Aja Romano

Aja Romano's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Vox
The Daily Dot
Publications:
Vox,
The Daily Dot
Movie Reviews Only
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3/5 | 95% | Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) |
Raya herself is a wonderful protagonist, easily one of my favorite Disney princesses by a mile... By the time I was near the end, however, the film's innumerable borrowed tropes really began to get to me. - Vox
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| Posted Mar 5, 2021
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3/5 | 34% | Earwig and the Witch (2021) |
Earwig's themes are so disjointed that it's not quite clear what the takeaway is. - Vox
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| Posted Feb 4, 2021
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95% | Housebound (2014) |
Housebound is writer-director Gerard Johnstone's only feature film, but its unique tone has the confidence of an established, more experienced screenwriter - Vox
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| Posted Jan 12, 2021
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40% | Death to 2020 (2020) |
Death to 2020 is ultimately just more of the same painfully humorless noise that's made up most of the year. - Vox
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| Posted Dec 29, 2020
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3.5/5 | 55% | The Prom (2020) |
The jokes land, the cast is superb, the score is still charming, and fans of the show will have little to complain about. - Vox
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| Posted Dec 11, 2020
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85% | American Murder: The Family Next Door (2020) |
Crucially, the documentary doesn't concern itself with digging deeper into Chris Watts's persona, with mythologizing him or probing for underlying motives in his behavior. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 5, 2020
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90% | Dave Chappelle: 8:46 (2020) |
Even unrefined and exhausted - or perhaps because it is both of those things - Chappelle's perspective on being black in America is still searing, powerful, and worth hearing. - Vox
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| Posted Jun 15, 2020
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3.5/5 | 62% | It Chapter Two (2019) |
While Chapter Two works perfectly fine as a complement to Chapter One, it still falls short in that the closer our heroes come to triumphing over "It," the further they get from a satisfying conclusion. - Vox
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| Posted Sep 6, 2019
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3.5/5 | 77% | Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019) |
Given that I was mainly expecting monsters with a side of more monsters, I can't complain too much. I got what I came for, and this is certainly not the first horror film to serve a sloppy social allegory along with its chills. - Vox
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| Posted Aug 9, 2019
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3/5 | 63% | Child's Play (2019) |
It's silly, even nigh nonsensical, full of flat stock characters, plot non sequiturs, and a hand-wave-y take on technological dystopia that never manages to get above eye roll levels of sincerity. But it's also fun and funny. - Vox
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| Posted Jun 21, 2019
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72% | The Perfection (2019) |
In essence, the movie looks like it should be a slick, thrilling emotional arc that speaks to women. But beneath the surface, it's something more regressive. - Vox
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| Posted May 29, 2019
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2.5/5 | 57% | Aladdin (2019) |
The terrible musical sequences, the lackluster CGI, and the strange creative and emotional restraint that permeates the film frequently flatten Disney's original Aladdin into a cardboard version of itself. - Vox
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| Posted May 22, 2019
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27% | Rent Live (2019) |
But to make all of this even weirder, there was a live performance of Rent happening onstage - and it was awesome! - Vox
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| Posted Jan 28, 2019
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98% | The Conformist (1970) |
It's easy to overlook how stark The Conformist's political and allegorical message is because it's just so damn beautiful. - Vox
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| Posted Dec 3, 2018
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70% | Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003) |
KHNH drips with color and cheer. - Vox
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| Posted Nov 28, 2018
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61% | Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) |
Bohemian Rhapsody is a movie that consciously tries to position a gay man at its center while strategically disengaging with the "gay" part as much as it can... - Vox
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| Posted Nov 16, 2018
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3.5/5 | 93% | CAM (2018) |
Ultimately as cheeky as it is scary, Cam is a seduction disguised as a sermon, and it's all the better for it. - Vox
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| Posted Nov 16, 2018
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21% | H2: Halloween II (2009) |
Extends this interest in psychology to Laurie Strode (played this time by Scout Taylor-Compton), plumbing the emotional and psychological connection between her and Michael. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 19, 2018
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27% | Halloween (2007) |
Because it's still about Michael Myers, it all feels epic and larger than life in a way few of those other films do. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 19, 2018
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12% | Halloween: Resurrection (2002) |
Stay away unless you like kitschy early internet nostalgia and lots of blurry found-footage trickery. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 19, 2018
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52% | Halloween H20 (1998) |
H20 is far more character-driven than any of its predecessors. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 19, 2018
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29% | Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) |
I need to state for the record that Donald Pleasence is a truly great actor... But he also loved to chew the scenery, and the middle period of the Halloween franchise gave him plenty to sink his teeth into. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 19, 2018
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41% | Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) |
This movie is a dirty trick on all Halloween fans. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 19, 2018
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32% | Halloween II (1981) |
As films go, however, Halloween 2 isn't very good. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 19, 2018
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96% | Halloween (1978) |
Still creepy as hell. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 19, 2018
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65% | The Little Stranger (2018) |
A deft exploration of controlling and entitled masculinity. - Vox
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| Posted Sep 6, 2018
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3/5 | 92% | Searching (2018) |
Searching is also a powerful conversation starter. It's worth watching just for the questions it raises about who we are in a digital world, and how real our virtual connections really are. - Vox
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| Posted Aug 29, 2018
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100% | Hannah Gadsby: Nanette (2018) |
It's a powerful rejection of comedy itself. - Vox
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| Posted Jul 5, 2018
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No Score Yet | The Carmilla Movie (2017) |
As someone who wants queer narratives to feature happy romantic relationships and be charming and have serious characterizations with meaningfully substantive development and plots, I can't help but find it disappointing. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 27, 2017
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91% | Gerald's Game (2017) |
One of the best things about this movie is its smallness - Vox
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| Posted Oct 3, 2017
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4/5 | 86% | It (2017) |
Yet for all its dark social relevance, It is also moving, emotional, and even optimistic. - Vox
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| Posted Sep 6, 2017
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3.5/5 | 16% | The Dark Tower (2017) |
Arcel's film is fun, loving, scary, and often as genuinely compelling as it is wildly misguided. - Vox
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| Posted Aug 3, 2017
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4.5/5 | 87% | It Comes At Night (2017) |
Harrowing, visually striking, and almost too on the nose for the current sociopolitical moment, It Comes at Night is one of the best films of the year. - Vox
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| Posted Jun 8, 2017
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3.5/5 | 100% | Mommy Dead and Dearest (2017) |
The film's interweaving of past and present creates a visually unsettling tapestry of disbelief. - Vox
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| Posted May 16, 2017
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3/5 | 8% | Rings (2017) |
In conceptualizing how it feels to be inescapably pursued by something that's embedded in your culture, 2015's It Follows is a much better sequel to The Ring. - Vox
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| Posted Feb 7, 2017
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3.5/5 | 83% | Beware the Slenderman (2018) |
Beware the Slenderman... goes deeper than a typical true crime doc in fascinating ways. - Vox
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| Posted Jan 27, 2017
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2.5/5 | 82% | Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) |
[It's] a largely silly, disjointed construction of run-of-the-mill scares and awkward priest jokes, but at least director Mike Flanagan gives it his best shot, which is more than we can say of his predecessor. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 24, 2016
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97% | Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) |
Like the original Mad Max trilogy, Miller's dystopia is drenched in political commentary, but while the film's feminism has recently taken center stage, its environmentalism is far more strident. - The Daily Dot
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| Posted Oct 24, 2016
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50% | Earth to Echo (2014) |
Earth to Echo will appeal to the nostalgia of older kids who appreciate a good coming-of-age romp, parents looking for movies that eschew most of the usual stereotypes of teens on film, and the average YouTuber and tween. - The Daily Dot
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| Posted Oct 24, 2016
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2/5 | 37% | Blair Witch (2016) |
A movie that contributes nothing new to either the Blair Witch mythos or the vast landscape of found-footage horror. - Vox
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| Posted Sep 16, 2016
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4.5/5 | 88% | Don't Breathe (2016) |
[A] taut, appropriately breath-stealing new movie that galvanizes the tired home invasion subgenre of horror the way films like The Witch and It Follows have done for the coven and slasher subgenres. - Vox
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| Posted Sep 6, 2016
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4.5/5 | 97% | Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) |
The stellar achievement of Kubo is the animation itself. - Vox
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| Posted Aug 19, 2016
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3/5 | 56% | The Purge: Election Year (2016) |
The Purge takes far too much glee in presenting its violence like a beautiful fever dream, undermining and muddling its solemn political messages at every possible turn. - Vox
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| Posted Aug 8, 2016
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4/5 | 99% | The Wailing (Goksung) (2016) |
The Wailing succeeds at combining a mood of deep unease with visceral gore, buddy cop comedy, and a hallucinogenic mix of horror tropes - a recipe that yields, among other things, an atypical exorcism helmed by an intense Korean shaman. - Vox
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| Posted Aug 8, 2016
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4/5 | 80% | The Conjuring 2 (2016) |
It somehow manages to be scarier, more thoughtful, and more intellectually honest than its predecessor. - Vox
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| Posted Aug 8, 2016
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54% | Me Before You (2016) |
In other words, if you've ever wanted your romance with a side of disability and chronic pain, Me Before You is perfect for you - as long as you don't actually want a realistic depiction of any of those things. - Vox
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| Posted Aug 8, 2016
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3/5 | 93% | The Little Prince (2016) |
The Little Prince should make a compelling, if not always fully incisive, case for clinging to the lessons of youth. - Vox
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| Posted Aug 8, 2016
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