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Brian Eggert
Tomatometer-approved critic
Brian Eggert is the owner and film critic of Deep Focus Review, where he has written movie reviews, in-depth essays, and critical analyses since 2007. Brian also regularly appears on KARE 11, the NBC affiliate for the Twin Cities, to review and discuss movies. He belongs to the Society For Cinema and Media Studies, Minnesota Film Critics Alliance, Online Film & Television Association, International Film Society Critics, Independent Film Critics of America, The Critics Circle, and National Coalition of Independent Scholars.
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Twister (1996) |
It lacks any interesting characters or drama. Like an amusement park ride, its ups and downs ultimately peter out, leaving the viewer with little more than a momentary buzz or two to remember. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jul 22, 2024
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Starve Acre (2023) |
The quiet intensity of Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark sell this familiar but creepily effective tale of grief manifesting as something scary. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jul 22, 2024
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Twisters (2024) |
Like the original, Twisters isn’t that great of a movie and doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. But it’s diverting enough and delivers on its promise of a spectacle. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jul 18, 2024
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Mamma Mia! (2008) |
The film’s greatest pleasures derive from the star factor. Namely, Meryl Streep. Is there anything this woman can’t do? - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jul 14, 2024
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The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008) |
I want to believe there are still quality X-Files stories to tell, even if this one wasn’t. I want to believe this, but like the protagonists in the movie, my beliefs are conflicted with doubt and reservation. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jul 14, 2024
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Saint Laurent (2014) |
Rather than a hagiography, Bonello confronts his subject’s personhood without dwelling on his genius, leaving viewers with no clear sense of how one should feel about Yves Saint Laurent. That’s part of what makes the film so exceptional. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jul 13, 2024
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Longlegs (2024) |
Combined with a script that lacks humanity or depth, Perkins’ draconian style hangs over Longlegs like a miasma, infecting the narrative and robbing the otherwise inspired premise of life. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jul 12, 2024
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Sing Sing (2023) |
Sing Sing, a profoundly sensitive portrait of humanity finding an outlet and purpose through art, draws out feelings of empathy where society usually reserves little. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jul 11, 2024
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The Inheritance (2024) |
The filmmakers have few original ideas here. Worse, they don’t explore these well-trodden ideas with much inspiration. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jul 09, 2024
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MaXXXine (2024) |
Although it doesn’t meet the standards of X and Pearl, it remains capable of possessing its audience with a confident presentation, a committed central performance by Goth, and a million seedy details - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jul 04, 2024
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Mother, Couch (2023) |
The quirky, irrational situation offers much metaphoric potential. However, as the film carries on, the symbolism proves trite and self-consciously peculiar, and the whole endeavor never pays off in dramatic terms. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jul 02, 2024
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A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) |
Day One does just what it sets out to, neither breaking the mold nor failing to meet the series’ expectations, but offering a sturdy and admirable spinoff with impressive performances and diverting thrills. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 27, 2024
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Kinds of Kindness (2024) |
The film questions the absurd lengths to which people will go to feel acknowledged, embraced, or loved, and it achieves this with a sublime variety of bizarre, funny, shocking, and witty stories. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 27, 2024
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Daddio (2023) |
The content of Hall’s spec script proves too familiar and somewhat generic to leave much of an impression; though, her assured direction and the measured pacing denote an evident talent at work. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 25, 2024
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Janet Planet (2023) |
Lacy’s utterly convincing inquisitiveness makes watching her fascinating, and Ziegler’s unselfconscious performance never feels like the work of an actor but the behaviors of an authentic personality. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 25, 2024
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Marry My Dead Body (2022) |
The film yearns for harmony between the old and new, traditionalism and progressiveness, and by extension, echoes Taiwan’s identity, with roots in Chinese heritage and modern Western influence. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 24, 2024
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The Bikeriders (2023) |
An almost ethnographic study of a niche group whose romantic prime was short-lived and, like so many other American institutions in this era, corrupted by the influence of power and greed, and then ruined by battles for control - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 18, 2024
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Inside Out 2 (2024) |
It’s a resonant, profoundly fulfilling piece of work that captures the relatable drama of how a flurry of emotions emerges in teendom, yet these rather impulsive feelings never go away; we just learn to manage them better, rather than them managing us. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 13, 2024
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Tiger Stripes (2023) |
Commanding an excellent cast—particularly first-time screen actor Zairizal, who has a natural and vibrant screen presence—and confident execution, Nell Eu makes an impressive debut feature with Tiger Stripes - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 10, 2024
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Zombi Child (2019) |
Thoughtfully conceived and performed, the film is a mesmerizing experience that approaches Haitian culture with openness and the French treatment thereof with a critique stemming from the country’s colonial history - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 08, 2024
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The Watchers (2024) |
Whatever potential The Watchers may have as a creature feature, Shyamalan-brand mindbender, or horror story steeped in Irish folklore, the execution is amateurish and graceless. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 07, 2024
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Funny Games (2007) |
Don’t think of Haneke’s picture as a thriller, bound by typical thriller tropes, complete with an exciting thriller climax and gratifying conclusion. Think of it as an experiment to show you how Hollywood cinema has manipulated your expectations - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 05, 2024
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Captivity (2007) |
An uninspired horror flick that puts the nail in the coffin of the torture porn subgenre - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 05, 2024
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Mirrors (2008) |
Sutherland plays Jack Bauer without the badge, running about and barking at everyone, even his reflection. It's tiresome. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 05, 2024
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Rogue (2007) |
There’s considerable production value backing this beast. But it adheres to a tired when-animals-attack formula without much novelty or inspiration. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 05, 2024
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88 Minutes (2007) |
Avnet treats his audience like we’ve never seen a thriller before, when really we question if we’ve ever seen one this bad. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 05, 2024
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Righteous Kill (2008) |
Given the downright sloppiness of the storytelling and squashed hopes that De Niro and Pacino might electrify the screen again, Righteous Kill is hugely disappointing. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 05, 2024
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Hit Man (2023) |
This is a crowd-pleasing effort and star-making film—one that feels airy yet has a surprising complexity and darkness behind its many pleasures. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 03, 2024
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Night Shift (2023) |
The material feels like a short story and quickly evaporates from the brain. But it’s a diverting late-night watch that kept me engaged for its brief runtime and produced a few jolts. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted Jun 03, 2024
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Young Woman and the Sea (2024) |
This is a wonderfully sturdy crowd-pleaser that, sure, may play the audience like a harp, but it’s so well put together and so moving that one can hardly complain. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 30, 2024
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The Dead Don't Hurt (2023) |
The Dead Don’t Hurt is meditative and mature filmmaking that at once embraces and rethinks classical Western motifs in a series of elegant, subtle alterations. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 30, 2024
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In A Violent Nature (2024) |
A prime example of how a filmmaker can take well-worn material, apply a new or artistic lens, and accomplish something both exciting and entertaining using the same old elements. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 27, 2024
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Handling the Undead (2024) |
It’s a promising narrative feature debut for Hvistendahl and demonstrates her evident skill, but the narrative feels underdeveloped. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 27, 2024
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The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024) |
Chapter 1 amounts to an overfamiliar reworking of the original, too similar to feel like something new, and too full of banalities to distinguish itself. It’s an inauspicious start to a trilogy, instilling almost zero interest in what awaits - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 21, 2024
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The Strangers (2008) |
Not even Bertino’s impressive formal control as a first-time director can make up for how empty the material is and how absurdly familiar the whole thing proves to be - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 19, 2024
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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) |
Admittedly, I had unreasonably high expectations for Furiosa, and Miller met them by delivering a prequel of mad poetry that deepens and enhances an iconic character and the story to follow in Fury Road. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 19, 2024
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Babes (2024) |
The dramatic scenes in Babes don’t quite land as well as the comedy. Fortunately, the movie is often hilarious - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 18, 2024
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Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever (2023) |
Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever could have been an empty cash grab to mine an obscure 1990s property for a quick payday, but it’s actually the best of Bornedal’s three takes on the material and a welcome return to this sort of yarn. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 16, 2024
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I Saw the TV Glow (2024) |
It’s symbolically loaded and readable as a trans allegory, but the narrative doesn’t always engage, and some choices feel broad or more like weird-for-weird’s-sake flourishes. Still, there’s enough here to applaud and consider for days afterward - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 15, 2024
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The Last Stop in Yuma County (2023) |
It’s the product of an unmistakable talent demonstrating what he can achieve with a small budget, strong character actors, a few locations, and plenty of imagination - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 15, 2024
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Back to Black (2024) |
Inspired filmmakers could take this blueprint and make something special out of it. The outline isn’t necessarily the problem; it’s the generic, Wikipedia-article manner in which most movies of this sort adhere to it. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 13, 2024
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Stress Positions (2024) |
The prevailing sense of imbalance and frenzy is by design, but that doesn’t mean the artistic drive will be to everyone’s taste. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 13, 2024
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Evil Does Not Exist (2023) |
A thoughtful and even challenging low-key eco-thriller, Evil Does Not Exist considers the relationship between people and their environment as fraught with disruptive forces, both in how humanity corrupts the environment and also in how Nature fights back - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 11, 2024
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Coma (2022) |
Coma acknowledges that life comes with highs and lows, life and death—an equilibrium in the universe as natural as spring following winter. Though it’s Bonello’s least accessible film to date, it also might be his most personal. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 10, 2024
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Humane (2024) |
A well-crafted discussion prompt that, for all its momentary shocks and pitch-black humor, leaves one with fascinating questions—not only about what you would do in this family and in this society, but how the film reflects and comments on our world. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 08, 2024
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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) |
Screenwriter Josh Friedman shows a palpable interest in theme and character over empty spectacle and action set pieces, resulting in a smarter-than-average popcorn movie. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 08, 2024
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Bee Movie (2007) |
Seinfeld's brand of observational humor is in full force, only imbued with more imagination and irony when applied to the bee world. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 03, 2024
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Unfrosted (2024) |
How did a comedy starring some of the funniest people on the planet manage to be so bereft of laughs? - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 03, 2024
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The Fall Guy (2024) |
Armed with an appealingly low-stakes conflict, the movie’s breeziness makes the 125-minute runtime fly by, [but] the lightness of everything onscreen also robs the viewer of much investment, making the experience effortless yet forgettable. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 02, 2024
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The Idea of You (2024) |
Full of the usual ups and downs, this charmer explores its adult characters with surprising dimension and care, making the material sing, even though we’ve seen versions of this story in various permutations countless times before. - Deep Focus Review
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| Posted May 01, 2024
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