Jeannette Catsoulis
Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications:
New York Times,
Las Vegas Mercury,
Reverse Shot,
NPR
Critics' Group:
Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association
Movie Reviews Only
| T-Meter | Title | Year | Review | |
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| 68% | Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021) |
Sono's visuals, sizzlingly realized by the cinematographer Sohei Tanikawa, lack neither brio nor imagination. But the ludicrousness of the plot severs any emotional connection... - New York Times
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| Posted Sep 16, 2021
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| 73% | Blue Bayou (2021) |
Beautifully relaxed family scenes help us forgive the ponderous direction... - New York Times
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| Posted Sep 16, 2021
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| 73% | Malignant (2021) |
None of this is especially scary, but, if you're patient, Wan delivers the kind of hilariously sick climax that only a sadist would spoil. Or envisage. - New York Times
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| Posted Sep 10, 2021
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| 45% | Queenpins (2021) |
"Queenpins" scampers toward its ludicrous conclusion with less concern for logic than for ensuring that everyone gets what he or she wants. With the possible exception of the audience. - New York Times
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| Posted Sep 9, 2021
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| 93% | Lily Topples the World (2021) |
"Lily Topples the World" aims to enlighten you; but this undisciplined, curiously shallow documentary from Jeremy Workman might leave you with more questions than answers. - New York Times
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| Posted Aug 26, 2021
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| 71% | Together (2021) |
An awkward and uncomfortable experiment, "Together" unfolds with a staginess that rebuffs our involvement. - New York Times
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| Posted Aug 26, 2021
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| 62% | Mosquito State (2021) |
Borne along on the whine of insects and a lead performance of surpassing strangeness, "Mosquito State" is a disquieting merger of body horror and social commentary. - New York Times
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| Posted Aug 26, 2021
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| 61% | The Protégé (2021) |
The silliness in Richard Wenk's script is epic. - New York Times
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| Posted Aug 20, 2021
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| 44% | Flag Day (2021) |
"Flag Day" feels as much a love letter from Penn to his own daughter as the story of someone else's. - New York Times
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| Posted Aug 19, 2021
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| 86% | The Night House (2021) |
The scares land like blows and the eeriness is pervasive in "The Night House," David Bruckner's hyper-focused, unnervingly sure follow-up to his 2018 wilderness frightener, "The Ritual." - New York Times
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| Posted Aug 19, 2021
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| 96% | CODA (2021) |
The actors work together seamlessly, the blue-collar coastal setting is richly realized and the family's cohesiveness solidly established. - New York Times
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| Posted Aug 12, 2021
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| 88% | Ema (2021) |
Whether a melodramatic comment on art and anarchy, or a wild experiment in toxic maternalism, the film feels like a fever that just won't break. - New York Times
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| Posted Aug 12, 2021
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| No Score Yet | Usedom: A Clear View of the Sea (2021) |
Shaping personal and geographical history into sun-drenched dollops, the director Heinz Brinkmann fashions a charmingly quirky guide to his island home. - New York Times
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| Posted Aug 12, 2021
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| 15% | Lucky (2011) |
Mr. Hanks performs with customary blankness and a woeful lack of chemistry with his hardworking co-star. - New York Times
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| Posted Aug 9, 2021
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| 58% | John and the Hole (2021) |
Constructed with an artfulness that suggests ideological complexity, the movie is finally too withholding and ambiguous to fully engage. - New York Times
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| Posted Aug 5, 2021
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| 83% | The Last Matinee (Red Screening) (2021) |
I may never look at a jar of pickles the same way again. - New York Times
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| Posted Aug 5, 2021
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| 27% | Naked Singularity (2021) |
"Naked Singularity" welds legal drama and science fiction into a misshapen crime caper. - New York Times
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| Posted Aug 5, 2021
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| 57% | The Last Mercenary (2021) |
The fight scenes have wit and Van Damme delivers his lines with just the right amount of weary good humor. - New York Times
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| Posted Jul 30, 2021
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| 62% | Jungle Cruise (2021) |
Like Vogon poetry, the plot of Disney's "Jungle Cruise" is mostly unintelligible and wants to beat you into submission. - New York Times
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| Posted Jul 29, 2021
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| 38% | Joe Bell (2021) |
A droopy drama with its feet on the blacktop and its heart set on redemption. - New York Times
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| Posted Jul 22, 2021
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| 91% | Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (2021) |
With immense perceptiveness, Neville shows us both the empath and the narcissist: The man who refused to turn the suffering he saw in war zones into a bland televisual package, and the one who would betray longtime colleagues to please a new lover. - New York Times
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| Posted Jul 15, 2021
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| 97% | Pig (2021) |
While "Pig" can at times feel engulfed by its own sullenness, there's a rigor to the filmmaking and a surreal beauty to Pat Scola's images that seal our investment in Robin's fate. - New York Times
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| Posted Jul 15, 2021
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| 86% | The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52 (2021) |
Neither slick nor propulsive, "The Loneliest Whale" gently combines aquatic adventure and bobbing meditation on our own species's environmental arrogance. - New York Times
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| Posted Jul 9, 2021
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| 52% | The Tomorrow War (2021) |
Clichés rain as fast and as furiously as bullets. - New York Times
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| Posted Jul 1, 2021
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| 20% | Let Us In (2020) |
Apparent delight seeps into almost every frame, giving the film a guileless warmth that drew my good will. - New York Times
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| Posted Jul 1, 2021
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| 100% | Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story (2021) |
The dishiness is fun, but "Lady Boss" is most penetrating when it lifts the carapace of glamour Collins had constructed, both as alter ego and as armor against her critics. - New York Times
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| Posted Jun 28, 2021
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| 42% | The Ice Road (2021) |
Sadly, Neeson's dander is no match for a hackneyed plot, poorly visualized stunts and characters whose behavior can defy common sense. - New York Times
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| Posted Jun 24, 2021
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| 97% | I Carry You with Me (2021) |
Turning time and memory into an elliptical portrait of what it means when borders become barriers, "I Carry You With Me," the first narrative feature from the documentary filmmaker Heidi Ewing, trades distance for empathy. - New York Times
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| Posted Jun 24, 2021
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| 23% | The Birthday Cake (2021) |
Giannopoulos might be inexperienced, but he's canny with mood and unafraid to experiment with the rhythms of violence. I, for one, am keen to see what he does next. - New York Times
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| Posted Jun 17, 2021
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| 27% | The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard (2021) |
"The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard" is loud, lazy, profane and well nigh incoherent. It's also at times quite funny, with a goofy vulgarity that made me giggle. - New York Times
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| Posted Jun 16, 2021
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| 19% | The Misfits (2021) |
Equally insulting to Arabic dialects and the Muslim Brotherhood, "The Misfits" is inarguably awful, its grandiose muddle of a plot unimproved by bored camels and barely clothed women. - New York Times
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| Posted Jun 10, 2021
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| 89% | Censor (2021) |
"Censor" gazes on movie history with style and commitment, but little apparent purpose beyond simulation. - New York Times
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| Posted Jun 10, 2021
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| 56% | Edge of the World (2021) |
"Edge of the World" plugs its narrative gaps with corn and cliché. - New York Times
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| Posted Jun 3, 2021
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| No Score Yet | Grace and Grit (2021) |
If you can make it through the first ten minutes of "Grace and Grit" without groaning, then your tolerance for New Age folderols, saccharin voice-overs and seraphic gazes is higher than mine. - New York Times
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| Posted Jun 3, 2021
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| 91% | A Quiet Place Part II (2021) |
Faster, coarser and far noisier, "Part II" sacrifices emotional depth for thriller setups that do less to advance the plot than grow the younger characters. - New York Times
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| Posted May 27, 2021
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| 70% | Blue Miracle (2021) |
Based on a true story, "Blue Miracle" suffers mightily from slapdash plotting and superficial moralizing. - New York Times
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| Posted May 27, 2021
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| 75% | When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (Als Hitler das rosa Kaninchen stahl) (2019) |
The film strains to inject even a modicum of drama. - New York Times
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| Posted May 20, 2021
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| 67% | Army Of The Dead (2021) |
Its grim images of quarantined refugees and rotting hordes summon a bleakness at odds with its most fun creation: An elite zombie power couple with functioning brains. Snyder should probably have given them final cut. - New York Times
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| Posted May 20, 2021
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| 76% | Percy vs Goliath (2020) |
The result is a movie that's unlikely to raise your pulse, but it might just heighten your interest in what goes into your mouth. - New York Times
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| Posted Apr 30, 2021
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| 88% | Lucy the Human Chimp (2021) |
By turns alarming and poignant, Alex Parkinson's infuriatingly deferential film recounts how Carter - passionately attached to Lucy and admittedly clueless about how to facilitate her adjustment - abandoned her life to live with Lucy on a remote island. - New York Times
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| Posted Apr 30, 2021
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| 90% | Together Together (2021) |
Sweet, sensitive and surprisingly insightful, Nikole Beckwith's "Together Together" fashions the signposts of the romantic comedy - the meet-cute, the misunderstanding, the mutual acceptance - into a wry examination of a very different relationship. - New York Times
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| Posted Apr 22, 2021
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| 48% | The Marijuana Conspiracy (2021) |
"The Marijuana Conspiracy" is worse than inert: It's shallow and tone-deaf. - New York Times
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| Posted Apr 20, 2021
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| 98% | Hope (Håp) (2021) |
Raw, melancholy and unquestionably mature, "Hope" understands that some wounds may never be healed. - New York Times
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| Posted Apr 15, 2021
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| 61% | The Banishing (2020) |
"The Banishing" never finds its groove. - New York Times
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| Posted Apr 15, 2021
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| 21% | Thunder Force (2021) |
The jokes are juvenile, but how many youngsters will recognize Lydia's mimicry of a 1994 Jodie Foster in "Nell"? - New York Times
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| Posted Apr 9, 2021
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| 26% | Voyagers (2021) |
Essentially a zero-gravity "Lord of the Flies," Neil Burger's "Voyagers" nevertheless plays like a CW sci-fi pilot for those who find "The 100" too unsanitary. - New York Times
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| Posted Apr 8, 2021
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| 25% | The Unholy (2021) |
Playing the evil entity with convulsive movements and a killer manicure, the contortionist Marina Mazepa turns in the movie's most entertaining performance. That's if you don't count Morgan looking genuinely baffled as to what he's doing here at all. - New York Times
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| Posted Apr 1, 2021
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| 46% | Amundsen: The Greatest Expedition (2019) |
"Amundsen" tries in vain to make us care about its unprepossessing subject, a man who seems to extract little joy from his staggering successes. - New York Times
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| Posted Apr 1, 2021
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| 44% | Shoplifters of the World (2021) |
This is a tender story of teen ennui that almost anyone can enjoy. - New York Times
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| Posted Mar 25, 2021
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| 78% | Bad Trip (2020) |
However effortful, the movie's tricks are more likely to activate your gorge than your funny bone. - New York Times
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| Posted Mar 25, 2021
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