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Robert Abele
Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:
Film Critic, LA Weekly
Publications:
Critics' Group:
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Emilia Pérez (2024) |
The real knockout is Saldaña, a compassionate audience surrogate and urgent energy source. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Nov 05, 2024
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Blitz (2024) |
“Blitz” is a welcome reminder that a bruised, searching and flawed home front, in the waning days of empire, was its own fascinating emotional terrain too. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Nov 01, 2024
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Juror #2 (2024) |
Anchored by performances that refuse to tell us what to think, “Juror #2” skillfully depicts how, in practice, the ideal of blind justice too easily becomes the shortsighted, look-the-other-way kind. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Nov 01, 2024
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Union (2024) |
“Union” lets us see what Amazon and the world would soon discover about the power workers have when they invest in their dignity first. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Oct 25, 2024
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Zurawski v Texas (2024) |
It’s the defiantly unslick, urgent intertwining of teamwork and private grief that lifts “Zurawski v Texas” out of the usual sea of issue documentaries, Crow and Perrault toggling between the high-stakes courtroom drama and raw human tragedy. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Oct 25, 2024
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Rumours (2024) |
Hopefully, “Rumours” can kick off a new age of gonzo, let’s-all-laugh-in-fear-together entertainment. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Oct 21, 2024
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Exhibiting Forgiveness (2024) |
Art is constructive, whereas drugs annihilate, and religion can be exploited. And yet the rich takeaway of “Exhibiting Forgiveness” is that artmaking is a journey, not necessarily a solution. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Oct 21, 2024
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The Universal Theory (2023) |
Nothing in “The Universal Theory” is going to blow your mind, but as it plays its fastidiously crafted notes of conspiracy and chaos, you’ll know the idiosyncrasies of the art house are alive and well. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Oct 14, 2024
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Separated (2024) |
Nonetheless, what we glean from the totality of the interviews and research, and Morris’ well-honed style of coalescing information, is damning enough. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Oct 14, 2024
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The Outrun (2024) |
Saoirse Ronan knows how to do more than hold her own against the Orkney archipelago’s breathtaking, windswept remoteness. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Oct 04, 2024
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All Shall Be Well (2024) |
It’s a quietly shattering place “All Shall Be Well” goes to, in which a time of consoling devolves into petty matters of consolation. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Oct 01, 2024
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Saturday Night (2024) |
Too bad that more measured view of talent wasn’t as interesting to the makers of the affectionate yet hollow homage that is “Saturday Night.” - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Sep 27, 2024
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A Different Man (2024) |
In its off-kilter sensibilities, “A Different Man” fits in with Schimberg’s abiding curiosity about the tenuousness of identity. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Sep 20, 2024
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Wolfs (2024) |
What Clooney and Pitt ultimately offer, whether deadpan or with raised voices, bored or engaged, is still above what passes for bunker onscreen charisma these days. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Sep 20, 2024
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Speak No Evil (2024) |
When you won’t speak the evil of “Speak No Evil,” then a disservice has been done to the source terror and how expertly it refused to deliver us to a safe place. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Sep 16, 2024
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Look Into My Eyes (2024) |
Human connections are gifts, imagination is powerful and empathy isn’t a trick. These are the things “Look Into My Eyes” patiently communicates to us from its watchful perch. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Sep 13, 2024
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His Three Daughters (2023) |
The strange electricity of waiting is conveyed with every shot, whether it holds one, two or all three of its sterling leads in the frame. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Sep 06, 2024
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Seeking Mavis Beacon (2024) |
“Seeking Mavis Beacon” makes the lows as meaningful as the highs, endorsing a wild web world in which mystery and exposure can peacefully coexist. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Sep 06, 2024
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Reagan (2024) |
A hollow portrait... - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Aug 30, 2024
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The Killer (2024) |
Woo has lost none of his love for the practical bravura of elaborate, ludicrous stunts, nor any of his way with camera movement and editing that complements choreography. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Aug 23, 2024
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The Crow (2024) |
It’s like an anti-entertainment protest. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Aug 23, 2024
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Rob Peace (2024) |
Chiwetel Ejiofor proves more earnest than skillful at bringing heartfelt complexity to another tale of whiz-kid promise and resourcefulness. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Aug 19, 2024
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Sugarcane (2024) |
This multipronged filmmaking approach, chronicling the painstaking work of a cold case while documenting what years of whispers and silence have wrought, is what gives “Sugarcane” its raw power. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Aug 19, 2024
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Daughters (2024) |
“Daughters” doesn’t have an obvious ending, and it’s in the realities of distance that we come to fully grasp the complexity of the dance, girls and fathers bonding without plexiglass barriers or pricey video calls separating them. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Aug 12, 2024
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Good One (2024) |
In its lived-in quality and gathering churn, “Good One” is a dream of an indie, from the craft in every frame to the humor, epiphanies and mysteries that gird its portraiture. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Aug 12, 2024
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Kneecap (2024) |
Music-filled and spikily edited, “Kneecap” finds rude wit and edge to underscore its needle-drop righteousness; that it sustains its level so exuberantly is remarkable, especially considering how hit-and-miss these self-mythologizing projects often are. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Aug 05, 2024
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Great Absence (2023) |
A beguiling and touching transference of understanding across time and memory. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jul 29, 2024
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Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (2024) |
As enlightening an overview as “Made in England” is, with Adrian Johnston’s original score playing like a theme from a lost work of theirs, it’s also a beautiful reminder that love for our favorite movies is an evolving relationship. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jul 29, 2024
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Crossing (2024) |
Whether we’re in daytime or night, there always seems to be a light bathing someone’s face or beckoning them, a visual touch I came to appreciate in a movie that could so easily have taken a more despairing route considering its gritty backdrop. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jul 20, 2024
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Confessions of a Good Samaritan (2023) |
“Confessions” is as much about the mysteries of our human impulses as it is about elective surgery and the roots of altruism. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jul 15, 2024
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Touch (2024) |
Even after the pall of historical tragedy thickens, “Touch” is still perfumed with much to admire for a love story, especially where Kormákur’s compassionate way with actors is concerned. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jul 15, 2024
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Fancy Dance (2023) |
In “Fancy Dance,” the missing are a crisis, but a culture’s rites of closure shouldn’t be endangered either. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jun 21, 2024
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Summer Solstice (2023) |
Though modest in aim and light on its feet, it gives hope that, like with Rohmer, trans stories eventually reach all the seasons. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jun 21, 2024
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Firebrand (2023) |
At a certain point, it feels as if scenes are missing, and what’s left reads as unconvincing. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jun 17, 2024
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The Watchers (2024) |
Between the clunky narrative and the Interesting Shots, you feel defeated by both show and tell. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jun 08, 2024
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Flipside (2023) |
Wilcha breezily excavates why life can feel so full of promise while also being frustratingly incomplete. He folds in a message of gratitude that tints this sneakily affecting movie with a forgiving sense of color and light. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jun 08, 2024
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Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg (2023) |
This profile from Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill is a bid to reclaim the valuable heat of Pallenberg’s incandescence, while never shielding viewers from her life’s lasting burn marks. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted May 13, 2024
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Power (2024) |
“Power” could just as easily have benefited from the docuseries treatment, but even at less than 90 minutes, it lands plenty of hard truths and harder questions.
- Los Angeles Times
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| Posted May 13, 2024
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Wildcat (2023) |
“Wildcat” shows that his [Hawke] gifts in front of the camera are being complemented behind it, too, especially when the subject is a life woven through with art, passion and pain. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted May 06, 2024
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Evil Does Not Exist (2023) |
The ending will probably confound you, but its power lies in what particulars are provided, and how it leaves us wondering about the unstoppable dreams of humans and the ageless realities of nature. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted May 06, 2024
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Boy Kills World (2023) |
For this boy to kill the world, the movie shouldn’t need to kill our patience first. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Apr 26, 2024
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We Grown Now (2023) |
It’s a resolutely poetic, at times even golden-hued portrait of lives unafraid to hope amid growing despair. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Apr 18, 2024
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Blackout (2023) |
The idiosyncratic earnestness of an experienced horrormeister playing with the classics still makes for a substantial midnight snack. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Apr 15, 2024
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The Old Oak (2023) |
It’s a righteous oeuvre with marvelously strong roots. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Apr 15, 2024
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Coup de Chance (2023) |
The result at times carries the whiff of something simultaneously refreshing and nostalgic. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Apr 06, 2024
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Farewell, Mr. Haffmann (2022) |
Thanks to its actors, there’s a credibly heavy sense of the personal prisons within literal ones that only a wretched war can foster. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Apr 06, 2024
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Wicked Little Letters (2023) |
"Wicked Little Letters” is benignly enjoyable in its take on a true story of hidden feelings, farcical expression and righteous action. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Apr 01, 2024
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The Shadowless Tower (2023) |
There’s a rich quietude at work in “The Shadowless Tower,” which makes one realize how that virtue varies from filmmaker to filmmaker. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Apr 01, 2024
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Carol Doda Topless at the Condor (2024) |
As a portrait of an offbeat showbiz world pushing the boundaries of expression, led by a no-holds-barred icon, “Carol Doda Topless at the Condor” is a buoyant tribute to a life of exposure. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Mar 25, 2024
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Limbo (2023) |
The narrative invariably feels like merely a framework for Sen’s carefully cultivated black-and-white mood, immersing us in a parched, faded world of loss, anger and hiding. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Mar 25, 2024
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