Desson Thomson
Desson Thomson's reviews (from any publication) always count toward the Tomatometer
because this critic is a Tomatometer-approved critic.
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 36% | Spice World (1998) |
Spice World is about as awful and shamelessly pandering as a fanzine movie could dare to be.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jun 21, 2016
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| 80% | Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) |
Highly entertaining.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Nov 5, 2015
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| 57% | Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) |
Tomorrow Never Dies isn't one of the great Bonds, by any means. But it's familiar, flashy and enjoyable in all the right places.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Nov 1, 2015
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| 78% | GoldenEye (1995) |
At the most basic, crowd-pleasing level, Goldeneye does the trick.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Oct 28, 2015
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| 27% | Lost in Space (1998) |
A galactic slump of a movie that stuffs its travel bag with special effects but forgets to pack the charm.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Sep 17, 2014
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| 25% | Fathers' Day (1997) |
For the comic actors, this project -- an enjoyable synthesis of improvisation and adherence to the original story -- seems almost too easy. You wonder why it took them so long.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jul 14, 2014
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| 99% | L.A. Confidential (1997) |
There are so many things to enjoy here. Director Curtis Hanson... keeps a complex story coherent and absorbing -- if bloody at the end.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jun 4, 2014
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| 46% | For Love of the Game (1999) |
Those flashbacks will drive you nuts. As if baseball didn't drag on long enough, almost every inning or out of that Yankees game is punctuated by a memory.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted May 8, 2014
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| 58% | Blast From the Past (1999) |
Blast From the Past saves its best for first.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Mar 21, 2014
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| 89% | Rushmore (1998) |
Rushmore is an almost indefinable genre of its own. A comedy with a menacing edge? An ironic romance? Hard to call. Anderson, the director and co-writer, and Wilson, co-writer, have a vision like no one else's.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Mar 17, 2014
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| 75% | Ransom (1996) |
There are more climaxes in here than in a Swedish blue movie. This is not to say you won't be thrilled, charged up and put through the ringer at times, but your intelligence will need to be shoved under your seat like warm, flat soda.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jan 22, 2014
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| 80% | The Boxer (1997) |
Despite its strengths, romantic staying power and a surprise ending, The Boxer has begun to lose the fight as the movie ends.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted May 14, 2013
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| 73% | Promised Land (1988) |
Clumsy, heartfelt and promising.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Oct 17, 2012
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| 86% | The Exorcist (1973) |
It's good stuff but, basically, The Exorcist is a museum piece, something to be enjoyed for its historical value, its datedness and its almost quaint shock value.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Oct 8, 2012
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| 72% | In & Out (1997) |
Actually, the funniest parts of the movie are excerpts from the film that Cameron is originally nominated for.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Apr 11, 2012
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| 100% | Toy Story 2 (1999) |
The toys are back with even more hilarious vengeance. The story's twice as inventive as its predecessor. And the vocal talents of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and others bring even fuller soul to the proceedings than before.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Feb 14, 2012
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| 67% | American Psycho (2000) |
It's hard to summon up enthusiasm for a performance so rooted in bloody banality. I mean, as Patrick, Bale's most emotionally pressing dilemma is: Chainsaw or butcher knife?‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Mar 28, 2011
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| 68% | The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) |
There's an excessive amount of excess -- a mind-numbing plurality of firearm battles, vehicular explosions and brutally frank sexual talk.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Feb 16, 2011
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| 15% | Boys (1996) |
The movie's not helped at all by Ryder, who seems uncomfortable playing femme fatale to these grimy-fingered boys, as if she doesn't believe anyone could feel this adulative about her.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jan 14, 2011
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| 89% | The Bridges of Madison County (1995) |
What follows is, essentially, gothic-romantic bunk. But there's a nicely stylized, below-the-surface courtship between the performers. They make you forget that, at their very core, they are hackneyed creations.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jul 6, 2010
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| 63% | The Last Supper (1996) |
As the body count gets higher, and the housemates begin to question their high-and-mighty purposes, the movie stumbles under its sophomoric moral weight.‐ Washington Post
Posted Jun 10, 2010
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| 92% | 9500 Liberty (2010) |
Most of us are good people when we're sitting around the dinner table. What happens to us as soon as we step up to the public podium?‐ TheWrap
Read More | Posted Jun 7, 2010
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| 83% | Hercules (1997) |
[An] insipid, lifeless, animated feature.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Nov 16, 2009
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| 2/4 | 38% | Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009) |
While it celebrates the creative and the imagined and introduces us to colorful characters, it's bland and dull.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Oct 23, 2009
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| 76% | Captain Abu Raed (2007) |
An endearing blend of myth and melodrama that forthrightly explores family abuse in its own society.‐ Washington Post
Posted Aug 21, 2009
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| 78% | The End of the Line (2009) |
If the tone is occasionally off-putting, the message -- at least, the facts about the fish -- is harder to shrug off.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Aug 14, 2009
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| 94% | Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008) |
All in all, this is a celebration of Australian exuberance, a national ethic of adventurousness and enormous charisma.‐ Washington Post
Posted Aug 7, 2009
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| 97% | Burma VJ: Reporter i et Lukket Land (Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country) (2008) |
Thanks to the new guerrilla narrative, the world has a constant flow of images to file in its collective consciousness. And that camera-testable accountability slowly becomes a global civic right that fulfills the noblest purpose of journalism.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jul 31, 2009
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| 3% | Speed 2 - Cruise Control (1997) |
[It] sinks faster than a rock.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jul 21, 2009
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| 86% | 500 Days of Summer (2009) |
Finally, a romance that understands we mark our lives by our scrapes with love, and our defeats, rather than simply white-wedding-cake success.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jul 17, 2009
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| 63% | The Merry Gentleman (2009) |
With just a few tweaks, The Merry Gentleman could have made a wickedly funny parody of the over-earnest, lyrically hard-edged indie movie. But it's too late for do-overs.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jun 12, 2009
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| 79% | The Hangover (2009) |
Even though Apatow has no fingerprints over this movie, The Hangover follows in the same surprise-me tradition: It takes us to the dumb side but comes back with something unexpectedly affecting.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jun 5, 2009
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| 28% | Fast & Furious (2009) |
The reunion is fun and frantic, like the original on double nitro.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Apr 3, 2009
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| 90% | Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick (Everlasting Moments) (Maria Larsson's Everlasting Moment) (2009) |
It's gloriously absent of the hyper-speed anxiety that passes for storytelling on our multiplex screens.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Mar 26, 2009
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| 90% | Coraline (2009) |
For all its visual delights, Coraline remains more an engaging spectacle than a connective drama.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Feb 5, 2009
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| 88% | Get on the Bus (1996) |
It's a simple, appealing premise and filmmaker Spike Lee uses it to full comic advantage.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Oct 18, 2008
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| 56% | George of the Jungle (1997) |
Surprisingly pleasant.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Oct 18, 2008
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| 69% | Tin Cup (1996) |
Tin Cup works for viewers of any handicap.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Aug 5, 2008
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| 69% | American Teen (2008) |
What makes Nanette Burstein's movie so powerful is its uncanny sense of familiarity. Watching them, we are transported into a humming, philosophical reverie about ourselves.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jul 31, 2008
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| 14% | Hitman (2007) |
A thoroughly entertaining experience.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2008
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| 62% | Diary of the Dead (2007) |
We want to high-five Romero for finding new ways to off his lifeless marauders.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2008
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| 46% | Cassandra's Dream (2007) |
Although McGregor and Farrell produce some occasionally spirited moments, particularly in the earlier scenes, they are little more than walking and talking schemes, their choices based entirely on socioeconomic impulses.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2008
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| 87% | The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996) |
We're really celebrating Hollywood's freedom to create biographies of anyone, no matter how high or low on the social ladder, and still come up with the same banal characteristics, messages and conclusions.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jun 30, 2008
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| 59% | Love Songs (2008) |
Yes, it's weird. But it's wild card weird, with that thrill of never knowing what's coming next or when these Parisians are going to get musical on us.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted Jun 5, 2008
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| 16% | Dudley Do-Right (1999) |
Surprisingly pleasant.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted May 20, 2008
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| 74% | Son of Rambow (2007) |
We cringe and laugh at -- and are ultimately moved by -- their clumsiness and innocence. And it endears us to the Rambo films in ways we never could have anticipated.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted May 16, 2008
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| 88% | Roman de gare (2007) |
The movie is more entertaining than it is logical; its narrative leaps are sometimes ahead of our ability to believe them. But as the compellingly enigmatic Pierre, Pinon keeps us rapt.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted May 16, 2008
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| 47% | Mister Lonely (2007) |
A visually and conceptually mesmerizing and mystical movie.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted May 16, 2008
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| 68% | Irina Palm (2008) |
Although director and co-writer Sam Garbarski takes great care in tracing this difficult dramatic path (he has to balance the twin tracks of other people's morality and Maggie's personal course), he can't avoid the predictability.‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted May 16, 2008
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| 14% | Made of Honor (2008) |
At its best, a romantic comedy celebrates one of humanity's greatest yearnings: to give and to find the love of a lifetime. At its worst (and this is where Made of Honor comes in), it can leave you with a bad taste, not just in your mouth but in your soul‐ Washington Post
Read More | Posted May 1, 2008
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