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Marc Savlov
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Green Ghost & the Masters of the Stone (2021) |
A mash-up of películas de acción, supernatural family drama, and light humor, it wears its heart – and its influences – on its avocado-accented, superheroic sleeve. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted May 04, 2022
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Unplugging (2022) |
Unplugging is hamstrung by its ricocheting tone and undercut by sequences that probably provoked chuckles during the initial read-through but too often fall flat in the finished product. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Apr 21, 2022
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Master (2022) |
An arresting feature debut from Director Mariana Diallo, Master gingerly walks the tightrope between outright supernatural horror and a criticism of the enduring power of monied white privilege. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Mar 16, 2022
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Bitch Ass (2022) |
Bitch Ass’ numerous subtexts address everything from the consequences of systemic racism within the African-American community to the implications of being different in urban Black America. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Mar 16, 2022
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Barbarians (2021) |
Dorfman's debut feature is a corker of a good time to watch and rife with some juicy subtexts regarding class, British colonialism, and toxic masculinity. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Jan 11, 2022
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Freeland (2020) |
Freeland has precious little dialogue, so Fairchild conveys her unspoken inner feelings using only her face and eyes. In this she excels, radiating calm, outrage, despair, and melancholic memories. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Oct 15, 2021
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Small Engine Repair (2021) |
Small Engine Repair is a real American horror story, skillfully shot, perfectly cast and acted, and carrying a sorrowful message that resonates with brutal truth. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Sep 09, 2021
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We Need to Do Something (2021) |
O'Grady, working from Booth's tightly knit script, gives the audience a master class in claustrophobic horror movie minimalism, preferring to focus on the four cornered family members as fear and uncertainty hobble their rational wits. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Sep 02, 2021
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The Colony (2021) |
Certainly lead adult actor Arnezeder has panache to spare, as does Bousinna, but the muddled storyline defeats them time and time again, no matter how perfectly angry/hopeful their lines are. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Sep 01, 2021
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The East (2020) |
The East is an unrelenting condemnation of the Netherlands' misguided attempt to return its colonial outreach to a time long gone while hitting most (if not all) of the "doomed war" niche genre movie tropes without ever actually teetering into cliche. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Aug 17, 2021
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Joe Bell (2020) |
Joe Bell is preaching to the converted and unlikely to draw in the type of audience that actually needs to hear its pleas for kindness in a mean and wild world. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Jul 22, 2021
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F9 The Fast Saga (2021) |
It's a Fast and the Furious film but this time clunkier, minus much of the snappy gutter panache of 2001's original. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Jun 25, 2021
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Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation (2020) |
Truman & Tennessee is a fascinating but melancholy mash note to the enduring friendship of two genius misfits who, despite constant self doubt barely masked by a raconteur's seeming insouciance. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Jun 18, 2021
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Holler (2020) |
For all the scenes of desperate people doing desperate things in order to stave off literal starvation while working dead-end or downright criminal jobs, Riegel somehow manages to imply short, sharp shock of actual hope by film's end. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Jun 10, 2021
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The Carnivores (2020) |
Medel's perfectly raw and queasily realistic performance of an already insecure mind coming wholly unhinged, and cinematographer Adam J. Minnick's canted camera setups and dreamy-dreary color palette, The Carnivores is a slow burning bad dream. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Jun 05, 2021
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Los Hermanos/The Brothers (2020) |
A brief history lesson that touches on communist Cuba's food rationing system discussed while the brothers venture out into Havana in search of an elusive bottle of soy sauce feels unnecessary, but that's a minor misstep in an otherwise embracing film. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Jun 01, 2021
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Duty Free (2020) |
As director/son Regis chronicles his mother's story over a three-year period, we get to know her in singular detail, and what emerges is the exact opposite of what audiences may assume. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted May 06, 2021
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The Outside Story (2020) |
A savvy examination of the importance of community, The Outside Story meanders along with Charles and his chance encounters with others in his neighborhood. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Apr 29, 2021
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Vanquish (2021) |
It's all about that futuristic superbike, actually. The plot mechanics, action set pieces, and characters arcs - or lack thereof - are all dreadfully overfamiliar, resulting in a cream puff of a thriller. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Apr 16, 2021
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Wojnarowicz (2020) |
McKim's documentary is as jangly and urgent as its subject and his art, and it packs a melancholy wallop, using the artist's own running commentary via cassette tape. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Mar 25, 2021
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Alien on Stage (2020) |
Inspiring and uplifting in equal amounts, Harvey and Kummer's fangs-and-all documentary is, like its subject, one of a kind. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Mar 25, 2021
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Gaia (2021) |
Fans of Jeff VanderMeer's "Southern Reach Trilogy" and its Annihilation adaptation, and lovers of the defiantly feminine and vengeful natural world will find plenty to chew on in Gaia. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Mar 24, 2021
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The Hunt for Planet B (2021) |
Director Nathaniel Kahn's documentary ranges far afield from just the challenges of building the James Webb under constant threat of budgetary cuts. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Mar 22, 2021
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Dark State (2021) |
That might be your cup of Bilderbergian-flavored hydroxychloroquine paranoiac politics but I found it to be yet another depressing reminder of how far we've fallen. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Mar 18, 2021
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The Marksman (2021) |
Sometimes it's best to just keep things simple and comfortingly familiar, cliched though they may be. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Jan 15, 2021
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Beautiful Something Left Behind (2020) |
Through it all Philps keeps her camera low the better to represent the children's as-yet-unformed POV, both literally and emotionally. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Jan 12, 2021
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The Twentieth Century (2019) |
It ends up being a smashingly good and goofball history of the non-world of Canadian history and flim-flammery, deeply committed to its own colonial crazy. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Dec 01, 2020
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Jiu Jitsu (2020) |
Jiu Jitsu's weakest link may be its lousy fight choreography which is shot wide and low with stunt doubles who seem like they could really use a good nap. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Nov 20, 2020
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Mortal (2020) |
Mortal plods along for most of its running time with the occasional helicopter chase scene and plenty of CGI fulminology: But ultimately Ovredal's not-so-deep-dive into Norwegian mythos is a too-obvious let down. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Nov 12, 2020
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Possessor: Uncut (2020) |
Untangling that hazy, convoluted storyline amidst all the heavily stylized carnage and outright nihilism may be the film's biggest drawback, but presumably that's exactly what Cronenberg intended. All is surreal, illusory, and forbidding. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Oct 02, 2020
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Space Dogs (2020) |
Space Dogs is more meditatively Tarkovskian than History Channel fodder. Kremser and Peter employ plenty of archival and often painful-to-watch footage of these unwitting animal pioneers; they were not "boldly going," but rather "uncomprehendingly sent." - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Sep 25, 2020
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I've Got Issues (2019) |
A message from the universal spirit, perhaps, and most certainly one that carries even more meaningful weight right now than director Collins could've ever suspected way back in the before-times. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Sep 25, 2020
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Shortcut (2020) |
The kindest thing I can say for Shortcut is that the briefly-glimpsed practical monster effects by Rome-based EFX outfit Makinarium (Zoolander 2) are nicely done. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Sep 25, 2020
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Made in Bangladesh (2019) |
The portrait [Hossain] paints, while visually arresting thanks to cinematographer Sabine Lancelin's eye for Dhaka's colorfully saturated and gritty milieu, is a grim one. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Sep 04, 2020
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The Prey (2018) |
Cinematographer Lucas Gath does a terrific job immersing the viewer in the wilds of Cambodia's own "green hell" and there's more than enough kung-fu versus bokator bone-breaking brawling to satisfy even the hardest of hardcore genre fans. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Aug 20, 2020
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Coup 53 (2019) |
Coup 53 is a historical documentary that plays more like All the President's Men had it been written by John le Carré with a dash of Costa-Gavras and Manchurian Candidate John Frankenheimer. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Aug 20, 2020
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Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (2020) |
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is as real as it gets, a snapshot stolen from the very year everything turned to shit. It's a masterpiece. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Jul 23, 2020
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Hill of Freedom (2014) |
That may sound like some terribly serious arthouse navel-gazing, but ultimately Hill of Freedom is surprisingly satisfying in its sheer - albeit abjectly disjointed - fish-out-of-water ordinariness. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Jun 12, 2020
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Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) |
Miyazaki conjures a pubescent fable out of whole cloth that both kids and adults will enjoy immensely, and with the late Phil Hartman on board as Kiki's wiseacre feline familiar, there's many more comic moments than in the director's later work. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Jun 11, 2020
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Haunters (2010) |
Director Kim [Min-suk] manages to surprise at nearly every turn, setting up audience expectations and then gleefully knocking them down, one after another, like an intricate pattern of dominoes. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted May 09, 2020
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Impractical Jokers: The Movie (2020) |
I could watch the infamous McKay-helmed Ferrell short The Landlord on a loop for 93 minutes and laugh myself into hypoxia, as opposed to the nap Impractical Jokers left me craving. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Mar 12, 2020
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Onward (2020) |
Onward is visually dazzling, which is no surprise given those involved. But the simplistic, cookie-cutter storyline, which verges on the video game-esque without really being as fun as a supercool video game, is a letdown. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Mar 05, 2020
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Brahms: The Boy II (2020) |
Quoth the other, more bewhiskered and musically inclined Brahms, "The only true immortality lies in one's children." Oh, Johannes, if only you knew. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Feb 27, 2020
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The Photograph (2020) |
You don't need to bring a handkerchief into the theatre for fear of ocular leakage, but The Photograph's modestly hopeful denouement is, truly, picture perfect. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Feb 20, 2020
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Come to Daddy (2019) |
Come to Daddy is a stylistically impressive and disconcertingly lovely shot across the absurdist bow that plays havoc with genre conventions and as such impresses with its utterly unique take on father/son reunification and the perils thereof. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Feb 06, 2020
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Spies in Disguise (2019) |
Spies in Disguise is a fair-to-middling example of a movie that knows its core demographic and rarely bothers to aim higher than, oh, 4 foot, 4 inches. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Dec 19, 2019
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A Hidden Life (2019) |
[August] Diehl's performance is a model of restraint; he more often imparts information by a look, a glance, the slump of his shoulders, than he does with a spoken word. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Dec 19, 2019
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Mickey and the Bear (2019) |
Even at its most dire, Mickey and the Bear is tinged with an almost holy hope for all involved, a rare and remarkable feat to pull off so well for a first-time director indeed. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Dec 05, 2019
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Waves (2019) |
Waves is both incrementally unnerving and eventually exultant, a pitch-perfect portrait of post-millennial teenage life, with all of its ultra-adrenalized emotions, fraught expectations, and fateful, rash decisions. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Nov 21, 2019
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The Good Liar (2019) |
The Good Liar is a pleasantly playful thriller hiding a seriously shady history close to its benighted heart. - Austin Chronicle
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| Posted Nov 21, 2019
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