Greg Cwik
Greg Cwik's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Entertainment Weekly
Slant Magazine
In Review Online
indieWire
Metro
The Week
MUBI
Movies reviews only
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Somewhere in Queens (2022) |
Following in those footsteps, Somewhere in Queens, which Romano co-wrote, directed, and in which he stars, is likewise wholly unremarkable, a true case of writing what you know, playing it safe (or, perhaps, he’s an auteur?). - In Review Online
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| Posted Apr 21, 2023
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Tetris (2023) |
That sense of apathy that plagues the film’s conception is what will ultimately register most with viewers — there’s simply nothing to be excited about here. - In Review Online
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| Posted Apr 03, 2023
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Children of the Corn (2020) |
Wimmer's film isn't particularly memorable, and the Children of the Corn series has yet to summon a single indelible moment in 40 years, but you have to appreciate a horror film that aspires to entertain, and often succeeds. - In Review Online
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| Posted Mar 06, 2023
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Hamilton (2020) |
There is an implicit experience of theater...one that makes Hamilton enjoyable to the degree that it is, and one that does not translate, here, to film. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jun 05, 2021
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Shirley (2020) |
Decker's film presents the psychosexual obsession...but the salacity feels perfunctory rather than passionate. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jun 05, 2021
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Martin Eden (2019) |
Martin Eden works better as a story of self-loathing and self-destruction than it does as a social critique or political statement. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 12, 2019
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Domino (2019) |
Considering the problems that plagued the film, it's a testament to the vivacity of the director's style that Domino isn't a complete disaster. - MUBI
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| Posted Jun 03, 2019
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Welcome to Marwen (2018) |
The whole endeavor feels like a disservice to Mark Hogancamp's story, in no small part because no one in the film feels human, even outside doll form. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Dec 19, 2018
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The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018) |
Fede Álvarez's film suffers from a compulsion to be capital-C cool, and all of its ostensibly stylish shots are untethered to any semblance of a sustained reality. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Nov 06, 2018
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Suspiria (2018) |
Luca Guadagnino's remake of Dario Argento's film is silly and self-serious, a funereal pseudo-realist drama about political upheaval and the violence of systems that's at odds with itself. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Oct 21, 2018
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The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) |
A few sharp one-liners seem to be anchoring a meandering story that, however beautifully filmed, fails to linger in the mind, dissipating quickly like all that gunsmoke. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Oct 08, 2018
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Her Smell (2018) |
A story of filth and fury and, eventually, of placidity and peace, Her Smell is Alex Ross Perry's most chaotic and unmuffled film—until it isn't. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 25, 2018
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At Eternity's Gate (2018) |
This is both a fitting tribute to an artist who rebuffed conventional painting techniques, and a disappointingly self-indulgent exercise, the efforts of a filmmaker whose affinity for abstractions often interfere with the story he's trying to tell. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 24, 2018
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Wildlife (2018) |
Wildlife is at once loquacious and laconic, a film in which simple words hold unspoken and unequivocal power, and the space between banal utterances become chasms. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 07, 2018
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First Reformed (2017) |
After more than 20 features, Paul Schrader has been reborn with First Reformed, an unhurried, furious, deeply agonized look at faith and skepticism that's as reverent as it is blasphemous. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted May 11, 2018
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Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda (2017) |
It too often relies on lazy synchronicity, drawing awkward parallels between Sakamoto and the films he's worked on. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Apr 26, 2018
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Duck Butter (2018) |
The setup of a 24-hour relationship that bypasses the getting-to-know-you phase speaks to the nature of expedited modern dating culture, but despite its attempts at intimacy, Duck Butter is difficult to fall in love with. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Apr 23, 2018
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Marrowbone (2017) |
An incessant deluge of subplots drowns what could have been a sparse and beautiful ghost story. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Apr 10, 2018
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You Were Never Really Here (2017) |
Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here could be considered artsy exploitation, a film whose formal dexterity belies its debts to its chosen, and quite squalid, genre. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Apr 03, 2018
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Golden Exits (2017) |
In Golden Exits, Browning is finally given material worthy of her talents. She evinces a vague unhappiness, the tedium of a life spent going from place to place, infatuation to infatuation. - Reverse Shot
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| Posted Feb 15, 2018
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Double Lover (2017) |
Though Double Lover has a slight oneiric quality from the start, it grows increasingly delirious, the plot threads knotting in convoluted patterns and the overall mood more and more ridiculous. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Feb 14, 2018
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Legend of the Mountain (1979) |
Every pan and snap zoom and dissolve is exact, every whorl of smoke and wind-thrown swath of leaves pulled from a dream and placed methodically before our eyes. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jan 29, 2018
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Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond - Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton (2017) |
The film is about the idea of Andy Kaufman, about how artists channel their influences and keep the dead alive. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Nov 09, 2017
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1945 (2017) |
The fractured rhythm of 1945 and the desolate aesthetic are engrossing, but Ferenc Török's film doesn't linger. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Oct 31, 2017
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Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (2017) |
It's an exercise in joviality, unflinching in its love for Joan Didion, and unwilling to be much more. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Oct 24, 2017
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The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) |
The characters' emotional vacancy feels like another auteurist tic to which Yorgos Lanthimos is dauntlessly committed. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Oct 16, 2017
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Wonder Wheel (2017) |
The tone throughout vacillates wildly from silly comedy to classic Hollywood melodrama, and all of it feels as artificial and unsatisfying as the cotton candy twirling in a vending cart. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Oct 14, 2017
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Sylvio (2017) |
Sylvio's banal depictions of everyday loneliness through the diurnal tedium of an anthropomorphic animal brings to mind BoJack Horseman, but without the caustic navel-gazing and self-destruction or the mordant pop-culture musings. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Oct 10, 2017
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Let the Sunshine In (2017) |
Claire Denis finds the inexorable beauty (and sadness) in that most corrosive and fugacious of feelings. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Oct 04, 2017
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Before We Vanish (2017) |
Before We Vanish's beauty, its poignancy, comes from its relationship to Kiyoshi Kurosawa's other work. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Oct 03, 2017
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Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017) |
Brawl in Cell Block 99's economy of storytelling is as efficiently brutal as the eventual skull-crackings. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Oct 03, 2017
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Creepy (2016) |
[Director Kiyoshi] Kurosawa's approach to horror - quiet, calm, collected scenes of quotidian normality laced by that lingering feeling of something wicked this way coming - feels refreshingly out of touch. - The Week
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| Posted Aug 28, 2017
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The Neon Demon (2016) |
With The Neon Demon, [director Nicolas Winding Refn] vivisects the idea of surface-level pleasure by creating a frightening world of surfaces gleaming with pleasure. - The Week
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| Posted Aug 28, 2017
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De Palma (2015) |
No one kills people with the bravura relish of De Palma. He is the Michelangelo of Murder, a man who crafts decadent, deviant works of art using viscera and celluloid in lieu of paint. - The Week
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| Posted Aug 28, 2017
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Hacksaw Ridge (2016) |
This ethical and philosophical quandary, of violence begetting enlightenment, is the soul of Gibson's artistry. - The Week
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| Posted Aug 28, 2017
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Evolution (2015) |
Evolution is a serene film, one that exists in a state of twilight sedation, but beneath the surface something stirs, like the percolating uncertainty of a boy stricken with fever and confined to his bed. - Reverse Shot
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| Posted Dec 01, 2016
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Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life (2016) |
There aren't many memorable visual gags or lines of dialogue, but at least Middle School plays it safe and doesn't go out of its way to be relentlessly irritating. - Metro
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| Posted Oct 07, 2016
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The Secret Life of Pets (2016) |
The character designs are decent and the swirling water and looming city skyline are gorgeous, but something about Pets feels overly familiar. - Metro
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| Posted Aug 30, 2016
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Morgan (2016) |
Pseudo-science thriller Morgan manages the impressive feat of being simultaneously moronic yet utterly indistinct. - Metro
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| Posted Aug 30, 2016
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An Open Secret (2014) |
For any filmmaker to take on wealthy and powerful Hollywood marquee names represents a tough proposition, but Berg tackles the topic with a courageous stance that's infectious. - indieWire
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| Posted Jun 01, 2015
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Aloha (2015) |
Equally hobbled by an amateurish script and vaguely defined characters, the movie's long list of mediocrities have an anonymous quality, as though the director has been completely reborn as a hack. - indieWire
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| Posted May 28, 2015
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