Alissa Wilkinson

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 <a href="https://twitter.com/alissamarie" target="blank">@alissamarie</a>.

Publications: Christianity Today, RogerEbert.com, Paste Magazine, Movie Mezzanine, Vox, Flavorwire

Movie Reviews Only

Movies
TV

	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Review
4/5	95%	Us (2019)	It's horrific in a way that hangs onto your gut when it's all over. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 21, 2019
	99%	Apollo 11 (2019)	It is grand and awe-inspiring, particularly if you can catch it in IMAX... It's almost as if you're actually on the moon. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 11, 2019
	46%	What Men Want (2019)	It's a diverting comedy with funny performances. But if you're looking for it to deliver on its title, move along. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 8, 2019
2.5/5	64%	Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)	It doesn't really add up to much, it's darkly enjoyable as long as you're into all that. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 7, 2019
	64%	Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019)	So profoundly lacking in any insight that it's hard to believe it was greenlit in an era like ours. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 6, 2019
3.5/5	76%	Late Night (2019)	It's a breath of fresh air, a cheeky bit of entertainment that will have the side effect of prodding other star-led comedies to try a little harder. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 4, 2019
	74%	Untouchable (2019)	A vital document of women regaining control of their own narrative. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 4, 2019
2.5/5	67%	Native Son (2019)	Progresses in fits and starts; every time you feel like you've locked into it, it seems to slam on the brakes and veer off around the corner. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 28, 2019
3.5/5	91%	Fyre (2019)	You actually come away from Netflix's Fyre feeling like you've got a sense of who McFarland is and why he was able to con so many people into giving him their time, respect, and millions in cash. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 17, 2019
2/5	77%	Fyre Fraud (2019)	It is, in essence, a think piece. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 17, 2019
	41%	The Upside (2019)	The proudly clichéd way it deals with class, race, and especially disability feel tin-eared at times. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 10, 2019
2/5	37%	Glass (2019)	Glass feels like fan service that tries too hard to replicate earlier success, and manages to diminish both Unbreakable and Split in retrospect. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 9, 2019
2.5/5	62%	Bird Box (2018)	The cross-cutting narrative device doesn't add much to the movie, and as it wears on, it starts to feel like it isn't totally sure what it's trying to do. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 27, 2018
2/5	70%	The Mule (2018)	It feels, in the end, inauthentic. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 21, 2018
1.5/5	66%	Vice (2018)	I can't figure out what Vice's motives are, or what we're meant to take away from the film. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 21, 2018
4/5	98%	Marwencol (2010)	Malmberg hangs back, allowing the character of Hogancamp - rather than any contrivance or "plot" - to power the film. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 19, 2018
3.5/5	93%	Bumblebee (2018)	Instead of staging a bombastic action cheesefest, Bumblebee self-consciously apes the style of 1980s coming-of-age stories, to great effect. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 18, 2018
2.5/5	27%	Mortal Engines (2018)	It's filled to the point of overflowing with stories, challenges, mysteries, and spectacle - some of which make for a more compelling film than others. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 13, 2018
2.5/5	78%	Mary Poppins Returns (2018)	It's still a nice-looking, entertaining movie, and a fine way to spend a few hours with your family over the holidays. But I found myself wishing that an extra spoonful of sugar and a pinch of magic had been sprinkled in too. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 12, 2018
	90%	Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes (2018)	Divide and Conquer is not content to skim the surface of Ailes's life. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 7, 2018
3/5	85%	Dumplin' (2018)	Dumplin' still manages to be entertaining, and if it hammers on its message a little too often and a little too clumsily, it's still a fun romp at heart. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 7, 2018
4/5	90%	Happy as Lazzaro (Lazzaro felice) (2018)	So mind-bending is its big twist. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 30, 2018
4/5	93%	The Favourite (2018)	The Favourite's trio of leads - Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone - turn in some of the best performances of the year. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 21, 2018
4.5/5	96%	Roma (2018)	One of the best things a movie can do is force us to settle down, quiet ourselves, and live inside someone else's experience for a while. And Roma is a shining example of a film that succeeds in that endeavor. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 20, 2018
	78%	Green Book (2018)	Borrowing the name of such a fraught piece of history and making a feel-good comedy about it, then failing to do that piece of history justice, is at best a misstep. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 19, 2018
3.5/5	91%	Widows (2018)	A cast this stacked can't help but generate glory. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 16, 2018
	96%	Amazing Grace (2018)	People have been listening to Amazing Grace for decades, but watching the album get made is a full-on experience, body and soul. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 15, 2018
3/5	62%	Outlaw King (2018)	For what it is, Outlaw King is plenty entertaining, with a hint of humanity in Robert and Elizabeth's courtship. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 15, 2018
3.5/5	58%	The Grinch (2018)	This movie's heart, and its story, is definitely in the right place. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 9, 2018
	11%	God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness (2018)	The greatest offense of the God's Not Dead series may be its failure to imagine for its audience what a truly radical belief in a living God would look like. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 5, 2018
	90%	The Kindergarten Teacher (2018)	It's a perceptive, complex, and sensitive depiction that at times feels like a psychological thriller, and Gyllenhaal shines in the role. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 2, 2018
1.5/5	61%	Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)	It takes a certain degree of, um, talent to make a crashingly dull movie about Freddie Mercury, one of the least drab humans who ever lived. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 2, 2018
4.5/5	100%	Shirkers (2018)	Deeply personal, fabulously engrossing. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 29, 2018
4/5	66%	Suspiria (2018)	It's impossible to ignore how skillfully Guadagnino dove into the material and came up with something all his own. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 23, 2018
	98%	Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)	A delightfully misanthropic buddy heist that's both solemn and light on its feet. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 19, 2018
4/5	91%	The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)	At the end of the journey we're left laughing through the lump in our throat. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 15, 2018
3/5	79%	Apostle (2018)	If you're on the hunt for a frightening and original horror movie, it's a stellar choice. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 12, 2018
3.5/5	68%	Beautiful Boy (2018)	It is a horror film without the cathartic feeling of emotional release that comes along with most horror. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 10, 2018
3/5	75%	Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)	It's overstuffed but still feels controlled. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 3, 2018
4/4	99%	Selma (2015)	It is a very, very good movie, beautifully shot by Bradford Young and deftly, almost astonishingly well-directed by relative newcomer Ava DuVernay. - Christianity Today EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 2, 2018
	72%	Where the Wild Things Are (2009)	It's a quiet reminder of the power of scary-ish stories, and it's made with warmth, humor, and wisdom. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 25, 2018
4.5/5	92%	The Old Man & the Gun (2018)	It's a gentle inversion of the glamorous thief trope, so gentle that if you're not paying attention, you might miss it. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 25, 2018
	59%	Vox Lux (2018)	Portman's performance as a strung-out pop star is appropriately hard-bitten and manic. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 17, 2018
	88%	High Life (2019)	The film is confounding but wholly original. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 17, 2018
4/5	95%	If Beale Street Could Talk (2019)	Elegiac and lovingly wrought, If Beale Street Could Talk is darkness laced with light, a story that has not stopped being true in the years since it first was told. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 17, 2018
	99%	Free Solo (2018)	Both beautiful and harrowing. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 17, 2018
	88%	Margin Call (2011)	Positively devastating. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 14, 2018
4/5	89%	A Star Is Born (2018)	While it's not a perfect film - though the first hour just may be - A Star Is Born boasts more than enough passion to make up for some of its narrative hiccups. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 14, 2018
4/5	87%	First Man (2018)	Gosling's portrayal of the stoic Armstrong is so understated that it's hard to tell how much Armstrong realizes the weight of what he's saying. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 11, 2018
4.5/5	62%	American Dharma (2018)	American Dharma isn't a dismantling of Bannon's ideologies. It's a portrait of delusion. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 11, 2018