Eric D. Snider
Featured Critic;
Portland, OR
Eric D. Snider has been a writer all his life, a film critic since 1999, and a beard wearer since 2008. He holds a degree in journalism and used to work in "the newspaper industry," back when that was a thing. As a freelancer, Eric has written regularly for Film.com, Cinematical, Movies.com, Pajiba, and (of course) Twitch, among others. He lives in Portland. His website, EricDSnider.com, lives on the Internet.
Review: THE GREAT GATSBY Is a Class Assignment You'll Want to Skip
Baz Luhrmann's half-frenetic, half-subdued version of The Great Gatsby is almost 100 percent faithful to the novel in terms of plot, and almost zero percent faithful in terms of theme, character, and impact. I don't doubt that Luhrmann and his...
More »
Review: PAIN & GAIN Mocks Meatheads, Is Meatheaded
Pain & Gain is a brash, puerile action-comedy of errors about a trio of muscle-obsessed idiots who set out to extort money from a sleazy Miami businessman by kidnapping and torturing him. Michael Bay, who directed it, is almost the...
More »
Review: AT ANY PRICE Explores The Changing World Of Modern Farmers
"It's gonna be a great harvest," says a farmer's wife near the end of At Any Price. She's referring to the corn crop, but what this resonant, well-acted drama has made clear by this point is that "you reap what...
More »
Review: SCARY MOVIE 5 Contains No Laughs But Much Poop
I'd be tempted to say that nothing in Scary Movie 5 is funny, but the outtakes that play over the closing credits show multiple cast members struggling to keep from laughing, so obviously I'm mistaken. Clearly the film is hilarious....
More »
Review: 42 Offers a Nice, Pleasant Version of Jackie Robinson's Story
The closest 42 comes to revealing anything about the actual personality or character of Jackie Robinson -- the first black player in Major League Baseball -- is when he privately expresses frustration at being beholden to someone for a kindness....
More »
SXSW Review: DRINKING BUDDIES Brings Joe Swanberg to the Big Time
Joe Swanberg's career as a filmmaker has gone through several phases, all without his name being known to more than a tiny fraction of the movie-going public. The inadvertent and unwilling godfather of the "Mumblecore" sub-genre (in which listless twentysomethings...
More »
SXSW 2013 Review: HAUNTER Delivers an Enjoyably Tame Ghost Story
Time is a fluid thing in the atmospheric Haunter, but it's set mainly in 1985. It's the day before Lisa's 16th birthday. It has been for a while. Lisa (Abigail Breslin) and her wholesomely plain family -- mother (Michelle Nolden),...
More »
SXSW 2013 Review: HOURS Makes the Mistake of Putting All Its Dramatic Weight on Paul Walker's Shoulders
All human beings have a talent for one thing or another, and Paul Walker is a human being, so Paul Walker undoubtedly is good at something. But whatever it is, it's not acting. Acting is not the thing Paul Walker...
More »
SXSW 2013 Review: GO FOR SISTERS Is an Easy-Going Character Drama from John Sayles
Few filmmakers are more legitimately "independent" than John Sayles, who has now written and directed 18 features since 1979 (Return of the Secaucus Seven) without studio backing. His latest, the affable character drama Go for Sisters, while not an outstanding...
More »
Review: Say Yes to NO
I assume you're well-versed in Chilean politics of the 1980s. I mean, who isn't, right? But even if you're not -- even if you're, say, an American who barely recalls the name Pinochet and is already exhausted by the 2012...
More »
Review: SAFE HAVEN Adds Another Bland Mess to the Nicholas Sparks Rap Sheet
Oh, sure, it's popular to make fun of Nicholas Sparks movies. It's very "cool" and "trendy" to pile on the insults every time a new one is released, three or four times a year. But do you want to know...
More »
Review: BEAUTIFUL CREATURES Is Perkier, More Fun Than Most Teen Romances
There's a lengthy, dragging middle section of the supernatural teen romance Beautiful Creatures that threatens to sink the whole enterprise. Tellingly, it's when the nuts and bolts of the plot kick in: as the witch's pivotal 16th birthday approaches, good...
More »
Review: SIDE EFFECTS May Include Whiplash From Jarring Change In Tone
The important thing to know about Side Effects -- which Steven Soderbergh says will be his last theatrical film for a while, maybe forever -- is that whatever you're thinking it's going to be, it probably is not that. Pardon...
More »
Review: IDENTITY THIEF Steals from Better Films, Comes Up Short
You have to admit, it takes some guts to rip off a hundred other movies and then call the result Identity Thief. That sort of brazenness would be admired by the scoundrel at the center of this wearying, derivative comedy,...
More »
Sundance 2013 Review: PRINCE AVALANCHE Delivers a Hint of the Old David Gordon Green
Many reviews of Your Highness and The Sitter, two of the more pitiful comedies of 2011, featured concerned inquiries as to what (and in some cases what THE HELL) had happened to those films' director, David Gordon Green. His first...
More »
Sundance 2013 Review: UPSTREAM COLOR May Be More Interesting to Discuss Than Watch
Ever since Primer won Sundance's grand jury prize in 2004, indie-watchers have been wondering what its writer-director, Shane Carruth, would do next. Primer was his first movie, you see, and he made it for $7,000. Who is this guy?...
More »
Sundance 2013 Review: AUSTENLAND Is Clumsy, Unfunny
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single lady who obsesses over the works of Jane Austen -- particularly Pride and Prejudice, and specifically the 1995 miniseries version with Colin Firth -- will find her real-life boyfriends lacking when...
More »
Review: GANGSTER SQUAD Is a Cartoon That Thinks It's Real
If Gangster Squad had been released last September, as originally scheduled, it would have been forgotten by now. There's a good chance it would have been forgotten by October. Instead, after some reshoots to avoid a coincidental resemblance to last...
More »
Review: LES MISERABLES Delivers Most of the Emotion and Some of the Spectacle
When it became his privilege to direct the movie version of the Les Misérables stage musical that has enthralled the world for more than a quarter-century, Tom Hooper made one crucial, momentous decision. Instead of following the normal practice of...
More »
Review: THIS IS 40 Has Laughs, But No Substance
The very first joke in This Is 40 -- a movie made in 2012 by experienced comedy professionals -- is about Viagra. That lazy, hackneyed start is a bad sign because it suggests that writer-director Judd Apatow, the reigning champion...
More »
