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 @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 |
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| 100% | Amazing Grace (2016) |
People have been listening to Amazing Grace for decades, but watching the album get made is a full-on experience, body and soul.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Nov 15, 2018
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| 3/5 | 57% | Outlaw King (2018) |
For what it is, Outlaw King is plenty entertaining, with a hint of humanity in Robert and Elizabeth's courtship.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Nov 15, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 57% | The Grinch (2018) |
This movie's heart, and its story, is definitely in the right place.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Nov 9, 2018
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| 12% | 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
Read More | Posted Nov 5, 2018
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| 88% | 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
Read More | Posted Nov 2, 2018
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| 1.5/5 | 62% | 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
Read More | Posted Nov 2, 2018
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| 4.5/5 | 100% | Shirkers (2018) |
Deeply personal, fabulously engrossing.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Oct 29, 2018
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| 4/5 | 62% | Suspiria (2018) |
It's impossible to ignore how skillfully Guadagnino dove into the material and came up with something all his own.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Oct 23, 2018
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| 98% | Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018) |
A delightfully misanthropic buddy heist that's both solemn and light on its feet.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Oct 19, 2018
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| 4/5 | 92% | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) |
At the end of the journey we're left laughing through the lump in our throat.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Oct 15, 2018
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| 3/5 | 80% | Apostle (2018) |
If you're on the hunt for a frightening and original horror movie, it's a stellar choice.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Oct 12, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 69% | Beautiful Boy (2018) |
It is a horror film without the cathartic feeling of emotional release that comes along with most horror.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Oct 10, 2018
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| 3/5 | 73% | Bad Times at the El Royale (2018) |
It's overstuffed but still feels controlled.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Oct 3, 2018
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| 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
Read More | Posted Oct 2, 2018
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| 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
Read More | Posted Sep 25, 2018
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| 4.5/5 | 90% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 25, 2018
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| 86% | Vox Lux (2018) |
Portman's performance as a strung-out pop star is appropriately hard-bitten and manic.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 17, 2018
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| 85% | High Life (2018) |
The film is confounding but wholly original.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 17, 2018
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| 4/5 | 94% | If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) |
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
Read More | Posted Sep 17, 2018
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| 99% | Free Solo (2018) |
Both beautiful and harrowing.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 17, 2018
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| 89% | Margin Call (2011) |
Positively devastating.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 14, 2018
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| 4/5 | 90% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 14, 2018
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| 4/5 | 88% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 11, 2018
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| 4.5/5 | 58% | American Dharma (2018) |
American Dharma isn't a dismantling of Bannon's ideologies. It's a portrait of delusion.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 11, 2018
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| 4/5 | 96% | The Hate U Give (2018) |
The Hate U Give succeeds spectacularly. It's anchored by Stenberg's dynamic performance, but the rest of the cast is uniformly terrific.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 10, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 81% | Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018) |
The film is much better than the baggage that comes with its title might imply.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Sep 7, 2018
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| 4/5 | 65% | The Little Stranger (2018) |
Marrying social commentary with spookiness doesn't just make for effective storytelling; it underlines just how frightening it is to live in a world where your station in life controls your happiness.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Aug 30, 2018
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| .5/5 | 23% | The Happytime Murders (2018) |
The movie's sole virtue is its short runtime.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Aug 23, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 81% | Alpha (2018) |
Worth seeing just to witness how audacious it is.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Aug 15, 2018
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| 2/5 | 45% | The Meg (2018) |
To call the film "derivative" isn't pejorative; it's kind of the point.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Aug 10, 2018
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| 3/5 | 51% | Equalizer 2 (2018) |
He's never referred to as "the Equalizer" by those around him, but he might as well be, given that he's just a cape away from being a full-fledged superhero.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 93% | Blindspotting (2018) |
Collin and Miles's relationship also allows the movie to carefully but confidently address some of the thornier realities that abstracted political and social arguments often sidestep for convenience's sake.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2018
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| 3/5 | 81% | Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) |
Exactly what Abba would want.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jul 18, 2018
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| 4/5 | 97% | Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) |
Fallout features a badass, brilliant action hero who also never kills anyone without looking them straight in the eye first and visibly weighing the moral choice before him.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jul 17, 2018
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| 4.5/5 | 99% | Eighth Grade (2018) |
Startlingly empathetic, wincingly honest, and always completely charming.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jul 13, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 46% | Skyscraper (2018) |
The result is a competent action film that serves up some properly nail-biting moments.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jul 12, 2018
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| 53% | The First Purge (2018) |
I can't quite shake the feeling that something is just off about the Purge series' attempt at political literalism combined with dying citizens, recontextualized as a social experiment.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jul 3, 2018
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| 90% | Set It Up (2018) |
Set It Up works because it knows the long line of romcoms it comes from.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jun 29, 2018
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| 4.5/5 | 100% | Leave No Trace (2018) |
Every year a handful of small, independent American films show up that leave you breathless. Leave No Trace is one of them.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jun 29, 2018
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| 1.5/5 | 63% | Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) |
Sicario: Day of the Soldado is weirdly weak, more of a knock-off than a sequel - and most definitely a wasted opportunity.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jun 28, 2018
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| 3/5 | 48% | Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) |
Eventually it spirals into "gothic horror, except with dinosaurs," a concept I personally can get behind.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jun 20, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 94% | Incredibles 2 (2018) |
It seems so weird to say: While writer-director Brad Bird's Incredibles 2 is undeniably a good time at the movies for the whole family, it's the rare superhero movie that may have too many ideas knocking around in its noggin.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jun 11, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 99% | Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018) |
It's a gentle film that doesn't take a lot of risks but doesn't really need to.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jun 8, 2018
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| 4.5/5 | 89% | Hereditary (2018) |
Mostly I just felt really weirded out, which is what the movie wants... In that way, Hereditary is a true horror film.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted Jun 1, 2018
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| 88% | American Animals (2018) |
There's a kernel of something interesting in the film, and it's the movement between performance and "reality" that makes it work.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 31, 2018
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| 5/5 | 93% | First Reformed (2018) |
It lingers uneasily in the subconscious. Furious and darkly funny, it's a tight, explosive encapsulation of our very specific moment in history.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 25, 2018
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| 74% | Capernaum (Capharnaüm) (2018) |
The film contains some outstanding performances by children (including a toddler!) and it's undeniably going straight for the heartstrings.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 23, 2018
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| 95% | Burning (Beoning) (2018) |
It's gripping and unnerving, a noir-style mystery with no answers that goes in entirely unexpected directions (and harbors a hint of William Faulkner too).‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 23, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 58% | Under the Silver Lake (2019) |
It's no Mulholland Drive, but the point of Under the Silver Lake rhymes with themes from David Lynch's masterpiece: that lifetimes of watching others has instructed us in how to be watched ourselves.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 18, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 84% | Pope Francis - A Man of His Word (2018) |
Isn't likely to convert any of Francis's critics, but it might just convince the indifferent that he has something to say to our world.‐ Vox
Read More | Posted May 17, 2018
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