Elizabeth Weitzman
Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications:
Film.com,
Village Voice,
New York Daily News,
TheWrap,
Culture Trip
Movie Reviews Only
T-Meter | Title | Year | Review | |
---|---|---|---|
72% | The World to Come (2020) |
Historical lesbian love stories have become an increasingly prolific genre... and this one doesn't strike much new ground as a romance. But it's haunting as a portrait of a marriage trapped in amber, each partner screaming silently inside themselves. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Feb 3, 2021
|
|
69% | Land (2021) |
[F]or anyone unable to leave the confines of their own home or neighborhood right now, "Land" offers simple lessons and stunning landscapes that may feel like a welcome balm. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jan 31, 2021
|
|
69% | A Glitch in the Matrix (2021) |
Ascher leaves us pondering the costs of dissociation, but also its seductive appeal. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jan 31, 2021
|
|
83% | There Is No 'I' in Threesome (2021) |
[A]lthough the movie concerns itself with love and sexuality, its true subjects are vulnerability, trust and self-knowledge. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jan 31, 2021
|
|
57% | R#J (2021) |
Twenty-five years ago, Baz Luhrmann's MTV-influenced "Romeo + Juliet" taught young audiences that Shakespeare's themes and talent are truly eternal. But it's tough to get invested in a romance between two people more interested in likes than love. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jan 31, 2021
|
|
75% | Palmer (2021) |
Palmer is, in every sense of the word, decent. It's familiar, and predictable, and a little bit hokey. But it's also genuinely moving and surprisingly memorable, thanks to its two leads. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jan 28, 2021
|
|
4/5 | 73% | Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010) |
Serkis is such a live wire that the supporting actors (Olivia Williams, Naomie Harris, Ray Winstone) can do little but stand back in awe. It's the rare instance where such admiration is earned. - New York Daily News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Apr 27, 2020
|
2.5/4 | 67% | Babies (2010) |
The kids are absolutely charming, and each scene is beautifully shot. But there is no narrative thread, and the minimal social observations are blindingly obvious. - New York Daily News
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Apr 27, 2020
|
100% | Slay the Dragon (2020) |
For those who don't feel up to facing more bad news, there is some hope here in the form of citizen activists doing all they can. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Apr 2, 2020
|
|
89% | Banana Split (2020) |
Plenty of viewers are likely to nod when April googles "anxiety vs actual heart attack," while this critic was fully onboard from the moment she righteously refuses to serve a customer a hot dog at her movie theater concession job. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Mar 25, 2020
|
|
90% | The Booksellers (2020) |
Pays warm-hearted tribute to the reading, but also the shopping, the rifling, the obsessing, the complaining, the dreaming, the list-making, the shelf-organizing, and everything else book-lovers love to do. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Mar 5, 2020
|
|
95% | First Cow (2020) |
While it fits perfectly into the larger framework of Reichardt's filmography, it also stands alone in rare, iconoclastic beauty. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Mar 4, 2020
|
|
99% | Saint Frances (2020) |
The pacing is slow and the suburban-Chicago imagery feels deceptively ordinary, but the memorably empathetic depictions of everyday joys and pain are most often found in the connections between people. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Feb 26, 2020
|
|
60% | You Go to My Head (2020) |
The more opportunities director-producer-co-writer de Clercq takes to shoot Belgian model Delfine Bafort in various states of languorous undress, the more it starts to feel like we're watching a vanity wish-fulfillment fantasy. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Feb 14, 2020
|
|
79% | Buffaloed (2020) |
Had the movie gone all-in on Peg's amorality, we might have had a more interesting project. Had Peg shown some nuanced vulnerability or awareness, we might have had a more likable one. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Feb 13, 2020
|
|
89% | Earth (Erde) (2019) |
Though Geyrhalter shoots from seemingly every angle, the cinematography itself is equally clinical. This leads to a harshly striking - and strikingly harsh - tableau, which aptly reflects his intentions. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Feb 6, 2020
|
|
93% | Whirlybird (2020) |
Yoka spent six years sifting through and digitizing Bob's archives, and even he may have been surprised to find that the micro story winds up being stronger than the macro one. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jan 26, 2020
|
|
93% | Possessor: Uncut (2020) |
So well crafted that it's likely to make a lot of other Sundance films feel relatively amateurish. But as both writer and director, Cronenberg focuses so intently on the surface that he neglects to include enough substance. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jan 26, 2020
|
|
67% | The Wave (2020) |
Klabin seems to be speaking directly to midnight movie fans, stoners who love hearing about other people's dreams, and Justin Long completists. Outside that particular demographic, this frenetic trip may wind up feeling more like an exhausting slog. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jan 16, 2020
|
|
100% | The Woman Who Loves Giraffes (2020) |
Despite some grim ecological statistics and a conservationist message, the movie is so inspirational it feels like the sort of old-fashioned family film that can now be excavated on Disney+. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jan 9, 2020
|
|
38% | Black Christmas (2019) |
If you're intrigued to hear that Riki Lindhome of Garfunkel and Oates has refashioned "Up on the Housetop" into a jaw-dropping rape-culture callout, this is the movie for you. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Dec 12, 2019
|
|
68% | Bombshell (2019) |
They didn't want to leave anyone out, and they didn't want to make anyone mad. As a result, a genuinely explosive story never detonates with the force it should. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Dec 9, 2019
|
|
89% | The Two Popes (2019) |
Given that the film and its title are inspired by actual events, it would be no spoiler to reveal where this path is leading. But there is so much artistry in the unexpected ways the journey is plotted that viewers ought to experience them firsthand. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Nov 27, 2019
|
|
95% | Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project (2019) |
It's certainly curious that the first people to be interviewed in a movie about a former Communist activist are her chauffeur, secretary, and caretaker. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Nov 14, 2019
|
|
52% | Charlie's Angels (2019) |
The real asset Banks brings to the movie, though, is her own perspective. She builds the whole project on a scaffolding of sisterhood that feels so natural, it highlights Hollywood's historic failures in this regard. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Nov 12, 2019
|
|
100% | Good Girls Get High (2019) |
Cynicism often curdles movies of this kind, but director Laura Terruso, who co-wrote the script with Jennifer Nashorn Blankenship, underscores each scene with sweetness. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Nov 7, 2019
|
|
63% | The Good Liar (2019) |
The film really wants to be either a thriller or a caper. Unfortunately, it has neither the excitement necessary for the former nor the fun required of the latter. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Nov 7, 2019
|
|
97% | The Kingmaker (2019) |
Marcos innately understands the importance of image, but she seems to have underestimated her inquisitor, who uses well-chosen historic footage and powerfully-edited interviews with other Filipinos to gradually expand the canvas. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Oct 30, 2019
|
|
88% | Synonyms (Synonymes) (2019) |
Filmmaker and subject also share a disdain for restraint, shouting and jostling to ensure we've gotten their point. But while their parallel passions aren't exactly subtle, they do make their mark. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Oct 24, 2019
|
|
81% | Greener Grass (2019) |
The repetition can start to feel overdone, but the best jokes are acutely-crafted and sold with impressive deadpan by DeBoer, Carden and Bennett. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Oct 17, 2019
|
|
19% | Jexi (2019) |
Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have figured out how to modernize one of the most traditional and apparently still essential Hollywood tropes: the Crazy Bitch. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Oct 11, 2019
|
|
71% | Wrinkles the Clown (2019) |
What Nichols finds is promising, but because of the way the movie is structured, the reveal feels like a murky cheat. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Oct 3, 2019
|
|
88% | Brittany Runs a Marathon (2019) |
What starts out feeling inspirational threatens, at some points, to tip into disheartening conformity. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Aug 22, 2019
|
|
42% | Vita & Virginia (2019) |
Because Arterton portrays Vita with an almost adolescent superficiality, her fixation on Virginia never feels like more than a conquest, or a rung to be climbed on the literary ladder. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Aug 22, 2019
|
|
63% | Driven (2019) |
A joyride more interested in the journey than in any significant destination. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Aug 15, 2019
|
|
49% | Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019) |
Not an ideal match for the source material, but those who arrive without any preconceptions - or are willing to stray from the novel's style - will appreciate the assets of a modestly engaging and gently touching dramedy. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Aug 14, 2019
|
|
100% | Vision Portraits (2019) |
Evans intersperses his own experience with those of three others, finding comforting commonalities and essential differences. The result is artistically uneven in structure but emotionally powerful throughout. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Aug 7, 2019
|
|
64% | The Mountain (2019) |
Probably best suited for the sort of on-a-loop side room you'd find in a modern art museum, where it could endlessly challenge viewers but give curious wanderers a quick way out if they've had enough. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jul 25, 2019
|
|
93% | Sword of Trust (2019) |
As with all of Shelton's improv-inspired movies, the plot offers plenty of interest but the personalities provide the purpose. She chooses her actors very carefully, and then lets them loose to explore, expand, or ignore the script. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jul 11, 2019
|
|
65% | Annabelle Comes Home (2019) |
Annabelle seems to be on the same shoot-it-all-in-a-day schedule as Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson. None of them appear in more than a few scenes, preferring to set things up and then let a cast of (admittedly appealing) unknowns take over. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jun 24, 2019
|
|
63% | Child's Play (2019) |
The movie's biggest strength is its balance between mordant humor and psychological fear. Everyone's focus seems to be in a very old-fashioned place, and here that's an asset. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Jun 20, 2019
|
|
88% | Mouthpiece (2019) |
Ultimately, the filmmakers' intention isn't to throw us off but to invite us in, to encourage us to wonder: Is it really so strange for one woman to have two reactions to life? - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted May 30, 2019
|
|
90% | Framing John DeLorean (2019) |
Most compelling of all are the interviews with the two people who come closest to answering, or at least addressing, the question that overwhelms this entire project: DeLorean's daughter Kathryn and son Zach. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted May 1, 2019
|
|
86% | Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation (2019) |
Michael Wadleigh's seminal 1970 documentary was immersive and electric, a definitive, you-are-there experience rather than a here's-what-happened chronicle. This Woodstock is a here's-what happened chronicle. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted May 1, 2019
|
|
89% | You Don't Nomi (2020) |
All power to the director and his sources for seeing more than most of us do. But skeptics are unlikely to be converted by quotes that tend to be either generic or overstated. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Apr 29, 2019
|
|
30% | Red Joan (2019) |
Cookson is very good, but she's too often left to perform in a vacuum. Lindsay Shapero's script - based on Jennie Rooney's novel - neglects to build in the tension Cookson clearly aims to generate. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Apr 18, 2019
|
|
70% | Stockholm (2019) |
Stockholm is no Dog Day Afternoon, but if you're willing to take the movie for what it really is - a fairly generic caper inspired by, rather than based on, actual events - you'll find just enough to appreciate. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Apr 10, 2019
|
|
98% | Working Woman (2019) |
Feels very contemporary, but will also resonate with generations of viewers who recognize the many small moments that lead up to and follow its quietly wrenching central experience. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Mar 26, 2019
|
|
93% | Light from Light (2019) |
A movie this modest requires patience and generosity and a rejection of expectations...But it is a gem likely to stay with anyone smart enough to seek it out. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Mar 19, 2019
|
|
86% | The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2019) |
Exhibiting a dexterity that suggests far more extensive directorial experience, Ejiofor proves himself a master of impact. His visual approach is expansive and evocative, thanks also to the fine work of cinematographer Dick Pope. - TheWrap
EDIT
Read More
| Posted Feb 27, 2019
|