Eric Henderson
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Targets (1968) |
Far from a period piece, Targets’s contrasting tales capture a still-relevant portrait of America’s uniquely schizophrenic relationship with gun violence. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted May 18, 2023
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Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (2023) |
The sense that they don’t make mass entertainments like this anymore is palpable. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Apr 27, 2023
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Head Over Heels (1979) |
Joan Micklin Silver’s humble PG-rated romantic dramedy is, in its brisk 95 minutes, a more adult entertainment than nearly any studio-backed film you could name from the past decade or so. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Apr 03, 2023
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Imitation of Life (1934) |
The film remains a conscientious depiction of the bitter realities of race in America. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jan 10, 2023
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Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (2022) |
There are only clichés in this rise-and-fall material, with the sole distinctive wrinkle being the weight given to the rise versus the fall. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Dec 21, 2022
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Blow Out (1981) |
It’s the death of the ‘60s and ‘70s that haunts Blow Out and has arguably inflated its reputation among those incapable of recognizing anything good in, say, The Fury. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 09, 2022
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Pink Flamingos (1972) |
Of course, every battle in their filth war is quite obviously filtered through John Waters’s legendarily up-is-down, wrong-is-right sense of humor. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jun 21, 2022
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The Girl Can't Help It (1956) |
Criterion’s set for The Girl Can’t Help It is going to look awfully smart on the shelf next to their forthcoming release of Pink Flamingos. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted May 11, 2022
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Written on the Wind (1956) |
Any time a film scholar tries to steer a Sirk conversation into dry academicism, remind them that, in Written on the Wind, a character rhumbas her father to death. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Mar 08, 2022
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The Boys in the Band (2020) |
This new Boys in the Band is a Matryoshka doll of period piecery, a flashback of a flashback of a flashback. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 26, 2020
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You Don't Nomi (2019) |
Has the time come to ask if the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction? - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jun 10, 2020
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Skyscraper (2018) |
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is the true Tower of Babel, the movie star who with each film gets closer to God and whose films always come tumbling down around him. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jul 12, 2018
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Tag (2018) |
It offers amity, emotional support, awkward tears, the specter of death, and the spectacle of ass-punching slapstick all rolled up in one somehow cohesive collection of all-good spare parts. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jun 14, 2018
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That Summer (2017) |
The makers of this rescued-footage documentary ultimately understand the power of its subjects' personalities. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted May 17, 2018
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Life of the Party (2018) |
Novelty and Melissa McCarthy's comedic chops only carry Life of the Party to midterms, and it soon becomes apparent that it's a star vehicle without any engine. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted May 10, 2018
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Rampage (2018) |
It's a wonder that a video game from the 1980s could efficiently set its premise up in a single cut scene, but a major Hollywood production in 2018 can't seem to get beyond mere exposition in its 107-minute running time. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Apr 11, 2018
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Ready Player One (2018) |
It's a boldly attempted strike against the monolithic corporatization of fan service, and arguably one of the few films that defines dystopia as nothing less than a marketplace of trademarked, cross-promotional intellectual property. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Mar 28, 2018
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Father Figures (2017) |
The film, which finished shooting more than two years ago before spending endless months without a release date, is both meandering and bloated, suggesting the Frankensteinian result of brutal test screenings. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Dec 22, 2017
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Ferdinand (2017) |
Any potential subtext of Munro Leaf's children's book has been bleached out in the marketplace-oriented Ferdinand. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Dec 13, 2017
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The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017) |
Since "humbug" is already spoken for by Ebenezer Scrooge, "opportunistic" would be the most apt word for The Man Who Invented Christmas. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Nov 21, 2017
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Thor: Ragnarok (2017) |
Thor: Ragnarok is the flamboyantly roller-disco entry in an already uncomplicatedly cartoonish side franchise. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Oct 31, 2017
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Marshall (2017) |
Marshall arguably intends for societal 20/20 hindsight to provide the bulk of perspective throughout. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Oct 12, 2017
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Gaga: Five Foot Two (2017) |
Far from seeming like a strategic element created to define Lady Gaga's reinvention, the documentary instead feels like a natural outgrowth of it. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 21, 2017
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It (2017) |
It cashes in on trendy retroism--the remedial, brash distant second cousin to nostalgia--instead of utilizing the perspective of, to borrow from Joni Mitchell, seeing clowns from both sides now. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 07, 2017
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(undefined) |
The film is both the last great gasp of '60s hippie ethos and the first masterpiece of what would become an increasingly technocratic '80s movie-house takeover. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Aug 31, 2017
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Whitney: Can I Be Me (2017) |
It's no surprise that Nick Broomfield finds little use for the moments of unabashed triumphalism in Houston's life, as he's doggedly fixated on the humiliating swan dive. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Aug 18, 2017
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Naked (2017) |
The film besmirches the reasons that Groundhog Day's Möbius-strip construction worked. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Aug 09, 2017
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Detroit (2017) |
Kathryn Bigelow hyper-realistically, almost dispassionately, covers her ensemble's actions in the manner of a somber disaster film. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jul 29, 2017
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Girls Trip (2017) |
Malcolm D. Lee's film at least it goes down easy. Easy like a Sunday-morning hangover. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jul 21, 2017
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Wish Upon (2017) |
The only wish that ends up satisfyingly granted is, in Wish Upon's final and utterly predictable tableau, the audience's. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jul 13, 2017
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Everything, Everything (2017) |
The film's plot crux isn't romantic fatalism, but the year's cutest manifestation of trendy gaslighting. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted May 18, 2017
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Unforgettable (2017) |
The truly depressing thing about a thriller as undercoocked as Unforgettable is its failure to fly on dark fantasy. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Apr 20, 2017
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Going in Style (2017) |
No one in Going in Style seems to really know what the hell they're doing or why. And even though that goes double for the filmmakers, at least no one succumbs to taking any of it seriously. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Apr 06, 2017
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The Boss Baby (2017) |
Every Republican regime gets the ludicrous devious-baby saga it deserves. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Mar 30, 2017
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Life (2017) |
If you ever find yourself in outer space and the only person talking any sense is Ryan Reynolds, locate the nearest escape hatch. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Mar 23, 2017
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Passengers (2016) |
Monogamy, Passengers seems to suggest, is tantamount to existing in a world where nothing else matters outside of the bond you and your partner share. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Dec 21, 2016
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Collateral Beauty (2016) |
David Frankel's film argues that the power of miracles can be manufactured by those who can fund them. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Dec 14, 2016
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Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) |
The film exists resolutely outside of salience and doggedly within the comfort of escapism. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Nov 17, 2016
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Storks (2016) |
Maybe it's not the worst thing in the world that Storks doesn't take many cues from Pixar's tear-jerking playbook. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 22, 2016
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Bridget Jones's Baby (2016) |
The Pinkberry solipsism of this particular franchise all but requires our heroine persist as a lovelorn martyr for her audience's benefit. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 15, 2016
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Sully (2016) |
It's an Eastwood film that very nearly strikes the same unsophisticated but delicate tone of his obligatory end-credits ditty. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 08, 2016
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War Dogs (2016) |
The film is unrepentantly cynical when it comes to the global business of warmongering, but proves unsurprisingly earnest when it comes to the lure of the American dream. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Aug 17, 2016
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Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016) |
There's something to be said for a summer movie that offers up Chris Colfer as an unapologetic misogynist hairdresser. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jul 20, 2016
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Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016) |
Much like with Neighbors 2, Mike and Dave's obvious ace in the hole is its commitment to gender parity. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jul 05, 2016
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Central Intelligence (2016) |
It's a pity that no one else involved in the making of the film had Dwayne Johnson's sly intuition. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jun 15, 2016
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Me Before You (2016) |
It punks its impressionable audience into believing a lie, then punishes them for their foolishness. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jun 02, 2016
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Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) |
The film fails to anchor its CGI or events with emotional heft. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted May 25, 2016
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The Angry Birds Movie (2016) |
The Angry Birds Movie is a lot of things, but none of them true to the app's appeal. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted May 17, 2016
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Keanu (2016) |
Key and Peele aren't mining territory they haven't already explored at length on their Comedy Central sketch show, nor do they do a whole lot to elaborate on it. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Apr 28, 2016
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Barbershop: The Next Cut (2016) |
A pop sonata of stand-up comedy routines layered with, if not vitality, then at least honest energy. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Apr 14, 2016
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