Keith Phipps

Keith Phipps
Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications: Slate, AV Club, Reverse Shot, Time Out Chicago, TV Guide, The Dissolve, The Verge, Uproxx
Critics' Group: Chicago Film Critics Association
Official Websites: theonionavclub.com

Movie Reviews Only

T-Meter Title | Year
23% 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
53% 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
95% 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
21% 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
42% 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
92% 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
35% 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
86% 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+ 69% 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
61% 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
96% 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+ 84% 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
86% 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
93% A Fantastic Woman (Una mujer fantástica) (2018) Ultimately ...it doesn't shy away from depicting Marina's vulnerabilities, this is a film more about perseverance than victimhood. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 1, 2018
88% Mary and The Witch's Flower (2018) The setting and premise allow Studio Ponoc to show what it can do. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 18, 2018
76% In the Fade (Aus dem Nichts) (2017) With [Kruger] ... In the Fade has dark, magnetic center, holding together the story of a woman trying to make sense of the impossible in a world where mere toughness sometimes isn't enough to fight back the cruelty of others. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 27, 2017
91% Phantom Thread (2018) Anderson has made a strange, entrancing, often darkly funny film that's at once like nothing he's ever made and one no one else could make... - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 7, 2017
88% The Post (2018) We need this movie now. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 6, 2017
94% 3-4x juugatsu (Boiling Point) (1990) It's a stranger and better film than Violent Cop, as well as an indication of even better things to come. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 20, 2017
A 100% Fort Apache (1948) [Balances] a respect for classic American frontier virtues with a less generous assessment of how those virtues were applied. - AV Club EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 20, 2017
77% Sweet Virginia (2017) Bernthal and DeWitt generate a nice chemistry as lovers who've found each other after abandoning the romantic notions of their youth. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 14, 2017
85% Blade of the Immortal (Mugen no jûnin) (2017) Beneath scars and a weary expression, Kimura's quite convincing in the lead, with each new confrontation seeming to confirm his darkest view of humanity. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 2, 2017
85% The Square (2017) It's a satire keeps the camera rolling after the punchline to allow time for the full, uncomfortable implication of the joke to settle. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 26, 2017
64% The Foreigner (2017) ... given the leads - it's James Bond meeting Supercop, after all - it's hard not to wish for a little more. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 12, 2017
90% Gerald's Game (2017) [Mike] Flanagan has a command of how to make the most of a single location, and Gerald's Game often captures a sense of mounting tension and fear through small touches. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 29, 2017
97% Lucky (2017) [Harry Dean Stanton] gets a last starring role in a bittersweet sunset of a movie crafted as a tribute to everything that made him irreplaceable. It's well-earned and beautifully played. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 28, 2017
88% Super Dark Times (2017) It's a film that remembers how awful it can be to grow up, and that even those who survive it usually don't get out without taking a few scars. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 28, 2017
86% American Made (2017) American Made delivers so much as rambunctious entertainment that it's easy to miss the film's withering assessment of American foreign policy during the Reagan years. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 28, 2017
98% The Killer (1989) The work of a filmmaker operating at the highest level of his abilities. - The Dissolve EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 8, 2017
98% Whose Streets? (2017) [Whose Streets?] is a memorable snapshot of what protest looks like now, in a moment of escalating tension and an era of social media immediacy with little patience for incremental change. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 16, 2017
96% The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography (2017) [Elsa] Dorfman's a fascinating character whose sunny demeanor, much like her generally cheerful photos, contains hidden depths. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 16, 2017
97% Columbus (2017) In its best moments, Columbus doubles as a reminder that films speak in a language all their own, and that language often cuts deeper than words. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 16, 2017
83% Patti Cake$ (2017) Once Patti Cake$ gets going it seems determined to sand away the texture that made in intriguing in the first place. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 16, 2017
75% Killing Ground (2017) Power also brings a remarkable degree of technical skill to the film, cutting between his two chronologies at telling moments and turning the idyllic surroundings into a place where danger and horror seems to rest behind each bend in the trail. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 1, 2017
79% The Beguiled (2017) It's Dunst who gives the standout performance, transforming Edwina from a buttoned-up vision of repression to a woman driven by a volatile mix of desire and desperation. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 21, 2017
100% Dawson City: Frozen Time (2017) The film moves at a stately pace, but that just makes it cumulative effect all the more powerful. Time had its way with Dawson City as it has its way with the rest of the world, but there's much to learn, and beauty to see, in what's been left behind. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2017
93% Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2017) The film works at once as a compelling, tangled legal story, a depiction of Chinatown's world within a world, and a portrait of those who live there and shape it as they try to bridge the gap between one world and the other. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2017
87% Paint It Black (2017) It's as remarkable a depiction of how grief can subsume us and bend reality to its needs as you'll ever see, directed by a talent with a bright future behind the camera. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2017
44% Rough Night (2017) It's all over the place, but it's always willing to take chances. The movie goes for it. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2017
77% The Hero (2017) It's rare that a character actor gets this kind of showcase, and Elliott confirms that he's more than capable of handling center stage. - Uproxx EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 9, 2017