Leah Greenblatt
Tomatometer-approved critic
| Publications: | Entertainment Weekly |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| A- | 81% | 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
Read More | Posted Oct 10, 2018
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| B | 72% | 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
Read More | Posted Oct 10, 2018
|
| B | 89% | 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
Read More | Posted Oct 9, 2018
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| B- | 30% | Loving Pablo (2018) |
Both actors gamely bring the full heft of their movie-star charisma.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Oct 2, 2018
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| B | 84% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 28, 2018
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| B | 75% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 28, 2018
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| B | 84% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 13, 2018
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| B- | 84% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 12, 2018
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| B+ | 99% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 12, 2018
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| B | 59% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 11, 2018
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| B | 85% | The Sisters Brothers (2018) |
A dusty, squint-eyed Western ramble full of wry cowboy humor and sudden death.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Sep 10, 2018
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| B+ | 93% | If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) |
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
Read More | Posted Sep 10, 2018
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| B+ | 80% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 9, 2018
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| 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
Read More | Posted Sep 8, 2018
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| B | 64% | Beautiful Boy (2018) |
The acting is uniformly excellent, and the movie looks almost disconcertingly great...‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Sep 8, 2018
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| B | 79% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 8, 2018
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| B+ | 44% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 7, 2018
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| 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
Read More | Posted Aug 31, 2018
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| C+ | 44% | Destination Wedding (2018) |
Its verbal turns are so wildly overwritten that all the actors can really do is hold on to the wheel well, racing through reams of ratatat dialogue.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Aug 30, 2018
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| B | 69% | The Children Act (2018) |
The pale, sharp-featured Whitehead brings an appropriately feverish intensity to Adam, who looks less like a typical 21st-century teenager than Lord Byron with a backpack.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Aug 28, 2018
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| B+ | 93% | Searching (2018) |
First-time filmmaker Aneesh Chaganty (a former Google employee, appropriately) is a resourceful man, and a very clever one; he nearly aces his high-wire conceit to the end.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Aug 27, 2018
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| B | 92% | Support the Girls (2018) |
To see a black female over 40 holding the center of a story about ordinary, unsung lives makes Support a low-key pleasure; one that transcends its own shaggy narrative.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Aug 22, 2018
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| B+ | 83% | Juliet, Naked (2018) |
The plot is essentially a wisp, and Byrne is far too luminous for her sad-sack role. But Juliet still feels winning; the small, sweet grace note on a familiar melody.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Aug 14, 2018
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| B+ | 87% | Madeline's Madeline (2018) |
Writer-director Josephine Decker more than earns the label "auteur," and all the connotations that come with it.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Aug 10, 2018
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| B+ | 81% | The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018) |
A movie... you don't so much watch as wear like a slanket.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Aug 10, 2018
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| B | 92% | Crazy Rich Asians (2018) |
If Asians really only grazes true Crazy, the movie is still a deliriously glossy, globe-trotting trifle -- two hours of romantic fantasy and real-estate porn poured on so thick it's almost lickable.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Aug 8, 2018
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| B- | 72% | Christopher Robin (2018) |
It's just an earnest tribute, tastefully faithful to the source -- and flatter, somehow, than the story ever was on the page.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Aug 2, 2018
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| B | 49% | Like Father (2018) |
The movie's arc is too conventional by half, but the appeal of the two main actors keeps it (sorry) afloat, maybe more than it should...‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Aug 2, 2018
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| B+ | 82% | Puzzle (2018) |
Macdonald... refuses to let Agnes be an easy avatar for midlife longing and suburban discontent. With her fierce, strange energy at the center, the film builds quietly toward its own small revelations, piece by piece.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Jul 26, 2018
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| B | 87% | The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018) |
A thoughtful if somewhat shapeless drama about the struggle between human instinct and ideology, populated by finely-drawn characters...‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Jul 26, 2018
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| C+ | 44% | Hot Summer Nights (2018) |
Essentially a humid, fantastically soundtracked pile of screenwriting clichés about a disaffected teen discovering sex, drugs, and trouble one Cape Cod summer circa 1991.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Jul 23, 2018
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| A- | 94% | Dark Money (2018) |
Damning, clear-eyed, and as gripping as any John Grisham thriller.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2018
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| B | 80% | Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) |
It mostly succeeds in its own glittery, aggressively winsome way...‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Jul 17, 2018
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| B+ | 100% | McQueen (2018) |
A fascinating if incomplete portrait of genius interrupted - and a life that should have lasted much longer than it did.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Jul 13, 2018
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| B | 82% | Under the Tree (Undir trénu) (2018) |
Depraved comedy and intimate domestic drama fight for supremacy in Iceland's Under the Tree -- a dark, discomfiting farce that plays like David Lynch for the umlaut set.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Jul 2, 2018
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| A- | 88% | Whitney (2018) |
Whitney feels like the kind of film anyone who cared at all about her should see: the fullest portrait yet - if one that will always, inevitably fall short - of a singular artist and human being who may have eluded understanding in the end. ‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Jun 29, 2018
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| B | 53% | Woman Walks Ahead (2018) |
But if it doesn't exactly feel revelatory or deeply explored as a historical document, it's still an intriguing story, capably told.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Jun 27, 2018
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| B- | 52% | Boundaries (2018) |
It all bumps along, as road trips do, through silliness and boredom and occasional, unexpected charm. But Feste's story never really gets the rhythms right.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Jun 20, 2018
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| B+ | 84% | The Gospel According to André (2018) |
All that glitters - or sparkles, or goes swish - is Gospel in Kate Novack's intimate, absorbing portrait of legendary fashion editor André Leon Talley. ‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Jun 20, 2018
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| B | 64% | The Year of Spectacular Men (2018) |
As a shiny-bright artifact of how-I-spent-my-summer-vacation family bonding, Year is tart, breezy fun.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Jun 13, 2018
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| B | 57% | Hotel Artemis (2018) |
Essentially a loving, highly stylized homage to the kind of camp apocalyptia John Carpenter used to make; the only thing missing here is an Ernest Borgnine cameo and Kurt Russell scowling in an eye patch.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Jun 6, 2018
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| B | 86% | Alex Strangelove (2018) |
It's hard to fault the bigger message here: that we all deserve the right to be true to who we are, even if it takes a few hard turns - and some collateral emotional damage - to get there.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Jun 6, 2018
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| B | 68% | Ocean's 8 (2018) |
Ocean's 8's girls-just-wanna-have-grand-larceny conceit is the kind of starry, high-gloss goof the summer movie season was made for.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted Jun 6, 2018
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| B+ | 89% | American Animals (2018) |
American Animals feels like a new kind of true-crime thriller: one that shamelessly rewrites its truths in real time as it goes.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted May 24, 2018
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| B- | 47% | How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2018) |
[Mitchell's] giddy, knowingly camp direction has a sort of glitter-stick DIY spirit that keeps the movie aloft long after the story itself has run out of road.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted May 24, 2018
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| B | 53% | Book Club (2018) |
In an industry that defines "mature audiences" as anyone old enough to vote, a movie centered entirely on women over 65 - a sex comedy, no less - feels like some kind of small Hollywood miracle.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted May 18, 2018
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| B | 67% | On Chesil Beach (2018) |
The kind of movie whose quiet power you can't help but appreciate, even as you know you'll probably never be able to sit through it again.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted May 17, 2018
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| B | 82% | Deadpool 2 (2018) |
Dizzy fun for a while, like eating Twinkies on a Gravitron. Eventually, though, it just wears you out.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted May 14, 2018
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| B | 78% | The Escape (2018) |
A quiet domestic-drama chamber piece with a vein of pure desperation thrumming beneath it.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted May 10, 2018
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| B | 38% | Life of the Party (2018) |
Life of the Party is a charming and generally painless way to spend two hours.‐ Entertainment Weekly
Read More | Posted May 10, 2018
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