Tim Brayton
Tomatometer-approved critic
| Publications: | Film Threat, Antagony & Ecstasy, Alternate Ending |
| Critics' Group: | Online Film Critics Society |
| Location: | Chicago, IL |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2/5 | 39% | Hell Fest (2018) |
Fundamentally nothing but a walking tour through nice sets in the company of awful people, and I'm sorry, but the sets aren't that nice.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Oct 17, 2018
|
| 5/5 | 92% | Mandy (2018) |
Somewhere between a prog album cover come to life and a metal album cover come to life, and subscribes to both genre's artistic tendency towards maximalism.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Oct 5, 2018
|
| 2.5/5 | 70% | Hold the Dark (2018) |
It is incredibly mirthless - aggressively, obsessively so.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Oct 5, 2018
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| 3/5 | 76% | Smallfoot (2018) |
A little quiet modesty, free from giant setpieces or huge self-aware comic bits or commercial cross-promotion, is a very nice change of pace.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Oct 4, 2018
|
| 3/5 | 66% | The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018) |
The almost tangible smell of dusty shadows and autumnal damp saturating the 1973 source material have been downplayed in favor of dazzling spectacle.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Oct 4, 2018
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| 4/5 | 85% | A Simple Favor (2018) |
A pretty great attempt to split the difference between outright camp and chic Eurocool.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Oct 4, 2018
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| 2/5 | 84% | The Wife (2018) |
Probably exists for lots of reasons involving lots of passions from lots of filmmakers, but mostly feels like it was lab-created to win Oscars in the 1990s.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Oct 4, 2018
|
| 2.5/5 | 33% | The Predator (2018) |
How does that writer take a whack at that franchise, and come up with something as convoluted and puffy as this?‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Oct 4, 2018
|
| 3.5/5 | 84% | The Land of Steady Habits (2018) |
Finds Holofcener and company doing superb work capturing the cadences of a particular stratum of American life.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2018
|
| 1.5/5 | 12% | God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness (2018) |
Instead of of a raging bonfire of heinous idiocy, it's really just a clunky, bad movie, and that's just not as much fun.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2018
|
| 3/5 | 27% | The Nun (2018) |
The film is madly in love with the idea of old-school matinee movie horror.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 93% | Searching (2018) |
A good, crisp, gnarly thriller, with exactly the right amount of human interest for it to pretend to be more than just a grubby shocker.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2018
|
| 3/5 | 72% | Sleepless in Seattle (1993) |
Substantially better, funnier, smarter, and more impeccably-controlled than almost everything that came in its wake.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2018
|
| 2.5/5 | 69% | The Boys from Brazil (1978) |
A film too dopey and campy to be taken seriously, too mordant and sober to be much fun, and too ludicrous and melodramatic to be at all defensible as a social commentary.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2018
|
| 4.5/5 | 94% | The More the Merrier (1943) |
A gossamer-weight, charming film about how very awful it is to have the war fill every minute of your waking world - I don't know how that alchemy works, but it's sublime.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2018
|
| 2.5/5 | 86% | The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018) |
A film that, independently of anything else it gets right or wrong, is at least slightly dismal as an aesthetic object.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 23% | The Happytime Murders (2018) |
"Muppets, but they curse and ****" really just isn't enough to cut it. There needs to be something more to it, and what's frustrating is that the film has that something.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2018
|
| 1/5 | 23% | Mile 22 (2018) |
The film is incoherent at the broad level of its plot, and it's also incoherent all the way down to the smallest level of each individual cut.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 42% | Palindromes (2004) |
It seems stuck entirely at the level of "what would happen if we tried..."‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 81% | Alpha (2018) |
A tightly-fitted adventure movie that is, for all its ridiculously high concept and its bestiary of CGI Pleistocene fauna, pretty simple and direct.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2018
|
| 2.5/5 | No Score Yet | Challenge to White Fang (Il ritorno di Zanna Bianca) (1974) |
A failed film, absolutely, and more a curio for Fulci fans than anything for any other viewer.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2018
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| 3/5 | No Score Yet | White Fang (Zanna Bianca) (1973) |
These outlandish extremes of tone do, unquestionably, mean that the film is a bizarre experience. But it is not, overall, an unsatisfying one.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 92% | Crazy Rich Asians (2018) |
Deeply satisfying in the way of a by-the-books romantic comedy that has found good character-based reasons for checking all of the boxes that need to be checked.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 94% | The Endless (2018) |
Fans of intellectually striving "little" sci-fi movies could do a whole lot worse.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2018
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| 1/5 | 8% | Slender Man (2018) |
A disordered and unfocused ghost story that bears all the very worst habits of the genre.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 45% | The Meg (2018) |
The film is actually able to concoct a reason for Jason Statham to get into hand-to-hand combat with a 75-foot shark. That is, in a sense, the whole of what it needs to do.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
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| 4/5 | 95% | BlacKkKlansman (2018) |
It's been ages since any of Lee's fiction features have been so clear-headed and driven by a need to make bold, epochal declarations about The State Of American Culture.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
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| 0.5/5 | 14% | Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009) |
It's beyond incompetent, and it probably also sounds like it's a hoot and a holler as a result. This is not the case.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 49% | The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018) |
The pleasure of watching Kunis and McKinnon carries the movie through a lot of rough spots, and that's extremely useful, because rough spots are mostly what the film has.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
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| 4/5 | 93% | Blindspotting (2018) |
Excitingly watchable, brashly cinematic, full of ideas, and full of the idealism of the very best American indie cinema.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 71% | Christopher Robin (2018) |
While it is very, very far from being the worst or most insipid thing Disney has down with these characters, it puts up a good fight to be the most dull.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
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| 1.5/5 | 19% | Tyler Perry's Acrimony (2018) |
Impressively misconceived and mishandled.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 72% | Tenebre (Unsane) (1982) |
Rather more aggressive towards its viewer than one expects, and more surprising than a body count mystery in 1982 has any right to be at all.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 93% | Calibre (2018) |
A tight piece of craftsmanship from top to bottom.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
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| 1/5 | 68% | Miami Connection (2012) |
Anything can be this incompetently made - but this incompetently made and also this openly in love with filmmaking and humanity? That's a much rarer combination indeed.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 100% | Leave No Trace (2018) |
Serves as a reminder of all the amazing things American independent cinema could be if it pushed itself more.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
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| 4/5 | 100% | Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms (2018) |
If the film is a bit frustrating on the storytelling front, it makes up for it with some staggeringly beautiful imagery.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
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| 3/5 | 73% | Sky High (2005) |
A snappy, knowing genre experiment.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 91% | Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (2018) |
For a comedy for 8-year-olds this be this dedicated to nonsense humor just for the sheer joy of it... I tell you what, it gives a fella hope for future generations.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
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| 0.5/5 | No Score Yet | Don't Go Near the Park (Sanctuary for Evil) (1981) |
Relentlessly filthy, and it is also fizzy and zesty and fun in the way that only the sunniest of bad movies can approach‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2018
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| 5/5 | 97% | Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) |
One of the very best action epics ever made. And I suspect, one of the best that will be made for an extremely long time to come.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2018
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| 3/5 | 60% | Pantaleon y las Visitadoras (2002) |
There's a winning, genial quality to the film that makes the satire go down well.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 51% | Equalizer 2 (2018) |
It's just very standard, very predictable, very much exactly the movie you think it's going to be: that is the whole of its appeal and also its most glaring limitation.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 58% | Unfriended: Dark Web (2018) |
We're now two-for-two on films in this series that really feel like they ought to be doing more than just presenting the same old shocks in online drag.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2018
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| 4.5/5 | 93% | Sorry to Bother You (2018) |
Sorry to Bother You is a godsend.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 81% | Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) |
There's more plot than "celebrity karaoke in Greece", and the songs generally support the narrative in some way rather than just providing space for the next showstopper.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 75% | Dead and Buried (1981) |
One of the most interesting American horror films of 1981.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2018
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| 2/5 | 33% | Grease 2 (1982) |
Aimless and horribly dull, with its vigorous group dances failing to compensate for the insipid songs.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 99% | Eighth Grade (2018) |
Totally harrowing.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2018
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| 2/5 | 46% | Skyscraper (2018) |
Beyond well-rendered pixels and pectorals, Skyscraper is a pretty joyless slog.‐ Alternate Ending
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2018
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