Movie Reviews by Ben Sachs - Page 26 of 28

501-520 of 546 Reviews

Sort by:

Review of Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 21 Sep 2011

Andy Lau (Infernal Affairs) gives a charismatic lead performance as Dee, a historical figure who became a folk hero, but the real attraction…

Read Review

Review of Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest (2011)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 14 Sep 2011

Rapaport keeps things lively with a hip-hop-tinged aesthetic, shuffling rhythmically between old and new footage…

Read Review

Review of Stake Land (2010)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 11 Sep 2011

Mickle's observation of a devastated working-class America is so sharp that the horror elements, though effectively handled, come to feel like…

Read Review

Review of Apollo 18 (2011)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 07 Sep 2011

This isn't at all scary, but the rough images can be weirdly compelling, the movie's conspiratorial jive enhanced by the fact that the lunar…

Read Review

Review of 5 Days of War (2011)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 31 Aug 2011

It almost goes without saying that Harlin is the wrong man to direct a docudrama about the Russia-Georgian conflict of 2008, which displaced…

Read Review

Review of Seven Days in Utopia (2011)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 31 Aug 2011

If the combination of Christian bromides and golf tips strikes you as a recipe for boredom, stay away…

Read Review

Review of Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (2011)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 19 Aug 2011

The visual effects are as gleefully shoddy as ever, and the playful ideas sometimes achieve a dreamlike suggestiveness…

Read Review

Review of Senna (2010)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 18 Aug 2011

Much of the film's impact comes from the nimble editing of Chris King (whose previous work includes Exit Through the Gift Shop) and Gregers Sall…

Read Review

Review of Conan the Barbarian (2011)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 17 Aug 2011

Rife with the oldest and simplest pleasures of 3-D movies: all sorts of objects fly at the camera, and the climactic battle takes place over…

Read Review

Review of The Whistleblower (2010)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 11 Aug 2011

Kondracki relies on sharp, quotidian detail to show how such atrocities become business as usual; she also makes a point of humanizing the…

Read Review

Review of The Help (2011)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 10 Aug 2011

As in many reductive period pieces, there are no real characters here, just archetypes, namely reactionary cretins and sensitive souls who…

Read Review

Review of Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 27 Jul 2011

As in the directors' earlier work, the humor is rooted in humiliation, but the execution here is tepid and indecisive, possibly because the…

Read Review

Review of Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 27 Jul 2011

Playing a variation on John Wayne's character from Red River, Harrison Ford gives an understandably bewildered performance, often appearing…

Read Review

Review of Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 20 Jul 2011

Joe Johnston - returning to the vibe of his first directorial effort, The Rocketeer (1991) - creates a fun retro-futurist environment with…

Read Review

Review of Monte Carlo (2011)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 01 Jul 2011

The movie hits a surprising range of emotional grace notes, including several moments of genuine regret, and concludes with an understated…

Read Review

Review of The Trip (2011)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 15 Jun 2011

The movie offers enough good one-liners, both comic and ruminative, to hold one's interest, but don't expect much else…

Read Review

Review of The Art of Getting By (2011)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 15 Jun 2011

The movie is so filled with such optimistic gestures that one wishes it were more convincing; the dialogue is riddled with cliches and the…

Read Review

Review of Beginners (2011)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 08 Jun 2011

Mills pulls off the nonchronological structure with uncommon sensitivity; unfortunately, he also confuses sensitivity with preciousness (recurring…

Read Review

Review of X-Men: First Class (2011)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 01 Jun 2011

Like Bryan Singer's X2 (2003), this fifth entry in the X-Men franchise is noteworthy for its gay-rights subtext and for its noted actors delivering…

Read Review

Review of The Double Hour (2009)

By Ben Sachs (546) for Chicago Reader (7,190) on 26 May 2011

As the heroine, Rappoport creates an exquisite, multifaceted character from the old film noir archetype of a woman in flight; in this case…

Read Review

Page 26 of 28

Ben Sachs has written reviews for:

Chicago Reader (7,190)

Ben Sachs is connected to:

Popular Movies Right Now

The Batman

2022

75%430 Reviews

Split

2017

71%1,218 Reviews

The Judge

2014

67%866 Reviews

Hillbilly Elegy

2020

61%141 Reviews

Top Gun: Maverick

2022

82%272 Reviews

Dark Waters

2019

76%68 Reviews

Nope

2022

68%181 Reviews

Ford v Ferrari

2019

81%171 Reviews

Oppenheimer

2023

85%310 Reviews

The Menu

2022

70%145 Reviews

Movies You Viewed Recently

Vacation

2015

53%941 Reviews

Bumblebee

2018

69%1,005 Reviews

Creed

2015

80%1,195 Reviews

The Third Man

1949

86%742 Reviews

Stoker

2013

66%793 Reviews

True Romance

1993

78%787 Reviews

Melancholia

2011

71%1,121 Reviews

Waves

2019

76%72 Reviews

Pulp Fiction

1994

90%1,016 Reviews

mother!

2017

66%1,757 Reviews