Aja Romano

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

T-Meter Title | Year
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 5, 2021
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 4, 2021
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 12, 2021
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 29, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 11, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 5, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 6, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 9, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 21, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted May 29, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted May 22, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 28, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 3, 2018
70% Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003) KHNH drips with color and cheer. - Vox EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 28, 2018
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 16, 2018
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 16, 2018
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 19, 2018
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 19, 2018
12% Halloween: Resurrection (2002) Stay away unless you like kitschy early internet nostalgia and lots of blurry found-footage trickery. - Vox EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 19, 2018
52% Halloween H20 (1998) H20 is far more character-driven than any of its predecessors. - Vox EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 19, 2018
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 19, 2018
41% Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) This movie is a dirty trick on all Halloween fans. - Vox EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 19, 2018
32% Halloween II (1981) As films go, however, Halloween 2 isn't very good. - Vox EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 19, 2018
96% Halloween (1978) Still creepy as hell. - Vox EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 19, 2018
65% The Little Stranger (2018) A deft exploration of controlling and entitled masculinity. - Vox EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 6, 2018
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
100% Hannah Gadsby: Nanette (2018) It's a powerful rejection of comedy itself. - Vox EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 5, 2018
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 27, 2017
91% Gerald's Game (2017) One of the best things about this movie is its smallness - Vox EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 3, 2017
4/5 86% It (2017) Yet for all its dark social relevance, It is also moving, emotional, and even optimistic. - Vox EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 6, 2017
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 3, 2017
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 8, 2017
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted May 16, 2017
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 7, 2017
3.5/5 83% Beware the Slenderman (2018) Beware the Slenderman... goes deeper than a typical true crime doc in fascinating ways. - Vox EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 27, 2017
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 24, 2016
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 24, 2016
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 24, 2016
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2016
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 6, 2016
4.5/5 97% Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) The stellar achievement of Kubo is the animation itself. - Vox EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 19, 2016
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 8, 2016
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 8, 2016
4/5 80% The Conjuring 2 (2016) It somehow manages to be scarier, more thoughtful, and more intellectually honest than its predecessor. - Vox EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 8, 2016
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 8, 2016
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 8, 2016