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Joe Morgenstern
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Smoke Signals (1998) |
I can't think of a recent movie that packs more provocative fun into less than ninety minutes. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Nov 08, 2023
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Lone Star (1996) |
Mr. Sayles's sensibility is literary, rather than cinematic. His film looks as flat as the land it depicts, while his directorial technique turns the not-so-neat trick of making professional actors look nonprofessional. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 06, 2023
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Traffic (2000) |
No movie has ever evoked, with such intelligence and dramatic power, the doomed campaigns and moral chaos, the base motives and high ideals of the troops in their far-flung battles. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 06, 2023
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Moulin Rouge (2001) |
By and large, though, the experience is more benumbing than bewitching, more exhausting than exciting. Moulin Rouge puts you through the mill as no musical has done before. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 30, 2023
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Eraser (1996) |
Tree trunk he may be, but Mr. Schwarzenegger has grown new branches with green leaves in this smart action thriller, directed with panache by Charles Russell and written crisply by Tony Puryear and Walon Green. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 19, 2023
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The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) |
You're quickly won over by the movie's subversive wit, swept along by its narrative bravado and its enormous visual energy. This new "Hunchback" is a triumph on its own terms, and on any other terms that might come to mind. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 19, 2023
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In the Mood for Love (2000) |
In the Mood for Love excites us with words not spoken, passions not played out. A mood story more than a love story, it's all about sustaining a state of exquisite melancholy in the face of desire. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 15, 2023
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Magnolia (1999) |
[A] sprawling, enthralling phantasmagoria. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 15, 2023
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Saving Silverman (2001) |
It's basically a cheerful slob job, one of those slapped-together features so often embraced by teenagers with more disposable income than discernible taste. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 15, 2023
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Hannibal (2001) |
All of this opulence, together with extravagant set-pieces that go past grisly to grotesque (and then, in the climax, on to goony), can't compensate for the halting pace of a patchy script. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 15, 2023
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Someone Like You (2001) |
Another dim adaptation of a bright comic novel. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 15, 2023
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The Tailor of Panama (2001) |
The premise still provides some fun, but only Le Carre fans with tin ears and clouded eyes will fail to note the film's sour tone, crude performances and drab look. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 15, 2023
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Amores perros (2000) |
The writer and director combine the gravity, narrative sweep and emotional pull of traditional literature with the dazzling visuals and pungent music of contemporary entertainment. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 15, 2023
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The Matrix (1999) |
I know almost nothing of the intricate techniques that make The Matrix as eye-filling as it is brain-numbing, but I can tell you that... [its visuals] are wondrous to behold. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 13, 2023
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Godzilla (1998) |
Most of the film's failings are banal ones -- a paucity of dramatic invention and of human, or reptilian, emotion; the story is as cold-blooded as its subject. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Feb 01, 2023
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Blow-Up (1966) |
Never before Blow-Up has Michelangelo Antonioni, the cinema’s bravest spelunker of the soul, come up from the depths with such a marvelous story and such gorgeous pictures of the cavernous emptiness inside modern man. - Newsweek
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| Posted Aug 15, 2022
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Coming Apart (1969) |
The material is weak to the point of self-parody, and the performers are left to their own devices, and we're left to wonder just what those devices are. - Newsweek
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| Posted Jul 06, 2022
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Salesman (1969) |
It is a slippery item to define and delimit. Among many other things -- fact, fiction, quasi-fact, quasi-fiction -- Salesman is a reasonably satisfying story about one of the salesmen, Paul Brennan. - Newsweek
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| Posted Jul 06, 2022
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Pierrot le Fou (1965) |
"Pierrot" is less successfully artistically than several Godard films that followed it: Masculine Feminine, La Chinoise and Weekend. It's much more than historically interesting, though, this funny little fugue for soured sweethearts. - Newsweek
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| Posted Jul 06, 2022
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Stolen Kisses (1968) |
By almost almost any standards but those he has already set, François Truffaut has an enormous new success in Stolen Kisses. It's certainly an entertaining movie... By no stretch of any romantic's imagination, though, is Stolen Kisses a great film. - Newsweek
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| Posted Jul 06, 2022
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Pretty Poison (1968) |
This is a lot for a ninety-minute movie to have on its mind, yet Black builds his scenes and directs his actors with great lucidity. - Newsweek
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| Posted Jul 06, 2022
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Warrendale (1967) |
A very nearly perfect documentary. - Newsweek
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| Posted Jul 06, 2022
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Wild in the Streets (1968) |
It is nothing substantial and everything urgent. - Newsweek
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| Posted Jul 06, 2022
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Oliver! (1968) |
The most important thing about [Oliver!] is pleasure, the sheer delight of a movie that can change the lives of kids who see it -- for the better, for the better -- and serve as a public bath for adults to luxuriate in, sing in, get cleansed in. - Newsweek
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| Posted Jul 06, 2022
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Joanna (1968) |
The ending is perfectly charming and in no way to be faulted. It’s only what comes before that confuses and cloys. - Newsweek
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| Posted Jul 06, 2022
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Easy Rider (1969) |
Easy Rider is not consistently well made, but it’s purposefully made, and the purpose pays off. - Newsweek
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| Posted Jun 21, 2022
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Petite Maman (2021) |
Poetry on screen can’t be constructed, or willed into existence. Under the right circumstances, though, it can be allowed. Ms. Sciamma, whose previous feature was the passionate and extravagant Portrait of a Lady on Fire, has created those circumstances. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Apr 22, 2022
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The Duke (2020) |
One of the pleasures -- even privileges -- of watching a film like this is seeing what superb actors are able to do with material that doesn’t aspire to greatness. The story is charming, the performances are exceptional. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Apr 22, 2022
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The Northman (2022) |
A tumultuous, graphically gorgeous entertainment for our time as well as an ineffably somber meditation on our species’ seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of savagery. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Apr 22, 2022
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Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) |
We’re supposed to be witnessing an epic battle between good and evil, but it’s a contest between energy and entropy, and entropy carries the dreary day.
- Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Apr 15, 2022
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Paris, 13th District (2021) |
Paris, 13th District, beautifully photographed in black-and-white by Paul Guilhaume, really is romantic, however skeptical of romance the story may be. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Apr 15, 2022
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Return to Space (2022) |
A portrait, by reflected light from fiery boosters, of one of Earth’s most curious (in every respect) overachievers; and a testament to failing upward -- far, far upward. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Apr 07, 2022
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Ambulance (2022) |
In this action adventure, the apotheosis of [Michael Bay's] career thus far, cheerful idiocy occasionally rises to the level of delectable lunacy. For the most part, though, it’s entertainment as punishing paradox, a high-speed slog. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Apr 07, 2022
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The Contractor (2022) |
[The Contractor] leaves you feeling drained and depressed. How’s that for a marquee blurb? Not a likely candidate, but not a misleading one either. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Apr 01, 2022
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Gagarine (2020) |
It’s a piece of urban history seen through the lens of magic realism, a fragile but beguiling fantasy, tethered now and then to gritty reality, about a do-gooder doing the best he can against daunting odds. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Apr 01, 2022
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Turning Red (2022) |
If the perfect is the enemy of the good, it’s banished joyously in Turning Red. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Mar 11, 2022
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Great Freedom (2021) |
Great Freedom is a brooding work of literal and figurative darkness. Its deepest concerns begin with homophobia, of course, but include our need for human contact, kindness, even domesticity in unexpected forms. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Mar 10, 2022
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After Yang (2021) |
In a tale that touches on such a diversity of subjects -- loneliness, mortality, adoption, family ties, the realm of the senses, artificial intelligence -- it’s the ineffable things that count. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Mar 04, 2022
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The Batman (2022) |
[The Batman] is very long, relentlessly intense, murmured more often than spoken, and photographed, by Greig Fraser, with a glowering gorgeousness that must be seen to be felt. It’s also enthralling and tailored to our time. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Mar 04, 2022
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Cyrano (2021) |
The casting is perfect in concept, and occasionally fulfills its promise, but in a notably imperfect film that’s afflicted by a benumbing score and dreary songs. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Feb 25, 2022
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Lingui, The Sacred Bonds (2021) |
Another part is the state of their own connection -- frayed by harsh circumstance and in urgent need of repair. That repair work constitutes the heart of this beautiful film. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Feb 19, 2022
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Ted K (2021) |
A stunning performance by Sharlto Copley... finds emotional mercury in Kaczynski’s boiling cauldron of rage. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Feb 18, 2022
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Uncharted (2022) |
If less is more, “Uncharted” must be a masterpiece. It’s bloodless, heartless, joyless, sexless and, with one exception, charmless. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Feb 18, 2022
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Death on the Nile (2022) |
[Death on the Nile] has pizazz and period style in the same way today’s big-brand toothpastes have flavor -- artificial ingredients give them a taste that’s discernible, but too generic to name. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Feb 11, 2022
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The Sky is Everywhere (2022) |
[The Sky is Everywhere] embraces excess as an expression of the heroine’s mercurial spirit. Sometimes the results are excessively excessive, blithely blissed-out or simply clichéd. Mostly, though, they’re funny, affecting and endearing. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Feb 11, 2022
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Blacklight (2022) |
One could even argue that it’s not a movie at all, only a rusted-out recycling bin of ill-fitting themes, notions, poses, conventions, affectations, tropes, tropelets and inert snippets of dialogue from other movies. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Feb 11, 2022
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The Worst Person in the World (2021) |
Ms. Reinsve is magnificent in the role, her radiant face a registry of unsettled feelings. It’s a great performance by any measure, and finds its complement in Anders Danielsen Lie’s beautifully nuanced portrayal of Aksel. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Feb 04, 2022
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Moonfall (2022) |
The film is less like a full-fledged story than a series of notifications you might get on your phone, most of them couched in language that could have been generated by a buggy AI program. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Feb 04, 2022
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Beloved (1998) |
What's right in Beloved is powerfully right: its portrait of a tortured mother seeking forgiveness, its shocking depiction of slavery as a wrecker of bodies and a crusher of souls. What's wrong in the film, though, is dreadfully wrong. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Feb 02, 2022
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Compartment No. 6 (2021) |
It's an improbably beautiful film about strangers on a train coming to terms with each other as they make peace with their troubled selves. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jan 28, 2022
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