Witney Seibold

Tomatometer-approved critic

Publications: IGN Movies, CraveOnline, TheWrap, Movies.com, Nerdist, Legion of Leia, Critically Acclaimed

movie Reviews Only

Movies
TV

	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Review
	59%	Alita: Battle Angel (2019)	Like far too many blockbusters of its ilk, "Alita" is focused on any number of vaguely confusing and uninspired sci-fi subplots, each cribbed from superior films and none brought to a proper conclusion. - Critically Acclaimed EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 15, 2019
	No Score Yet	Justice League: The New Frontier (2008)	The central problem with "Justice League: The New Frontier" is that Bruce Timm's clear, square-jawed animation style doesn't match the tone... Director Bullock, rather than using his film's style as a necessary distancing tool, merely revels in it. - Critically Acclaimed EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 6, 2019
7.8/10	71%	Cold Pursuit (2019)	As thrillers go, this one is more adult than your average. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 28, 2019
	37%	Glass (2019)	As we so often say with Shyamalan: Maybe next time... - Critically Acclaimed EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 13, 2019
7.5/10	99%	They Shall Not Grow Old (2019)	While Peter Jackson's fascinating new technical process brings 100-year-old footage to life in a new way, the tech sometimes gets in the way of the stories being told. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 21, 2018
	No Score Yet	Pelisky (1999)	The cultural shifts of the 1990s seemed to be a global move away from traditions via dismissal and sarcasm rather than active revolution. - Critically Acclaimed EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 10, 2018
	40%	The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018)	New to the series is a sense of stale fatigue. - Critically Acclaimed EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 10, 2018
	88%	The Visitor (1979)	I can't say that the bulk of 1970s psychedelia was necessarily successful - they were big on histrionics but short on actual logic - but one can at least admire them for being willing to tip into the surreal to reach something higher. - Critically Acclaimed EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 8, 2018
7.9/10	98%	Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)	Melissa McCarthy gives one of her best performances in a surprisingly relatable story about a criminal misanthrope with a heart beating deep inside her. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 18, 2018
5.9/10	48%	Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (2018)	Goosebumps 2 is in far too much of a hurry - and perhaps too eager to be widely accessible - to be actually scary or wholly effective. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 11, 2018
8.4/10	92%	The Old Man & the Gun (2018)	Light on its feet, very laid back, and underlined by retro 1981 style, The Old Man & the Gun uses the biography of a famous bank robber as a casual nod farewell to a great movie star. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 28, 2018
6.8/10	67%	The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018)	An exciting and scary final act makes up for a middling kid horror fantasy that is marked by a slow start and an inappropriately comedic tone. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 19, 2018
	100%	Level Five (2014)	Watching it in the era of Twitter does make "Level Five" feel like a distant lamentation on the failure of technology - indeed of cinema itself. It's a record of the questions we once asked, and how we essentially already lost the fight. - Critically Acclaimed EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 14, 2018
	12%	Peppermint (2018)	There is nothing fresh or flavorful about "Peppermint." It's a rote and predictable revenge thriller with only a few capable action sequences, a few fleeting moments of exhilarating violence, and one pretty great action performance from Garner. - Critically Acclaimed EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 7, 2018
6.5/10	51%	Equalizer 2 (2018)	Denzel Washington and Antoine Fuqua have created a unique Punisher-with-heart vigilante character that is a pleasant thrill to watch and a modest delight to revisit. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 18, 2018
5.2/10	11%	Siberia (2018)	Constructed as half romance and half crime thriller, Siberia loses focus, and doesn't emerge as a great version of either. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 16, 2018
	99%	Eighth Grade (2018)	In a landscape dominated by teen movies that bank so heavily on well-worn archetypes and weepy melodramatic situations, experiencing a film like "Eighth Grade" can feel almost miraculous in how natural it is. - Critically Acclaimed EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 12, 2018
9.7/10	93%	Sorry to Bother You (2018)	Certainly weird, confrontational, wildly satirical, and certainly unique, Sorry to Bother You is one of the funniest, energetic, and best films of the year. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 6, 2018
	43%	King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963)	Even if you didn't grow up with it, there is a lingering spirit of Saturday morning television hanging over it, a weird childhood fantasy realized, something primal about my pop culture associations, even more than with Freddy fighting Jason. - Nerdist EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 26, 2018
7.2/10	62%	Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)	Sicario: Day of the Soldado is a darkly thrilling film with excellent performances, and its gritty, intense action is balanced by heady themes of moral decay, but overall, because of recent political developments, it feels behind the times. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 20, 2018
6.1/10	49%	Superfly (2018)	Superfly features an appealing lead, and captures small tastes of amazing, striking cool, but is also bogged down by plot and characters that reduce an otherwise slick flick into something that is more capable than amazing. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 13, 2018
	48%	Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)	The most aggressively idiotic film in the series to date. - Critically Acclaimed EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 6, 2018
	73%	The Misandrists (2018)	"The Misandrists" is a lesbian hand grenade. It's a raucous clenched fist of queer feminist outrage thrown in the face of anyone who dares to give the patriarchy even the smallest bit of wiggle room. - Critically Acclaimed EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 1, 2018
5.2/10	13%	Action Point (2018)	Action Point contains some crazy stunts and some funny-ish gross-out humor, but is ultimately a pale echo of the dark destruction Johnny Knoxville became famous for. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 1, 2018
6/10	88%	American Animals (2018)	Although featuring some good acting, and certainly ambitious in its critique of the characters, American Animals is too sleepy to strike a chord. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted May 30, 2018
5.8/10	40%	Mary Shelley (2018)	Mary Shelley's fascinating life story is told to contain a few brief glimpses of modern insight, but ultimately weakens under its over-use of conventional, romantic storytelling tropes. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted May 24, 2018
6.5/10	67%	Manhunt (2017)	The chases and gunfights in Manhunt are impressive and brisk, containing just as much panache as you remember from John Woo films of 20 years ago. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted May 10, 2018
2.5/10	24%	The Week Of (2018)	As usual, Adam Sandler presents a mean-spirited comedy, but an unengaged cast and uninspired writing also make The Week Of a bore. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 27, 2018
3/10	No Score Yet	Dark Crimes (2018)	This common cop-becomes-obsessed dynamic is not new; it can be seen in just about every episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 19, 2018
5/10	27%	Sherlock Gnomes (2018)	It contains nothing that is offensive, challenging, or complex, nor does it contain any great deal of wit, color, or imagination. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 23, 2018
8.2/10	40%	The Strangers: Prey At Night (2018)	While the film does posses its share of admittedly cheap jump scares - those masks! - Prey at Night gets far more traction from its mood, its pacing, and its overall skillful filmmaking than many other horror films of its ilk. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 8, 2018
7.5/10	72%	The Ritual (2017)	The Ritual is by no means a new classic; its novelty and skill can only elevate its predictable set-up so far. But it does do everything you want a horror film to do with notable efficiency and a great deal of mood. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 28, 2018
7.5/10	82%	Love and Saucers (2017)	Here is a man who experienced something terrible and strange, and who has been using his art as a method of exploring his psyche. That's very human. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 25, 2018
7/10	92%	Kickboxer: Retaliation (2018)	Solid, exploitation movie fun. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 23, 2018
4.5/10	27%	Proud Mary (2018)	If you have Taraji P. Henson, the wherewithal to invoke the badass funk films of the '70s, and the willingness to murder a pile of bad guys, then why not have some fun with it? Such a pity. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 12, 2018
4/10	80%	Olaf's Frozen Adventure (2017)	Friendly to the point of near-annoyance, and starring a character one might dislike, Olaf's Frozen Adventure is nothing more than a sticky sweet, substance-free stop-gap between Frozen features. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 26, 2017
6.1/10	67%	Beyond Skyline (2017)	You'll certainly find better alien mayhem films than Beyond Skyline, but some creative special effects, interesting fights, and fun, alien brain-sucking will keep you moderately -- but solidly -- entertained. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 13, 2017
6.5/10	14%	Geostorm (2017)	Geostorm cannot be defended in terms of striking originality, wit, or even basic intelligence, but its affable slickness make it a bad film that is surprisingly consumable. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 26, 2017
8.5/10	82%	Tragedy Girls (2017)	Tragedy Girls is a gleeful blast of subversive energy in a landscape populated by too much safety; One's horror films should feel a little over the edge. - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 19, 2017
	70%	mother! (2017)	God and religion are simply the stage on which Aronofsky's anti-patriarchy message is set. - Legion of Leia EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 19, 2017
5.5/10	28%	Amityville: The Awakening (2017)	Amityville: The Awakening has a good cast, and, if viewed by a group of rowdy friends late at night, may certainly do its due diligence in periodically startling you for 87 minutes - IGN Movies EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 13, 2017
	97%	Lost in America (1985)	Brooks explodes the Kerouac fantasy by depicting two of the most uptight, urban people in the world trying to live it out. - CraveOnline EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 9, 2017
	100%	Stalker (1979)	A bleak sleepwalk into the heart of darkness. - CraveOnline EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 9, 2017
	96%	L'Argent (1983)	L'Argent is one of the most damning litanies of human evil one may encounter. It's also one of the better films. - CraveOnline EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 9, 2017
	49%	Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)	A bracing, unique, vivacious, visually glorious sci-fi adventure that gleefully vibrates with impish life... It's the best science fiction film of the year, - Legion of Leia EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 16, 2017
	66%	Alien: Covenant (2017)	When the creatures are finally allowed to go hogwild on the bleeding meat hanging off of our lead characters, there is a certain anarchic thrill, but one can't help but immediately acknowledge that we're just watching a pretty surface on a limp skeleton. - Legion of Leia EDIT Read More \| Posted May 12, 2017
	75%	Kong: Skull Island (2017)	It's a lightning-quick, bright, dumb, slyly silly, unapologetically clichéd pulp adventure that, despite it all, is a rip-roaring good time. - CraveOnline EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 8, 2017
	96%	The Exterminating Angel (El Ángel Exterminador) (1967)	'The Exterminating Angel' is a confrontation. Not only because of its clear political underpinnings, but because of a weird undercurrent of human sympathy. - CraveOnline EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 25, 2017
	97%	The Asphalt Jungle (1950)	The characters are no mere cold symbolic avatars in a world gone stylistic; Huston breaks down that intellectual barrier, and allows the characters to shine in all their glorious dumb pathos. - CraveOnline EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 25, 2017
	98%	His Girl Friday (1940)	'His Girl Friday' is more feminist than it even gets credit for. - CraveOnline EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 25, 2017