Anthony Lane
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears? (2023) |
More than it knows, this movie is an engaging, and sometimes enraging, exposé of chronic insularity. - New Yorker
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| Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Inside (2023) |
Life, in the hands of Dafoe, is an agonized game. For Katsoupis, regrettably, agony wins the day. - New Yorker
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| Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Strange Days (1995) |
Fiennes holds steady; his moody, lonely performance, especially in the beguiling first half hour, lends the story an air of calm despair. - New Yorker
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| Posted Mar 10, 2023
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The Quiet Girl (2022) |
Finely framed by the cinematographer Kate McCullough, “The Quiet Girl” is an idyll, yet its placid surface is puckered by anxiety. - New Yorker
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| Posted Feb 24, 2023
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Cocaine Bear (2023) |
The excess, however gleeful, is that of a film paying anxious tribute to itself. Look, it seems to shout, here’s an apex predator becoming a homicidal junkie! What did you expect? - New Yorker
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| Posted Feb 24, 2023
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The Station Agent (2003) |
None of the central performers put a foot wrong; Dinklage excels as a burdened man who is angry, tired, and tough. - New Yorker
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| Posted Feb 24, 2023
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The Tailor of Panama (2001) |
Boorman wants to turn the novel’s rueful satire into something sharp and sweaty, but the tone veers all over the place, and the plot feels like reckless fantasy. - New Yorker
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| Posted Feb 07, 2023
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Godland (2022) |
One secret of this extraordinary film, and of its power to exhilarate: the shock of emotional vigor, arising from the continual rub of physical texture and effort. - New Yorker
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| Posted Feb 03, 2023
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Knock at the Cabin (2023) |
For some reason, the movie doesn’t cling and stick as it should. - New Yorker
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| Posted Feb 03, 2023
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You People (2023) |
The one person to emerge with credit from the melee is Murphy, whose character grows ever more rigid with anger. Supporting actors as forceful as Rhea Perlman and Elliott Gould barely get a chance to speak. - New Yorker
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| Posted Feb 02, 2023
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Close (2022) |
What Dhont understands, in short, is how kinetic the rites of passage are—how growing pains are expressed not in words, however therapeutic, but in rushes of activity. - New Yorker
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| Posted Jan 20, 2023
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When You Finish Saving the World (2022) |
Although “When You Finish Saving the World” is... taut with unhappiness, it allows itself to be funny... - New Yorker
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| Posted Jan 20, 2023
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Corsage (2022) |
What Kreutzer aims to impress upon us is the effect of smothering and constraint—not only upon her heroine but also upon the female sex, at every social stratum, under Habsburg rule. - New Yorker
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| Posted Dec 23, 2022
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Babylon (2022) |
It goes nowhere, in a mad rush. - New Yorker
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| Posted Dec 23, 2022
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The Truth About Charlie (2002) |
The film is hilariously indifferent to the conundrum of the plot, but it is sustained, just about, by the buoyancy of its mood. - New Yorker
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| Posted Dec 19, 2022
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Living (2022) |
So compelling are Nighy and Burke that I will watch them in anything... - New Yorker
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| Posted Dec 16, 2022
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Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) |
The moral combat could not be more simplistic, yet all the Cameron trademarks are in play... - New Yorker
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| Posted Dec 16, 2022
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Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical (2022) |
It seems fitting... that the best thing about Warchus’s film should be the energy of the children. - New Yorker
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| Posted Dec 02, 2022
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Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022) |
Though the rounded beauty of Disney’s draftsmanship—remember the cathedral-like cavern of the whale’s interior—can never be erased, the angularity of this latest attempt has a piercing punch of its own. - New Yorker
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| Posted Dec 02, 2022
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The Whale (2022) |
“The Whale” is laughably earnest, larded with melodrama, and designed to shut down the long-standing association of human bulk with high spirits. - New Yorker
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| Posted Dec 02, 2022
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The Magdalene Sisters (2002) |
You come away from the movie not just convinced but cowed. - New Yorker
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| Posted Nov 21, 2022
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The Son (2022) |
The fable of Nicholas and Peter has the brittle feel of a setup. Over and over, as situations are constructed, you can spot the payoff coming... - New Yorker
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| Posted Nov 19, 2022
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White Noise (2022) |
If, like me, you enjoy watching smoothly choreographed sequences of people weaving in and out of rooms, chattering and snacking, or rallying one another to the TV, then the everyday crackle and hum of “White Noise” will be enough. - New Yorker
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| Posted Nov 19, 2022
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Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022) |
It is shiny with mischief, crafted with guile, and performed with eager wit... Why, then, should the whole enterprise feel so curiously thin and cold to the touch? - New Yorker
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| Posted Nov 19, 2022
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Bones and All (2022) |
“Bones and All” proves difficult to watch, but looking away is harder still. - New Yorker
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| Posted Nov 11, 2022
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The Fabelmans (2022) |
“The Fabelmans” may look nice ’n’ easy as it swings along, with a pile of laughs to cushion the ride, and a nifty visual gag in the closing seconds, but take care. Here is a film that is touched with the madness of love. - New Yorker
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| Posted Nov 11, 2022
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Murder in the First (1995) |
Playing the hero of an issues movie (and this one is dripping with issues) is usually a thankless task, but Slater carries this one with ease. - New Yorker
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| Posted Nov 07, 2022
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Notting Hill (1999) |
There are plenty of incidental pleasures; some of the supporting players—especially Tim McInnerny as a lousy cook and Rhys Ifans as a scrofulous Welshman—threaten to steal the picture. - New Yorker
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| Posted Oct 31, 2022
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Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022) |
Scene after scene is calculated to colonize the senses. Yet Iñárritu’s grand designs, even at their most morally fervent, leave you ill at ease. - New Yorker
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| Posted Oct 28, 2022
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Armageddon Time (2022) |
Although much of the action unfolds in a minor key, its impact on Paul is all too major; the adolescent mind, as Gray understands, can be a tool of magnification. - New Yorker
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| Posted Oct 28, 2022
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Aftersun (2022) |
Rumors of something remarkable have circled around “Aftersun” since its première, at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and guess what? The rumors are true. - New Yorker
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| Posted Oct 15, 2022
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The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) |
What animates “The Banshees of Inisherin” and saves it from stiffness is the clout of the performances. - New Yorker
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| Posted Oct 15, 2022
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Amsterdam (2022) |
Only in its milder moments, when Russell is not trying too hard to be madcap, or to badger us with dark political portents, does “Amsterdam” stir and convince. - New Yorker
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| Posted Oct 07, 2022
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Decision to Leave (2022) |
Having been twisted into bewildered bits by the convolutions of Park’s narrative, I was astonished, toward the end, to find it brushing against the tragic. - New Yorker
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| Posted Oct 07, 2022
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Argentina, 1985 (2022) |
Though the dramatic atmosphere could hardly be denser, it’s also pierced by surprising shafts of comedy; there is courage to be had, Mitre reminds us, in preserving a lightness of heart. - New Yorker
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| Posted Oct 03, 2022
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Tár (2022) |
Blanchett responds with perfect pitch. Her eyes are like spies, missing nothing, and her smile is a charmer’s knife. - New Yorker
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| Posted Sep 30, 2022
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Together (2000) |
Within minutes, we know not only where we are but whom we are dealing with; as a director, Moodysson is the perfect host, calmly introducing us, without the trace of a sneer, to a broad selection of trolls and eccentrics. - New Yorker
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| Posted Sep 26, 2022
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Blonde (2022) |
Bedazzling, overlong, and unjust, “Blonde” does a grave disservice to the woman whom it purports to honor. - New Yorker
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| Posted Sep 16, 2022
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Don't Worry Darling (2022) |
The problem is not that this is a cautionary tale but that the caution comes as no surprise. - New Yorker
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| Posted Sep 16, 2022
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Ricki and the Flash (2015) |
Demme is unrivalled at filming bands at play—and at noticing the folks who listen and dance along—and Streep’s part is worthy of her formidable gifts. - New Yorker
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| Posted Aug 29, 2022
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The Good Boss (2021) |
“The Good Boss” pulls more weight than you’d expect, and Bardem is in charge of the pulling. - New Yorker
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| Posted Aug 26, 2022
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Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022) |
The movie, though a frantic treat for the retina, is also oddly inactive. - New Yorker
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| Posted Aug 26, 2022
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Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022) |
In traditional murder mysteries, you don’t much care who croaks, but this was the first occasion on which I found myself actively willing the extinction of every single character, if possible in conspicuous agony. Not one deserves to survive. - New Yorker
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| Posted Aug 05, 2022
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Bullet Train (2022) |
In truth, the only soul to emerge with any credit from “Bullet Train” is Brad Pitt, who drifts through the tumult in a haze of unbothered charm. - New Yorker
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| Posted Aug 05, 2022
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Nope (2022) |
Like “Get Out” and “Us,” it is another resourceful meditation on fear and wonder—errant at times, yet strewn with frights and ever alert to the threat of racial hostility. - New Yorker
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| Posted Jul 22, 2022
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Marx Can Wait (2021) |
Bellocchio deals in the deeply personal yet somehow not in the private; there is a vital robustness to his methods, and the new film, despite facing intractable problems from long ago... feels sociable and even touched with laughter. - New Yorker
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| Posted Jul 21, 2022
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Before Sunrise (1995) |
The charm—the midsummer enchantment—never feels forced; it steals up and wins you. A true romance. - New Yorker
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| Posted Jul 18, 2022
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Elvis (2022) |
Presleyologists will learn nothing here, and purists will find plenty against which to rail. Less knowing viewers, however, may well be sucked in by Luhrmann’s lively telling of the tale. - New Yorker
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| Posted Jun 24, 2022
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Apples (2020) |
What Nikou evokes, with a haunting prescience, is the air of a stunned world. - New Yorker
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| Posted Jun 17, 2022
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Official Competition (2021) |
“Official Competition” is nicely balanced, and the poiser-in-chief is Cruz, whose portrayal of Lola goes way beyond simple wackiness. - New Yorker
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| Posted Jun 17, 2022
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