Mark Olsen

Mark Olsen's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s): Boxoffice Magazine Chicago Tribune Film Comment Magazine L.A. Weekly Los Angeles Times Village Voice Sight and Sound

Publications: Boxoffice Magazine, Chicago Tribune, Film Comment Magazine, L.A. Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Village Voice, Sight and Sound

Movie Reviews Only

Movies

T-Meter	Title \| Year	Review
90%	Always Be My Maybe (2019)	"Always Be My Maybe" is pleasant without being particularly powerful, appealing if not exactly transformative. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted May 29, 2019
63%	The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2019)	Thinking how different the world feels from even five years ago, let alone 25, the movie feels at a remove, not so much dated as just distanced, needlessly off on its own. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 9, 2019
46%	Second Act (2018)	The movie is all over the place and there is no attempt to weave it into a coherent whole - which is regrettable as scene for scene it often works. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 20, 2018
58%	The House That Jack Built (2018)	A provocative idea executed with a halfhearted commitment. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 13, 2018
54%	The First Purge (2018)	By delivering the story within the framework of genre cinema at its most trashy and garish, the filmmakers convey any message as a bit of rough pleasure amid the kicks and thrills of a movie. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 3, 2018
86%	Okja (2017)	With his latest work, Bong has created a heroine for our times, an indelible movie creature, a story that balances heart and head and a movie that engages with the boundaries of technology both on-screen and off. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 28, 2017
95%	Solaris (1976)	The film has a hypnotic pull, drawing the viewer deeper and deeper into its enigmatic adventure by crafting a world all its own. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted May 18, 2017
100%	Stalker (1979)	The film has a hypnotic pull, drawing the viewer deeper and deeper into its enigmatic adventure by crafting a world all its own. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted May 18, 2017
69%	Free Fire (2017)	"Free Fire" is not Wheatley's best film, but it is a rollicking good time and, more important, an inadvertent skeleton key to thinking about and understanding the rest of his films. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 20, 2017
No Score Yet	Dog Lover's Symphony (2006)	The film is so off on all fronts it becomes a chicken-egg conundrum trying to pinpoint specific problems -- as the stiff acting isn't aided by the overly expository dialogue, which in turn is driven by the functional plotting. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 10, 2017
35%	Live By Night (2017)	Neither elegantly concise nor an epic sprawl, but rather something just awkwardly misshapen. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 22, 2016
83%	Sausage Party (2016)	At a moment when news from our actual world so often seems a nightmare parody of itself ... there is sweet balm in seeing a bagel and a lavash overcome their differences to find mutual pleasure in one another. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 11, 2016
58%	Bad Moms (2016)	Like husbands who think that carrying in the groceries is really pitching in, Lucas and Moore have their hearts in the right place, but their efforts have little real insight or impact. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 28, 2016
83%	The Family Fang (2016)	It's heavy stuff, served with a light touch. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted May 5, 2016
90%	Barbershop: The Next Cut (2016)	"The Next Cut" manages to be entertaining and thoughtful, harmless fun but just serious enough not to seem frivolous. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 14, 2016
21%	The Boss (2016)	It is hard to think of a movie squandering the opportunity of a perfectly timed cultural moment quite like "The Boss." - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 7, 2016
87%	Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)	For all its ease, the film has a constant undercurrent of emotional truth. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 29, 2016
90%	10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)	It is designed to be fun, efficient and accessible and delivers precisely and exactly on that and nothing more. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 10, 2016
31%	Daddy's Home (2015)	"Daddy's Home" is a movie just smart enough about being dumb. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 24, 2015
60%	Sisters (2015)	The movie settles for being a party comedy and little else. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 17, 2015
50%	#Horror (2015)	"#Horror" is a bit like someone who is genuinely scared of something but tries to laugh it off. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 19, 2015
61%	Legend (2015)	A tremendous effort by Hardy is let down by unfocused storytelling. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 19, 2015
87%	The Peanuts Movie (2015)	The movie isn't some kind of disservice to the legacy of Charles Schulz, but it also feels unnecessary. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 5, 2015
63%	Truth (2015)	It is not hard to wonder if "Truth" the screenplay might have rang its bell a bit more clearly in the hands of another director, another set of eyes and hands to distill the material. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 15, 2015
80%	The Assassin (2015)	Combining Hou's patient, observant style with a historical martial arts tale, the film is a fascinating hybrid of craft, genre and story. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 15, 2015
60%	The Intern (2015)	A better, funnier and more considered movie than much of what passes for nonfranchise studio filmmaking, even as it shows a world almost exclusively white, straight and upmarket. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 24, 2015
92%	Sicario (2015)	Directed by Denis Villeneuve from a script by Taylor Sheridan, the film manages to somehow be sleek and sprawling, focused and cagey at the same time, often in the same scene. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 17, 2015
47%	A Walk In The Woods (2015)	One can't help but imagine what previously attached directors Barry Levinson or Richard Linklater might have done with this material, with their affinity for scenes of drifting talk and hanging out. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 2, 2015
38%	We Are Your Friends (2015)	The movie never quite decides if it wants to be a sensitive drama of self-actualization or a playful party movie and ultimately misses the mark on both counts. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 27, 2015
43%	American Ultra (2015)	It turns out to be a disappointingly underdeveloped film that its makers, chiefly director Nima Nourizadeh and writer Max Landis, must have thought could coast by on a cool but half-baked idea. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 20, 2015
67%	The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)	It all winds up feeling hollow and even slightly oppressive, an enforced sense of fun jabbed within quotation marks. It aims for a silky lightness of touch but lands like a dropped slab of concrete. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 13, 2015
16%	Pixels (2015)	Some movies are so interminable that it seems they might never end, while others are assembled with such indifference that you are essentially left waiting for them to start. "Pixels" somehow manages both. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 23, 2015
46%	Irrational Man (2015)	In its own strange, deliberate way the film does wind up feeling surprising, fresh even, as Allen finds new ways to explore some of his most longstanding preoccupations. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 16, 2015
27%	Terminator Genisys (2015)	"Terminator Genisys" could be Exhibit A in why the current line of thinking in Hollywood regarding sequels/reboots/remakes often leads to terrible decisions and worse films. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 30, 2015
95%	Spy (2015)	"Spy" may not be a great movie, but it is great fun. And at times it will have you wondering if there's that much of a difference. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 4, 2015
33%	Entourage (2015)	The movie has none of the fizz of the earliest of the series' eight seasons, and watching it summons that vague blank familiarity of discovering a show you used to watch is unexpectedly still on the air. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 3, 2015
20%	Aloha (2015)	Even with its off-balance, overstuffed storytelling, the film maintains a charm and energy that never flags, with brisk pacing and generally engaging performances from its deep-bench cast. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted May 28, 2015
31%	Lost River (2015)	"Lost River" is indeed a mess, but it's the best mess possible, an evocative grab-bag of images and moods with a heartfelt sincerity and conflicting impulses of romantic melancholy and hardscrabble hopefulness. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 9, 2015
65%	The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015)	The film has only the sheer charm of its cast to get it by, and it says a lot about the actors that they nearly pull it off. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 5, 2015
88%	Adieu au langage (Goodbye to Language) (2014)	Anyone interested in the possibilities of the moviegoing experience - what can happen in a dark theater - owes it to themselves to say hello to "Goodbye to Language." - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 22, 2015
43%	The Gambler (2014)	By suppressing Wahlberg's more typical sparkling unpredictability, this new reading of the character recasts him into someone more frustrating than free. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 24, 2014
42%	Comet (2014)	Its conceits ... get in the way of its characters, making it feel fussy and convoluted when it aims for something more simple and elegant. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 6, 2014
67%	Winter In The Blood (2014)	The story captures a slipstream of memory and regret, interweaving past and present and what might be happening in Virgil's mind as he reflects on lost family and lost chances. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 30, 2014
22%	Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)	There is something half-hearted about the entire film, as if those behind it were involved not because they wanted to make it, not because they should make it, but just because they could. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 7, 2014
89%	Calvary (2014)	In its steady assemblage of details over an incidental, episodic structure it accrues a building sense of moral gravity. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 31, 2014
46%	Wish I Was Here (2014)	For a film that purports to be about the process of maturity and growth, it is woefully un-evolved, lacking in understanding and insight. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 17, 2014
88%	Code Black (2014)	Part of what makes "Code Black" so exciting is that it may be one of the best examples of the new possibilities of the age of digital filmmaking. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 26, 2014
69%	Palo Alto (2014)	Conjures a delicate, very specific sense of middle-class adolescence, the indeterminate, nascent feelings of the teenage years. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted May 8, 2014
60%	Nymphomaniac: Volume II (2014)	Von Trier is such a masterful filmmaker that every new project comes on with the expectation and air of a totalizing masterwork. "Nymphomaniac: Volume II" creates the unsated sensation of having too much and wanting more. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 4, 2014
76%	Nymphomaniac: Volume I (2014)	It provides, perhaps like the experiences of love and sex, a shifting variety of insights, emotions, unexpected lightness and moments of visceral shock. - Los Angeles Times EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 20, 2014