Mark Jenkins

Mark Jenkins
Mark Jenkins's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s): Washington Post Orlando Weekly Slant Magazine NPR.org NPR
Publications: Washington Post, Orlando Weekly, Slant Magazine, NPR.org, NPR

Movie Reviews Only

T-Meter Title | Year
3/4 77% Blizzard of Souls (The Rifleman) (Dveselu putenis) (2019) The filmmakers are unafraid of the picturesque, lighting scenes so they resemble old-master canvases. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 3, 2021
3/4 100% This Is Not a Movie (2020) The documentary adroitly demonstrates that Fisk is still motivated by the boyish curiosity that drew him to journalism. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 17, 2020
2.5/4 89% Unpregnant (2020) Its few nutty ideas demonstrate how little distance Unpregnant manages to put between itself and a standard high-school comedy. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 8, 2020
2/4 66% Fisherman's Friends (2020) The script doesn't contain many lines that ring true, and a few clang wildly off-key. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 18, 2020
3/4 96% John Lewis: Good Trouble (2020) The film is well-outfitted with telling, thematically rich shards of historical information. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 29, 2020
2.5/4 94% A Regular Woman (Nur Eine Frau) (2020) Where When We Leave built to simple outage, this one concludes with a rush of complex, conflicting emotions. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 21, 2020
97% Why Don't You Just Die! (Papa, sdokhni) (2020) As reminiscent of Japan's Sion Sono as of Guy Ritchie or Quentin Tarantino, Why Don't You Just Die! drips almost as much style as plasma. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 9, 2020
2/4 51% I Still Believe (2020) A sort of "Me, God and the Dying Girl," the movie is well-made (if slow) and features an attractive cast and a lot of amiable (if bland) religious pop-rock. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 15, 2020
87% Sorry We Missed You (2020) A lacerating social drama that proceeds to demolish the current corporate line on "gig work." - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 5, 2020
82% The Whistlers (2020) If the film goes faster and farther than its predecessors, it does so at the expense of depth. That's intentional, though. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 27, 2020
2/4 88% Onward (2020) While Onward begins as a story of bereavement, it soon turns to celebrating the payoffs of positive thinking. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 21, 2020
36% The Night Clerk (2020) The film may intend to be a Rear Window for the mini-cam era, but it lacks Hitchockian perplexity and perversity. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 20, 2020
79% Buffaloed (2020) In 2017, Zoey Deutch managed to carry Flower, a brisk but slight comedy about an exuberant young hustler with Daddy issues. She does it again in Buffaloed, in which she plays pretty much the same character, but confronts a different social evil. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 13, 2020
28% The Rhythm Section (2020) What are crucially missing from this scenario, besides sheer believability, are wit, ambiguity and irony. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 30, 2020
86% Color Out of Space (2020) Despite all the peril, the film musters little urgency. It dawdles its way to a the final freakout, fueled by Colin Stetson's increasingly amok score. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 23, 2020
81% A Hidden Life (2019) As usual, Malick's style of storytelling is roundabout and allusive, but this time it seldom stalls. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 12, 2019
3/4 97% The Kingmaker (2019) "The Kingmaker" chills the soul by presenting shantytown residents and school kids who extol the Marcos regime and even endorse its eight-year period of martial law. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 11, 2019
83% Queen & Slim (2019) Queen & Slim is more interested in myth-making than storytelling, and viewers who don't care that much about the latter just might buy into the former. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 27, 2019
90% Dark Waters (2019) Ruffalo is one of the movie's producers, and he demonstrates his devotion to the project by receding into the role of the rumpled attorney. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 22, 2019
1.5/4 26% The Warrior Queen of Jhansi (2019) Considering all the blood spilled before and since, this epilogue doesn't feel quite so triumphant as "The Warrior Queen of Jhansi" wants it to be. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2019
73% Harriet (2019) If the movie doesn't burn as brightly as Tubman's legacy, the tale it tells is illuminating nonetheless. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 31, 2019
61% The Current War: Director's Cut (2019) This cut of The Current War packs enough cinematic flash to be a fitting homage to the inventor of the kinetograph. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 24, 2019
2.5/4 94% Western Stars (2019) It's basically a concert flick, with some extras. And those extras are not the best things in it. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 22, 2019
79% Loro (2019) Sorrentino's stylish but overloaded satire is less sober narrative than drunken tone poem - a buzzing, throbbing attempt to simulate the experience of living in Berlusconi-world. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 19, 2019
92% Monos (2019) To watch this fierce drama is to be welcomed to the jungle. - NPR.org EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 12, 2019
42% Vita & Virginia (2019) The two women don't really seem to know each other very well. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 22, 2019
3.5/4 98% One Child Nation (2019) This is an important film, if often a difficult one to watch. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 14, 2019
45% After the Wedding (2019) If this redo is slick and shallow, it's nonetheless meticulously constructed and entirely watchable, with only a few histrionic moments. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 8, 2019
90% Tel Aviv on Fire (2019) The result is not exactly the most pointed satire ever devised by a Palestinian filmmaker, but it does elicit some smiles. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 2, 2019
96% I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (Îmi este indiferent daca în istorie vom intra ca barbari) (2019) Like other contemporary Romanian filmmakers, Jude is well attuned to human absurdities, especially those of pompous public officials. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
77% The Plagiarists (2019) The Plagiarists ponders authenticity, yet its characters and conflicts feel synthetic. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 27, 2019
88% 16 Shots (2019) The movie offers many pungent details, including a telling one it holds until the last moment, and is structured for maximum drama. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 6, 2019
60% The Fall of the American Empire (La chute de l'empire américain) (2019) The film's knowledge of everything from Stoic philosophy to money-laundering is refreshing. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted May 31, 2019
1.5/4 41% The Tomorrow Man (2019) The movie's ending could be called a twist. But it's really more of a belly flop. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted May 29, 2019
89% The Souvenir (2019) Hogg's confessional memoir draws you in, while her clinical style pushes you away. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted May 16, 2019
94% Shadow (2019) The ravishing costumes and sets are all in black, white, and watery shades of gray, as if they'd been conjured from Chinese calligraphy and ink paintings. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted May 2, 2019
2/4 63% Breakthrough (2019) "Breakthrough" glibly peddles miracles but is honest enough to admit that not everybody gets one. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 16, 2019
1/4 46% Little (2019) Like most Hollywood movies that pretend to question the values of the filthy rich, "Little" implicitly endorses them. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 12, 2019
93% Long Day's Journey Into Night (Di qiu zui hou de ye wan) (2019) What matters is what has already happened, even if it can't be precisely recalled, not what transpires in front of the camera. The wisp of a story is really just the occasion for impressionistic musing and evocative picturing. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 11, 2019
2.5/4 82% High Life (2019) [The] most amazing moments are never amazing enough to jar it out of its static orbit. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 10, 2019
2.5/4 54% The Best of Enemies (2019) The mostly short scenes are often overpowered by pop songs - including incongruous choices from Donovan and David Bowie's back catalogues - and Henson's performance is so broad it verges on farcical. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 4, 2019
47% The Chaperone (2019) While Norma awakens to fresh possibilities, her story remains a snooze. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 28, 2019
99% Ash Is Purest White (2019) Jia's films retain their documentary-like interest in real places and actual events, but acknowledge that depicting the new China requires a touch of surrealism. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 14, 2019
1.5/4 33% Mapplethorpe (2019) If the new biopic "Mapplethorpe" presents this transgressive vision is vivid detail - and it does - that's only because it includes so many of Mapplethorpe's pictures. Everything else in the film is timid and pedestrian. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 13, 2019
2/4 93% Giant Little Ones (2019) The plot may take an unexpected path, but that's not enough to make Franky and Ballas's story compelling. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 5, 2019
68% Climax (2019) The drawback, as Noé veterans will anticipate, is that his style trumps - no, obliterates - the scenario. Climax becomes steadily less thrilling as it approaches its, you know ... peak. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 28, 2019
3/4 99% Apollo 11 (2019) It's a more visceral trip than any moviegoer - even the armchair experts - has ever taken before. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 26, 2019
95% Hotel by the River (2019) Shot in wintry black-and-white, Hotel by the River folds Hong's usual concerns into a structure that's more complex than usual. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 14, 2019
2.5/4 69% Cold Pursuit (2019) This is a movie in which nearly every one of the abundant killings is not just an act of justice, but also a blackly comic punchline. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 7, 2019
90% Arctic (2019) The simple yet intense scenario makes Arctic a taut, cohesive exercise for Penna and editor and co-writer Ryan Morrison. It's also a fine showcase for Mikkelsen, playing a man who's resourceful but no more heroic than he needs to be. - NPR EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 31, 2019