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Andrew Wyatt
Tomatometer-approved critic
Andrew Wyatt lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where he has been writing about cinema, television, video art, and culture since 2007. Andrew is the lead film critic for The Lens, the official blog of Cinema St. Louis. He was previously the lead film critic for St. Louis Magazine from 2010 to 2017. He has also been a contributor to Alive Magazine, The Common Reader, The Curator, and Temporary Art Review. For his work at St. Louis Magazine, he was named a finalist in the Blog Writing category of the 2014 Great Plains Journalism Awards. He is a member of the Online Film Critics Society and the St. Louis Film Critics Association, and serves as the webmaster for the latter organization. He has served as a juror and presenter for the St. Louis International Film Festival, the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase, the Robert Classic French Film Festival, and the CinemaSpoke screenplay competition.
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Streetwise (2021) |
A beguiling, purgatorial noir about the lost souls who dream of getting out, while knowing with dead certainty that they never will. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Aug 29, 2023
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Between Two Worlds (2021) |
Like its investigative journalist protagonist, Between Two Worlds has good intentions, but it never finds a way to satisfyingly resolve its disparate identities. - Riverfront Times
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| Posted Aug 25, 2023
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The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) |
For genre devotees who are jonesing for the distinctive pleasures of a lushly produced, 1800s-set supernatural thriller, Øvredal’s film will feel like a properly bloody steak dinner after a long, demoralizing fast. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Aug 11, 2023
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Afire (2023) |
The magic trick to Afire is that Petzold permits the viewer to glimpse a little humanity through the haze of Leon’s relentless awfulness, just enough to sustain our empathy as he blunders about. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Aug 03, 2023
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Talk to Me (2023) |
A solid but unassuming work of horror filmmaking, one that is ultimately less interesting for its journeyman formal qualities than for its nasty, remorseless depiction of adolescent folly. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Jul 25, 2023
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Oppenheimer (2023) |
Oppenheimer plays like an ashen jittery companion piece to Dunkirk, a case study in how even the so-called Great Men of History lack the courage to stop modernity’s slouching march towards Armageddon. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Jul 21, 2023
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The Taking (2021) |
An eye-opening if occasionally frustrating documentary essay that reveals the geographic and ideological flimflam that’s been in front of our noses all along. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Jul 11, 2023
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Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Part One (2023) |
The most unexpected yet welcome aspect of Dead Reckoning is the way it deliberately echoes Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible, which kicked off the franchise in 1996. - Orlando Weekly
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| Posted Jul 07, 2023
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Past Lives (2023) |
A deeply romantic film that isn't really about romance per se, it has sort of screenplay that can only come from lived experience and keen observation. - Riverfront Times
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| Posted Jun 22, 2023
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Asteroid City (2023) |
An intricate and boundlessly revelatory film. Anderson's best (and funniest) since 'Grand Budapest'. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Jun 19, 2023
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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) |
Across the Spider-Verse was practically obliged to up the ante, creatively speaking, and it unquestionably delivers (and then some). - Riverfront Times
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| Posted Jun 05, 2023
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In the Dusk (2019) |
Bartas is less concerned with narrative momentum than with steeping in the sensations of the cruel, ragged, not-yet-modernized world of post-WWII Lithuania. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Jun 05, 2023
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Motion Detected (2023) |
Almost every aspect of Motion Detected is tacky and poorly executed, but what truly sinks the film is not its shoestring budget but its conceptual inanity and incoherence. - The Take-Up
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| Posted May 18, 2023
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De Humani Corporis Fabrica (2022) |
Although hardly apolitical, Castaing-Taylor and Paravel’s approach is less interested in the nitty-gritty of process than in the philosophical potency of nose-on-the-glass sensation. - The Take-Up
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| Posted May 09, 2023
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Beau Is Afraid (2023) |
Never boring, but often frustrating, it’s the kind of $35 million auteurist Rorschach test that is destined for cult appreciation and years of contention. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Apr 20, 2023
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How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022) |
While HTBUAP capably employs heist-picture tropes to deliver a crackerjack thriller, the film nonetheless feels somewhat politically and psychologically hollow. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Apr 06, 2023
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Enys Men (2022) |
Whether it amounts to anything beyond a reverent pastiche is questionable, but there is an undeniable eldritch potency to its images that can be difficult to shake. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Mar 29, 2023
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John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) |
Stahleski, Reeves, and their collaborators are old hands at this point, and Chapter 4 delivers its ultra-violence with all the pristine visual coherence and intoxicating relentlessness that series devotees have rightly come to expect. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Mar 22, 2023
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Godland (2022) |
For a film about religion and colonialism, 'Godland' is a surprisingly elliptical, contemplative work, one fascinated with the majestic landscape and the quotidian rituals of the Icelandic people. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Mar 08, 2023
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Pacifiction (2022) |
Ultimately, Serra’s feature is concerned foremost with conveying a malarial haze of futility and disillusionment. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Feb 28, 2023
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No Bears (2022) |
A startlingly harsh work of self-critique; a two-pronged deconstruction of the artist’s oblivious egotism and bull-in-a-china-shop propensity for leaving devastation in his wake. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Feb 21, 2023
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Huesera: The Bone Woman (2022) |
Part of the captivating intelligence of Cervera’s film lies in how the initial depiction of Valeria slowly unravels, revealing the existential terror just beneath her tissue-thin façade of joyful anticipation. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Feb 14, 2023
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Skinamarink (2022) |
In an era when a rabbit hole of endless creepypasta terror is only a smartphone tap away, Skinamarink is a formidable reminder that all horror filmmaking is shadow play at heart, a danse macabre between the seen and the unseen. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Feb 08, 2023
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Knock at the Cabin (2023) |
Knock at the Cabin isn't a story. It's a situation, and a philosophically incoherent one at that. It all but turns to the viewer and asks – like some overly familiar youth pastor – “Really makes you think, doesn’t it?” Not really. - The Take-Up
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| Posted Feb 02, 2023
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Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022) |
An intriguingly weird and spooky version of the story. Also a truly terrific feat of design and animation, - The Lens
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| Posted Dec 09, 2022
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Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022) |
A bigger, gaudier, twistier affair than its predecessor. (The hideous, naked greed evinced by the suspects remains the same, of course.) - The Lens
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| Posted Nov 21, 2022
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Holy Spider (2022) |
Notwithstanding its grim subject, Holy Spider mostly eschews true-crime orthodoxy thanks to Abbasi’s moody, jittery direction and Amir-Ebrahimi’s marvelous, finely tuned performance. - The Lens
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| Posted Nov 08, 2022
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Nanny (2022) |
Jusu has crafted a moody, self-assured feature debut, a creepshow tale of urban paranoia in the tradition of Roman Polanski. - The Lens
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| Posted Nov 04, 2022
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Memories of My Father (2020) |
Although the film does not paper over the sourer (or bloodier) aspects of Faciolince’s memoir, Memories of My Father is foremost a tribute to a man that the author plainly idolized. - The Lens
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| Posted Nov 02, 2022
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Tár (2022) |
Nothing about this dense, mesmerizing film is simple, least of all the way it regards its diabolical protagonist. - The Lens
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| Posted Oct 21, 2022
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Hellraiser (2022) |
The least-bad possibility for Hellraiser aficionados: a robust extension and expansion that also functions as a partial rebuild of one of the genre’s most wicked and ill-treated franchises. - The Lens
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| Posted Oct 05, 2022
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Smile (2022) |
A surprisingly intense, bleak experience, closer to The Ring or It Follows – in spirit, if not in the artistry of its execution – than to most recent occult-horror dreck. - The Lens
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| Posted Sep 30, 2022
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Speak No Evil (2022) |
A Feel Bad Movie in the purest sense. Not pointlessly so, but certainly the sort of thing that only a self-selected niche audience will likely be interested in experiencing. - The Lens
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| Posted Sep 15, 2022
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True Things (2021) |
Holding the whole thing together are Wootliff and Davies’ impressively parsimonious screenplay and Wilson’s characteristically engrossing, expertly shaded performance. - The Lens
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| Posted Sep 07, 2022
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Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022) |
Whatever its faults, Three Thousand Years of Longing is bursting with affection for legendary fiction in all its strange, extravagant glory. - The Lens
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| Posted Aug 24, 2022
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A Love Song (2022) |
"Sweet-tempered atmosphere rich in lonely wistfulness, against the backdrop of a pleasant, low-fi, slightly eccentric version of American West." - The Lens
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| Posted Aug 17, 2022
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Prey (2022) |
Simplicity is what enables Prey to succeed so magnificently, both as a long-overdue, worthy successor to Predator and as a rip-roaring stand-alone period action flick. - The Lens
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| Posted Aug 03, 2022
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Resurrection (2022) |
A fantastically tense psychological thriller first and foremost, but also a disturbing horror film about the twisted logic of abuse. - The Lens
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| Posted Jul 28, 2022
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Nope (2022) |
Peele’s highly anticipated third feature is, in part, a story about the irresistible compulsion to watch the world burn through the distancing porthole of the photographic frame. - The Lens
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| Posted Jul 20, 2022
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Flux Gourmet (2022) |
A cheeky cinematic feast that builds on a foundation of robust traditions, yet boasts its own strange, distinctive flavors. - The Lens
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| Posted Jul 13, 2022
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Hit the Road (2021) |
One of the year’s best and most original films: a thrilling fusion of family drama, charming comedy, and philosophical dolefulness. - The Lens
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| Posted Jun 29, 2022
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Lux Æterna (2019) |
How can one know where performance ends and real trauma begins? Here Lux Æterna ascends (or is it descends?) into avant-garde meta-horror territory, presented with all the over-cranked sensory intensity of Noé’s Climax (2018). - The Lens
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| Posted Jun 21, 2022
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Neptune Frost (2021) |
Uzeyman and Williams’ feature is enigmatic, and it can even be frustrating in its meandering opacity, but its radical, transformative spirit is always crystal clear. - The Lens
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| Posted Jun 14, 2022
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X (2022) |
West's best film to date: a gooey, ebullient orgy of the lewd and the learned, the squalid and the sumptuous. - The Lens
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| Posted Jun 07, 2022
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Benediction (2021) |
In his inimitable way, Davies uncovers the ecumenical pain in the particulars of Sassoon’s emotional and spiritual tribulations. - The Lens
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| Posted Jun 02, 2022
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Montana Story (2021) |
A tender, anguished drama that leans heavily on its powerful lead performances and its evocative yet authentic sense of Big Sky desolation. - The Lens
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| Posted May 26, 2022
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Happening (2021) |
As the world gets darker and tougher for birthing bodies, unflinching stories about what’s at stake will only become more precious and more powerful. Happening is an exceptional example of just such a story. - The Lens
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| Posted May 11, 2022
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Reflection (2021) |
A sobering, iron-blooded drama about a prisoner of war who survives a hellish ordeal only to return home to a spiritual purgatory, Reflection presents a story that hits hard and offers no easy answers. - The Lens
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| Posted May 04, 2022
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Father (2020) |
At times the film's ruthlessly grim and grounded approach flirts with bleakness for the sake of bleakness. However, Fathers distinctly Eastern European viewpoint is evident in its faint scent of dark, Kafkaesque absurdity. - The Lens
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| Posted Apr 27, 2022
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The Northman (2022) |
Around the sturdy mythic pillars of regicide-slash-fratricide and seething vengeance, Eggers and Sjón have fashioned an almost-original creation, a mud-and-gore-slicked work of historical verisimilitude spiked with fly agaric and raging testosterone. - The Lens
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| Posted Apr 19, 2022
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