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Bill Newcott
Tomatometer-approved critic
Bill Newcott is the award-winning film critic for The Saturday Evening Post, SaturdayEveningPost.com and MoviesForTheRestOfUs.com and producer/host of the Saturday Evening Post's "Movies For The Rest Of Us" YouTube series. He is the creator of AARP's Movies For Grownups franchise, where he reviewed films for 16 years. His most memorable movie moment was co-hosting an evening of films with Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies.
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Dumb Money (2023) |
Accomplishes its Money-For-Dummies-Like-Me mission admirably. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Sep 26, 2023
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Golda (2023) |
Mirren not only overcomes whatever limitations a heavily made-up face may impose — she transcends them. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Aug 25, 2023
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Between Two Worlds (2021) |
It all works primarily because of Binoche, who lays down her superstar glam to meet her costars on their own level, playing her scenes with them, rather than around them, yielding the film’s focus to become, like her character, primarily an observer.
- The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Aug 17, 2023
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Reinventing Elvis: The '68 Comeback (2023) |
A warm musical wormhole, capturing a moment when a legend was rediscovering his own genius and sharing it with a world that had nearly forgotten him. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Aug 10, 2023
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Jules (2023) |
Funny when it wants to be, darksome in all the right places, "Jules" answers the question, “Is there life out there?” with another question: “Why are you looking out there?” - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Aug 04, 2023
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Oppenheimer (2023) |
The easy part for Christopher Nolan was making Oppenheimer a big-screen behemoth...trickier was embedding within that blockbuster a film of almost excruciating intimacy; a psychodrama that probes the soul of the 20th century’s most unknowable man. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Jul 31, 2023
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The Beanie Bubble (2023) |
While the narrative structure formulated by a first-time feature-making team at times seems as squishy as Lucky the Ladybug (currently $200 on eBay), a fine cast creates a gallery of fully realized and often compelling characters. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Jul 21, 2023
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The Miracle Club (2023) |
If The Miracle Club...doesn’t warm the cockles of your heart, then I’m sorry, there is no hope for you and you should probably just consign yourself to watching WWE cage matches for the rest of your life. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Jul 15, 2023
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The Lesson (2023) |
A film noir in broad daylight..Moody and sad, The Lesson employs a first-rate cast to explore the dynamics of a family in a death spiral, and the infinitely selfish patriarch at the controls, grimly piloting everyone nose-first into the ground. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Jul 07, 2023
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Maggie Moore(s) (2023) |
A thriller/comedy that sincerely longs to breathe the rarified air of a Coen Brothers classic but sadly lets down not only its audience, but also its valiantly committed cast. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Jun 16, 2023
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It's Quieter in the Twilight (2022) |
Like doctors tending to patients on life support, the Voyager team is watching their patients’ vital organs fail. One morning, they know, they will come to work, transmit a digital “Good morning” across the Solar System — and get only silence in return.
- The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Jun 02, 2023
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Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (2023) |
For every sobering moment in this sometimes difficult but ultimately life-affirming documentary, Fox turns hopelessness on its head, wringing joy from every fleeting victory; laughing uproariously with the love of his life..and grown kids who adore him. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted May 28, 2023
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Sanctuary (2022) |
It’s all exhausting fun, tapping into the cerebral circuits of brain teasers like Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth and David Slade’s Hard Candy. - Movies For The Rest Of Us
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| Posted May 19, 2023
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BlackBerry (2023) |
A wildly entertaining account of, as one character describes it, “The smart phone everyone had before they had an iPhone.” - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted May 19, 2023
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Carmen (2022) |
Those of us who know and love Bizet’s Carmen will search in vain for virtually any parallels, other than there is a boy and a girl, and someone dies at the fadeout. (As Bugs Bunny wisely said, “Well, what did you expect in an opera? A happy ending?”) - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted May 04, 2023
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Peter Pan & Wendy (2023) |
Lowery's Peter Pan becomes a meditation on the universal tension between the recklessness of youth and the caution of age; a young person’s wild resentfulness of authority and an elder’s crotchety adherence to norms. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Apr 28, 2023
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American River (2021) |
Immeasurably more useful than a seething environmental screed...an affectionate appreciation of what remains, and a blueprint for ways in which countless other American rivers may write their own happy endings. - Movies For The Rest Of Us
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| Posted Apr 23, 2023
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Somewhere in Queens (2022) |
Not simply a feel-good comedy about one quirky family’s reaction to some ripples in their accustomed dynamic. As he so slyly did during his decade on TV, Romano draws for us a scrawled, jumbled blueprint of the entire family construct. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Apr 20, 2023
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Nefarious (2023) |
Nefarious may not be great filmmaking, but it is confident filmmaking, and sometimes that can get you exactly where you want to go. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Apr 13, 2023
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How to Live Forever (2009) |
A wonderfully funny, thoughtful exploration of what it means to get older, the extremes to which people go to hold off the effects of aging … and the vexing question: How old is old enough? - AARP Movies for Grownups
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| Posted Apr 01, 2023
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Drive Angry (2011) |
Nicolas Cage’s latest attempt at onscreen and/or career self-immolation, fills a particularly specialized film niche: The movie that is inappropriate for all ages. - AARP Movies for Grownups
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| Posted Apr 01, 2023
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Cowboys & Aliens (2011) |
If Sam Peckinpah had made Close Encounters of the Third Kind...(or)...if Steven Spielberg ...had directed The Wild Bunch, I could imagine it turning out a lot like this. - AARP Movies for Grownups
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| Posted Apr 01, 2023
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The A-Team (2010) |
After casting did its job, the project seems to have been turned over to a classroom of fifth-grade boys—although I’d like to think the kids would do a better job of...trying to close up...plot holes....gaping enough to drive a flaming tank through. - AARP Movies for Grownups
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| Posted Apr 01, 2023
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The King's Speech (2010) |
Reminds us of a time — not long ago at all — when substance counted for something, and admiration, even among those born to privilege, had to be earned. - AARP Movies for Grownups
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| Posted Apr 01, 2023
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Safety Last (1923) |
A distinctively modern comedy in 1923; 100 years on it remains so. More than ever, we’re all hanging from that clock, trying not to panic as a disinterested, preoccupied world scurries below us, indifferent to our passions and pain.
- The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Apr 01, 2023
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Tetris (2023) |
An imaginative and often charming comedy/drama bristling with characters shady and sweet, pallid and powerful, all of whom find themselves stripped to their core identities because of a deceptively simple, infuriatingly addictive video game. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Mar 31, 2023
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The Lost King (2022) |
In its own way compelling; simmering at a comfortable slow burn thanks to an endearing cast and a whimsical script.
- The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Mar 24, 2023
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Moving On (2022) |
Most of all, this is the Jane and Lily show. Have any two stars since Bob and Bing ever had so much fun together? - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) |
EEAAO is that insufferable child whose parents trot her out in tap shoes, then watch to make sure you register adequate amazement at her Buffalo turns and Bombershays. You appreciate the kid’s skill and preparation — but gawd, how you wish it were over. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Mar 11, 2023
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iMordecai (2022) |
I’ll spare you the litany of the many truly awful films wrought under similar circumstances, but Samel — who says he studied filmmaking by watching online Master Classes — has birthed a lovingly crafted, sweetly nuanced tale of familial love. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Mar 02, 2023
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Linoleum (2022) |
A strikingly original work; an outrageous meditation on the meaning of lives that, on the face of it, don’t seem to have much meaning at all. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Feb 23, 2023
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Maybe I Do (2023) |
A movie that’s more Aaron Sorkin than Nora Ephron. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Jan 28, 2023
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The Son (2022) |
When your profoundly depressed son comes to you and says, 'Hey, I noticed that gun you’re hiding in the laundry room,' you’d think even the most numb-skulled parent on the planet would think, 'Hmm. Maybe I should move that thing.' - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Jan 21, 2023
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A Man Called Otto (2022) |
Touches on the same weighty themes as 'Ove' — isolation, suicide, and mortality among them — but from the start, director Marc Forster...pulls back the drapes to brighten what in the original version was a decidedly murky room. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Jan 21, 2023
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Women Talking (2022) |
Were there an Oscar category for Truth in Advertising, this year’s award would most certainly go to Women Talking, a film that...somehow creates as compelling a cinematic experience as you’ll have this year. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Jan 16, 2023
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Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022) |
Utterly without subtext, completely uninterested in raising anyone’s consciousness about anything, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is refreshingly focused — in its own, lazy laser sort of way — simply on being fun and frolicsome. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Dec 16, 2022
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The Whale (2022) |
The Whale...offers few moments of hope and no truly happy resolutions (but) you stick with this guy through thick and thicker, simultaneously repulsed and intrigued thanks to a fierce performance of a lifetime by Brendan Fraser. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Dec 08, 2022
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Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022) |
It’s taken 140 years and about 20 screen incarnations, but del Toro has finally gotten Pinocchio’s secret sauce just right. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Dec 02, 2022
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The Fabelmans (2022) |
Without question a bona fide Spielbergian crowd pleaser from its sentimental opening to its fabulously funny blackout. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Nov 17, 2022
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Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) |
The joke played hilariously 12 years ago...in a memorable fake movie trailer. Spinning the gag out to nearly two hours cannot help but yield extended periods when even the most devoted Weird Al fans have to ask themselves: Is this trip necessary? - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Nov 11, 2022
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My Policeman (2022) |
Lushly photographed, epic in scope, populated by six supremely appealing actors — and calibrated to break your heart like a bad boyfriend. You couldn’t ask for much more than that in a weepie. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Nov 04, 2022
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Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues (2022) |
An unprecedented look at a man who endured blind hatred, crushing poverty, and bitter misunderstanding — yet who could, at the end of his life, sing with convincing authority, “What a Wonderful World.” - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Oct 27, 2022
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Moonage Daydream (2022) |
Bowie is the man who sold the world on radical individuality in its rock stars — and even for the casual Bowie observer, Moonage Daydream sells us on appreciating a too-short life, lived to the hilt. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Oct 26, 2022
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The Greatest Beer Run Ever (2022) |
Farrelly seems to have thought Beer Run would float along on its frothy premise, punctuated by the occasional explosion of wartime violence. Instead, the film stumbles tipsily along, from lamp post to lamp post, uncertain of its way home. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Oct 26, 2022
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A Jazzman's Blues (2022) |
There’s no denying the power of Perry’s commitment to the endeavor. His passion for A Jazzman’s Blues is palpable, and it shows in the performances and the care with which his set pieces unfold. - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Sep 30, 2022
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The Good Boss (2021) |
Spot-on as corporate satire, infused with humanity thanks to a funny and committed cast, The Good Boss draws its inspiration from classic workplace comedies like Office Space and The Devil Wears Prada - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Sep 21, 2022
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The Woman King (2022) |
All you need to know about The Woman King: There’s Viola Davis, buff as an Olympian, a blood-stained panga machete slung over her shoulder, and an expression on her face that says, “Who’s next?” - The Saturday Evening Post
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| Posted Sep 21, 2022
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The Hotel (2022) |
Years from now, film historians will...identify the Cinema of COVID: Stories that involve forced isolation, or helplessness in the face of an invisible foe, or solemn re-assessment of life’s priorities...elements (that) vex the characters in this film - Movies For The Rest Of Us
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| Posted Sep 10, 2022
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Living (2022) |
Delicate as the head of a good stout, sentimental as an old Scottish love song...the film at the very least stands as the crowning performance in Bill NIghy’s long and illustrious career. - Movies For The Rest Of Us
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| Posted Sep 10, 2022
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Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues (2022) |
With this tuneful, tender documentary, director Sacha Jenkins convincingly makes the case that there was no more significant music figure in the entire 20th century than Louis Armstrong. - Movies For The Rest Of Us
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| Posted Sep 10, 2022
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