Keith Phipps

Keith Phipps
Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications: New York Magazine/Vulture, Rolling Stone, AV Club, GQ, TV Guide, The Dissolve, The Verge, Uproxx, The Ringer, Polygon, MEL Magazine
Critics' Group: Chicago Film Critics Association
Official Websites: http://https://twitter.com/kphipps3000

Movie Reviews Only

T-Meter Title | Year
90% Wattstax (2000) The swaggering "Theme From Shaft" fades into the unsparingly sad state-of-the-community number "Soulsville," beautifully summing up what's come before. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 17, 2020
26% Jiu Jitsu (2020) Once it kicks into gear, it never feels like a waste of viewers' time, either. - Polygon EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 16, 2020
39% Rebecca (2020) There's no way to watch it without being reminded you could be watching Hitchcock's version instead. - The Ringer EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 23, 2020
88% The Mummy (1932) An eerie, weirdly moving film about loneliness and the persistence of history. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 6, 2020
87% Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) Shatner and Montalban never share the same space, but their face-offs highlight the film, as they both wring every drop of drama out of their lines. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 9, 2020
60/100 78% Greyhound (2020) As living room viewing, it's the sort of movie that plays beautifully on a lazy Sunday afternoon, when the explosions and sound of bending steel matter less than the characters they threaten. - TV Guide EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 9, 2020
93% Irma Vep (1996) A funny and fascinatingly open-ended look at the state of the art, Irma Vep is well worth a look. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 16, 2020
98% Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) Kiki's slow pace and light-on-conflict plot may surprise kids... but it's difficult not to be won over by the film's endearing characters and beautiful animation, as well as a storyline that stresses the values of independence and friendship. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 11, 2020
92% Night Warning (1983) It's an exceptional film, both in its execution and its content. - Fangoria EDIT
Read More | Posted May 21, 2020
21% Mercury Rising (1998) There's such a lack of vision behind Mercury Rising that the title could have it going in either direction and it would still end up in the same familiar place. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 23, 2020
B+ 90% The Wolf Man (1941) It finds modern sophistication and cultured intellects unprepared to deal with a threat that's already at hand, maybe even under our own skin. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 13, 2020
65% 13 Going on 30 (2004) Apart from the moment when Garner unselfconsciously flirts with a 13-year-old boy, the film is pretty much devoid of comic spark, and though it seems to have sweet intentions, it keeps sending mixed messages. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 25, 2020
A- 61% The Mummy (1999) It's passable entertainment, but it'll likely leave you wanting more. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 26, 2020
86% Color Out of Space (2020) Cage serves the film well, playing Nathan as a man whose personality seems to fluctuate as if being distorted by cosmic radiation. - Polygon EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 23, 2020
41% The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003) As it goes with the TV show, so it goes with the movie, which benefits from being shot largely in Rome and suffers from trying to stretch its sitcom antics to feature length. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 15, 2020
52% Charlie's Angels (2019) The film emerges as a perfectly agreeable action movie, one that's both true to the concept of Charlie's Angels, and probably unrecognizable to anyone time-traveling from the 1970s. That's okay, though. Some concepts have to evolve to survive. - Polygon EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 18, 2019
56% The Santa Clause 2 (2002) Despite the obviously mercenary nature of this sequel, there's a thimbleful of clever ideas at work here, most notably in the way Allen's RoboSanta begins to turn his toy factory into a tiny dictatorship. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 4, 2019
52% Boxcar Bertha (1972) Boxcar Bertha is filled with recognizably Scorsese touches. - The Ringer EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 1, 2019
100% Nightjohn (1996) Smart, memorable and well worth seeing, Nightjohn is the sort of film that often gets undeservedly overlooked. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 27, 2019
74% Between Two Ferns: The Movie (2019) It's a pretty thin premise for a movie, but that's not necessarily a problem. - The Verge EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 20, 2019
62% It Chapter Two (2019) It's an appreciably less-engaging film in every way, suffering from lurching storytelling, wild vacillations in tone (even within scenes), and a strong cast that never fully gels as a group. - The Verge EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 6, 2019
85% Once Upon a Time In Hollywood (2019) A bittersweet, complex, conversation-starting look back at the film business at the close of a tumultuous decade, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood also works as a strong argument for why it's too soon for Tarantino to pack it in. - Slate EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 5, 2019
67% Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019) Even though Statham and Johnson are both big, bald slabs of muscle, they make a fun study in contrasts. - The Verge EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 1, 2019
90% Galaxy Quest (1999) It's a warm, appealing comedy filled with well-realized characters and jokes ranging from the wry to the slapstick-y. - The Verge EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 22, 2019
84% Crawl (2019) Crawl would look pretty good in just about any season. In this one it positively glows. - Slate EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 13, 2019
49% Jurassic Park III (2001) The latest sequel to Steven Spielberg's clever, scary 1993 original is even less necessary than Spielberg's borderline nonsensical (but still pretty entertaining) 1997 follow-up, The Lost World. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
40% Scream 3 (2000) Virtually none of the craftsmanship of Craven's best is on display here, and what good ideas do turn up are largely recycled from previous efforts. This Scream has been widely marketed as the series' final installment. Better late than never. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 17, 2019
22% Dark Phoenix (2019) Still, Dark Phoenix deserves points for taking a new approach. - The Verge EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 5, 2019
56% Ma (2019) As might be expected from an actress who frequently finds depths in roles both large and small, Spencer takes the chance to get beneath her character's skin. - The Verge EDIT
Read More | Posted May 30, 2019
52% Why Do Fools Fall In Love (1998) Why Do Fools Fall In Love never really conveys the essence of its subject. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted May 23, 2019
94% Shadow (2019) Even without its distinctive look, Shadow would be memorable, an accomplished fusion of what Zhang does well, but the visuals take it to another plane. - The Verge EDIT
Read More | Posted May 8, 2019
1% Alone in the Dark (2005) Beware the film that confuses before it even begins. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 9, 2019
45% The Cell (2000) Almost worth seeing because there's nothing else like it, it's also easy to wish there never will be again. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 31, 2019
22% Practical Magic (1998) ts flat whimsy, VH1-ready musical montage sequences, and less-than-magic magic realism will probably not be enough to hold the attention of all but the most undiscriminating fans of witches and Stockard Channing. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 30, 2019
39% Reefer Madness (Tell Your Children) (Doped Youth) (1936) Espers' 1936 film deserves its reputation as one of the most entertainingly bad movies ever made. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 29, 2019
90% Shazam! (2019) It's almost as if superhero stories were at heart about wish fulfillment. It's almost as if they're allowed to be fun. - The Verge EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 23, 2019
100% For the Love of Spock (2016) The film offers a better sense of who Leonard Nimoy was, and where Spock came from, than a more objective approach could. - The Verge EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 1, 2019
91% High Flying Bird (2019) Yet, regardless of how the film looks, Soderbergh's pacing and gift for editing are what keep the action tight, while McCraney's crisp dialogue livens up potentially mundane, exposition-heavy exchanges. - The Verge EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 8, 2019
59% Deep Blue Sea (1999) Deep Blue Sea, a sort of cross between Aliens (without the thrills) and The Poseidon Adventure (without the camp compensations), doesn't deliver the killer-shark-versus-A-list-character-actor thrills you crave. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 11, 2019
38% Gummo (1997) Take away the shock value, and there isn't much there: just a stylistically promising student film peddling bargain-basement surreal nihilism that, stretched over 90 minutes, grows awfully tedious. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 7, 2019
70% The Mule (2018) A spry, funny, moving film that never heads in the direction in which it looks like it's about to head, kind of like its protagonist. - Slate EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 13, 2018
87% Sisters (1973) An expertly paced, technically audacious thriller that's too knowing to be easily dismissed as a mere exercise. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 3, 2018
B+ 64% Race with the Devil (1975) Race With The Devil has problems getting over the flat, TV-style direction by Cleopatra Jones director Jack Starrett, but it gets by on engaging drive-in goofiness, even if it's tough to swallow the idea that mid-'70s Texas swarmed with Satanists. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 27, 2018
63% The Wild Angels (1966) In many ways, The Wild Angels was a bellwether of where the decade was headed. - The Verge EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 7, 2018
94% Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind (2018) If Come Inside could benefit from a little more candor and invention, Williams himself prevents it from becoming predictable. - Rolling Stone EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 13, 2018
B+ 85% Downhill Racer (1969) Downhill Racer doesn't always work... As a look at how [Robert] Redford's character and those orbiting him spend their time between runs, however, it's superb. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted May 30, 2018
80% Unsane (2018) Watching Stephen Soderbergh's Unsane is like being locked in a circus cage with a tiger. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 21, 2018
39% The Strangers: Prey At Night (2018) From the first notes of Adrian Johnston's John Carpenter-inspired score to the retro font used for the title card, Prey At Night sets itself up as an homage to classic slasher films, and mostly does right by its inspirations. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 8, 2018
87% Thoroughbreds (2018) It plays at times like a new take on Strangers on a Train in which both parties commit to unspeakable acts without any reservations. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 6, 2018
23% The 15:17 to Paris (2018) Whatever he's done in the past, Eastwood here seems most interested in paying tribute to some men who deserve the commendation - nothing more, and nothing less - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 8, 2018