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Critics list

Gary Shannon

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

A semi-retired film critic based in Vancouver, BC.

Publications:

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Annabelle: Creation (2017) 71% 5/10 EDIT “Too fixated on the explosive and bombastic properties of shock horror to understand the kind of fear truly effective horror movies leave in their wake.” – The Young Folks Jan 8, 2019 Full Review Genesis (2018) 89% 6/10 EDIT “Too many moments in "Genesis" come off as too deterministically 'by design' to achieve the aching loneliness Lesage so obviously wants to convey.” – The Young Folks Jan 8, 2019 Full Review The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) 76% 10/10 EDIT “Stands as perhaps the greatest inquiry into the myth of the "Old West."” – The Young Folks Jan 7, 2019 Full Review The Student (2016) 86% 4/10 EDIT “Ironically allows antireligious pedagogics and dogmas overtake [Kirill Serebrennikov's] story, itself a cautionary tale on the dangers of pedagogical and dogmatic thinking.” – The Young Folks Jan 7, 2019 Full Review Bad Lieutenant (1992) 77% 8/10 EDIT “The greatest New York City depiction of repentance in the deepest, darkest slums of the human soul since Scorsese's "Mean Streets."” – The Young Folks Jan 7, 2019 Full Review Train to Busan (2016) 95% 6/10 EDIT “[It's] nothing we haven't seen before but Train to Busan takes a unique and surprisingly intimate spin on the high-octane zombie genre.” – The Young Folks Jan 7, 2019 Full Review A Scanner Darkly (2006) 68% 7/10 EDIT “Using interpolated rotoscoping techniques Linklater manage[s] to capture a unique visual style for "A Scanner Darkly" just absurd enough to be comical and just human enough to be tragic.” – The Young Folks Jan 7, 2019 Full Review Munich (2005) 79% 9/10 EDIT “"Munich" mutes Spielberg's hallmark sentimentalism to convey a more productive sense of ambiguity toward moral injustice, a crucible forged from our inability to empathize with the "other."” – The Young Folks Jan 7, 2019 Full Review A Bigger Splash (2015) 89% 6/10 EDIT “[Luca Guadagnino's] cathartic visual style seems to fluctuate too loosely between complimenting his script's character nuances and shameless superficiality.” – The Young Folks Jan 7, 2019 Full Review Barton Fink (1991) 90% 10/10 EDIT “In their dark comic masterpiece "Bartin Fink," [The Coens] draw the line between artistic integrity and artistic smugness.” – The Young Folks Jan 7, 2019 Full Review Mirai no Mirai (2018) 91% 8/10 EDIT “Too many 2018 films are about "family," but Hosoda's "Mirai" feels like the first film to truly attempt to understand what it means to be a family in 2018.” – The Young Folks Dec 29, 2018 Full Review The Favourite (2018) 93% 6/10 EDIT “The humor in The Favourite requires a level of estrangement and distance with history and the upper-class.” – The Young Folks Nov 26, 2018 Full Review An Elephant Sitting Still (2018) 94% 8/10 EDIT “Hu Bo probes an abyss of endless despair, within it he finds an impenetrable beauty in our ability to withstand the unremitting brutality we inherit by simply existing.” – The Young Folks Oct 16, 2018 Full Review The Wolf House (2018) 96% 7/10 EDIT “The Wolf House may not pose the answers to life's harsh questions but it's invaluable in that it encourages our eyes, ears and minds to not to let that which seems trustworthy answer those questions for us.” – The Young Folks Oct 15, 2018 Full Review Mangoshake (2018) 6/10 EDIT “I am not ashamed to admit that this type of lo-fi outsider art appeals to every inch of my 20-something sense of aimlessness.” – The Young Folks Oct 15, 2018 Full Review 3 Faces (2018) 98% 7/10 EDIT “It is with his infectious brand of amusement that Pahani explores this girl's strange world which, through generations of tradition, remains curiously divorced from his and Behnaz Jafari's.” – The Young Folks Oct 12, 2018 Full Review The Image Book (2018) 90% 8/10 EDIT “[Jean-Luc Godard's] film is hyper-aware, even overwhelmingly so, but amidst [his] kaleidoscope of images emerges a deeply personal vision.” – The Young Folks Oct 12, 2018 Full Review Transit (2018) 94% 8/10 EDIT “Christian Petzold's romantic waltz of Hollywood dreamscape and grounded emotional reality is not so much a distracting contrivance in the case of Transit as a compelling abstraction.” – The Young Folks Oct 10, 2018 Full Review Holiday (2018) 80% 5/10 EDIT “Eklöf lacks a human touch that should've lifted her impressive formal habits from merely cold precision.” – The Young Folks Oct 5, 2018 Full Review Fausto (2018) 100% 7/10 EDIT “Familiar sights [are] enshrouded in darkness, leaving the knowledge of what's lying just before our eyes painfully out of our grasp ... Bussmann's film [thus] becomes a sublime odyssey into how we fill that darkness.” – The Young Folks Oct 5, 2018 Full Review Asako I & II (2018) 77% 9/10 EDIT “For all its obvious contrivances, the ingenuity behind its strange dramatic devices makes [Asako I & II] easily as the most authentic emotional experience in cinemas this year.” – The Young Folks Oct 5, 2018 Full Review The Sisters Brothers (2018) 87% 5/10 EDIT “Audiard is given the kind of material made to deepen archetypes and clichés-an admirable intent-but every attempt for Audiard to deepen his western ends up working against the genre's every natural impulse and inclination.” – The Young Folks Sep 28, 2018 Full Review Perfect Blue (1997) 84% 10/10 EDIT “[Satoshi Kon's film], among the scariest in the medium, finds equally disturbing implications in its imagined threats as it does in its physical ones.” – The Young Folks Aug 22, 2018 Full Review Matinee (1993) 93% 9/10 EDIT “[Dante's] delirium is both hilariously absurd and terrifyingly convincing.” – The Young Folks Aug 3, 2018 Full Review The Great Silence (1968) 100% 9/10 EDIT “Corbucci's terse, elemental and rugged direction compliment a world shook by corruption and evil, and plagued by treachery so pervasive it enfolds as powerfully through its cold setting as does its even colder characters.” – The Young Folks Jul 16, 2018 Full Review
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