Rick Groen, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
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For 1,280 reviews, this critic has graded:
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44% higher than the average critic
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2% same as the average critic
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54% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1 point higher than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Rick Groen's Scores
- Movies
| Average review score: | 60 |
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| Highest review score: |
Critic Score
100
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| Lowest review score: |
Critic Score
0
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 748 out of 1280
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Mixed: 366 out of 1280
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Negative: 166 out of 1280
1,280
movie reviews
- By critic score
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Rick Groen 75
It sure ain't the Christmas of Dickens's imaginings. Dysfunctional overachievers all, the Vuillards are a family bizarre enough to make the Royal Tenenbaums look like candidates for a Hallmark card. -
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Rick Groen 75
A worthy docudrama that is solid if not sublime. But, sometimes, a merely good film can brush up against greatness, and this one does so twice – in Sean Penn's magnetic performance and in the cautionary tale's contemporary resonance. -
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Rick Groen 75
The Class is simultaneously old school and new, familiar in its themes but unique in design and, at its best, riveting in execution. -
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Rick Groen 75
Never brilliant but always solid and often wry, Marley & Me is what it celebrates -- an amiable overachiever. -
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Rick Groen 75
The result is a fairly co-ordinated effort that, despite a few miscues, yields a consistently watchable film. -
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Rick Groen 75
So this is a light/bright movie that actually illuminates our dull grey lives, reminding us that intrigue can be, well, intriguing. And damn sexy too. -
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Rick Groen 75
Two Lovers is two movies – the complex, alluring one we want, and the simple, pedestrian one we'll settle for. -
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Rick Groen 75
Yes, the delight of this movie lies in these devilish details, and it's clear that writer-director Greg Mottola knows them well. -
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Rick Groen 75
Mainly, though, the film's strength is reportorial, sensitively exploring a theme that has grown ever more prominent with the globalization of sport. -
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Rick Groen 75
This documentary is only partly a story of the chosen one; mainly, and more intriguingly, it's a chronicle of the choosing one, of the nervous young monk charged with the job of leading the search party. -
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Rick Groen 75
The symbolism is about as subtle as a fang to the neck. Really, Daybreakers is more fun than foreboding; it's fright-lite, yet that's par for the bloody course in these busy apocalyptic days. -
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Rick Groen 75
Essentially a love story, as stripped of sentimentality as the landscape is shorn of green, yet an extraordinary love story nonetheless – powerful and poignant and, even in the midst of hope's imminent extinction, hopeful too. -
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Rick Groen 75
The best satire implicates the audience; this stuff keeps our sense of superiority smugly intact. -
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Rick Groen 75
Upbeat it ain't, but when the light fades from the final frame, there remains something unusual in the Dardennes canon – the possibility of an escape from futility's clutches, and a reason for hope that might, just might, be more than an illusion. -
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Rick Groen 75
This is the story of the diminutive Coco before she became the fashionable Chanel – in other words, the whole movie is one long first act. -
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Rick Groen 75
Avatar is a king's ransom fairly well spent, not least because Cameron's invitation into his superbly crafted universe comes with an unexpected price: He makes it easy to gaze fondly on all this movie magic, but only in exchange for a hard look at ourselves. -
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Rick Groen 75
This is still her (Wasikowska’s) picture. She’s its 10-foot tower, mysterious and brave and excited and withdrawn. Alice is the true magic in a Wonderland that’s mere movie magic – the happy surprise amidst everything we’ve come to expect. -
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Rick Groen 75
The tale may be Dahl's, but there's a whole new wag to it – this is decidedly, weirdly and, at best, wonderfully a Wes Anderson movie. -
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Rick Groen 75
A seriously black comedy. Black, because affliction and angst abound. Comic, because this rampant bleakness is presented as nothing more than an amusing bauble. -
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Rick Groen 75
In truth, what follows is less disturbing than intriguing – to audiences hip to the mechanics of horror flicks, it's rare fun to be fooled, and this one is pretty damned clever. -
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Rick Groen 75
Mainly, though, it's the exquisite restraint - both of Cornish's performance and Campion's direction - that gives the film its power. -
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Rick Groen 75
Despite acting under the computer-generated encumbrances of that monkey tail and those centaur legs, Delphine Chanéac does something remarkable with Dren – she makes her a disturbingly sexy thing. -
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Rick Groen 75
Mother symbolically doubles as Mother Korea, devoted to her land. But is she blindly and uncritically devoted, too quick to forgive and forget sins that should be redressed, to treat any flaws in the national character as simply intrinsic to the country's nature? -
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Rick Groen 75
As for the implicit tragedy amidst the funny business, the swelling ranks of the unemployed, the movie has no solution but instead offers itself as implicit solace: Escape, ye wretches, into my clever humour and my nifty dialogue and my star's considerable charm. -
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Rick Groen 75
Those who lived through the Vietnam War era, and paid attention, will find this documentary short on revelation but long on poignant reminders. -
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Rick Groen 75
A little gem of social realism that makes up in polish what it lacks in consistency. -
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Rick Groen 75
This time, though, Zemeckis has another technical trick up his sleeve – 3-D – and for once the gimmick succeeds. -
