Peter Travers
Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications:
Rolling Stone,
People Magazine,
ABC News
Critics' Group:
National Society of Film Critics,
New York Film Critics Circle
Movie Reviews Only
| T-Meter | Title | Year | Review | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 86% | The Card Counter (2021) |
A new Paul Schrader movie is always an event and this spellbinding meditation on sin and salvation-seen through the eyes of a gambler (a superb Oscar Isaac) who counts cards to both escape and confront his torturous past-is one of his best. - ABC News
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| Posted Sep 10, 2021
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| 92% | Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) |
So what if the showoff climax subs depth for dazzle. As the first Asian hero in Marvel history, former stuntman Simu Liu is action poetry in motion and his epic starring debut kicks off the fall film season on a rousing high note. - ABC News
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| Posted Sep 3, 2021
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| 30% | He's All That (2021) |
Manufactured for the 'Kissing Booth' crowd, this gender-swapped, TikTok-friendly update of the 1999 teen hit sounds awful and it often is, but enough charm pokes through the cracks to sucker anyone who ever fell for a makeover fable. - ABC News
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| Posted Aug 27, 2021
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| 84% | Candyman (2021) |
The scares are off the charts, but only as a means to confront the film's heavy messaging about racial injustice. Dynamite star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and director Nia DaCosta make you think hard about everything you see. Welcome to a new horror classic. - ABC News
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| Posted Aug 27, 2021
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| 75% | Go Fish (1995) |
Troche triumphs by striking a universal chord without compromising her subject. She's a talent to watch. - Rolling Stone
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| Posted Aug 24, 2021
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| 96% | CODA (2021) |
You'll laugh, cry and all steps in between at this vital family entertainment with a title that stands for Children of Deaf Adults. Oscar winner Marlee Matlin and newcomer Emilia Jones turn this emotional powerhouse into one of the year's best. - ABC News
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| Posted Aug 20, 2021
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| 37% | Reminiscence (2021) |
Even Hugh Jackman's indisputable star power can't light up the pretentious, pseudo-poetic, sci-fi murk of this thundering misfire, which will only make you remember other, better movie mindbenders. 'Blade Runner' anyone? - ABC News
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| Posted Aug 20, 2021
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| 67% | Respect (2021) |
This by-the-numbers Aretha Franklin biopic is all about Jennifer Hudson doing Aretha proud. And does she ever. As the legendary Queen of Soul, Hudson does not, will not, cannot hit a wrong note, making 'Respect' a tribute to both their radiant talents. - ABC News
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| Posted Aug 13, 2021
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| 80% | Free Guy (2021) |
Ryan Reynolds piles on the charm as a bland bank teller who discovers he's just a pixelated extra in a violent video game. The comedy could have been sharper, spikier and riskier-like The Truman Show- but this summer funfest goes down easy, - ABC News
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| Posted Aug 13, 2021
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| 88% | The Green Knight (2021) |
In a summer of junk, cinema visionary David Lowery delivers a modern movie masterpiece about a wannabe knight (an Oscar worthy Dev Patel) who must fight monsters he can and cannot see. It's a unique and unforgettable film that ranks with the year's best. - ABC News
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| Posted Aug 6, 2021
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| 91% | The Suicide Squad (2021) |
The gloriously unhinged James Gunn keeps Margot Robbie, John Cena and a top cast of crazies firing on all cylinders and turns a botch job original that was the worst movie of 2016 into the down-and-dirty whirlwind it was always meant to be. - ABC News
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| Posted Aug 6, 2021
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| 75% | Stillwater (2021) |
As a blunt-force Oklahoma oil rigger trying to save his daughter jailed in France for murder, Matt Damon gives an indelible, implosive performance in a deeply personal human drama disguised as a crime thriller. - ABC News
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| Posted Jul 30, 2021
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| 62% | Jungle Cruise (2021) |
The Rock and Emily Blunt knock themselves out to entertain in this dopey, derivative, theme-park ride of a movie. But, hey, the kids will love it and like the Metallica thrasher that bizarrely shows up on the soundtrack, "nothing else matters." - ABC News
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| Posted Jul 30, 2021
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| 50% | Old (2021) |
Shot with a poet's eye and a tin ear for dialogue, this tricked-up thriller about the horror of getting old too fast brings out the best and worst in M. Knight Shyamalan by botching a Covid-resonant premise about sudden death and the collapse of time. - ABC News
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| Posted Jul 23, 2021
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| 26% | Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021) |
Critics will pick on this sequel. It's what we do when an alleged creative enterprise turns into a corporate ad campaign. Expect no grumbles from the under-13 crowd eager to eyeball LeBron James jamming in cyberspace with cartoon royalty. - ABC News
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| Posted Jul 16, 2021
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| 79% | Black Widow (2021) |
Even when bloated Marvel action robs the film of intimacy, Johansson digs deep into how her Russian assassin once felt outside the Avengers bubble. And Pugh deserves Oscar love as her pretend sister in this surprising salute to female empowerment. - ABC News
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| Posted Jul 9, 2021
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| 91% | No Sudden Move (2020) |
Set in 1954 Detroit, Soderbergh's terrific, twisty, film-noir throwback keeps a lot of racial, political and sexual tension simmering under the surface, providing a field day for actors who interact with clockwork precision and off-the-wall laughs - ABC News
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| Posted Jul 2, 2021
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| 52% | The Tomorrow War (2021) |
There's nothing 'tomorrow' about a recycled sci-fi jumble that places all its bets on yesterday. - ABC News
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| Posted Jul 2, 2021
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| 100% | Sisters On Track (2021) |
You'll want to stand up and cheer for this eye-opening true story of three Black sisters from Brooklyn who emerged from a homeless shelter with their single mother to make it in the field of competitive track with the odds stacked against them. - ABC News
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| Posted Jun 25, 2021
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| 59% | F9 (2021) |
As usual the plot is stupid beyond saving, but the vehicular action is insanely entertaining. That's a fair tradeoff for the adrenaline junkie in all of us who only wants Vroom cranked up to 11. Consider it done. - ABC News
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| Posted Jun 25, 2021
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| 66% | Fatherhood (2021) |
Edgy comic Kevin Hart smooths out his rough edges to play a widower trying to raise his daughter alone. Hart can act, but he can't act his way out of a sappy script that mistakes manipulative laughs and tears for genuine emotion. - ABC News
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| Posted Jun 18, 2021
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| 91% | Luca (2021) |
It's not in the same league as such Pixar classics as 'WALL-E' and 'Toy Story,' but there's no denying the pure enchantment of the visual, comic and subtextual dazzle in this tale of two sea monsters trying to pass for human boys in 1960's Italy. - ABC News
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| Posted Jun 18, 2021
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| 94% | In the Heights (2021) |
Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tony-winning musical is a surefire Oscar contender that lights up the screen with the immigrant experience of the American Dream. The estupendo cast gives the summer's best party a heart that sings and a spirit that soars. - ABC News
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| Posted Jun 11, 2021
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| 98% | Rear Window (1954) |
Hitchcock condemned the invasive immorality of voyeurism without for a second denying its allure. In terms of art and entertainment, he knew better than any movie director that there's no percentage in minding your own business. - Rolling Stone
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| Posted Jun 8, 2021
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| 56% | The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) |
The third and weakest chapter in the "Conjuring" series messes with the facts about a real-life case of demonic possession as a legal defense, but Farmiga and Wilson as married demonologists know how to marshall nerve-rattling chills. - ABC News
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| Posted Jun 4, 2021
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| 55/100 | 74% | Cruella (2021) |
Two Oscar-winning Emmas-Stone and Thompson-are dressed to wow and deliver much to enjoy in this beautifully crafted fluffball, but the end result is a decorative distraction that never runs the risks it promises. - ABC News
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| Posted May 28, 2021
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| 91% | A Quiet Place Part II (2021) |
A sequel always loses the advantage of surprise, but Krasinski has crafted the perfect thriller to get summer audiences back into movie theaters where everything is dark and everyone can hear you scream. - ABC News
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| Posted May 28, 2021
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| 88% | Dream Horse (2021) |
Sure it's hokey, but this fact-based crowdpleaser starring a terrific Toni Collette as a struggling Welsh villager who risks everything on a racehorse she breeds and raises is an underdog story that works like a charm. - ABC News
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| Posted May 21, 2021
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| 62% | Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021) |
Angelina Jolie, back in action mode as a haunted smokejumper seeking redemption, gets the job done if you're looking for action escapism, but those who wish for something deeper and more resonant are out of luck. - ABC News
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| Posted May 15, 2021
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| 26% | The Woman in the Window (2021) |
Amy Adams leads an overqualified and underserved cast as an agoraphobic child psychologist who thinks she sees a murder in this 'Rear Window' ripoff that just lies there, static and dreary, awaiting an animating spark that never comes. - ABC News
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| Posted May 15, 2021
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| 78% | The Water Man (2021) |
Actor David Oyelowo makes a heartfelt directing debut in a PG adventure about a boy (Lonnie Chavez) in search of a mythic creature who might save his dying mother. Even when the pace drags, the film is a gift for family audiences. - ABC News
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| Posted May 7, 2021
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| 49% | Here Today (2021) |
A dementia subplot torpedoes the laughs, leaving Tiffany Haddish and writer-director-star Billy Crystal adrift in a comedy fizzle that forgets to be funny. - ABC News
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| Posted May 7, 2021
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| 39% | Things Heard & Seen (2021) |
You know a ghost story is a hot mess when it strands a stellar Amanda Seyfried and a top cast in a remote, country house haunted by toxic masculinity, dangling plot threads and nothing worth hearing or seeing. - ABC News
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| Posted Apr 30, 2021
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| 44% | Tom Clancy's Without Remorse (2021) |
No knock on serving up an action-jacked Michael B.Jordan in an R-rated, red-meat, military thriller. But this clumsy update of Clancy's 1993 bestseller should have been way better than a generic, one-note, cash grab - ABC News
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| Posted Apr 30, 2021
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| 95% | My Octopus Teacher (2020) |
You'll laugh and cry your eyes out as an emotionally bruised diver learns about life and loyalty from an eight-tentacled mollusk. This Oscar favorite and viral sensation is the year's most unorthodox and unforgettable love story. - ABC News
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| Posted Apr 23, 2021
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| 5% | Vanquish (2021) |
it's a form of actor abuse to see the legendary Morgan Freeman trapped in this relentlessly violent and vapid mess that does offer one lesson to students of cinema in how to do everything calamitously wrong. - ABC News
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| Posted Apr 23, 2021
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| 50% | Monday (2021) |
Sebastian Stan, the Winter Soldier himself, shows he can sizzle with costar Denise Gough for a romcom romp in Greece that starts on a sexy, swooshing high before draining out the fun for dramatic insights that never come. Bummer. - ABC News
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| Posted Apr 16, 2021
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| 26% | Voyagers (2021) |
Despite an intriguing premise that suggests a "Lord of the Flies" in space, this thriller about young hotties playing astronauts quickly devolves into a dud that never makes sense of its borrowed convictions or any sense at all. - ABC News
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| Posted Apr 9, 2021
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| 21% | Thunder Force (2021) |
This comedy misfire starring McCarthy and Spencer as unlikely superheroes is hardly a crime against cinema. It just a bumpy road to blah in which the actors look to be having a way better time than you will. That's messed up. - ABC News
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| Posted Apr 9, 2021
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| 75% | Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) |
Forgive the exposition dump in the convoluted plot and go for a clash of the titans that is spectacular in every sense of the word. - ABC News
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| Posted Apr 2, 2021
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| 80% | Concrete Cowboy (2021) |
An inner-city western featuring Black cowboys in a real-life setting deserves celebrating and the dynamite teamwork of Idris Elba and young Caleb McLaughlin head off the father-son cliches in the script to keep you riveted. - ABC News
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| Posted Apr 2, 2021
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| 40/100 | 35% | Six Minutes to Midnight (2021) |
It's a juicy premise: Eddie Izzard's British spy vs a school for daughters of the Nazi elite run by the great Judi Dench. But the crackerjack espionage thriller that might have been, the one filled with ideas and purpose, is defeated by flat execution. - ABC News
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| Posted Mar 26, 2021
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| 80/100 | 84% | Nobody (2021) |
Bob Odenkirk aces his first role as an action star in this wild, twisty ride. He's such a canny, captivating actor that even when the plot gets silly you're willing to follow him anywhere. - ABC News
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| Posted Mar 26, 2021
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| 90/100 | 92% | Another Round (Druk) (2020) |
A peak-form Mads Mikkelsen stars in this hilarious and heartbreaking spellbinder as a Copenhagen high-school teacher who thinks day drinking might sharpen his faculties. The Oscar for Best International Feature belongs right here. - ABC News
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| Posted Mar 19, 2021
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| 76% | The Ballad of Little Jo (1993) |
Greenwald takes an invigorating feminist slant on the Old West that is sure to provoke argument. More power to her. - Rolling Stone
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| Posted Mar 17, 2021
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| 22% | Chaos Walking (2021) |
A hot mess that throws a wet blanket of dystopian drivel over fresh young stars Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland. 'Chaos Limping' is more like it. - ABC News
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| Posted Mar 12, 2021
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| 37% | Cherry (2021) |
Tom Holland, of Spider-man fame, breathes dramatic fire as a PTSD-afflicted Army medic in Iraq who returns home to rob banks to feed his drug habit, but his glossy, overlong film is failed Oscar bait that drowns him in dreary addiction cliches. - ABC News
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| Posted Mar 12, 2021
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| 50/100 | 49% | Coming 2 America (2021) |
It's good to see Eddie Murphy again as Zumundan royalty, but the laughs in this tame, PG-13 sequel to the raucous, R-rated 1988 original feel predictable and played out as they strain to slide by on nostalgia. Your call. - ABC News
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| Posted Mar 5, 2021
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| 88/100 | 94% | Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) |
The sisters are doing it for themselves and one of them is a dragon in a wild, animated wonder ride from Disney that radiates female empowerment and comes at you in a whoosh of creative ideas in full eruption. - ABC News
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| Posted Mar 5, 2021
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| 56% | The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021) |
Singer Andra Day's breakout star performance as jazz legend Billie Holiday raises this chaotic film above its faults by showing how Holiday used her voice as a starting gun for the civil-rights movement despite a relentless FBI campaign to destroy her. - ABC News
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| Posted Feb 26, 2021
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