Chuck Wilson

Chuck Wilson
Chuck Wilson's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s): L.A. Weekly Village Voice
Publications: City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul, L.A. Weekly, Village Voice
Critics' Group: Los Angeles Film Critics Association

Movie Reviews Only

T-Meter Title | Year
98% The Forty-Year-Old Version (2020) Supremely entertaining, The Forty-Year-Old Version is a love song to the power of being real. - L.A. Weekly EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 12, 2021
93% Straight Up (2020) Romantically subversive in ways that feel true to the current moment, Straight Up may well become an era-defining classic. - L.A. Weekly EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 14, 2021
98% Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles (2019) Footage of Tevye and his wife Golda singing "Do You Love Me?" in a recent Tokyo staging is so moving one wishes to see the entire production. - L.A. Weekly EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2020
89% Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (2019) It's heart-clutching and makes one understand what Ronstadt's Penzance co-star, Kevin Kline, says earlier in the film about her voice: "Celestial yet earthy. So absolutely pure. It made me cry." - L.A. Weekly EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2020
92% The Vast of Night (2020) An oft-told alien invasion story that's really a movie about being exuberantly young, and boundlessly curious - as alien trackers and first time directors alike must be - The Vast of Night is a nervy delight. - L.A. Weekly EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 22, 2020
95% Lucky Grandma (2020) The range of emotions that play across her face when she realizes she's gambled away all her money is a master class in the art of acting. - L.A. Weekly EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 22, 2020
98% Fourteen (2020) Figuring out if we can be can continue to be someone's person in a steady continuum of such moments is the question Fourteen asks, artfully, and on its own terms. - L.A. Weekly EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 22, 2020
99% On the Record (2020) ...it's as if the filmmakers are attempting to create a safe space for Dixon to tell her story, and when she finally does, it's wrenching. - L.A. Weekly EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 22, 2020
68% Bombshell (2019) The entertainingly potent Fox News docu-satire, Bombshell, is jammed with incident - largely based on events at the network during the 2015 election cycle - but the film's most unsettling nugget is one that's presented in the first five minutes. - L.A. Weekly EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 21, 2020
93% End of the Century (2019) Lucio Castro's emotionally muted yet fascinating debut feature. - L.A. Weekly EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 18, 2019
68% Beautiful Boy (2018) Imperfect yet affecting. - L.A. Weekly EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 23, 2018
92% A Prayer Before Dawn (2018) A Prayer Before Dawn feels scarily authentic, and may be too much for some. But there are moments of grace amid the setting's despair. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 8, 2018
100% Buddies (1985) Thirty-three years after its initial release, the film remains as affecting as ever. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 19, 2018
60% Another Kind of Wedding (2018) A comedy that presents Kathleen Turner and Frances Fisher as feuding life partners should be irresistible, but Another Kind of Wedding proves more irritating than charming. - L.A. Weekly EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 5, 2018
16% Blumhouse's Truth or Dare (2018) Horror fans trust Blumhouse, so why waste the brand on a flick as lame as Truth or Dare? - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 14, 2018
96% A Quiet Place (2018) A Quiet Place is completely gripping, and in a film fully reliant on facial communication, exquisitely acted by those amazing kids, and by Krasinski and Blunt, who've never been better. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 3, 2018
39% The Strangers: Prey At Night (2018) Has a slow and rather grim first half, but then, in the home stretch, takes a welcome turn into the seriously silly. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 13, 2018
96% Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017) Recognition (and compensation) proved elusive in Lamarr's lifetime, but in this marvelous documentary, a brilliant woman - "I'm a very simple, complicated person" - finally gets her due. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 21, 2017
89% Wait for Your Laugh (2017) A disappointment. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 1, 2017
100% Diamond Island (2016) This kind of narrative inexactitude might drive some viewers crazy, but there's an emotional truth to it, too. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 17, 2017
84% Tom of Finland (2017) Why does Tom of Finland play like an over-cited term paper? The film is jammed with incident and detail but there's little flow to the storytelling ... - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 17, 2017
90% Super Dark Times (2017) Both a thriller and meditation on the loss of innocence, Super Dark Times is rich with the minutiae of a bygone era ... but Phillips and screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski press hard against the instinct for nostalgia. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 4, 2017
26% Unlocked (2017) Unlocked feels like a 1970s-style conspiracy thriller, which makes it a perfect fit for the 76-year-old Apted, whose wonderfully varied career includes the James Bond flick, The World Is Not Enough. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 30, 2017
49% Churchill (2017) So full of movie clichés and high melodrama that it's sometimes hard not to giggle - and one should never laugh at the prime minister. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted May 31, 2017
53% Cezanne and I (Cézanne et Moi) (2017) [A] beautifully produced but dramatically wobbly epic. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 29, 2017
36% Live Cargo (2017) The need to tell a story and the desire not to collide in Live Cargo, the narratively uneven but visually exquisite debut feature from writer-director Logan Sandler. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 29, 2017
94% Midsummer in Newtown (2017) Slightly uneven yet deeply affecting ... - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 26, 2017
90% The Lion in Winter (1968) All that's ever mattered about The Lion in Winter are Hepburn and O'Toole, and the pleasure we take from watching two masters inspire each other to greatness. Scenery chewing has rarely been so artful. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 12, 2016
13% Tank 432 (Belly of the Bulldog) (2016) A last-minute flurry of action and a final plot twist aren't enough to redeem this busy but tedious thriller. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 23, 2016
91% Uncle Howard (2016) A bit disjointed but also vibrant and loving, much like its subject. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 17, 2016
100% A Stray (2016) Most of the turns of plot feel organic, ours to discover, as long as we're paying attention. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 18, 2016
33% The David Dance (2016) [A] painfully dull film ... - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 12, 2016
65% The Great Gilly Hopkins (2016) Bates is a shameless ham throughout, but when she works her magic on Trotter's end-of-movie speech to Gilly, resistance is futile. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 5, 2016
81% Closet Monster (2016) It wouldn't work at all if the filmmaker hadn't lucked into an actor as gifted as Jessup. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 21, 2016
71% The Tenth Man (El rey del Once) (2016) In his lovely new film, Argentine director Daniel Burman mixes reality with fiction in inventive ways. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 3, 2016
92% Zero Days (2016) Since no terrorist group or nation state has ever claimed credit for Stuxnet, Gibney can only hypothesize about its origins, but he makes an alarmingly lucid (if circumstantial) case for the culpability of the United States and Israel. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 8, 2016
86% Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You (2016) The 93-year-old is a legend with a zillion stories - so why is the new documentary about his life so unsatisfying? - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 8, 2016
85% Heaven Can Wait (1943) Heaven Can Wait may be 73 years old, but it's vibrant and alive, and teaching us anew the central language of film. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2016
20% Who's Driving Doug (2016) The road-trip drama Who's Driving Doug is earnest but not overly sweet - a blessing for a film with built-in sentimentality traps. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 23, 2016
7% Misconduct (2016) Shimosawa's debut feature boasts an elegant visual style and a mystery plot with so many absurd twists that the film becomes enjoyable high melodrama. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 2, 2016
9% Martyrs (2016) Proves only that what is repellent in French is equally so in English. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2016
67% Krampus (2015) The movie sends mixed messages. It's hard, but gooey, too. Trick 'r Treat showed that Dougherty has a mean streak (with wit), but with Krampus, he's clearly been charged with delivering a wide-appeal PG-13 film. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 4, 2015
63% MI-5 (Spooks: The Greater Good) (2015) Led by the honorably dour Firth and the charisma-free Harington, MI-5 is convoluted and dull ... - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 1, 2015
100% Top Spin (2015) These "kids" turn out to be wiser than their years - wiser than most of us, probably - as they both win and lose with an enviable grace. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 20, 2015
71% The Looking Glass (2015) An overlong but deeply felt film about a dying woman trying to connect with her granddaughter. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 20, 2015
96% The Russian Woodpecker (2015) The Russian Woodpecker is very much like Fedor himself -- eccentric as hell, smart as a whip, and, at the end of the day, a heartbreaker. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 14, 2015
100% Movement And Location (2015) Movement and Location is an original and intelligent immigrant drama with a title so academic (and uncommercial) that you might want to give the filmmakers a firm talking-to. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 17, 2015
29% Hellions (2015) Hellions is unsettling, but in all the wrong ways. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 15, 2015
85% Uncle John (2015) Thanks to Ashton's brilliant, career-defining performance, we're made to see that the only thing worse than doing evil deeds is being nice enough to feel guilty about them. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 15, 2015
38% Contracted: Phase II (2015) The filmmakers don't appear fully committed to the idea of a zombie apocalypse, so no sense of dread (or suspense) ever takes hold. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 1, 2015