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Aja Romano
Aja Romano's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
The Daily Dot
Vox
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Thanksgiving (2023) |
You can’t have well-done social satire without follow-through, and Roth ultimately isn’t aiming his darts where he should be. - Vox
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| Posted Nov 17, 2023
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Hidden Blade (2023) |
As much as Tony Leung was made for subtle but heady roles like this, Hidden Blade belongs to Wang Yibo, and so does this review. - Vox
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| Posted Feb 28, 2023
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Purple Hearts (2022) |
The entire script is a bingo card full of politicized stereotypes. - Vox
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| Posted Aug 18, 2022
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Ricky Gervais: SuperNature (2022) |
If trans people are to be thrown to the wolves of comedy, one would hope the wolves would at least be funnier. - Vox
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| Posted May 26, 2022
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Jerrod Carmichael: Rothaniel (2022) |
Carmichael’s approach to his coming-out is to turn his comedy stage into a place of healing and acceptance, in which the audience becomes his confessors. - Vox
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| Posted Apr 08, 2022
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Saint Maud (2019) |
St. Maud marks a stunning feature film debut for writer-director Rose Glass. Understated yet opulent, measured, and intensely creepy, it's a tour de force in balancing uncomfortable levels of tension and suspense with deep pathos. - Vox
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| Posted May 20, 2021
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Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) |
Raya herself is a wonderful protagonist, easily one of my favorite Disney princesses by a mile... By the time I was near the end, however, the film's innumerable borrowed tropes really began to get to me. - Vox
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| Posted Mar 06, 2021
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Earwig and the Witch (2020) |
Earwig's themes are so disjointed that it's not quite clear what the takeaway is. - Vox
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| Posted Feb 04, 2021
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Housebound (2014) |
Housebound is writer-director Gerard Johnstone's only feature film, but its unique tone has the confidence of an established, more experienced screenwriter - Vox
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| Posted Jan 12, 2021
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Death to 2020 (2020) |
Death to 2020 is ultimately just more of the same painfully humorless noise that's made up most of the year. - Vox
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| Posted Dec 29, 2020
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The Prom (2020) |
The jokes land, the cast is superb, the score is still charming, and fans of the show will have little to complain about. - Vox
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| Posted Dec 12, 2020
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American Murder: The Family Next Door (2020) |
Crucially, the documentary doesn't concern itself with digging deeper into Chris Watts's persona, with mythologizing him or probing for underlying motives in his behavior. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 07, 2020
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Dave Chappelle: 8:46 (2020) |
Even unrefined and exhausted - or perhaps because it is both of those things - Chappelle's perspective on being black in America is still searing, powerful, and worth hearing. - Vox
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| Posted Jun 15, 2020
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It: Chapter Two (2019) |
While Chapter Two works perfectly fine as a complement to Chapter One, it still falls short in that the closer our heroes come to triumphing over "It," the further they get from a satisfying conclusion. - Vox
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| Posted Sep 06, 2019
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Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019) |
Given that I was mainly expecting monsters with a side of more monsters, I can't complain too much. I got what I came for, and this is certainly not the first horror film to serve a sloppy social allegory along with its chills. - Vox
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| Posted Aug 09, 2019
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Child's Play (2019) |
It's silly, even nigh nonsensical, full of flat stock characters, plot non sequiturs, and a hand-wave-y take on technological dystopia that never manages to get above eye roll levels of sincerity. But it's also fun and funny. - Vox
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| Posted Jun 21, 2019
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The Perfection (2018) |
In essence, the movie looks like it should be a slick, thrilling emotional arc that speaks to women. But beneath the surface, it's something more regressive. - Vox
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| Posted May 29, 2019
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Aladdin (2019) |
The terrible musical sequences, the lackluster CGI, and the strange creative and emotional restraint that permeates the film frequently flatten Disney's original Aladdin into a cardboard version of itself. - Vox
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| Posted May 22, 2019
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Rent Live (2019) |
But to make all of this even weirder, there was a live performance of Rent happening onstage - and it was awesome! - Vox
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| Posted Jan 29, 2019
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The Conformist (1970) |
It's easy to overlook how stark The Conformist's political and allegorical message is because it's just so damn beautiful. - Vox
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| Posted Dec 03, 2018
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Tomorrow May Never Come (2003) |
KHNH drips with color and cheer. - Vox
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| Posted Nov 28, 2018
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Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) |
Bohemian Rhapsody is a movie that consciously tries to position a gay man at its center while strategically disengaging with the "gay" part as much as it can... - Vox
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| Posted Nov 16, 2018
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Cam (2018) |
Ultimately as cheeky as it is scary, Cam is a seduction disguised as a sermon, and it's all the better for it. - Vox
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| Posted Nov 16, 2018
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Halloween: Resurrection (2002) |
Stay away unless you like kitschy early internet nostalgia and lots of blurry found-footage trickery. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 19, 2018
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Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) |
H20 is far more character-driven than any of its predecessors. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 19, 2018
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Halloween (2007) |
Because it's still about Michael Myers, it all feels epic and larger than life in a way few of those other films do. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 19, 2018
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Halloween II (2009) |
Extends this interest in psychology to Laurie Strode (played this time by Scout Taylor-Compton), plumbing the emotional and psychological connection between her and Michael. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 19, 2018
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Halloween II (1981) |
As films go, however, Halloween 2 isn't very good. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 19, 2018
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Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) |
This movie is a dirty trick on all Halloween fans. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 19, 2018
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Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) |
I need to state for the record that Donald Pleasence is a truly great actor... But he also loved to chew the scenery, and the middle period of the Halloween franchise gave him plenty to sink his teeth into. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 19, 2018
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Halloween (1978) |
Still creepy as hell. - Vox
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| Posted Oct 19, 2018
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The Little Stranger (2018) |
A deft exploration of controlling and entitled masculinity. - Vox
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| Posted Sep 06, 2018
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Searching (2018) |
Searching is also a powerful conversation starter. It's worth watching just for the questions it raises about who we are in a digital world, and how real our virtual connections really are. - Vox
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| Posted Aug 29, 2018
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Hannah Gadsby: Nanette (2018) |
It's a powerful rejection of comedy itself. - Vox
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| Posted Jul 05, 2018
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The Carmilla Movie (2017) |
As someone who wants queer narratives to feature happy romantic relationships and be charming and have serious characterizations with meaningfully substantive development and plots, I can't help but find it disappointing. - Vox
Read More
| Posted Oct 27, 2017
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Gerald's Game (2017) |
One of the best things about this movie is its smallness - Vox
Read More
| Posted Oct 03, 2017
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It (2017) |
Yet for all its dark social relevance, It is also moving, emotional, and even optimistic. - Vox
Read More
| Posted Sep 06, 2017
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The Dark Tower (2017) |
Arcel's film is fun, loving, scary, and often as genuinely compelling as it is wildly misguided. - Vox
Read More
| Posted Aug 03, 2017
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It Comes at Night (2017) |
Harrowing, visually striking, and almost too on the nose for the current sociopolitical moment, It Comes at Night is one of the best films of the year. - Vox
Read More
| Posted Jun 08, 2017
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Mommy Dead and Dearest (2017) |
The film's interweaving of past and present creates a visually unsettling tapestry of disbelief. - Vox
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| Posted May 16, 2017
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Rings (2017) |
In conceptualizing how it feels to be inescapably pursued by something that's embedded in your culture, 2015's It Follows is a much better sequel to The Ring. - Vox
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| Posted Feb 07, 2017
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Beware the Slenderman (2016) |
Beware the Slenderman... goes deeper than a typical true crime doc in fascinating ways. - Vox
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| Posted Jan 27, 2017
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Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) |
[It's] a largely silly, disjointed construction of run-of-the-mill scares and awkward priest jokes, but at least director Mike Flanagan gives it his best shot, which is more than we can say of his predecessor. - Vox
Read More
| Posted Oct 24, 2016
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Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) |
Like the original Mad Max trilogy, Miller's dystopia is drenched in political commentary, but while the film's feminism has recently taken center stage, its environmentalism is far more strident. - The Daily Dot
Read More
| Posted Oct 24, 2016
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Earth to Echo (2014) |
Earth to Echo will appeal to the nostalgia of older kids who appreciate a good coming-of-age romp, parents looking for movies that eschew most of the usual stereotypes of teens on film, and the average YouTuber and tween. - The Daily Dot
Read More
| Posted Oct 24, 2016
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Blair Witch (2016) |
A movie that contributes nothing new to either the Blair Witch mythos or the vast landscape of found-footage horror. - Vox
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| Posted Sep 16, 2016
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Don't Breathe (2016) |
[A] taut, appropriately breath-stealing new movie that galvanizes the tired home invasion subgenre of horror the way films like The Witch and It Follows have done for the coven and slasher subgenres. - Vox
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| Posted Sep 06, 2016
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Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) |
The stellar achievement of Kubo is the animation itself. - Vox
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| Posted Aug 19, 2016
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The Purge: Election Year (2016) |
The Purge takes far too much glee in presenting its violence like a beautiful fever dream, undermining and muddling its solemn political messages at every possible turn. - Vox
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| Posted Aug 08, 2016
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The Wailing (2016) |
The Wailing succeeds at combining a mood of deep unease with visceral gore, buddy cop comedy, and a hallucinogenic mix of horror tropes - a recipe that yields, among other things, an atypical exorcism helmed by an intense Korean shaman. - Vox
Read More
| Posted Aug 08, 2016
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