Reviews
Observer
The Fall Guy Isn’t a Satire of Hollywood’s Worst Instincts, It’s a Product of Them, May 3 2024: “Congratulations. Regardless of how intelligent you may be, you are far smarter than The Fall Guy thinks you are.”
Monkey Man Review: A Revenge Thriller Packed with Punches, Politics, Fury and Joy, April 4 2024": “Patel manages to pull off his ambitious plan thanks to a plethora of fury, joy, and just enough moments of bold cinematic repurposing, if not reinvention.”
Kung Fu Panda 4 Review: A Nonstop Ballet of Cartoon Violence, March 7 2024: “This dumpling and rocket-fueled contraption continues to employ the same seemingly unstoppable one-two punch: a steady drubbing of painterly and balletic cartoon violence and the unbounded—and increasingly turned out—enthusiasm of the series’ resident Zeus of Skadoosh, star Jack Black.”
Io Capitano Review: Oscar Nominated Depiction of the Hellscape of Migration, February 23 2024: “With its stunning John Ford-like vistas of a corpse laden Sahara and a vast Mediterranean Sea empty of aid vessels to help an immigrant ship overburdened with desperate and sick North Africans, Garrone has—on the surface—made a lush and monumentally disturbing feature-length commercial for staying home.”
American Fiction: Jeffrey Wright’s Stunning Performance Leads One of the Best Casts of the Year, December 14 2023: “If there were any lingering doubts that Wright is one of this country’s most spectacularly gifted actors, his 2023 has crushed them.”
Godzilla Minus One Review: A Mountain-Sized Monster Restored to Cinematic Glory, December 4 2023: “As a result of the quaintness of Godzilla’s old wrestler’s gait and the finger-smudged quality of his presentation, when Yamazaki unleashes his monster’s heat-ray breath on the newly rebuilt Tokyo, the impact feels all that much more impactful—it’s like a Van Halen guitar solo in the middle of a recorder recital.”
Rustin Review: A Radical Restoration of the Legacy of a Civil Rights Leader, November 16 2023: “There’s such a sheen of biopic respectability coating Rustin—Netflix’s new award-season entrant—that you almost miss how radical it is.”
The Killer Review: Meticulously Crafted Portrait of a Meticulous Hitman, November 13 2023: “The film is a veritable tone poem on the nature of work in the modern world.”
Dream Scenario Review: A Nowhere Man Who’s Suddenly Everywhere, November 9 2023: “Without anyone really noticing, the nebbishy, uncool professor has somehow become the “it” protagonist this prestige movie season.”
The Holdovers: A Quiet Miracle Full of Humor and Heartbreak, October 26 2023: “None of these characters ask for sympathy, but command it nonetheless.”
Bill Burr’s Old Dads Is a Waste of Bill Burr, October 20 2023: “As an actor, Burr is adroit, emotionally grounded and instinctively responsive to the choices of his fellow performers. Why he hasn’t put his considerable skill to greater use in dramatic films remains a mystery.”
American: An Odyssey to 1947 Review: The Story of Three Lives, Though One Dominates, September 8 2023: “Is there something a little off-putting about using the pain and destruction of Brown and Black bodies to appraise and elevate the brilliance and compassion of a famous White guy? Yes, there is.”
The Equalizer 3 Review: Denzel Washington’s Vengeance Machine Shows Signs of Age, August 31 2023: “Starting this kind of movie after the action has already taken place is akin to waking up on Christmas morning to find all of your presents unwrapped.”
Why Red, White & Royal Blue Should Make You Worried about the Future of Cinema, August 13 2023: “Released by a company that makes its bones selling us everything from teeth whitener to teething toys, Red, White & Royal Blue felt less like a romantic comedy in the tradition of Lubitch or Ephron and more like just another widget tumbling down an inexhaustible warehouse chute.”
The League Review: This Black Baseball Doc Puts Crucial History Under Museum Glass, July 17 2023: “The revelry never pours off the screen; instead, it remains trapped under museum glass.”
Theater Camp Review: A Delightful and Hilarious Mockumentary, July 14 2023: “But it is overworked tech guru Glenn that keeps the place running. As Glenn, Noah Galvin gracefully purloins the movie. The Good Doctor actor—who co wrote the script with Platt, Gordon, and Lieberman—is Theater Camp’s secret sauce, playing the diva whose outsized skills are hidden behind the spotlight he controls.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Review: Still at Least a Little Magical, June 19 2023: “Whereas Dr. Jones’s early cinematic adventures were a paean to the serial adventures that brought wonder to the childhoods of the grandparents of its Boomer creators, Dial of Destiny is intent on pandering to their Xbox-obsessed grandchildren.
Elemental Review: Heartfelt, Half-Baked and Full of Dad Jokes, June 15 2023: “A consideration of diversity that fails to address justice and social stratification reduces cultural identity to jokes about accents and spicy foods.”
Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse Review: A Smorgasbord of Eye Candy, But Style Over Substance, June 2 2023: “This is the Instagram filter that’s way more exciting than the vacation in the photos you posted; the gala gown that swallowed the starlet.”
Past Lives Review: A Wondrous and Deliriously Honest Romantic Drama, June 2 2023: “Song’s adroit writing and the hard work of actors Teo Yoo and the steely Greta Lee culminate in an emotional denouement as satisfying as it is devastating.”
Master Gardener Review: Another of Paul Schrader’s Lost Souls Seeks Redemption, May 16 2023: “Armed with Schrader’s meticulously measured consideration and restraint, Master Gardener isn’t an argument. Instead, it’s something more profound and necessary: it’s a meditation.”
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Review: A Spotify Playlist in Search of a Movie, May 2 2023: “What the film has going for it is Gunn’s undeniable love of comics and his ability to remix and revive them in a way that recalls the playfulness of pop art rather than Marvel’s responsibility to Disney shareholders.”
Sisu Review: A Gore-Splattered Contender for Action Movie of the Summer, April 27 2023: “At 64, Tommila is as delicious to watch exacting revenge on-screen as the preeminent silver-screen killing machine snack, Keanu Reeves.”
A Remarkable Documentary Celebrates Little Richard’s Revolutionary Art and Existence, April 21 2023: “Through the raunchy power of his singular music and the undeniable ebullience of his soul, he has the ability to transform even the squarest of spaces into something powerful, crucial, and unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.”
The Pope’s Exorcist Has All of the Vitality of a Corpse, April 14 2023: “Rather than landing as truly scary, the film feels like a distraction from the Church’s real-life horrors, mixed with something like wish fulfillment on the part of true believers.”
How to Blow Up a Pipeline Review: Film as a Revolutionary Act, April 7 2023: “Goldhaber has made one of the most exigent and vital cinematic statements in recent memory.”
Air Review: Ben Affleck’s Overeager Love Song to Nike Succeeds More than It Doesn’t, March 28 2023: “While Davis’s Deloris is criminally underused in the film, at least she’s in it, so she has that on the character of her son.”
Operation Fortune Review: Another Instantly Forgettable Guy Ritchie Action Movie, March 1 2023: “Landing in multiplexes more than a year late after some business reshuffling and rewrites (not a good idea for your bad guys to be Ukrainian gangsters at this moment in history), Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is a slick and empty-headed spy thriller that is almost instantly forgettable.”
Cocaine Bear Review: The Marketing is Better than the Movie, February 24 2023: “Cocaine Bear pretends to celebrate all that is vital and unruly in schlock cinema, yet by not having the passion or vision to back up its slam-bang title, it instead engages in the most tiresome, marketing-first habits of corporate film making.”
Best Movies 2022: 15 Films Defined by Reflection, Regret, Friendship, and Optimism, December 15 2022: “For my money, Catch-22’s Christopher Abbott, playing Carmichael’s Papa Roach-loving best friend who lugs around his childhood abuse like it’s a knapsack full of swords, gives the best supporting performance of the year.”
Emancipation Review: The Historical Drama as Will Smith Star Vehicle, December 7 2022: “The erstwhile Fresh Prince uses the weighty subject matter and the physical duress of his swamp-set portrayal to once again bolster his career-long obsession with cementing a permanent place in the Hollywood “Serious Actor” firmament.”
EO is a Dark Exploration of Humanity, Technology, and Nature, Yet Still Filled with Joy, November 22 2022: “Being a deeply weird arthouse movie made by a celebrated European auteur, of course Isabelle Huppert must show up.”
The Inspection: An Important Story of Pain and Survival, Told in a Limited Way, November 18 2022: “Union’s searing portrayal of unrelenting rejection is the sharpest thing in a movie that, despite its filmmaker’s intimacy with the subject, sheds little light on the nature of homophobia in the military, society in general, and the Black community in particular.”
Armageddon Time is a Beautifully Crafted Coming of Age Story that Falls Short, October 28 2022: “James Gray’s Armageddon Time is the kind of movie you get when a talented filmmaker thinks back upon the painful moments of his childhood and then, after close reflection, decides to remake The 400 Blows.”
Holy Spider: A Crisp, Engrossing Crime Thriller that Confronts Iran’s Power Structure, October 27 2022: “The puttering of Saeed’s motorbike, the vehicle with which he seeks his prey and later drives their bodies to abandoned dirt lots, provides the inspiration for Danish composer Martin Dirkov’s soundtrack. Dirkov, who like most of the crew is a returnee from Abbasi’s Border, opts for groaning industrial noise instead of the exoticized wails that often accompany Western visions of the Middle East.”
All Quiet on the Western Front Takes on a New Terrifying Relevance in Netflix Adaptation, October 24 2022: “For a film focused on getting the technical realities of war correct, it is Berger’s feel for and patience with the moments that these horrors disrupt—foxes sleeping in their den only to poke a head up at a distant blast, two starving soldiers savoring the taste of a fresh raw goose egg—that make this portrayal so singular.”
David O. Russell’s Amsterdam Is Overstuffed, Manic, and Enthralling, October 4 2022: "Amsterdam Jekyll and Hydes its way from the blood-caked battlefields and recovery rooms of World War I to the heroin dens and society parlors of early ‘30s New York City, all the while singing and dancing to a strange tune no one else can hear.”
Moonage Daydream is an Otherwordly Journey into the Life and Art of David Bowie, September 16 2022: “Occasionally, this approach can feel like raisins in potato salad — too much and not exactly necessary.”
Riotsville, USA Uncovers the Sixties Roots of the Militarization of the Police, September 14 2022: “Completely eschewing talking heads and relying on archival footage contextualized by captions and narration, Riotsville, USA is masterfully stitched together by editor Nels Bangerter, who worked a similar alchemy in 2016 with Kristen Johnson’s Cameraperson.”
Beast Elevates Its Horror and Dumb Thrills with a Sense of Loss (and Idris Elba), August 22 2022: “Like any horror movie worth its salted popcorn, you’ll spend much of the film cataloging the things the protagonists did right and the ones they did idiotically wrong.”
Bullet Train: Bombastic, Bloody, and Laden with Shallow Irony, August 3 2022: “One of Pitt’s most reliable attributes, his comedy, is particularly off point; he accentuates punchlines, mugs for the camera, and at one point has to flail about with a highly venomous snake on his hand in a weak approximation of Jerry Lewis.”
Vengeance Satirizes Media Elitist Smarm, But in a Smarmy Way, July 28 2022: “This tale of a blue-check Lothario clumsily investigating the Texas death of a one-time hookup—all as a means of advancing his podcasting career—falls victim to the exact forces it is trying to send up.”
Fire of Love Documents a Couple’s Fascination with Volcanoes, Film, and each Other, July 7 2022: “The film percolates with a love of movies, specifically the French New Wave; at its best moments it feels like Breathless, if Jean-Paul Belmondo’s character had been obsessed with volcanologists instead of Humphrey Bogart.”
Lightyear Is a Complex Exploration of Inner and Outer Space. Also There’s a Very Cute Cat, June 13 2022: “Can one be a hero in their story and yet a ghost in their own life?”
In Jurassic World Dominion the Dinosaurs Are Alive and Everyone Else is a Cardboard Cutout, June 8 2022: “The trademark move of Chris Pratt’s animal handler Owen Grady is to hold his hand up in the air and make his eyes really wide, like a crossing guard who just woke up from a nap. That’s about as deep as his character gets.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi: An Uneven Series Debut Shows Flashes of What Makes Star Wars Work, May 28 2022: “With Obi-Wan flying away and Anakin in seething stasis, the story is picking up thrust. I, for one, was finally able to stop looking backward at past transgressions of Star Wars—even if they happened a mere episode ago—and will be keeping my eye on the vast galaxy ahead.”
Jerrod Carmichael’s Remarkable On the Count of Three Makes Comedy Out of the Darkest Day, May 13 2022: “But it is Abbott who astounds. The James White actor taps into his own prickliness and inscrutability with a nuanced understanding of the way in which trauma affects our ability to process the world around us and does so with a sense of wonder and discovery that illuminates the film’s darkly humane comedy. It’s a performance that should be studied in both medical schools and drama classes for years to come.”
Doctor Strange: A Barrage of Special Effects, Splashes of Horror, and Nothing Up Its Sleeve, May 5 2022: “Sam Raimi, whose innate feel for comic horror sent a generation of kids hunting for VHS copies of Evil Dead II before his knack for mainstream spectacle got them to line up at the multiplex for the original Spider-Man trilogy, directs the film like it’s a notebook dump. He crams the movie’s margins with every idea he’s been sketching out since his days as a teenager, devouring comic books in suburban Detroit.”
Memory: Liam Neeson Movie Gives a Hollywood Makeover to…Alzheimer’s?, April 27 2022: “I have been helping to take care of a loved one with Alzheimer’s for the last couple of years. One thing I have picked up over that time is that you probably shouldn’t let someone with this neurodegenerative disease that afflicts nearly six million Americans anywhere near a garrote. This also holds true for high-caliber handguns equipped with silencers.”
The Bad Guys Rounds Up the Usual Suspects But Adds Some New Colors, April 22 2022: “From its gas-passing piranha (voiced by In the Heights’ Anthony Ramos) to its reliance on phrases like “butt rock” and “grumpy pants” that seem grown in a lab to make the 12-and-under set giggle, the movie plays its target audience like a fiddle. That is music, no matter how familiar, that even the most cynical among us can enjoy.”
With the Intriguing Dual and Appalling The Bubble, Karen Gillan is the Face of COVID Ennui, April 19 2022: “Dual can occasionally feel like a one-joke film that never bothers to be funny, or where the comedy comes off as so arch that it lands as something else entirely.”
Apollo 10 1/2: Richard Rides Nostalgia Like Lightning, March 30 2022: “Apollo 10 ½ is most alive in instances that feel almost too insignificant to be recalled: Stan and his brother determining which cars at the drive-in have “neckers” in the front seat based on whether the brake lights are flashing on or off; the tablespoons of sugar they dump on already sweetened Frosted Flakes; an elementary school game of kickball hotly contested on a shadeless suburban blacktop.”
The Matrix Resurrections Is Like Being Trapped in an Elevator With Someone Explaining It All to You, December 22 2021: “The net effect of all this techno-philosophic yackety-yak is the not altogether pleasant feeling that you are simultaneously watching a movie while being trapped in an elevator with someone desperate to explain what it’s all about and why you should like it.”
In Spider-Man: No Way Home, Spidey is Finally No Longer a Glorified Stark Industries Intern, December 20 2021: “More than merely a movie featuring a popular superhero, Spider-Man: No Way Home is an exultation of its title character and everything that has made him a pop culture force over the last six decades.”
The King’s Man Is Fun If You Turn Off Your Brain, December 17 2021: “There is slightly less gore than we have come to expect from the Kingsman franchise— though every knife plunge and bullet to the head is accompanied by the familiar gushing slush sound that echoes an overflowing Slurpee machine.”
Ben Affleck Dispenses Bar Wisdom But Can’t Save Watered-Down The Tender Bar, December 16 2021: “Instead, we get a rum and coke that’s been left unattended on the bar for a half-an-hour.”
Ghostbusters: Afterlife Should Have Been Left for Dead, November 17 2021: “Decidedly uncinematic— save for the seat-rumbling thunder that accompanies its various explosions—and marked by ill-conceived and badly-paced humor, Reitman’s film is guided by a barely hidden contempt for the intelligence of the fans it so desperately courts.”
Eternals Is a Refreshingly Romantic Reminder of the Power & Purpose of Event Films, October 24 2021: “A funny thing happened during the construction of a series of shareholder-pleasing, fan service tentpoles: actual storytelling broke out, the kind that has more to say about our real lives than it does the continuity of a fictional universe.”
Halloween Kills Leaves the Franchise Cold and Dead, October 14 2021: “Halloween Kills…so completely sucks the vitality out of John Carpenter’s and Debra Hill’s original vision that one would be tempted to call it a desecration if that didn’t make it sound like more fun than it actually is.”
The Uninspired Cry Macho Will Leave You Wistful for Clint Eastwood’s Past Work, September 15 2021: “In what will prove dispiriting to those of us trying to convince their elderly parents to give up their car keys, Cry Macho is a road picture.”
The Card Counter Finds Oscar Isaac Operating at the Peak of His Abilities, September 10 2021: “The Card Counter proves definitively that the alienated-man-with-a-job-in-conflict-with-himself-and-society theme is Schrader’s “A Love Supreme”— a seemingly simple melody that, when played over and over again by the right artists in the right situation, can reach ecclesiastical heights.”
Shang-Chi May Be the Least Dangerous Martial Arts Movie Ever Made, August 23 2021: “Sanitized by copious computer-generated special effects and washed clean of blood, sweat or any of the other grimier byproducts of the candy-colored, kid-friendly violence at its center, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings may take the title as the least dangerous martial arts movie ever made.”
Don’t Breathe 2 Is a Gothic, Gore-Filled Fable That Tastes a Bit Stale, August 13 2021: “As is the case for many of us over the past year or so — the new version is less muscular than the previous edition, and quite a bit flabbier.”
F9 May Be Absurd, But That’s Also What Makes It Life-Affirming, June 24 2021: “Lin so deeply understands the rhythm and tone these films are meant to have that even these howlers end up becoming more marshmallows and Maraschino cherries in a perfectly whipped Ambrosia salad.”
The Must-See Movies of Summer 2021: From F9 to The Green Knight, June 1 2021: “For once, it really feels like we will have a choice at the multiplex this summer, and not just between different movies that go boom.”
The Woman in the Window Is a Misbegotten Catastrophe, May 14 2021: “There’s little weight, not much style and even less sense to the psychological terror The Woman in the Window attempts to inflict.”
Without Michael B. Jordan, Without Remorse Would Be a Washout, April 28 2021: “Without the grounding of richly drawn characters and burdened by ideas that reflect Pentagon policy papers of the late 1980s rather than our current world, Without Remorse has the feeling of product rather than cinema — just another polished, consumer-facing, slightly stale gizmo scooting down the virtual Amazon assembly line.”
Mortal Kombat Checks Every Box but Is Far From Flawless, April 23 2021: “In keeping with their video game origins, the characters haven’t much by way of an emotional life, or personalities for that matter. Instead, for audience connection, the film relies entirely on the fact that one of them was your favorite to play at some point in your life.”
Nobody Is Bob Odenkirk’s High Body Count, Low Impact Revenge Thriller, March 25 2021: “The shock here—especially for Gen-Xers who still tend to associate him with the West Coast alternative comedy scene of the mid ’90s—is that the guy in question is Bob Odenkirk.”
The Aimlessness of Chaos Walking Is Oddly Its Strength, March 5 2021: “The story, so different from Ness’s book, isn’t so much told as it is yanked out of a closing lion’s mouth.”
Andra Day Catches The United States vs. Billie Holiday When It Falls, February 25 2021: “By focusing so much on the feds and the heroin, it feels like the equivalent of making a Grace Kelly biopic and focusing entirely on cars and speed limits.”
Judas and the Black Messiah Finds Hope in a Profoundly Tragic Story, February 11 2021: “Whereas Stanfield’s performance is physical, the Get Out star’s is musical.”
Sundance’s Best Docs Made Me Grateful for the Art That Shaped Them, February 10 2021: “The way that all three movies face head-on their central mystery—why are some driven to sacrifice so much to wrangle with the isolating newness of creation while the rest of us are satisfied with what we have?—with a boldness of purpose allows them to teem with vitality despite their traditional presentation.”
2020’s Best Films Testify to the Shared Joy and Delirium of Cinema, January 17 2021: “In a year that already forced us into stillness and introspection, it was as if the movies we watched were asking for even more.”
Minari Captures the Messy Truth About the American Dream, December 10, 2020: “In a rich and complicated display of masculinity that recalls old Hollywood icons like Gregory Peck, Yeun plays Jacob as a figure of constant forward motion who is crumbling internally.”
Uncle Frank Feels Like Backstory for a More Compelling Movie, November 27 2020: “Too queer for some, not nearly queer enough for others, Uncle Frank is fated to become the green bean casserole of this holiday’s film streaming options: designed to appeal to everyone, but destined to remain uneaten.”
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Is Chadwick Boseman’s Complex Parting Note, November 20 2020: “Davis’s every footfall and head tilt brims with raw sensuality, untapped power, and a pained wisdom known to blues singers and Black actors who rarely if ever get to play lead parts on screen that are this beautifully written.”
David Fincher’s Mank Is an Angry Call to Arms, November 6 2020: “The way that Seyfried and Oldman play off of each other in their stolen moments together—on the set of a vanity project, escaping a cocktail party to swill the good stuff, in the back of a car on the studio lot—allow the movie to shake off the sometimes starchy cleverness of its meticulous construction.”
Regina King’s One Night in Miami Is an Intimate Triumph and the Highlight of AFI, October 23, 2020: “In capturing a pivotal moment in the radicalization of four towering figures of the African American struggle, King brings a focused heat and contained fire that allows her film to rise above the living museum piece confines of its set up.”
The Trial of the Chicago 7 Is Another Sorkin-Centric Spin on History, October 16 2020: “In fulfilling Steven Spielberg’s 14-year-old-plus request to write a script based on the five-month trial that captivated a nation two generations past, Sorkin has found the ideal vehicle for the sort of finely crafted rejoinders, retorts and I-wish-I-had-said-that quips that have long comforted West Wing fans and made Newsroom watchers willing to overlook the show’s otherwise high-handed polemics.”
The Nest Refuses to Be the Movie It’s Screaming to Be, September 18 2020: “For fans of her nuanced work on peak TV mainstays like Fargo and The Leftovers, it is deeply satisfying to see Coon play a movie character with such a rich internal life, a woman who upshifts over the film’s slow and steady unspooling from clueless to defeatist to defiant.”
Mulan Is a High-Gloss Commercial for State Power, September 3 2020: “Oh, what twenty-two years—and the opening of the global marketplace—can do to our fables!”
The Must-See Movies of Fall 2020, From Greenland to Black Widow, September 1 2020: “We just lived through a summer blockbuster season without blockbusters. Now get ready for a fall prestige season without…the prestige?”
Bill & Ted Face the Music Needed More of Bill and Ted to Be Excellent, August 27 2020: “The younger pair is meant to share the same uncommon bond—as well as personality, mannerisms, and names—of their fathers. It’s a cute contrivance, but it feels both like a shortcut that allows the screenwriters to avoid writing the talented actors their own characters, as well as an all too obvious way for producers to pass the franchise on to the next generation.”
The One and Only Ivan is an Exhaustingly Small-Minded CGI Gorilla Movie, August 20 2020: “In a movie that runneth over with squandered talent, this one hurts the most. After Disney seemingly had no idea what to do with her epic strangeness in the last Maleficent movie, this time out it is as if the Mouse House has chosen to drain Jolie of her outsized power and energy all together.”
The Rental Feels Like an AirBnB Complaint Got Made Into a Movie, July 24 2020: “You’re not going to refund our $175? Well, I’m going to make a movie to show how creepy this outfit truly is!”
The Painted Bird Is One of the Most Relentless Depictions of Evil Ever, July 17 2020: “If the images themselves were not so stunningly beautiful, they would be impossible to withstand, which leaves the viewer in an impossible moral quandary of being seduced by cinema to bear witness to starkly monochrome degeneracy.”
Palm Springs Review: Finding Purpose in an Endless String of Todays, July 9 2020: “…Not simply because Palm Springs has shown up in our lives on March eleventy-effing-seventh or whatever goddamn day it is—though that uncanny coincidence certainly helps.”
Hirokazu Kore-eda Finds a Powerful Intimacy in The Truth, June 30 2020: “Kore-eda’s film is a quiet, Gallic gift to these orphans in the dark who are forever sorting through old stories and new movies in an attempt to find beauty in both the truth and the lies.”
Irresistible Is a Failure Built on Jon Stewart’s Prior Successes, June 22 2020: “The second film from writer-director Jon Stewart, Irresistible takes the bloated piñata that is the corrupting influence of money in electoral politics and proceeds to beat it with a wet noodle.”
Spike Lee’s Vietnam Movie Da 5 Bloods Offers a Glimmer of Hope, June 11 2020: “Serving as a bookend to his politically charged police procedural and comedy hybrid BlackKklansman, Da 5 Bloods sees Spike Lee continuing in his late-career tour as Mr. Lee, everyone’s favorite radicalized and truth-telling AP U.S. history teacher.”
The King of Staten Island Is Pete Davidson’s Touching, Flawed Confessional, June 9 2020: “As can sometimes be the case with artists who work in the confessional mode, there can be a lack of curiosity to Davidson’s approach, one that at times threatens to infect the film.”
Shirley Is a Sexy, Scary Fire Fueled by Elisabeth Moss and Her Co-Stars, June 5 2020: “Whether requesting an egg salad sandwich or berating the poor fool who dares to inquire about the progress on her latest novel, Moss delivers her ripostes with the same furious authority with which Samuel L. Jackson once demanded that MFing snakes get off of his MFing plane.”
The High Note Soars on Its Firecracker Script, Cast and Direction, May 27 2020: “As rib-sticking and satisfying as the six-hour bolognese at Jon and Vinny’s and as effervescent as a well-chilled free glass of sparkling rosé at a producer’s house party in the Hills, The High Note is a wholly unexpected and utterly enchanting summer movie throwback.”
It’s Hard to Care About Anything that Happens in The Lovebirds, May 22 2020: “It would be easy to put the blame here on the two stars; expect a lot of misguided chatter about Nanjiani and Rae’s lack of chemistry. But if they deserve blame, it is in their capacity as co-executive producers who approved production on the anemic and half-baked script.
Inheritance Is a Nonsensically Terrible Parasite and Succession Wannabe, May 18 2020: “The movie isn’t weird or the least bit surprising—it’s just the wrong kind of silly and blandly predictable. This Inheritance? Less than a handful of dust.”
Scoob! Might Just Be the Feel-Good Balm You Need Right Now, May 15 2020: “This treasure chest of wonderful nonsense is rendered with an animation style that looks generally flat, lifeless, and utterly untouched by human hands. Companies need to understand that when we ask for ‘contactless’ product, we are looking to apply the descriptor to our delivery pizza, not our movies.
Arkansas Is a Chicken-Fried Southern Crime Throwback to the ‘90s, May 6 2020: “If the world had been as it should be and not this horrifying mess in which we find ourselves, Arkansas, the directorial debut from Hot Tub Time Machine star Clark Duke, would have made its debut in March at South by Southwest.”
Netflix’s All Day and All Night Is a Devastating, Time-Bending Crime Film, April 30 2020: “Time is a centrifugal force in the movie, swirling in on and pulling its characters down until it finally collapses in on them, keeping them locked in their circumstances and in patterns of poverty and incarceration.”
The Western True History of the Kelly Gang Burns with a Punk Rock Fury, April 24 2020: “The movie shows that, true or not, in the right hands and with the right actors, this oft-told tale—like the Western genre itself—can course with the kind of venturesomeness that makes cinema so exciting no matter the circumstances under which we watch it.”
Amazon’s Selah and the Spades Does Not Dig Deep, April 17 2020: “Selah and the Spades comes off as little more than a artfully rendered location and a cool concept that is desperately in search of a story to tell that’s as compelling as its trappings.”
Apple TV+’s Controversial The Banker Sadly Glosses Over History, March 5 2020: “The Banker is a sadly facile and largely surface level rendering of a profoundly complex problem that deserves more attention.”
The Invisible Man Holds You in an Emotional Vise Grip, February 27 2020: “The errant dog dish, frying bacon, bed sheets, coffee grounds—the most unremarkable aspects of our housebound identities are made pestilential by the perniciousness of the film’s toxic central relationship.”
Pixar’s Onward Mostly Feels Like a Step Backward, February 26 2020: “…rather than challenge us or fill us with wonder, it is yet another brightly colored piece of content created to satisfy our visual sweet tooth”.
The Photograph Is So Much More Than Just a Romance-of-the-Week, February 14 2020: “What unfolds—at first with an ineffable and singular sense of intrigue and later in the more traditional and straightforward manner of other movie romances—are two relationships from two different periods that twist together and inform each other like a double helix.”
Sonic the Hedgehog Is a Miraculous Success, All Things Considered, February 13 2020: “Well, we now know what it’s like to watch a movie starring a top-tier Skee-Ball prize.”
Sitting Through Horror Film The Lodge Feels Sitting Through Purgatory, February 6 2020: “The doomed vacationers in this frostbit horror house don’t require Hail Mary’s and splash of holy water; they need a $300-an-hour therapist and a Zoloft prescription.”
Blake Lively is the Unlikely Heroine of Assassin Thriller, The Rhythm Section, January 31 2020: “…a film that plays like a sonata on grief—in the style of an absurdist action thriller.”
The Turning is the Horror Movie Equivalent of Processed Cheese Sauce, January 24 2020: “The best thing about reviewing the new PG-13 horror movie The Turning is that you don’t have to worry about spoiling the ending because it doesn’t have one. It just, sort of, stops.”
Bombastic and Absurd, Bad Boys for Life Is Also a Lot of Fun, January 17 2020: “The grace of their banter and the depth of their connection makes you wish that they starred in films together beyond Bad Boys, like Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor once did.”
Not Even Robert Downey Jr. Saves Dolittle From Its Own Words, January 16 2020: “Words are generally a problem for Dolittle—a fatal flaw when your picture is about talking animals.”
Just Mercy Tragically Illustrates the True Cost of the Death Penalty, January 8 2020: “He desires the sunshine of Cretton’s camera to reach all the corners of a corrupt justice system that the film compellingly demonstrates is rigged against the poor and disenfranchised.”
In Uncut Gems, Adam Sandler Finally Shows the Scope of His Talent, December 12 2019: “By not only giving us a glimpse of a take-no-prisoners New York City that is quickly vanishing but also showing us in full flower the true spectrum of colors possessed by a star many of us wrote off years ago, Uncut Gems ends up providing that rarest commodity in modern film going: a genuine sense of discovery.”
Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire Is a Devastating Masterpiece, December 4 2019: “The story is deceptively simple but rich with mystery and possibility.”
Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel Get Hopelessly Lost in the Woods of Frozen 2, November 19 2019: “Frozen 2 has no special message to impart beyond the obvious: it’s Disney’s woods—and we’re just lost in them.”
Last Christmas Is a Lifeless Holiday Flick Drenched in George Michael Hits, November 7 2019: “The depth of talent behind the screen and the appeal and attractiveness of the two stars should have resulted in something with slightly more than what we get here, which is essentially a Hallmark Christmas movie that has been gifted an outsized budget for music licensing.”
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil Squanders Angelina Jolie’s Ability to Play Oddball, October 17 2019: “The best way to bask in the dark refractions of the wonderfully strange Maleficent—not to mention the far too under-utilized actor who plays her—is to free her from the banality of the film that bears her name.”
With Parasite, Bong Joon Ho Orchestrates an Intricate and Rage-Filled Tale of Inequality, October 15 2019: “Bong harnesses the precise anxieties everyone of us is currently sharing and uses them to make every scene in this blackhearted comic thriller crackle with energy and purpose.”
Natalie Portman Still Manages to Mesmerize as an Unhinged Astronaut in Lucy in the Sky, October 3 2019: “From Jackie to Vox Lux,the actor’s choices indicate she has been trying to say something profound about the way women respond to and internalize trauma; it finally finds full voice here.”
The Death of Dick Long Gets Laughs by Playing It Dead Serious, September 27 2019: “The film boasts generally strong performances by a cast that seems to understand that in a situation this extreme, the best way to get laughs is to play it dead serious.”
Sylvester Stallone Exploits a Classic for the Morally Bankrupt Rambo: Last Blood, September 20 2019: “This sloppily conceived and muddily rendered Rambo picture does not merely insult any audience member unfortunate enough to see it; it does something far worse. It insults Rambo.”
Don’t Let Brad Pitt’s Space Suit Fool You, the Story of Ad Astra Is Far From Futuristic, September 17 2019: “It is hard to recall any movie star looking more relaxed fronting a major studio picture than Pitt is here. If the dude were any more chill, he wouldn’t be upright.”
It Chapter Two Piles on the Monsters But Forgets to Bring the Terror, September 6 2019: “There is something undeniably bold and even essential about the trick that the It films are trying to pull off. They are reexamining and weaponizing the Spielbergian tropes about childhood to which we have all become accustomed in an attempt to discover the trauma that lies beneath them.”
Keira Knightley Revives the World’s Rage Over the Iraq War in Official Secrets, August 29 2019: “As engaging as Official Secrets is, this is a strange time to escape to the movies to experience outrage at governmental corruption and dirty tricks.”
Angel Has Fallen Is a Neo-Noir for Our Age of Technological Paranoia, August 22 2019: “As weary as Banning might be, if you believe the Tomatometer scores of the previous two installments of the action saga we now call the “Fallen Trilogy,” he is still doing better than a film critic who has had to review all three.
Cate Blanchett’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette? Performance Is Her Most Affected to Date, August 16 2019: “It is the Oscar winner’s most affected performance to date, which is truly saying something when you consider that she has already played both Katherine Hepburn and Bob Dylan.”
Tween Adventure Film Good Boys Suffers From Too Many Swears and Obscene Gags, August 15 2019: “We need to have a talk about the F word. Once the most powerful of curse words, now it is only the most ubiquitous, liberally used to punch up otherwise flat Twitter jokes, or tossed into press remarks by backbench presidential candidates in hopes of spiking their lagging poll numbers. The word is typically used to convey urgency, informality and regressiveness, but most of the time it’s just fucking lazy.”
Blinded by the Light Captures the Profound Effect Pop Culture Can Have at Its Best, August 14 2019: “It’s as powerful a cinematic rendering of the precise moment that a piece of pop culture profoundly alters an individual’s life as I can recall ever seeing in the movies.”
The Kitchen Follows a Troubling Trend in Films Today, August 9 2019: “The movie’s fine craftsmanship is a lot like Margo Martindale, who is in a few scenes as a racist crime family matriarch: we have seen it done before and much smarter on any number of peak TV classics.”
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Offers Up a New Genre: Horror for Kids, August 9 2019: “Øvredal’s opening sequence at dusk in the fading town of Mill Valley, set to Donovan’s “Season of the Witch,” shows just how lively the often dreadful task of story establishment and character introduction can be in the right hands.”
The Art of Racing in the Rain Imagines an Odd Monologue for a Very Chatty Dog, August 7 2019: “If he weren’t voiced by a mellow and serene Kevin Costner, Enzo would sound like Martin Short’s old Ed Grimley character, only with Formula One replacing Pat Sajak and Wheel of Fortune as his object of obsession.”
Hobbs & Shaw Made a Major Miscalculation With Its Car Chases, August 1 2019: “No one was expecting Midnight Run-level repartee from Hobbs and Shaw, but is it too much to ask for a bit more than the who-has-a-bigger-penis stuff we get here?”
Luce Will Leave You Pondering These Murky Questions—And the Plot of the Film, July 30 2019: “It’s a little odd that the actors appear so ill at ease despite the fact that both of their characters are shown swilling wine by the fistful.”
Mike Wallace Is Here Presents the Evolution of Broadcast News Through the Story of One Man, July 26 2019: “Mike Wallace Is Here is nonetheless a refreshing return to a more promising era when a swashbuckling, nicotine-huffing newsman made powerful people sweat for our collective edification.”
Colonial Thriller The Nightingale Is Brutal and Difficult—That’s Why You Should See It, July 24 2019: “She makes consistently bold choices—from shooting in a condensed and claustrophobic Academy ratio to creating a soundscape that blurs the terrors of the wilderness with those that exist solely within Clare’s mind. But Kent is never showy; her choices are always in service to the story and her tormented characters, rather than an act of filmmaking bravura.”
In David Crosby: Remember My Name, a Music Icon Reckons With the Bridges He Burned, July 17 2019: “David Crosby: Remember My Name becomes the story of a man who falls several football stadiums short of finding the peace he sang about so melodiously in his heyday. Instead, he discovers something far more powerful: purpose.”
The Lion King Is a Perfect Example of What Happens When Toxic Nostalgia Takes Over, July 12 2019: “For all its technical accomplishments, it’s hard to look into the computer-generated eye of this soon-to-be box office behemoth and catch a glimpse of anything resembling a soul.”
With The Farewell, Awkwafina Cements Herself as a Certain Type of Star, July 9 2019: “Whether discussing her romantic prospects with her pushy Grandma or trying to extricate herself from a conversation with a chatty hotel employee, the onetime YouTube phenomenon is like chamber jazz musician, responding to her fellow actors in the moment and letting their choices color hers.”
Spider-Man: Far From Home Tries to Distract You From Seeing What These Movies Have Become, June 27 2019: “If ever a superhero movie needed a top-to-bottom script polish by David Mamet, it’s this one.”
Annabelle Comes Home to Show the Conjuring Universe What It’s Been Lacking, June 24 2019: “Annabelle Comes Home often feels like a fun, periodically thrilling and slightly claustrophobic horror-tinged theme park ride. It’s also, especially early on, akin to waiting in an interminably long line to get onto that ride.”
Gabriela Cartol Brings The Chambermaid to Life With Bristling Sensitivity and Dormant Rage, June 22 2019: “Like the metropolis that sprawls out far below the rooms she cleans, the film quietly pulses with life. And like Eve, we are left hoping she has a larger part to play in that world beyond smoothing blankets and folding toilet paper ends into perfect little triangles.”
The Funniest Movie This Year Also Tackles the Meaning of Life. It’s Toy Story 4, June 14 2019: “The films are about the two-year-old with whom you repeatedly watched the first in the series on a DVD that never made it back into its case, and who now is several years from having graduated from the University of Chicago. They are about the three-year-old who ran from the theater, tears streaking down her face, during the incinerator scene in the third film, and who now sits beside you, her every finger donned with skinny silver rings because that is how Billie Eilish wears them.”
Did the Men in Black: International Creators Forget What Made the Original Great?, June 13 2019: “…a largely toothless and wit-free reboot that empties the last of the originality and vivacity that has been steadily leaking out of the franchise with each subsequent installment.”
The One Thing Dark Phoenix Needed That the MCU Could Have Provided, June 5 2019: “There are almost no jokes in this movie. In the screening I saw, the audience only laughed once—when Scott, aka Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), drops a decidedly un-Disney f-bomb while threatening the team’s longtime adversary Magneto (Michael Fassbender). Unfortunately, it wasn’t clear the line was intended to be funny.”
Godzilla: King of the Monsters Absolutely Nails One Classic Monster Movie Element, May 31 2019: “The first thudding monstrous footfalls roll across the theater and rumble your seat even before the images start.”
Brightburn Squanders the Potential of Superhero Horror, May 25 2019: “If the filmmakers had a modicum of curiosity about the implications of their own idea, the movie might have had something interesting to say.”
Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin Serves Up a Slightly Familiar, Wholly Unsurprising World, May 24 2019: “There is something off-putting and a little tone-deaf about Smith—who is best when he is defying authority in films like 2001’s Ali or 1997’s Men in Black—playing a wise and magical being beholden or otherwise in the employ of others. Call it the Bagger Vance conundrum.”
Joanna Hogg’s Superb Film The Souvenir Opens Up the Privileged World From Which She Emerged, May 17 2019: “The Souvenir, Hogg’s fourth film, is an extraordinary rumination on memory and privilege while also being one of the most incisive movies ever to directly address—in moral, philosophical and personal terms—what it means to be a filmmaker.”
The Sun Is Also a Star Is Like Watching One Long, Vapid Instagram Story, May 16 2019: “While the two lead actors are both unbelievably attractive and incredibly aware of that fact, Melton and Shahidi together generate less heat than a rain-soaked newspaper.”
Amy Poehler and Her Ex-SNL Sidekicks Spin a Tale of Fart Jokes and Friendship in Wine Country, May 9 2019: “It’s a profoundly silly film about a deeply serious subject: those singular friendships that sustain us even when we are too busy or neurotic to give them the care they deserve.”
In Knock Down the House, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Win Sets the Scene for Other Election Stories, May 3 2019: “Unlike Ocasio-Cortez, the other candidates featured in Knock Down the House did not become subjects of national obsession, or even poll that well in their home states. If not for Lears’ dogged dedication to telling their story, many of us wouldn’t know who they were.”
A Fumbled Buddy Bolden Biopic Ensures the Jazz King’s Real Legacy Remains Unclear, May 2 2019: “Carr, who took the part over from Avenger Anthony Mackie, gets a good read on the character despite the muddled script. His depiction of mental illness is far more compelling and compassionate than the way the film portrays it, which is generally by blurring the edges of the screen as if schizophrenia were a form of macular degeneration.”
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile Makes You Question Nexflix’s Ted Bundy Obsession, May 1 2019: “If Reed Hastings’ streaming service were a city, you wouldn’t want to live there: serial killers would inhabit an entire neighborhood.”
Avengers: Endgame Puts the MCU in Company With Some of History’s Greatest Sagas, April 24 2019: “While people’s superhero cynicism and exhaustion is well earned, this film has risen above the immensity of its marketing and the ubiquity of the genre. It has placed itself and the whole unwieldy series alongside Tolkien’s Rings trilogy and the original Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Captain America comics, as a fantastical and essential response to and reprocessing of global tragedy. Yes, it’s all too much, but it is also exactly what we need.”
Let Under the Silver Lake Lead You On a Journey Through LA’s Sordid History of Cults and Murders, April 17 2019: “My theory is that Under the Silver Lake is exactly the kind of movie all those Silver Lake boys fantasized about making back then as they skimmed The Recycler over espresso and a Cubano at Café Tropical. It’s almost comically ambitious, wearing its reverence for Hitchcock and David Lynch on the sleeve of its flannel shirt, and is filled with topless women presented in a manner that’s meant to call attention to the toxicity of the male gaze. Or at least that’s how the sensitive fella who thought of it would explain it over PBRs at the Good Luck Bar. (RIP.)”
Little Woods Is a Devastating Modern Western Set Against Our Broken Health Care System, April 17 2019: “Little Woods shows Ollie and Deb as a kind of contemporary Butch and Sundance, battling against overwhelming enemies in a punishing Western landscape. And like any classic cinematic pair, the manner in which the two lead actors play off of each other is remarkable to behold.”
David Harbour Fights a Bland Script to Try to Make Hellboy Compelling. He Loses., April 11 2019: “The chief battle here isn’t the one on screen between Hellboy and a sixth century witch; it’s between Harbour and the uninspired gore and bland rock music in which his unfortunate first starring vehicle is soaked. He loses in the end, but at least he puts up a good fight.”
The Tragic Massacre of Peterloo Gets an Underwhelming Retelling Through Monotonous Monologues, April 4 2019: “Almost every member of the talented cast gets an opportunity to speechify, and they all make the best of their moment. But with well over 100 speaking parts, it can feel like a big band performance where every last instrument gets an unnecessarily long solo when all you really want them to do is play a song.”
The Mysteries of High Life and Why Claire Denis Resists Regular Plot Structures, April 4 2019: “Denis is a filmmaker who is able to make permanent the most ineffable aspects of the human experience, capturing them like fireflies in a jar. This is a film where irreconcilable contrasts—intimacy and isolation, hope and doom—don’t just share the same ship, they’re bunkmates.”
Tim Burton Gives Dumbo a Squeaky-Clean, High-Tech and Sadly Mainstream Makeover, March 26 2019: “Why does it all feel so safe?
Zachary Levi Looks Like a Mascot for an Off-Brand Hot Dog Company in Shazam!, March 25 2019: “Shazam! feels like a corporate product that’s so thirsty for approval from all quadrants that it never ends up figuring out what it is.”
Little Has Been Done to Address Campus Sexual Assault, Documentary Red Red Roll Reminds, March 22 2019: “While it is good that a director as versed on the subject of consent as Schwartzman is bringing her unwavering eye to the problem, it makes it all the more painful that we seem even further away from solving the issue then we were on that fateful August night in Ohio seven years ago.”
How The Hummingbird Project Made Late Capitalism Look Boring, March 15 2019: “It is one of those films where they keep reminding you that the stakes are high because they are unable to convincingly convey that fact in the storytelling.”
The Romantic Clichés in Five Feet Apart Are Tempered by Great Acting and Insight Into Living With Illness, March 14 2019: “It is difficult to convey just how swoony Riverdale star and former Disney Channel mainstay Cole Sprouse is in this movie.”
In Captain Marvel, Brie Larson Is a Superheroine Breaking Free From a Life Following Orders, March 6 2019: “While it may be a Marvel movie, it shares a deeper spiritual DNA with movies like Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, than it does, say, Ant-Man.”
Netflix Is Sending a Message by Following Roma With Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Powerful First Film, March 1 2019: “This film could have easily been a dramatization of William Kamkwamba’s well-shared Ted talk, and become the kind of spoonful of sugar, Disney-fied tale of uplift that would be easily recognizable and marketable. But he tells a much richer tale, one that brings large-scale issues that we tend to discuss theoretically—deforestation, colonialism, climate change—down to a granular, intimate scale.”
How Isn’t It Romantic Failed Rebel Wilson, February 14 2019: “Never in the history of the genre has the heroine of a rom-com required the NFL’s concussion protocol as early and as often.”
Lego Movie 2 Name-Checks a Long List of Films You Should Watch Instead of This One, February 6 2019: “The filmmakers pile on the name-drops—everyone from Mary Poppins to Elliott Smith gets a shout out—in what is an attempt not just to widen its appeal but also to distract from a plot that is both unwieldy and unsatisfying.”
Mads Mikkelsen’s ‘Arctic’ Hero Will Make You Want to Buy a Watch, Be More Chill, January 31, 2019: “This man versus the elements story is one of those singular cinematic experiences—precise, honest and unrelenting—for which movie theaters still exist.”
Netflix’s Fyre Exposes Billy McFarland’s Real Co-Conspirator: The Press, January 16, 2019: “That’s what you get for spending $12,000 to see Blink-182.”
A Dog’s Way Home Goes Astray with Its Reductive Message About Canine Discrimination, January 11 2019: “On the other hand, there is the work of the film’s director, critter-feature veteran Charles Martin Smith…Using deft pacing (despite its episodic nature, the movie never drags), a light touch, and a compassionate approach to all those that Bella encounters along her path, he manages to wring real emotion out of a story that likely would have devolved into trite sentimentality in most anyone else’s hands.”
Jason Momoa’s Aquaman Looks Like an Abercrombie Model, Talks Like a Sixth Grader, December 21 2018: “That is not to say that the latest entrant in the DC Extended Universe—the RC Cola of synergistic corporate superhero undertakings—doesn’t have its occasional B-movie pleasures.”
If Kenneth Branagh’s All Is True Is Accurate, Then Shakespeare Was One Giant Walking Cliche, December 20 2018: “Their extended scene together is touching, with McKellen trying to reconnect with the ‘Fair Youth’ he once was in Shakespeare’s eyes and in his sonnets. It concludes with both of them reciting in its entirety Sonnet 29 (‘When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes…’), giving the two Royal Shakespeare Company veterans a chance to have a genuine dueling banjos moment.”
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Is a Thrilling, Mind-Being Joyride, November 30 2018: “Watching the film—an animated superhero movie that takes full advantage of the visual and thematic freedoms these genres provide—in the midst of the lugubrious “important movie” season feels like sneaking off into your parents’ attic to dip into that one lone box of comics that has survived the purge.”
JK Rowling Is Getting Richer Off The Crimes of Grindelwald, but Her Wizarding World Is Losing Steam, November 15 2018: “The world Rowling dreamt up during the Tony Blair era is getting no richer after this installment, but its creator and various producers certainly will be.”
The Dizzying Digital Wonderland in Ralph Breaks the Internet Will Give You Whiplash, November 14 2018: “Watching it in a crowded movie theater is the equivalent of being wickedly hungover while trying to Red Bull through a 9 a.m. class called “Marshall McLuhan in the Information Age,” shopping the Disney Store website for sales, and texting with your best friend.”
The Girl in the Spider’s Web Is the Female-Fronted Kick-Ass Movie We’ve Been Desperate For, November 7 2018: “While we patiently wait for Brie Larson in next year’s Captain Marvel,touted as the rare superhero film fronted by a woman, this film shows that day has already arrived.”
Rosamund Pike Pulls Off One of the Most Complex Roles of the Season as War Journalist Marie Colvin, November 4 2018: “It struck me in a raw, emotional way that documentaries on the subjects—including Talal Derki’s 2013 The Return to Homs and Heineman’s own take on the subject, 2017’s City of Ghosts—have not. I must have cried for a good twenty minutes after it was over, if not longer.”
The Pretentious Suspiria Remake Asks, ‘Is Female Modern Dance Demonic?,’ October 25 2018: “From its stunt casting of Swinton as an old dude to its furtive camera work to its pointlessly crude expository, horror movies seldom come laden with more empty pretentiousness than this graceless art house reworking of the 1977 Dario Argento cult classic of the same name.”
Paul Dano’s Wildlife Is About Adultery and a Forest Fire, But It’s a Slow Burn, October 18 2018: “The An Education actress lays everything bare—her stymied sexual identity, her desire for a career, her dependence on a husband who is as unpredictable as the fires he has no business fighting—and yet somehow remains utterly inscrutable.”
Should Terrorist Attacks Be Movie Material? With 22 July, Paul Greengrass Doesn’t Convince Us, October 11 2018: “His film winds up uncharacteristically slack, even while the story it tells remains vital and sadly relevant.”
The Hate U Give Might Be a Hard Watch for Its YA Audience—And Maybe It Should Be, October 5 2018: “So what age is too young? I took my (white) 11-year-old daughter on a school night, and she cried through most of it. That the threat of violence, both from police and criminals, hung over every happy moment of the Carter’s life was overpowering to her, as it should be. When I asked if it was too much, she pinched her fingers together: Yes, just a little.”
Private Life Is Comedy Gold, Which Is Why You Shouldn’t Have to Watch It on Netflix?, October 5 2018: “It should not be this way. We should not have to wait a decade for a new Tamara Jenkins movie. We should be treated to her urbane, profoundly intimate, and deeply funny worldview more often than we encounter, say, the census or a global recession.”
How Are We Supposed to Believe in the Smallfoot Yetis When They Don’t Have Noses?, September 27 2018: “Perhaps the fact that these creatures could thrive doing highly aerobic activity in an oxygen-deprived environment without the appendage that has been allowing mammals to breath easy since their evolution will not bother you. It did me, as well as one of my two 11-year-old companions—so much so that it took us out of the movie. (The other one didn’t notice.)”
A New Netflix Doc Presents Quincy Jones as an Agreeable Yoda, But No One Is Fooled, September 21 2018: “Race and death seem to be constantly on Jones’ mind, but these urgent matters are mainly ignored by the filmmakers, as if exploring substantive topics might harsh the chill mood—or ire a man they both obviously adore.”
The Real Killer in Chloë Sevigny’s New Lizzie Borden Biopic? Misogyny, September 14 2018: “There is a cool detachment to the presentation of the story that, while perhaps fitting for a movie about a crime so carefully calculated it defies imagination, nonetheless serves to undercut the film’s high stakes.”
A Simple Favor Is a Lot Like Real Estate Listings: Glossy, Mildly Interesting, September 14, 2018: “A Simple Favor looks flatter than a Zillow slideshow.”
What They Had Doesn’t Think Alzheimer’s Is Funny—But It Does Show the Humor We Need to Cope, September 12 2018: “Does mom answer the stapler instead of the phone? Go with it. Does she insist on calling her husband of 40 years her boyfriend? Well, technically he is. Does she make a pass at you on the way home from the hospital? OK, maybe that one you can deny.”
The Story of an Unsung Country Music Hero, Blaze Displays Ethan Hawke’s Directorial Chops, September 7 2018: “Hawke shares his Boyhood director’s lyrical curiosity and ability to let scenes breathe and take on lives of their own.”
Shockingly Predictable, The Nun Proves Old Habits…Aren’t Scary, September 6 2018: “There’s so much promise here that goes untapped for the least satisfying reason imaginable: the people who made the movie didn’t need to, because the film would still make money.”
The Happytime Murders: When Swearing Puppets Aren’t Enough, August 23 2018: “The Happytime Murders fatally confuses crassness with subversion.”
Peter Berg Can’t Keep His Camera Still, But You Can Still See Mile 22 Is a Mess, August 16 2018: “If you took the entire post-9/11 military industrial complex, cut it with terrorism paranoia from the same period, then snorted the whole thing up your nose and tried to make a bunch of artistic decisions, you would probably end up with something resembling Mile 22.”
The Dog Who Costars in Alpha Clearly Deserved More Screen Time, August 16 2018: “In the current film-going environment, a PG-13 movie spectacular this untethered from pre-existing corporate properties is something of a miracle, albeit a flawed one that is missing the feral spark that makes the best man and beast stories so powerful.”
Deep-Sea Shark Thriller The Meg Is a Shallow But Fun Creature Feature, August 10 2018: “It could have been the result of the world’s shortest and least inspired elevator pitch: “Jurassic Shark.” But on another, equally surface level: Oh, hell, yes.”
Some of the Best BlacKkKlansman Scenes Serve No Plot Purpose—And Save the Film, August 8 2018: “Some of the film’s strongest moments are those that don’t advance the plot at all, but rather shine a light on the culture that shapes the story like an invisible guiding hand.”
Christopher Robin Is So Depressing That Eeyore Actually Livens Things Up, August 3 2018: “While I have not seen the entire opus (though anyone who has ever lived with a toddler will feel like they have) it is safe to say that there has never been a more morose or less lively a rendering than Christopher Robin.”
Like Father Has No Idea What Kind of Movie It’s Trying to Be, August 2 2018: “Dante famously imagined purgatory as a seven tiered mountain in the southern hemisphere, but that was only because he never got a chance to see Like Father.”
All Hail Kate McKinnon as She Successfully Balances Diarrhea Jokes With Gory Murder, August 2 2018: “McKinnon carries within her nimble frame a fusion reactor of delight and can-you-believe-we-are-getting-away-with-this gusto that elevates audience enthusiasm whenever it starts to waver, something that happens routinely as the film’s body count climbs progressively skyward.”
The Gushy Violence of The Equalizer 2 Lands Differently This Time, July 18 2018: “Seeing Denzel Washington fillet a host of bad guys with corkscrews, garden clippers and even a drill, as the camera luxuriated over the details, was a cinematic experience you never thought you needed—until you saw it.”
Joaquin Phoenix Is Restrained and Exacting in Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, July 12 2018: “Anchored by a Phoenix performance that is restrained, exacting and produced without a drop of sentiment, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot is one of the more engrossing examinations of the long yet thrilling slog of recovery, a process that seldom gets its cinematic due.”
For a Classic Blockbuster Concept, Skyscraper Has Uncanny Cultural Relevance, July 11 2018: “This is worldwide summer entertainment at its most cynical and bombastic, all of it sold by a stalwart Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson using the over-aggressive earnestness of a late-night TV pitchman.”
Hotel Transylvania 3 Is the Closest Thing Today’s Kids Have to Classic Looney Tunes, July 10 2018: “No current animation franchise lays stronger claim to the snap, crackle and pop of cartoon entertainment than Hotel Transylvania. With its crew of misfits and its penchant for screen-stretching chases studded with visual gags, it exists in a sweet spot between the rudimentary character comedy of Hanna-Barbera and the visual anarchy of Looney Tunes.”
Comedy Was Having a Cold Streak. Sorry to Bother You Just Ended It., July 3 2018: “From there, things get really nuts.”
Sicario: Day of the Soldado is Relentlessly and Pointlessly Disturbing, June 29 2018: “The soundtrack, like the movie, is unrelenting, filled with dread, and never builds towards anything resembling a satisfying conclusion.”
Paul Rudd Brings the Party to the More Serious Sequel, Ant Man and the Wasp, June 27 2018: “As long Paul Rudd is invited, it’s still a party.”
Couldn’t Mackenize Davis Have Taken the Metro in Izzy Gets the F*ck Across Town?, June 21 2018: “Troublingly, the L.A. the movie presents will be more familiar to people who know the city from the Missing Persons song or misguided New York Times think pieces than the one that actually exists today.”
Tag Is a Toxic, Clueless Example of Male Privilege, June 14 2018: "It is not terribly surprising that they made a movie about grown men playing the same aggressive and destructive game of tag for over 20 years. It is an idea that carries the pungent stink of inevitability.
If Director X's SuperFly Has a Social Justice Message, It Gets Lost in the Glitter, June 13 2018: "There is something narcotic and languid about his pacing and camera work that feels purposeful and stylistic when the script is focused but comes off as stumbling and haphazard when the story looses momentum, which is often."
You Rarely See a Sequel Like Incredibles 2, June 11 2018: "Brad Bird controls every aspect of this movie with many shades of humor, the ability to address important topics with a light touch, and a gracefully moving camera that responds to the action with the flowing artistry of Ginger Rogers following Fred Astaire in a waltz."
The Mister Rogers Documentary is What the World Needs Right Now, June 5 2018: "Despite sometimes coming off as a kind of 20th century Jesus in a cardigan, Mister Rogers is not coming back. But it looks like, as demonstrated in this remarkable film, he left a few things behind that just might be able to help."
Johnny Knoxville's Action Point is Like a Sad Jackass Meetup, June 1 2018: "The ball-smashing libertarianism on display in the new comedy Action Point—which the former Jackass majordomo stars in, co-wrote and produced—is one that bemoans the nanny state, helicopter parenting, and “corporate douchebags” who litigate the fun and creativity out of our lives."
Solo Builds a Sanitized Corporate Backstory for Everyone's Favorite Flyboy, May 24 2018: "Solo: A Star Wars Story won’t ruin anyone’s childhood. But it won’t make it much more interesting either."
Melissa McCarthy's Life of the Party Shows Gags Can't Stand in for Substance, May 11 2018: "Removal of the specs and a quick brush out of the mom perm is apparently enough to transform her, a la Sandy in Grease, into a party animal ready to grind on the dance floor with a cute frat brother."
The Only Living Boy in New York is Glazed in White Rich Male Privilege, August 9 2017: "This may be the absolute worst time in American history to make a sex fantasy for a privileged white bro child, which is all this light variation on the theme from The Graduate ultimately is."
Quiet Columbus Crafts a Cinematic Love Story for Mid-Century Modernist Architecture, August 3 2017: "This stroll through a living museum of Modern masterpieces has a grandeur and precision that deserves to be witnessed in a movie theater. Save The Dark Tower for VOD; get in the car to see Columbus."
Part Fiction, Part Documentary, Yiddish Menashe Lacks Cohesion, July 27 2017: "Considering the talent involved, and the rare opportunity presented to visit intimately with people many of us know best as fellow strap hangers on the subway, both we and them deserve a little bit better."
Work of Art War for the Planet for the Apes Redeems Summer Spectacle Season, July 13 2017: "This is a morally and artistically complex film, one that expertly melds high and low, significant and silly."
Lady Macbeth: An Odd Little Period Thriller Doesn't Quite Come Together, July 7 2017: "As much as the rather dimwitted Sebastian enraptures Katherine, there is a sense that she chose to have an affair to break the monotony of her day, which is largely consumed by napping. Indeed, Sebastian’s initial come-on to Katherine is to inquire if she is bored. Turns out, she was."
13 Minutes Is a Gripping Melodrama about a Lost Hero of the Resistance, June 30 2017: "It is high time that we not only knew Georg Elser’s name and story, but took a moment to recognize that his was a true act of heroism."
Spider-Man: Homecoming Is Good Fun, But Tony Stark Has Got to Go, June 30 2017: "When Downey Jr. first played the playboy defense contractor almost a decade ago, Stark’s flaws were fascinating, informed as they were by the actor’s own troubled past. Now he just seems like a petulant jerk with way too much power."
The Big Sick Is as Honest, Funny and Romantic As We Need It to Be, June 23 2017: "By borrowing from their real life, Gordon and Nanjiani have crafted the rare romance that sparkles with real life emotion. By the time we reach its well-earned ending, you are left with the powerful sense that for this pair, things have only just begun."
Transformers: The Last Knight Is Sloppy, Stupid and Quite Possibly Evil, June 21 2017: "It is loud and dumb and it expects its fans to be the same in its defense— to decry anyone who might take issue with it as elitist members of this summer’s no fun squad."
Beatriz at Dinner Boasts Dynamite Performances, But About That Ending…, June 9 2017: "Who would have guessed that Hayek and Lithgow — and not, say, a pair of alien-born transforming cars — would provide this summer’s most compelling and dynamic head-to-head face off."
My Cousin Rachel is a Bloodless Gothic Romance, June 8 2017: "Both the film and the chemistry generated between Weisz and Claflin feel about as smoldering and lustful as a tub of margarine."
Captain Underpants Is an Inspired and Subversive Piece of Animated Silliness, June 2 2017: "…Perhaps you just appreciate a good night of fun at the movies, which this candy colored and pure hearted collection of potty humor serves up with enough postmodern glee and subversion that it is likely to entertain those of us who don’t drink sugar water out of Mylar pouches."
A Woman's Life Is a Deeply Felt, Exquisitely Rendered French Drama, May 12 2017: "It’s a little long, profoundly sad, and filled with moments of minutiae that we are forced to interpret rather than have their intended meanings stapled to them like garage sale signs onto telephone poles."
Risk Is Muddled, Complicated Peek Into Julian Assange's Toxic Narcissism, May 5 2017: "We may not get a perfect documentary with Risk, but at least we get a very real and truthful sense of just how hard these kinds of movies are to make."
The Fate of the Furious, or Stop Worrying and Love the Fast and Furious Films, April 13 2017: "Jason Statham's balletic airborne martial arts dance while holding a baby is not only one of cinema’s cleverest John Woo tributes, but a joyfully absurd way to kick off the summer movie season."
The Boss Baby: The Meme Pretending to Be a Movie, March 30 2017: "I guess baby butts are funny or cute or something, but only in the right context and in far more limited doses than this."
Spring 2017's Top 10 Unmissable Movies, March 29 2017: "In contrast to his gangsta image, Tupac Shakur could at times be a real goofball."
Un Padre No Tan Padre Is a Pleasing But Familiar Family Comedy from Mexico, January 27 2017: "By the time it's over, you feel a bit like you don't want the vacation to end even though it rained for the last few days."
13th Is a Dense, Compelling Encyclopedia of Woke, November 7 2016: "It feels like the manifestation of that ghostly Encyclopedia of Woke many of us have been grasping for since the Black Lives Matter movement sprung up following the acquittal of the man who killed Trayvon Martin."
Antithetical Anti-Hazing Frat Film Goat Fails to Get It, September 14 2016: "By the end you feel like one of the pledges disappointed by the outcome of all that humiliation. Why did we even bother? Dude, I have no idea. I have no idea, bro."
Author, The JT Leroy Story Is a Compelling Exploration of Deception and the 1990s, September 6 2016: "The film effectively explores the nature of identity, celebrity, and the creative process in a way that is satisfying, even if many of the questions it raises don't get entirely answered."
Southside with You is Powerfully Romantic, Despite Classic Biopic Pitfalls, August 25 2016: "There are instances in Southside with You that inspire incredulous groans and seem lifted from a parody of a biopic of the early life of an Incredibly Important Person."
War Dogs: What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing, August 19 2016: "Much of the early film is spent with the boys scouring the government bid website like a couple of Hummel collectors looking to make a few bucks flipping figurines on eBay."
Imperium, Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Is a Sadly Relevant Crash Course in Racism, August 19 2016: "Still, there are moments when Imperium is plenty cheesy. Most of them come courtesy of Toni Collette as Radcliffe's FBI handler; she chews gum in every scene – presumably because the scenery did not provide enough sustenance."
Kubo and the Two Strings Review: A Cool But Flawed Stop-Motion Masterpiece, August 18, 2016: "The film can strut its Joseph-Campbell-by-way-of-Akira-Kurosawa pedigree like a third-year film student and sometimes seems to prefer to astound and amaze rather than entertain."
In Florence Foster Jenkins, Meryl Street and Hugh Grant Make Cluelessness a Virtue, August 16, 2016: "The film belongs to the iron lady."
Disney's Pete's Dragon Reboot Pits Mickey Against Magic, August 16, 2016: "While Pete's Dragon does manage to take flight and occasionally soar, like the overgrown golden retriever at its center, it just can't seem to stick the landing."
Indignation: A Sexy Philip Roth Romp, July 27, 2016: "Finally, a Philip Roth book that has been properly adapted into a movie!"
Into the Forest: Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood Make a Home in the Dark, July 27 2016: "One of the more intimate and thoughtful takes on the post-apocalypse in cinematic memory."
What Mr. Right Gets Wrong: Pretty Much Everything, April 2 2016: Mr. Right isn't a bad movie as much as it is two-and-a-half, maybe three bad movies playing all at the same time."
Louder than Bombs: A Moving Take on Family, War and Loss, April 8 2016: "This is a movie that captures, with singular intimacy and humanity, just how difficult it can be to communicate with the people you love most."
Yahoo!
What to Stream: Future True Detective Director Finds the Gothic Horror in Jane Eyre, September 2 2014: "This is Jane Eyre should be, a rough and tumble proto-feminist film noir that's closer to a horror story than a Victorian romance."
TRUNKWORTHY
Plate Throwers, Donkey Acts, and Jerry Lewis. Why Wouldn't We Want You to See Funny Bones?: "If it all sounds a bit cute, I assure you it’s not. Funny Bones comes off as profoundly personal on behalf of its Blackpool-born director. But cute? No movie that features Jerry Lewis standing on a beach telling his comedian son that he isn’t funny could ever be branded as such."
If Amy Broke Your Heart, Brace Yourself for Senna: "This is a movie electric with you-are-there immediacy, whether behind the wheel of a terrifyingly fast car on the streets of Monaco, or at a testy drivers-only meeting that teems with love and resentment."
Ronin Outsmarted (And Outdrive) the Average Action Film: "My favorite hero moment of any action flick is the self-stitch. You know, that scene where the fallen champion grits his teeth, yanks a bullet from his belly or arm, then calmly sews it all up again like a grandmother darning a sock…The king of the self-stitch (or the near self-stitch) is Robert DeNiro in the 1998 gem Ronin."
The Babadook is the Horror Film for Adults: "This is the most genuinely terrifying thing to come out of movie darkness since Norman Bates first started chattering on about his taxidermy collection."
You ARE Being Watched; So You Should Watch The Lives of Others: "If you are are looking for a bit more ice–and verisimilitude–in your Cold War cocktail, you can do no better than 2006's The Lives of Others."
How Walk Hard Made Every Other Music Biopic Obsolete: "What Austin Powers did for James Bond, Dewey Cox does for every music legend whose life story has been adapted for the screen. And even though it's complete fiction, it's a pretty accurate history of rock n'roll."
The Darkly Obsessive Big Fan Made Us Even Bigger Fans of Patton Oswalt: "The cynicism in Big Fan's soul is real and it's pitch black: the movie's message, at least in part, is that for common folk, our only heroic option is to take our beat downs gladly and and without complaint. But the film's most shocking element may just be its tenderness."
The Haunting is Scorcese's Favorite Horror Film. It Should Be Yours Too: "Like the very best films that freak us out–Psycho and The Shining top that list–The Haunting's scares are the result of the meticulous planning of a master craftsman. Wise–who won two Oscars for directing and producing West Side Story two years earlier and was nominated for editing Citizen Kane–is firing on all cylinders with this genre piece."
Robot Love: If Frank Langella Can Form a Bond with a Robot, Anyone Can: "With its view of technology as a potential cure for rather than cause of human loneliness, Robot & Frank would make an inspired double feature with Spike Jonze's more celebrated Her. Like most art worth your time, heart, and dollar, both films are about the triumph of love at its most unlikely."
The Kinda-Documentary Stories We Tell Is About Everything that Matters: "This is a movie that shows us that any answer to a question is itself another question, and that the stories we tell are as much a mixture of the joy and longing that animate our spirit as they are truthful recollections of the past."
The Savages Might Be the Greatest Philip Seymour Hoffman Performance You Missed: "The Savages is a 1927 Yankees kind of film, where every element–the intimately framed cinematography, the precisely realized set design, the piano-based score–performs at its peak. This is especially true of the acting: for all his Capotes and Masters, Hoffman was always most affecting when playing a character most like himself."
The Mad Men to Watch While You Wait for the Other Mad Men to Return: "It's a happy film about sadness, a film with a dark heart that looks like a bag of Skittles. Whether on a Caddie fin, the plush carpet of a row house, or the evening jacket of Fine Young Cannibals frontman Roland Gift, the colors in Tin Men pop and glisten, just like Levinson's language."
Let the Right One In is a Stunning Meditation on Childhood Love, Loneliness, and Um…Vampires: "In many ways, Let the Right One In is a blood-soaked take on classic Peanuts, only Charlie Brown gets his happy ending and the little red-haired girl scales walls and rips faces off of neighborhood drunks."
People
Before Midnight and Now You See Me, June 10 2013: "Hawke and Delpy respond to each other with such easy intimacy that it's impossible to imagine that they haven't spent the past nine years together."
Morning Glory and Unstoppable, November 22, 2010: "It's fun watching Rachel McAdams' unsinkable spunk square off with Harrison Ford's epic grump, but the film lacks the amorous fizz that powers the best romantic comedies."
Variety
Review: Kestral's Eye, January 30 2000: "In what could be a textbook on how to construct a story without plot or dialogue, Kristersson pieces together a cohesive narrative about two animals' quest for survival and proliferation in an indifferent world."
Review: Cremaster 2, October 25 1999: "In crafting American pop-culture detritus into an idiosyncratic biography, Barney's experimental film is not unlike its more mainstream counterparts, such as Being John Malkovich."
Review: The Old Man and the Sea, September 13 1999: "While Petrov and the film's producers deserve admiration for undertaking such a painstaking and ambitious independent project, Old Man leaves one wondering what Hollywood animators could do with Imax's seven-story screens."