ROTTEN TOMATOES: Peter Canavese

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PETER CANAVESE

Agrees with the Tomatometer 80% of the time.

Biography: Since 1987, Peter "Groucho" Canavese has been writing film reviews and articles in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is a member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle. Peter authors and maintains an exhaustive website called GrouchoReviews and is the chief film critic for monthly ON Magazine (since 1995), and Celluloid Dreams, a weekly radio show devoted to film (Celluloid Dreams runs on KSJS—90.5 FM—every Monday at 5pm). Since 2009, he has regularly contributed film reviews to Palo Alto Weekly. His reviews have also appeared in the San Jose Mercury News (1991-1994), in Bay Area weekly Alternate101 (2007-2008), and on Portland's 1190 KEX drive-time show Mark & Dave (2008).

Favorites: Citizen Kane, Brazil, Duck Soup, Ikiru, North by Northwest, 8 1/2

Publications: Groucho Reviews, ON Magazine, Palo Alto Weekly

Total Reviews: 1436
Total QuickRatings: 3

Location: San Jose, CA

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date (default)

Fresh 4/4	N/A	Spectacle: Elvis Costello With... - Season One (2009)	" Because Costello is himself so hugely talented as an eclectic songwriter and performer, because his taste is so impeccable, and because he is such a cultural magpie...Spectacle is a wholly addictive musical program for the ages. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 28, 2009
Fresh 3/4	N/A	Scrubs - The Complete Eighth Season (2008)	" Series creator Bill Lawrence has always toggled between the zany and the emotional, and the eighth season is no exception. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 28, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 92%	The General (1927)	" Keaton proves as endlessly clever and athletic as his screen surrogates...chock-full of hilarious sight gags, including bits of business that incorporate moving trains, cow-catchers, a bear (and bear trap), and a misbehaving cannon. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 25, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 91%	Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire (2009)	" Gabourey Sidibe brilliantly embodies the understandably bitter Precious, who shares her heartbreaking despair through extensive narration." — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 20, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Fresh 71%	The Blind Side (2009)	" Surely post-recession America will turn out in droves for this cinematic version of a hug. But should they?" — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 20, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 80%	Fight Club (1999)	" One of the seminal films of the 1990s...just as darkly funny, epic, and psychically wrenching as ever. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 14, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 95%	Monsters, Inc. (2001)	" *From its jazzy main titles to its gentle fadeout, Monsters, Inc.* has something that money can't buy. It's likeable. [Blu-ray]*" — Groucho Reviews* Posted Nov 12, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 98%	Up (2009)	" It's beginning to seem as if Pixar's delivery of one of the very best films of the year will be an unstoppable annual tradition. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 12, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Rotten 55%	Disney's A Christmas Carol (2009)	" Call me a Scrooge, but I'll pass on this synthetic version of that most humanistic of tales." — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 6, 2009
Fresh 3/4	N/A	Battlestar Galactica: The Plan (2009)	" A labor of love...so it's appropriate that the film should also be about love, the spanner in the works that allows humanity to triumph over machinery. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Nov 2, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 80%	Michael Jackson's This Is It (2009)	" A hall-of-mirrors investigation of extraordinary talent, emotionally stunted personality, a performer's process, and the cruel mistress of celebrity...but it also serves as a powerful performance version of a last will and testament." — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 30, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Rotten 44%	Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)	" Branagh's ambitious take succeeds as a cautionary tale about true monstrosity: hubris and man's inhumanity to man. But one man's operatic style is another man's unintentionally comical excess, and...Frankenstein certainly tempts fate... [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 26, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 60%	Wolf (1994)	" Mike Nichols' underrated 1994 hybrid not only of wolf and man, but also of satire and horror...an eccentric film that may well be regarded, decades hence, as a movie classic. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 26, 2009
Fresh 2.5/4	Rotten 48%	Astro Boy (2009)	" *What Astro Boy* has in spades are energy, good humor, and the demolition-derby action of a superhero smash-up, reasons enough to recommend it to grade-school boys.*" — Groucho Reviews* Posted Oct 23, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Rotten 37%	Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009)	" Gothic pop...a ripping yarn for the big screen..." — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 23, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 90%	Howards End (1992)	" The pairings of Margaret and Henry, and Helen and Leonard, attempt to cross fault lines widened by class, and the tragedy of Howards End is in the absolute necessity and absolute inefficacy of doing so at their moment in history. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 19, 2009
Fresh 4/4	N/A	It's Garry Shandling's Show: The Complete Series (2009)	" The ironic relationship with the audience is what makes It's Garry Shandling's Show one for the ages." — Groucho Reviews DVD REVIEW Posted Oct 19, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 92%	Drag Me To Hell (2009)	" *Raimi puts his pent-up energy to good use in Drag Me to Hell, an unpretentious horror hoot that's scary and funny in equal measure. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews* Posted Oct 18, 2009
Rotten 1.5/4	Rotten 24%	Law Abiding Citizen (2009)	" 'It's going to get Biblical!'...sets new standards of lunatic plotting as it goes about its smiting." — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 16, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 71%	Where the Wild Things Are (2009)	" A fine conversation piece for gifted kids%u2014assuming parents willing to talk to their kids about their feelings...also a fascinating psychological study for adults looking back on the roiling emotions of childhood." — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 16, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 98%	Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)	" One of the most important films in the history of popular cinema, and film fans must never forget the incredible achievement it was in 1937. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Oct 6, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 100%	The Wizard of Oz (1939)	" It's more than a movie; it's an American rite of passage. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Sep 28, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Rotten 51%	Easy Virtue (2009)	" A period piece that may play well with those who hate period pieces. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Sep 23, 2009
Fresh 4/4	N/A	The Complete Monterey Pop Festival (1967)	" Looking back on a time when music mattered, it's all good--at least as seen through the lens of documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker...[Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Sep 21, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 82%	Pierrot Le Fou (1965)	" Theirs is, in their own words, 'A story,' 'All mixed up,' and their self-construction mimics that of their true Creator, the ever-experimental auteur Jean-Luc Godard. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Sep 21, 2009
Fresh 3/4	N/A	Fringe: The First Season (2009)	" Abrams and co-creators Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci...chiefly credit the work of David Cronenberg for sending them into their own 'Videodrome' playground of body-threatening, science-gone-wrong invasiveness. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Sep 20, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 45%	Jennifer's Body (2009)	" Sets thoughts swirling about three bitch-goddesses: the teenage variety (namely Megan Fox's Jennifer), "success" in the commercial cinema, and that fickle mistress called hype." — Groucho Reviews Posted Sep 18, 2009
Rotten 1/4	Rotten 18%	Love Happens (2009)	" Pure Hollywood hokum, with plotting that's practically impossible...graceless product placement, cutesy situations, and neatly tied bows." — Groucho Reviews Posted Sep 18, 2009
Fresh 3/4	N/A	Supernatural: The Complete Fourth Season (2008)	" *Say what you will about the highly entertaining Supernatural, but you cannot deny it traffics in the highest stakes on television. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews* Posted Sep 15, 2009
Fresh 4/4	N/A	Star Trek: The Original Series - Season Two (1967)	" A phenomenon the likes of which television has seen no equal...[Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Sep 14, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 6%	Whiteout (2009)	" At least 10% more exciting than correction fluid." — Groucho Reviews Posted Sep 11, 2009
Fresh 2.5/4	N/A	Heroes - Season 3 ()	" Heroes still has some way to go in restoring the cohesion of its initial run, but Fuller has helped the show to prove it's capable of hitting a stride and mining fresh stories that deepen the mythology... [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Sep 9, 2009
Fresh 2.5/4	Rotten 49%	Taking Woodstock (2009)	" On balance Taking Woodstock--like Teichberg--takes after its immigrant American father, evincing a quiet humility in offering its rambling 'little perspective' of an emblematic happening that was almost everything it was cracked up to be." — Groucho Reviews Posted Sep 9, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 78%	It Might Get Loud (2009)	" [A] sideways glance at the electric guitar by way of profiling three generations of guitarists: Jack White of The White Stripes, the Edge of U2, and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin." — Groucho Reviews Posted Sep 9, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 85%	World's Greatest Dad (2009)	" An amusing, cynical black comedy about our national addiction to tragedy, and our commoditization of grief..." — Groucho Reviews Posted Sep 9, 2009
Fresh 2.5/4	Fresh 63%	Extract (2009)	" Bateman reliably tickles in his signature role of a square who can't catch a break, and Wiig once more delivers subtly funny character work in a tricky role." — Groucho Reviews Posted Sep 9, 2009
Fresh 3/4	N/A	CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - The Ninth Season (2008)	" Mind-bogglingly well-produced, each hour the equivalent of a mini-movie. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Sep 9, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Rotten 57%	9 (2009)	" One senses Acker stretching his eleven-minute short rather than containing bigger ideas and characters who have taken on lives of their own: 9 too clearly puts style over substance." — Groucho Reviews Posted Sep 9, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Fresh 86%	Lorna's Silence (2009)	" *The Dardenne brothers have seemed infallible, but their signature style begins to show strain in Lorna's Silence." — Groucho Reviews* Posted Aug 22, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 45%	Shorts (2009)	" Just creative enough to keep kids glazed over with nominal interest, but it won't challenge them much..." — Groucho Reviews Posted Aug 22, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 88%	Inglourious Basterds (2009)	" A whole lot of movie, but it's also technically mature filmmaking to a thematically juvenile end." — Groucho Reviews Posted Aug 22, 2009
Fresh 3/4	N/A	Sons of Anarchy - Season 1 (2008)	" Despite having something of the flavor of TV's most testosterone-laden shows, Sons of Anarchy is its own distinctive beast and another worthy entry in the stakes of addictive serialized TV. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Aug 22, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 65%	Duplicity (2009)	" The film's greatest pleasure is in the snappy dialogue Gilroy crafts for the capable duo of Roberts and Owen... [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Aug 22, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 41%	Fighting (2009)	" Montiel and his collaborators can pat themselves on the back for elevating empty material just a bit, but this is disposable cinema, designed to hit and run after an opening weekend. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Aug 22, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 93%	Sugar (2009)	" Sugar showcases a lovely performance by Soto, a match for the modest, low-key filmmaking style of Boden and Fleck... [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Aug 22, 2009
Fresh 2.5/4	Rotten 43%	How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003)	" A modest but bubbly comedy of manners. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Aug 20, 2009
Fresh 2.5/4	Fresh 72%	Sunshine Cleaning (2009)	" The sort of movie you root for, hoping it'll break through to be something special. It never quite does, but it still has the not-insignificant value of two fine actresses cast as sisters. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Aug 20, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Rotten 42%	The Ninth Gate (1999)	" Sorely underrated...wisely counter-cultural to Hollywood's idea of what a supernatural thriller should be. [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Aug 17, 2009
Fresh 2.5/4	Rotten 47%	Cutthroat Island (1995)	" Hey, are you looking for an exciting movie about pirates of the, well, um, Caribbean? [Blu-ray]" — Groucho Reviews Posted Aug 17, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Rotten 38%	The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)	" The unusual circumstances enable quite a bit of humor and mystery, but they also seriously cut down on the film's relevance." — Groucho Reviews Posted Aug 14, 2009

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0/4	The Number 23Offsite
0/4	See No EvilOffsite
0/4	Alone in the DarkOffsite
0/4	White NoiseOffsite
0/4	Surviving ChristmasOffsite
0/4	My Mother Likes WomenOffsite
.5/4	I Love You, Beth CooperOffsite
.5/4	Transformers: Revenge of the FallenOffsite
.5/4	Bride WarsOffsite
.5/4	Friday the 13thOffsite

PETER CANAVESE

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