86%	Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)	" Zeitlin's adoring gaze on the Bathtubbers' chaotic-yet-joyous way of life smacks of anthropological voyeurism: Rousseau's "noble savage" nonsense all over again, but with crawdads and zydeco." — Slate Posted Jun 28, 2012
44%	To Rome with Love (2012)	" At times this multiple-plot meander through the glorious labyrinth of the Eternal City can feel aimless, even lazy. But in the film's best moments, that willingness to wander works to its advantage." — Slate Posted Jun 24, 2012
78%	Brave (2012)	" I really hope that people will give this imaginative little fairy tale a chance, and I can't wait to show it to my 6-year-old daughter." — Slate Posted Jun 21, 2012
84%	Your Sister's Sister (2012)	" A keenly observed romance whose apparent rough-edged naturalism masks a considerable degree of craft." — Slate Posted Jun 17, 2012
41%	Rock of Ages (2012)	" Once you accept the utter and profound inconsequentiality of Rock of Ages, there's much to enjoy in it..." — Slate Posted Jun 14, 2012
94%	Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)	" A slight, wistful comedy that, at least up to the ambitious but unsatisfying final scenes, combines sci-fi and rom-com to pleasing effect." — Slate Posted Jun 8, 2012
73%	Prometheus (2012)	" Prometheus is more interested in piling on big questions than in answering them. It's deep without being particularly smart, although the dazzling design and special effects keep you from noticing that basic flaw until at least an hour in." — Slate Posted Jun 7, 2012
81%	A Cat in Paris (2012)	" ections of A Cat in Paris feel draggy even at the abbreviated running time of 65 minutes. But in the best parts, the crisscrossing plot strands all pause for a moment, and we just get to watch and listen to what's going on in this stylishly imagined world." — Slate Posted Jun 1, 2012
49%	Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)	" This over-crammed, disjointed, and lugubrious film is misconceived from the ground up." — Slate Posted May 31, 2012
20%	Chernobyl Diaries (2012)	" You might actively root for their collective demise, if you could rouse yourself to care one way or the other. Go gallivanting in Chernobyl and you get what you pay for, nimrods." — Slate Posted May 25, 2012
94%	Moonrise Kingdom (2012)	" A gorgeously shot, ingeniously crafted, �ber-Andersonian bonbon that, even in its most irritatingly whimsical moments, remains an effective deliverer of cinematic pleasure." — Slate Posted May 24, 2012
34%	Battleship (2012)	" This is the kind of summer movie that softens your brain tissue without even providing the endocrine burst of pleasure that would make it all worthwhile." — Slate Posted May 17, 2012
58%	The Dictator (2012)	" Most of The Dictator had me neither laughing nor shocked, but just staring at the screen in anxious is-that-all-there-is? silence." — Slate Posted May 16, 2012
38%	Dark Shadows (2012)	" [Burton] and Depp, both avowed childhood fans of the original series, seem to be in their element and having a grand old time." — Slate Posted May 10, 2012
96%	First Position (2012)	" First Position is an unabashedly inspirational portrait of what even very young people can accomplish with discipline and dedication." — Slate Posted May 4, 2012
92%	Marvel's The Avengers (2012)	" Its primary purpose is not to explore or subvert the superhero movie, but to lay the groundwork for more of them." — Slate Posted May 3, 2012
92%	Bernie (2012)	" Much more than a macabre true-crime tale: It's a story of thwarted love, not between two people, but between a man and a whole town." — Slate Posted Apr 27, 2012
64%	The Five-Year Engagement (2012)	" It's too bad The Five-Year Engagement's overlong, conventional last third squanders the goodwill built up in that sharply observed middle section." — Slate Posted Apr 26, 2012
95%	Marley (2012)	" Chronologically organized and voiceover-free, the movie is a 145-minute patchwork of old concert footage and talking-head interviews -- lots and lots of them -- from people who knew, loved, and worked with the reggae giant." — Slate Posted Apr 19, 2012
97%	Monsieur Lazhar (2012)	" Fellag, an Algerian comedian and humor writer, anchors the film as the ineffable Bachir, a man who's so private that even the third-act revelation of his back story doesn't fully explain his motivations to us (nor would we want it to)." — Slate Posted Apr 13, 2012

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