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Jason McKiernan
Jason McKiernan's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Filmcritic.com
Jason is a film critic and awards pundit writing for AMC Film Critic and Next Projection. He is a member of the Online Film Critics Society.
Favorite Filmmakers: Scorsese, Truffaut, Herzog, Miyazaki, P.T. Anderson
Dayton,Ohio
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Marry Me (2022) |
Perhaps the dated rom-com framework could be massaged into relevance if the film had even a shred of self-awareness, but Marry Me is an absolutely earnest feel-good product, its every moment assembled on an old-school Hollywood conveyor belt. - Film Racket
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| Posted Feb 11, 2022
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Bergman Island (2021) |
Its images are meditative, studying these characters as they drift from moment to moment, emotion to emotion. It's not precisely linear, instead moving with all the purpose and randomness of creative thought. - Film Racket
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| Posted Oct 22, 2021
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Mass (2021) |
These actors submit themselves to the emotional razorblades of this screenplay and bleed for their characters. Plimpton in particular shines. - Film Racket
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| Posted Oct 07, 2021
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Dear Evan Hansen (2021) |
This adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen unintentionally functions as a damning exposé of its source material. - Film Racket
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| Posted Sep 23, 2021
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Language Lessons (2021) |
On its face, it sounds like an experiment, but the film flows as naturally as it possibly can within its purposefully limited framework. - Film Racket
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| Posted Sep 10, 2021
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The Year of the Everlasting Storm (2021) |
As might be expected, the results are divergent in both concept and quality, but the collective reckoning on display is undeniably compelling. - Film Racket
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| Posted Sep 02, 2021
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Ema (2019) |
Its frustrating nature does nothing to diminish its allure, however. In fact, that frustration is what keeps the viewer glued to the screen. - Film Racket
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| Posted Aug 27, 2021
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Behemoth (2021) |
Behemoth is an interminable monstrosity. - Film Racket
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| Posted Aug 27, 2021
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Candyman (2021) |
It's messy, but so is the state of the world. DaCosta captures this intentional mess with efficient style and building suspense, leading to a conclusion that goes out with a flourish of terror -- part defiance, part tragedy. - Film Racket
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| Posted Aug 27, 2021
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Whirlybird (2020) |
Most intriguingly... the film explores the personal stakes of a life dedicated to chasing the news, an endeavor that is both fast-moving and never-ending. - Film Racket
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| Posted Aug 17, 2021
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Pig (2021) |
It's [Cage's] best work in years. - Film Racket
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| Posted Aug 17, 2021
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CODA (2021) |
What CODA lacks in thematic depth it makes up for in good humor and witty spirit. This is a consistently funny film, buoyed by a cast that is uniformly excellent. - Film Racket
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| Posted Aug 13, 2021
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The Suicide Squad (2021) |
The finale presents the clearest picture of what The Suicide Squad could've been for its full running time, if only it didn't get bogged down with, quite frankly, many of the same issues that plagued the original film. - Film Racket
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| Posted Aug 13, 2021
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Nine Days (2020) |
For all its heady conceptualizing, Nine Days is about that wondrous and infuriating fallibility of humanity. - Film Racket
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| Posted Jul 29, 2021
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Ride the Eagle (2021) |
Ride the Eagle is not a bad movie, but one that's so aggressively mediocre that it starts to seem bad after a while. - Film Racket
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| Posted Jul 29, 2021
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Old (2021) |
Its ambition is undeniable, but its overreach is unmistakable. - Film Racket
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| Posted Jul 29, 2021
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Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021) |
In a film so hellbent on promoting its own vault of material, it's futile to propose a title change to Server Jam, but at least that would've been more appropriate. - Film Racket
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| Posted Jul 22, 2021
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Holler (2020) |
Holler thrives in those complicated character-driven moments, the subtle, unmistakable, messy details that truly define these people and the place in which they're stuck but to which they feel obligated to remain. - Film Racket
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| Posted Jun 12, 2021
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What Lies West (2019) |
There are times, frankly, where What Lies West feels like an unpolished short submission at a festival. - Film Racket
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| Posted May 17, 2021
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Four Good Days (2020) |
What should be a very personal story of addiction and recovery becomes nothing more than a generic presentation of unremitting misery. - Film Racket
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| Posted Apr 30, 2021
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The Virtuoso (2021) |
One of those movies so mind-bogglingly misguided that it's difficult to discern whether the talented actors involved willingly grabbed a quick paycheck or if they mistook the material for something worthwhile. - Film Racket
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| Posted Apr 30, 2021
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Wildcat (2021) |
Wildcat feels like it should've been the short film that was made as a basis for a future-state feature that is more thoroughly developed. - Film Racket
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| Posted Apr 22, 2021
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Like a House on Fire (2020) |
A film about how painful and difficult it is to reacclimate to that which most would consider a "normal life." - Film Racket
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| Posted Apr 08, 2021
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Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) |
I look forward to forgetting all about it and then enjoying it again at a drive-in revival. - Film Racket
Read More
| Posted Apr 02, 2021
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French Exit (2020) |
bizarrely magnetic, though afterward you're left wondering what you've just experienced. - Film Racket
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| Posted Apr 02, 2021
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The Yellow Wallpaper (2021) |
inert, overlong, and willfully discordant with its source material - Film Racket
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| Posted Mar 25, 2021
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Nobody (2021) |
its thematic attitude is pretty flat, often failing to capitalize on the oddball verve of the concept - Film Racket
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| Posted Mar 25, 2021
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Somewhere with No Bridges (2021) |
effectively languorous and meditative - Film Racket
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| Posted Mar 08, 2021
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Tom & Jerry (2021) |
This slapdash cinematic lark feels like a holdover from another era, lost in a time capsule of style and perspective. - Film Racket
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| Posted Mar 04, 2021
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Coming 2 America (2021) |
If Coming to America was a sweet and imperfect lark, Coming 2 America is an uncanny heir. - Film Racket
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| Posted Mar 04, 2021
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The Father (2020) |
Hopkins' performance is a brilliant achievement, projecting bombastic self-assurance as, internally, he is drowning in self-doubt. - Film Racket
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| Posted Feb 25, 2021
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Nomadland (2020) |
Zhao's vision ventures beyond naturalism to reach a true synthesis of nature and narrative, achieving a sort of Narrative Verité, if such a term could exist. - Film Racket
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| Posted Feb 19, 2021
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Minari (2020) |
Set in the '80s but perhaps never more relevant than it is today, Minari is as uniquely American a story as you'll ever see. - Film Racket
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| Posted Feb 11, 2021
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PVT Chat (2021) |
A film that strives for cultural profundity but falls prey to the very culture it indicts. - Film Racket
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| Posted Feb 05, 2021
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Malcolm & Marie (2021) |
Written with barbed eloquence, performed with ferocity, and shot in a beautiful 35mm black-and-white. - Film Racket
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| Posted Feb 05, 2021
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Promising Young Woman (2020) |
Cassie is one of the most indelible characters of 2020 and is in many ways the ideal embodiment of the year's emotional torrent. - Film Racket
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| Posted Dec 24, 2020
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1917 (2019) |
The unbroken shot format is intended to open this world up, but ultimately encases it within a rigid proscenium - Film Racket
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| Posted Dec 24, 2019
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A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) |
Mister Rogers is a willful reflector of the human condition, understanding humanity's failings without outwardly embodying them, offering his empathy as our catharsis. - Film Racket
Read More
| Posted Nov 21, 2019
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Knives Out (2019) |
Knives Out is a doozy of a magic trick from Rian Johnson, and it's impossible not to fall for it. - Film Racket
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| Posted Nov 21, 2019
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The Report (2019) |
The Report serves as proof that a film can achieve total moral clarity and still come off as such a sanctimonious screed that you want to check its sources when you leave the screening room. - Film Racket
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| Posted Nov 14, 2019
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Pain and Glory (2019) |
Banderas' performance may be his greatest ever, abandoning the suave that has (rightly or wrongly) defined his screen presence as a man who once had imposing swagger but now only occupies the corporeal shell. - Film Racket
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| Posted Nov 08, 2019
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Black and Blue (2019) |
Black and Blue is a racial polemic that could only be made in this modern world we live in - the kind of high-key potboiler that can jackhammer its way into the conversation in our toxic atmosphere. - Film Racket
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| Posted Oct 24, 2019
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Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019) |
Maleficent is mired in a racial conflict and the threat of genocide - the ideal fall family movie experience. - Film Racket
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| Posted Oct 17, 2019
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Zombieland: Double Tap (2019) |
Nothing can fully recapture the magic of Zombieland, but Double Tap, per its title, succeeds at giving you more of what you thought you never needed, all the way up through the credits, for which you must stay seated. - Film Racket
Read More
| Posted Oct 17, 2019
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Joker (2019) |
Joker is a dread carnival, a relentlessly bleak tome of psychopathic origins that understands neither psychopathy nor origin stories. - Film Racket
Read More
| Posted Oct 11, 2019
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Hustlers (2019) |
a satire of our obsession with the sexual transaction that uses a male gaze industry to tell a female gaze story - Film Racket
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| Posted Sep 12, 2019
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It: Chapter Two (2019) |
It Chapter Two can't decide whether it wants to chase after Stephen King or Steven Spielberg. - Film Racket
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| Posted Sep 12, 2019
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Ready or Not (2019) |
A lack of basic stylistic cohesion is a distraction from which Ready or Not can barely recover, though enough of its giddy ridiculousness breaks through. - Film Racket
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| Posted Aug 22, 2019
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The Kitchen (2019) |
you know something's gone horribly awry when The Kitchen's most interesting moments in retrospect are the pre-film production logos - Film Racket
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| Posted Aug 08, 2019
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Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood (2019) |
not a recreation of classical Hollywood filmmaking but a dissection of the industry's machinery and a portrait of the people who grind through the machinery's gears - Film Racket
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| Posted Jul 25, 2019
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