Leah Greenblatt

Tomatometer-approved critic

Publications: Entertainment Weekly

movie Reviews Only

Movies
TV

	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Review
B	92%	Fighting with My Family (2019)	[A] movie about as subtle as the "bowling ball to the bollocks" one hopeful grunt has to take early on, but still somehow a winning one. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 5, 2019
	74%	Untouchable (2019)	[A] methodical, unmissable takedown. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 31, 2019
	91%	The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)	[G]orgeously shot, keenly felt, and utterly original in both style and execution. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 31, 2019
C	24%	Miss Bala (2019)	It's mostly left to Rodriguez to carry the absurdity on her shoulders, and the fact that she makes it so watchable is a real testament to her abilities. Next time, may the material rise at least halfway to meet her. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 31, 2019
A-	89%	Brittany Runs a Marathon (2019)	A whip-smart comedy that manages to deliver genuinely funny uplift without ever swerving away from its own dark side. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 31, 2019
B	90%	Big Time Adolescence (2019)	If Big Time isn't exactly a PSA for good adulting, it's still an endearingly messy portrait of boyhood and manhood and all the lessons in between. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 30, 2019
C-	26%	Polar (2019)	A gleefully unhinged teenage-boy dream that aims only for hard, shiny surfaces, and stays there. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 30, 2019
B-	34%	King of Thieves (2019)	There's some real, small pleasure in watching these old lions at work... - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 30, 2019
B+	88%	Arctic (2019)	When the gamble is man vs. nature, the smart bet is almost always on the house. Unless the man is Mads Mikkelsen... - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 30, 2019
B+	92%	Blinded by the Light (2019)	A Technicolor ode to the power of music so deeply tender and heartfelt that it disarms even the most misanthropic critic's instincts. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 28, 2019
B	65%	Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)	Gilroy has a lot to say about money, mindless consumerism, and the soul-sucking emptiness of conflating ownership and ego-stroking with self-worth. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 28, 2019
A-	93%	The Report (2019)	A sobering, supremely well-crafted procedural in the vein of Spotlight in The Post that seems designed to induce anger and catharsis in equal measure. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 27, 2019
B	100%	Honey Boy (2019)	If Honey's arc feels stamped in an certain kind of indie template, it still builds a sneaky kind of emotional capital. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 26, 2019
B	65%	Native Son (2019)	Sanders has an elusive kind of quicksilver presence; sometimes he's little boy, gentle and funny and kind; sometimes a grown man with nothing behind his eyes but rage or a hard blankness. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 25, 2019
B-	40%	The Upside (2019)	Forced to work strictly from the neck up, Cranston is just the right amount of gruff; Hart, aside from a deeply unnecessary catheter scene, gives a gratifyingly prickly and vulnerable performance. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 14, 2019
A-	99%	Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku) (2018)	It's all beautifully done, if seemingly aimless; for most of its two-hour runtime, the joy of the movie lies mostly in watching these fine actors build their beautifully flawed and lived-in characters. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 20, 2018
B	45%	Second Act (2018)	[Lopez is] nothing if not a woman who knows her brand... and Second Act is perfectly tailored to it. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 20, 2018
B	85%	Dumplin' (2018)	...there's so much willful, joyful uplift in the final scenes, it's hard not to buy into every aphorism re-upped from the classic Dolly playbook. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 17, 2018
B+	66%	Vice (2018)	[A] slick, wildly meta, and occasionally too-clever portrait of the most influential and easily least understood figure to ever hold the nation's second-highest post. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 17, 2018
B+	93%	Bumblebee (2018)	[Cena] gives good muscle, but Bumblebee brings something even more important - and actually transforming - to the series: a sense of humor, and a heart. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 14, 2018
B	78%	Mary Poppins Returns (2018)	Spoonfuls of sugar always help the movie magic go down; if only this Mary had gotten a necessary twist of lemon, too. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 12, 2018
A-	63%	Mary Queen of Scots (2018)	What keeps the film from feeling like period-piece amber... is the keenly feminist sensibility of first-time director Josie Rourke and the fierce charisma and complicated humanity of its two leads, sovereigns till the end. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 3, 2018
B+	80%	Ben is Back (2018)	Hedges is a flayed nerve, jittery and raw. Roberts may be the true revelation, though: She begs, she bargains, she swears like a teamster. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 3, 2018
B	62%	Bird Box (2018)	Bier keeps the mood taut and defiantly in the moment. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 3, 2018
A-	94%	Burning (Beoning) (2018)	The kind of movie whose takeaways you could spend hours debating and still feel miles away from being sure of anything at all. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 27, 2018
C+	91%	Widows (2018)	It's not clear exactly what kind of movie(s) Widows wants to be: feminist heist thriller? Sprawling political saga? Bare-knuckled gangster noir? - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 18, 2018
B+	80%	Green Book (2018)	In a world that seems to get uglier every day, this movie's gentle heart and mere humanity feel like a salve. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 18, 2018
B+	57%	The Grinch (2018)	The latest animated iteration of Christmas' most famous nemesis might not be strictly necessary, but it's still pretty fun - and revamped just enough to feel fresh. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 18, 2018
B+	80%	At Eternity's Gate (2018)	Abstract, meditative, dreamily surreal: much less a traditional biopic than an evocative series of scenes and images rooted in Willem Dafoe's fevered, close-to-the-bone performance. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 13, 2018
B-	37%	Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)	There might not be a more gorgeous-looking movie this year than Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 12, 2018
B-	61%	Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)	Malek has the ineffable pixie dust the part requires (if not the teeth; the famous Freddie overbite is prosthetic). - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 1, 2018
B+	89%	A Private War (2018)	The movie finds its rhythm as it goes, toggling between the sheer terror and adrenaline of embedding in the world's ugliest conflicts, and the murkier traumas of bringing that knowledge back home. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 30, 2018
A-	77%	Mid90s (2018)	Hill is too smart to mistake nostalgia and signifiers for storytelling. Instead, he makes Mid90s resonate with universal poignancy and electric energy; his kids are the best, messiest kind of real, and they're alright. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 10, 2018
B	75%	Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)	Mostly... it's an excuse to let a bunch of talented actors loose, and they meet the bare-bones script more than halfway. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 10, 2018
B	88%	The Kindergarten Teacher (2018)	An intriguing but ambiguous portrait of a flawed, fascinating woman who knows herself either too well or not at all. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 9, 2018
B-	32%	Loving Pablo (2018)	Both actors gamely bring the full heft of their movie-star charisma. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 2, 2018
B	86%	Monsters and Men (2018)	Green illuminates his characters with care and subtlety, allowing them to live inside shades of grey that a black-and-white world rarely allows. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 28, 2018
B	76%	Smallfoot (2018)	Beneath the easy slapstick, there's a timely moral too: Don't fear the unknown, embrace it. Just try not to squish it. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 28, 2018
B	86%	The Land of Steady Habits (2018)	As the tone wobbles between absurdity and tragedy, it also starts to shift toward something deeper and more bittersweet than mere midlife ennui. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 13, 2018
B-	72%	Destroyer (2018)	A solid-enough L.A. noir whose hook, and albatross, is the transformation of a beautiful Oscar-winning actress into a desiccated crone. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 12, 2018
B+	98%	Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)	If Can You Ever's actual story feels slight, it's worth staying just for the characters. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 12, 2018
B	63%	Bel Canto (2018)	Weitz is mostly known for lighter, more observational stories like About a Boy and Mozart in the Jungle, and the strongest moments in Bel Canto are the small ones. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 11, 2018
B	85%	The Sisters Brothers (2018)	A dusty, squint-eyed Western ramble full of wry cowboy humor and sudden death. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 10, 2018
B+	94%	If Beale Street Could Talk (2019)	In some ways Beale feels less like a movie than a well-staged, meticulously shot play; a period piece that floats beyond its specific time and place and into the realm of allegory. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 10, 2018
B+	79%	Halloween (2018)	The movie mostly works because it's so fundamental, and funny too: Michael still never speaks; his mask and his slow, deadly, deliberate walk say everything they need to. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 9, 2018
A-	97%	The Hate U Give (2018)	The Hate U Give feels like the welcome crest of a new wave: not bland chronicles of sparkle-skinned vampires or dance-squad rivalries but real, often painfully relevant tales about race and justice and millennial identity. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 8, 2018
B	69%	Beautiful Boy (2018)	The acting is uniformly excellent, and the movie looks almost disconcertingly great... - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 8, 2018
B	81%	Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018)	What sticks... is the larger message the movie delivers in its call to private citizens on public service: Run, vote, care. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 8, 2018
B+	63%	Outlaw King (2018)	Unlike Bruce's scrappy band of rebels, Outlaw never really has the element of surprise: It just comes in blazing, like a king. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 7, 2018
B+	90%	A Star Is Born (2018)	Star is less a story now than a myth - not so much reborn as recast, and passed on to the care of the next generation. - Entertainment Weekly EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 31, 2018