Luke Gorham
Tomatometer-approved critic
Luke Gorham is a film and music critic and the co-founder/editor-in-chief of In Review Online. He also co-hosts the film podcast Summer Blockbuster!?!, believes Twilight is one of the most rewarding comedies of all time, and has a 23-pound cat named Ronald McDonald. @inro
Movies reviews only
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Parachute (2023) |
Snow deserves much of the credit for the film’s successes as well. As a director, she doesn’t bring much formal swagger to the table... but she does imbue the proceedings with a level of specificity that enriches the material. - In Review Online
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| Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Unicorn Wars (2022) |
If [Vásquez's] work suggests that he doesn’t feel too optimistic about the state of modern existence and its future, we can at least feel better that he’s bringing something worthwhile to cinema’s current era of flattened and soul-dead animated art. - In Review Online
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| Posted Mar 11, 2023
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Seneca - On the Creation of Earthquakes (2023) |
Seneca — On the Creation of Earthquakes is roughly as audience-unfriendly as films come, sometimes to its benefit, but mostly otherwise. - In Review Online
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| Posted Mar 06, 2023
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The Deepest Breath (2023) |
The narrative ultimately proves to be fairly straightforward, but as realized by McGann it’s massaged into a will-s/he-won’t-s/he docu-thriller, with the film’s language adopting a past-tense posture with both of the primary operatives’ storylines. - In Review Online
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls (2023) |
Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls is a textbook example of the kind of short-form Internet meme-art that has no business attempting the translation to feature-length film. - In Review Online
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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Of an Age (2022) |
Stolevski is smart to cut his romance with a necessary thorniness, understanding how the inherent inequity of connection and emotional experience can both shape and damage us, and the ways a life can directly flower from such formative moments. - In Review Online
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| Posted Feb 17, 2023
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Wildcat (2022) |
Wildcat is a wondrous respite from such trite and calculated offerings; it even has the confidence and conceptual restraint to resist plaguing its frames with unnecessary aestheticizing or arbitrary images of Amazonian grandeur - In Review Online
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| Posted Jan 16, 2023
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Smile (2022) |
Smile’s marketing was considerably more impressive than the final product it was pitching to moviegoers, and one can only assume the critical grace the film has been afforded is more reflective of a dud couple of months at megaplexes. - In Review Online
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| Posted Oct 04, 2022
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Hocus Pocus 2 (2022) |
The oddball magic that the original managed to conjure has been displaced in Hocus Pocus 2 by too much shtick and schmaltz, and regardless of your predisposition to the material, the spell it seeks to cast is unlikely to linger for long in anyone’s mind. - In Review Online
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| Posted Sep 30, 2022
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On the Come Up (2022) |
There’s occasionally an incisive bit of commentary to light upon ... But the presentation of hip hop culture is too counterfeit and the path to an inevitable feel-good destination too uncomplicated for Lathan’s film to muster much genuine weight. - In Review Online
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| Posted Sep 21, 2022
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Please Baby Please (2022) |
At the core of the film’s singular makeup is a profound sense of the familiar, but in taking pains to defamiliarize these recognizable parts before carefully recomposing them, Please Baby Please proves to be like few other films you’re likely to have seen - In Review Online
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| Posted Aug 06, 2022
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Fire of Love (2022) |
Dosa’s film is confident in its imprecision, comfortable riding various visual and philosophical waves to appealingly exploratory rather than conclusionary ends. And so it’s baffling ... that all this is guided by Miranda July’s unfortunate voiceover. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jul 07, 2022
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Lakota Nation vs. the United States (2022) |
Lakota Nation is a clear-eyed and incendiary unpacking of the ouroboros logic of the country’s fundamentally racist, colonizer historiography. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jun 23, 2022
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Rounding (2022) |
The whole thing is just a logic-less grabbag of garbled horror signifiers with no organizing principle or guiding thematic interests, the kind of film an A.I. might produce if fed a sampling of the genre’s past couple decades of content. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jun 20, 2022
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Wes Schlagenhauf Is Dying (2022) |
It’s pretty clear that Wes Schlagenhaug is Dying was intended as a kind of calling card film, but this is one number you’re going to want to lose. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jun 15, 2022
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War Pony (2022) |
What Keough, Gammel, Bob, and Reddy have collaboratively accomplished here is an impressive, expressive film, one that will hopefully open more eyes to and wallets for the remarkable Indigenous art currently making inroads into mainstream moviemaking.
- In Review Online
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| Posted May 28, 2022
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Hello, Bookstore (2022) |
As background noise for book lovers doing some light cleaning, Hello, Bookstore is an agreeable enough oddity, but even that targeted audience would probably find more pleasure in just picking up a book. - In Review Online
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| Posted Apr 27, 2022
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Polar Bear (2022) |
Polar Bear remains an underbaked trifle, one which tips its hat toward a more progressive, substantive future for Disneynature, but whose praise here is largely conditional within the context of an underwhelming franchise. - In Review Online
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| Posted Apr 22, 2022
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You Won't Be Alone (2022) |
You Are Not Alone is thusly the rare tone poem film that feels enlivened rather than enervated by its bold aesthetic choices, a work built from a broad array of influences but adept at establishing and articulating its own singular character. - In Review Online
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| Posted Apr 14, 2022
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Night's End (2022) |
Nights End lands as such a thudding disappointment, a ragbag of various horror movie modes that fail to coalesce in any meaningful way. - In Review Online
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| Posted Mar 30, 2022
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This Much I Know To Be True (2022) |
The strength of the flowing, amorphous This Much I Know to Be True is in suggesting the fallacy of such organizing principles altogether, sidelining any instinct to justify its existence in the way all art, to some degree, must.
- In Review Online
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| Posted Mar 22, 2022
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Slash/Back (2022) |
If the films notable slightness means its doesnt register as a considerably substantial success, its still a diverting, charming girl power romp. - In Review Online
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| Posted Mar 15, 2022
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Turning Red (2022) |
The film continues the Disney umbrellas penchant for globe-trotting and/or diversity-sourcing, though in a similarly token and facile fashion. - In Review Online
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| Posted Mar 07, 2022
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Fresh (2022) |
The overall impression is one diminishing returns, the films few inspired instances and throwback horror sensibilities subsumed within a mess of filler. Fresh certainly isnt rotten, but it doesnt rise much above last nights leftovers either. - In Review Online
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| Posted Mar 07, 2022
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Emily the Criminal (2022) |
[Emily the Criminal] mistakes straightforwardness for sleekness, blandly shaped when not being energized by Plaza's superhuman effort. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jan 31, 2022
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The Tiger Rising (2022) |
[The Tiger Rising is] as unimaginative and perfunctory as adaptations come. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jan 27, 2022
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Swan Song (2021) |
In resisting the boorish pull of high dramatics, Cleary has crafted a surprising delicate film of considerable emotional power despite an economy of narrative pomp. - In Review Online
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| Posted Dec 17, 2021
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The Humans (2021) |
It's a film that firmly plants itself in the twilight zone of family intercourse ... and pulls on threads of insecurity and resentment to the point of snapping. - In Review Online
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| Posted Dec 03, 2021
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Tick, Tick... Boom! (2021) |
The film is so fully predicated on an orgy of Broadway referentialism that it practically begs to be razzed, and will inevitably distance more casual musical fans. - In Review Online
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| Posted Nov 16, 2021
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Night Raiders (2021) |
In suggesting something more thoughtful without delivering any follow-through, Night Raiders only avoids anonymity by being both so notably shallow and dull. - In Review Online
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| Posted Nov 12, 2021
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Fever Dream (2021) |
[A] pulpy sheen keeps Fever Dream appealing in its light grotesquerie, [but] its narrative nonetheless falls into an inertia...never able to reclaim the dizzying whirlwind of its opening sequence. - In Review Online
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| Posted Oct 23, 2021
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Dear Evan Hansen (2021) |
The material doesn't feel flattened so much as pumped full of valium...[Platt] plays Evan with such a pronounced sadsack physicality that it's impossible to do much other than chuckle. - In Review Online
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| Posted Sep 28, 2021
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Cinderella (2021) |
An entirely perfunctory affair with alternately bland renditions and seriously weird arrangements that leak fun from the chosen tracks at every opportunity. - In Review Online
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| Posted Sep 16, 2021
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The Last Thing Mary Saw (2021) |
The Last Thing Mary Saw isn't exactly a bad film per se, but it is exactly what horror cinema doesn't need right now. - In Review Online
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| Posted Aug 25, 2021
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Vivo (2021) |
Vivo starts strong under Lin-Manuel's distinctive brand, but veers into the realm of recycle in its disappointing back half. - In Review Online
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| Posted Aug 06, 2021
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Suprêmes (2021) |
For a while, Estrougo successfully rides this bullet-shot momentum, each scene bursting into the next, barely slowing down to take in the chaos of the come-up. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jul 21, 2021
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Pig (2021) |
Pig isn't just a one-trick pony. It starkly defies expectation throughout, making an entire mode from its many contrasts. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jul 13, 2021
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Cow (2021) |
The sum of Cow is a healthy mix of manipulative and earnest emotionalism ... but the practical offense is negligible in the face of its considerable beauty and tragedy. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jul 09, 2021
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Brighton 4th (2021) |
While the restraint is welcome, the film's destination makes it another mostly nondescript 'contemporary world cinema' effort. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jun 21, 2021
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Fathom (2021) |
In allowing itself to be defined primarily by what it's not, Fathom never establishes what it wants to be. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jun 19, 2021
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Catch the Fair One (2021) |
If there's a lack of tidiness to be found in Catch the Fair One's bleak exeunt, it's at least a mirror of the reality it seeks to depict. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jun 17, 2021
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Poupelle of Chimney Town (2020) |
The Garbage Man isn't the only thing here that stinks. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jun 17, 2021
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Dating & New York (2021) |
[Dating & New York] attempts to disguise its derivative genre core behind a melange of recognizable cinematic influences and occasionally subversive quirks. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jun 17, 2021
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Roh (2019) |
Soul otherwise relies on generic mimicry of the formula and imagery of better horror efforts. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jun 05, 2021
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The Spine of Night (2021) |
Even if things never quite entirely smooth out, [The Spine of Night is] distinguished by its nerdcore unorthodoxy. - In Review Online
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| Posted Mar 24, 2021
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Inbetween Girl (2021) |
Despite some welcome deviations from the teen sheen formula, the film lands somewhere in between commendable and disappointing. - In Review Online
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| Posted Mar 24, 2021
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Petite Maman (2021) |
Across its brief 70 minutes, Petite Maman proves to be both Sciamma's most intimate and epic work yet. - In Review Online
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| Posted Mar 09, 2021
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Chaos Walking (2021) |
There's legitimate visual finesse to appreciate in the film ... but in Chaos Walking, what you hear is what you get, and, frankly, it's not enough. - In Review Online
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| Posted Mar 05, 2021
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Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) |
It's neither much of a step forward or back [for Disney] in terms of overall quality or ambition, but the filmmakers manage to finesse enough small pleasures from the familiar. - In Review Online
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| Posted Mar 01, 2021
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Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) |
In ideological and moral war, familiarity ... is the state's greatest weapon. It's unfortunate, then, that it's also Judas and the Black Messiah's greatest weakness. - In Review Online
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| Posted Feb 11, 2021
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