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
2/5	42%	Stuber (2019)	Stuber is part of a breed of summer movies that I think of as "aggressively fine": They're not unwatchable, and you'll laugh sometimes, but they're also not very good, and there's no particular reason they couldn't be. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 15, 2019
2/5	52%	The Lion King (2019)	The Lion King has always been a film with quite a lot to say bubbling below its surface. But 2019's telling adds bloat, and nothing more. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 11, 2019
5/5	100%	The Farewell (2019)	[The Farewell] is a finely tuned drama that finds humor in the everyday absurdity that comes from belonging to a family. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 9, 2019
4/5	82%	Midsommar (2019)	There's no cutting away from the disturbing in Midsommar (in fact, the camera prefers to push into the worst of it); you will look at this, and you will see the violence that is life and death, the movie says. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 20, 2019
3.5/5	96%	The Edge of Democracy (2019)	The Edge of Democracy is not an impartial piece of journalistic filmmaking; indeed, Costa makes no pretensions to objectivity. She weaves in her own family's story and the film takes on the quality of a lament. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 19, 2019
2.5/5	45%	Murder Mystery (2019)	It's just the kind of movie to pop on one night when you're looking for something fun, silly, and a little mysterious. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 14, 2019
4/5	93%	The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)	The Last Black Man in San Francisco is heartbreaking and elegiac in all the best ways. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 5, 2019
1.5/5	41%	Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)	Godzilla: King of the Monsters has big monster fights in the rain. But it feels by the end like you've just spent hours of your life on a fleeting amusement park ride. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted May 31, 2019
4/5	97%	Booksmart (2019)	[Booksmart] is a very satisfying movie for anyone who was never cool enough to see themselves in the star of a '90s teen comedy. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted May 24, 2019
3.5/5	92%	Once Upon a Time In Hollywood (2019)	Once Upon a Time in Hollywood doesn't have a lot to say, in the end. And yet it manages to capture some of that old-time Hollywood movie magic. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted May 23, 2019
4.5/5	98%	The Lighthouse (2019)	Probably the most delightful thing about The Lighthouse is that it gives Willem Dafoe the role of a lifetime. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted May 21, 2019
4.5/5	74%	A Hidden Life (Une vie cachée) (2019)	A Hidden Life is everything [Terrence] Malick's devotees could want from a movie: beautiful, poetic, hewing closely to films like Days of Heaven and Tree of Life. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted May 20, 2019
3/5	90%	Rocketman (2019)	Rocketman sometimes feels like it's lost its way, especially near the end. But it's still a joyous celebration, a colorful story about love that can help people heal. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted May 17, 2019
3.5/5	54%	The Dead Don't Die (2019)	Though The Dead Don't Die feels like a gently resigned take on the apocalypse, what lurks below is a pessimism and maybe even nihilism that feels very much of a piece with our time. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted May 17, 2019
5/5	89%	The Souvenir (2019)	The Souvenir is a painfully precise story of what it is to be in love with someone with addiction - to weather the disappearances, the stolen money, the lies, the heartbreak. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted May 15, 2019
3.5/5	90%	John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)	Whatever it lacks in narrative intelligence it makes up abundantly in visual moxie, and in a medium that is first and foremost visual, that's what makes something great. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted May 10, 2019
2/5	67%	Wine Country (2019)	For a group of actresses with improv comedy chops, it feels labored at times. And it doesn't have the zany, unpredictable energy of a movie like Bridesmaids. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted May 9, 2019
3.5/5	100%	Knock Down the House (2019)	Knock Down the House is the rare documentary about today's American political landscape that might make you shed happy tears. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted May 1, 2019
3/5	82%	Someone Great (2019)	Someone Great is both sentimental and melancholic, and feels a bit disjointed in the way these movies always do. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 19, 2019
3/5	45%	Mary Magdalene (2019)	t I appreciate the aim of Mary Magdalene, and the ways it reimagines a familiar story with modern implications, even when it falls flat. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 10, 2019
	77%	Share (2019)	A sensitive, complex, important film - particularly in a world where the lines of consent and accusations of sexual assault still seem to be up for debate. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 3, 2019
	75%	The Plagiarists (2019)	It's more interesting as an exercise than a film, but it's funny and clever - even if it's not truly original. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 3, 2019
	95%	Monos (2019)	A gritty, jarring cinematic style, Monos is less likable than admirable, an achievement with a clear, apocalyptic vision. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 3, 2019
	100%	Midnight Family (2019)	A sweet, fascinating portrait of a group of people trying to make the best of a bad situation, and sometimes succeeding. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 3, 2019
	100%	Honeyland (2019)	Sometimes funny, sometimes beautiful, and often enlightening. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 3, 2019
	100%	Clemency (2019)	A heavy, deliberate film... anchored by an absolutely stunning performance from Woodard. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 3, 2019
2.5/5	46%	Dumbo (2019)	Dumbo is no barn-burner, largely forgettable in a way its predecessor wasn't. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 28, 2019
4/5	94%	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
	44%	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	63%	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
	56%	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	80%	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
	75%	Untouchable (2019)	A vital document of women regaining control of their own narrative. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 4, 2019
2.5/5	61%	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	90%	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	79%	Fyre Fraud (2019)	It is, in essence, a think piece. - Vox EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 17, 2019
	40%	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	63%	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	79%	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	89%	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