Alissa Wilkinson
Alissa Wilkinson's reviews (from any publication) always count toward the Tomatometer
because this critic is a Tomatometer-approved critic.
| Biography: |
Alissa Wilkinson is Vox.com's film critic. Formerly, she was chief film critic at Christianity Today. Her writing has appeared at Rolling Stone, Vulture, RogerEbert.com, Pacific Standard, Books & Culture, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Paste, and others. She lives and works in New York City, and you can find her @alissamarie.
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| Publications: | Christianity Today, RogerEbert.com, Paste Magazine, Movie Mezzanine, Vox, Flavorwire |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.5/5 | 86% | Battle of the Sexes (2017) |
At times, it works. But at others, it struggles to find its footing, and sometimes it flat-out falls down.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 22, 2017
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| 4/5 | 97% | Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) |
Martin McDonagh channels Flannery O'Connor's humor and sensibility in a film that looks at the absurd world and laughs.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 21, 2017
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| 56% | I Love You, Daddy (2017) |
I'm not convinced it's thoughtful, and suspect it's nothing more than clever and funny provocation for provocation's sake.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 15, 2017
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| 4.5/5 | 95% | The Death of Stalin (2017) |
The Death of Stalin is Iannucci's most complex and almost nihilistic rendering of what politics is: A team of bumbling and weak-minded people who lack any real conviction other than a desire for power and position.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 14, 2017
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| 4/5 | 96% | I, Tonya (2017) |
[I, Tonya] is unexpectedly resonant.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 14, 2017
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| 4/5 | 96% | The Shape of Water (2017) |
It is a difficult and beautiful dream - and del Toro makes it feel like just a bit less of a fantasy.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 13, 2017
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| 3.5/5 | 83% | The Final Year (2017) |
... the movie just lets its subjects speak and trusts the audience to connect the dots. That's an effective and even illuminating approach, though it can make it hard not to watch the film through parted fingers.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 13, 2017
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| 2.5/5 | 50% | Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House (2017) |
But for its faults as a movie, the story is still compelling as a bit of history, and more so in the midst of a presidential administration that at times seems to be taking all the wrong lessons from Nixon.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 13, 2017
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| 4/5 | 67% | mother! (2017) |
Mother! is a mad fantasia of fire and water and insanity, a spinning, flaming plume that is not here to make you like it, though it wouldn't mind if you decided to just bow down in worship.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 11, 2017
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| 4/5 | 93% | Molly's Game (2017) |
It's glorious to see [Idris] Elba working with great dialogue, but the movie belongs to [Jessica] Chastain, who throws herself into this role with abandon and vigor, and sells it completely.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 11, 2017
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| 1.5/5 | 42% | Suburbicon (2017) |
It makes a run at cleverness, trying to be a dark screwball commentary on America's race problem. But instead it's just a spectacular flop.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 11, 2017
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| 3/5 | 33% | Home Again (2017) |
"Charming" is the best word for Home Again, and how could it be otherwise?‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 6, 2017
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| 2/5 | 37% | The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017) |
It's a shame, mostly because The Hitman's Bodyguard had the potential to be a weird, funny summer flick. ‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Aug 18, 2017
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| 4/5 | 93% | Logan Lucky (2017) |
But the best part of Logan Lucky is that from the get-go you know you're in confident hands, and whatever's about to happen, it's going to be great.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Aug 17, 2017
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| 2.5/'5 | 48% | The Glass Castle (2017) |
The Glass Castle seems to be missing a sense of purpose. ‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Aug 10, 2017
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| 3/5 | 86% | Wind River (2017) |
Wind River is a good movie, and very nearly an excellent one.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Aug 3, 2017
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| 4/5 | 82% | Detroit (2017) |
Its goal is to make us into witnesses and bystanders -- to put us into the shoes of those who stand by and watch, feeling helpless even when we're not -- something it achieves through confident, pulsating filmmaking and emotional performances.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jul 27, 2017
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| 0.5/5 | 10% | The Emoji Movie (2017) |
Looking back, it seems so obvious. We should have seen The Emoji Movie's utter awfulness coming. But as with so many other things in 2017, hindsight is not so much 20/20 as a giant regret generator.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jul 27, 2017
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| 4/5 | 78% | Brigsby Bear (2017) |
This movie is great, and far more fun to watch if you have no idea what it's about. So if you're already inclined to go, then you're making the right choice. Go forth and enjoy.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jul 26, 2017
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| 4.5/5 | 93% | Dunkirk (2017) |
Dunkirk wants us to sense what made this moment so pivotal without reducing it to an individual tale. And at that, it succeeds richly.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jul 17, 2017
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| 3.5/5 | 69% | To the Bone (2017) |
[A] smart and even funny story of a young woman nearing the bottom of her anorexia.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jul 14, 2017
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| 4.5/5 | 93% | War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) |
It has something to say, and says it with a cinematic sensibility that's uncommon in most movies, let alone big-budget epics.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jul 13, 2017
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| 4/5 | 89% | Get Me Roger Stone (2017) |
The single most useful insight of Get Me Roger Stone is that men like Stone are driven not so much by ideology as by an overweening thirst for power and celebrity, propelled by absolute antipathy for their enemies.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jul 11, 2017
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| 4/5 | 80% | The Reagan Show (2017) |
The Reagan Show does something that counts as a radical act these days: It looks back at history -- actual history -- by letting historical footage speak for itself, without any talking heads to tell us what to think.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jun 29, 2017
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| 3.5/5 | 89% | Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press (2017) |
Nobody Speak builds a damning, convincing case that journalism needs protecting.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jun 23, 2017
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| 2.5/5 | 43% | The Bad Batch (2017) |
The Bad Batch squanders its strong start and rich setting on a too-thin plot.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jun 23, 2017
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| 4.5/5 | 98% | The Big Sick (2017) |
"Authentic" is an overused word in movie reviews, but there's no better way to describe The Big Sick: Every inch of it feels true, and not just because it's drawn from real life.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jun 22, 2017
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| 3/5 | 68% | The Journey (2017) |
The Journey is the rare hopeful political film rooted in both reality and very recent history.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2017
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| 2/5 | 77% | The Hero (2017) |
While Elliott is great in The Hero, the rest of the film is curiously inert and predictable.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jun 8, 2017
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| 3.5/5 | 79% | The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) |
The result isn't uplifting in the least. But it's deliciously frightening, a cautionary tale for the careless and a horror film that posits a world devoid of any real goodness.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jun 1, 2017
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| 5/5 | 97% | The Florida Project (2017) |
The Florida Project won't let us look away. Nor, given its brilliance, would we want to. Instead, we laugh, we watch silently, and we're challenged to stop simplifying people's lives so we can offer easy theoretical answers.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jun 1, 2017
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| 2.5/5 | 53% | War Machine (2017) |
It feels like Pitt is in a different movie than everyone else -- probably because he's giving a character actor's performance in the lead role, where everyone else (save Kingsley, who is cartoonish) seems to be playing their parts with a straight face.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 25, 2017
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| 3.5/5 | 89% | Promised Land (2017) |
That's the most accurate picture of America that this American can imagine: a land of competing narratives, where the only thing everyone can agree on is that lots of stuff has gone wrong, even if we can't agree on exactly what that stuff is.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 24, 2017
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| 4.5/5 | 100% | Faces Places (Visages, villages) (2017) |
A playful, surprisingly powerful document of an attempt to understand France by looking closely at its people.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 24, 2017
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| 4/5 | 62% | Happy End (2017) |
Most good films rely on their audiences to connect the dots a little, but Happy End is all dots, with none of the lines drawn in at all. The meaning is there, but you have to dig for it in the everyday events of a family's life.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 24, 2017
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| 4.5/5 | 78% | The Beguiled (2017) |
It's the mashed up stylistic markers of The Beguiled that make it so effective, especially as they skitter across the revenge plot humming along beneath the surface.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 24, 2017
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| 4/5 | 88% | The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017) |
The Meyerowitz Stories is a tale of a family, like all of our families, that still hasn't quite figured out how to somehow live with each other's deficiencies. But at least they're trying.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 23, 2017
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| 4/5 | 85% | Okja (2017) |
Okja isn't perfect; it falls down when the absurd and the serious ricochet back and forth between scenes, making it hard to track with the film's tone. But it's easily forgivable; this is a big, ambitious movie, and when it works, it is ridiculously fun.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 19, 2017
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| 70% | Alien: Covenant (2017) |
Unfortunately, Alien: Covenant is not really up to bearing the weight of the yarn it wants to spin.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 18, 2017
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| 4/5 | 73% | Wonderstruck (2017) |
Gorgeous, moving, and innovatively told, it may even be too smart for some adults. Kids will get it just fine, though.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 18, 2017
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| 3.5/5 | 28% | King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword (2017) |
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is a goofy, splendid medieval romp that also makes a distinctly English case for a moderate populism.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 11, 2017
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| 2/5 | 45% | Paris Can Wait (Bonjour Anne) (2017) |
Unfortunately, it's not a great film. But it's an enjoyable one, if you like fine wine, beautiful countrysides, and a little frisson of flirtation.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 11, 2017
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| 2/5 | 36% | Snatched (2017) |
Snatched, starring Amy Schumer and a woefully underused Goldie Hawn, takes a kind of lame premise and squeezes something kind of funny out of it.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 11, 2017
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| 3.5/5 | 83% | The Lovers (2017) |
The Lovers casts a longing glance over its shoulder at an older cinematic era while also remaining solidly rooted in the present. And like its protagonists, it revels in its double life.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 5, 2017
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| 1.5/5 | 17% | The Circle (2017) |
The Circle is a bafflingly bad movie.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Apr 28, 2017
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| 72% | Sleight (2017) |
The seams still show at times - this is obviously a low-budget movie - but for the most part, it's surprising, intriguing, and fun.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Apr 28, 2017
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| 4.5/5 | 87% | The Lost City of Z (2017) |
This is a different sort of movie: a stately, elegant epic paced like an elegy.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Apr 13, 2017
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| 4/5 | 91% | A Quiet Passion (2017) |
Cynthia Nixon plays Emily Dickinson, whose poetry and life is a perfect match for the signature style of director Terence Davies: rich in detail, deeply enigmatic, and weighed down with a kind of sparkling, joy-tinged sorrow.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Apr 13, 2017
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| 3.5/5 | 88% | Their Finest (2017) |
Their Finest is a lovely and stirring film, the kind of movie that reminds the audience that bravery comes in many forms... You can call that propaganda, but it also makes for a good story.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Apr 7, 2017
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| 4/5 | 80% | Colossal (2017) |
The result is delightful: While Colossal draws from a few familiar genres, it weaves them together and makes something totally new, and unexpectedly thoughtful. It's part metaphor, part reality, and just strange enough to keep us on our toes.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Apr 6, 2017
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