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Owen Gleiberman
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Wonka (2023) |
“Wonka” makes you feel good, but it never makes you levitate. - Variety
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| Posted Dec 04, 2023
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Candy Cane Lane (2023) |
“Candy Cane Lane” shows you that the Christmas movie as we’ve known it may be all used up, and that it has now entered its anything-goes surrealist phrase. ‘Tis the season to be batty. - Variety
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| Posted Dec 04, 2023
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Family Switch (2023) |
“Family Switch” has bits and pieces of amusement, but mostly you want to swap it for a better movie. - Variety
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| Posted Dec 02, 2023
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Genie (2023) |
[McCarthy is] the quipster caffeine in “Genie,” but over the years she has perked up too many second-rate, throwaway comedies, and this, I’m afraid, is one more of them. - Variety
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| Posted Nov 22, 2023
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Dashing Through the Snow (2023) |
In its way, the movie takes you back: to that Christmas present you still remember, the one that touched a chord in you and meant everything. - Variety
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| Posted Nov 20, 2023
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Wish (2023) |
The strategy behind “Wish” seems to be: If we do an homage to enchantment, the audience will be enchanted. True magic, however, can’t be recycled. - Variety
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| Posted Nov 17, 2023
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Thanksgiving (2023) |
“Thanksgiving” follows the rules of the slasher genre, but it’s got a more charged and entertainingly hyperbolic atmosphere than these movies used to have. - Variety
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| Posted Nov 15, 2023
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Concrete Utopia (2023) |
It’s a fractious, blood-soaked drama about the will to survive that feels like “Earthquake” crossed with “Lord of the Flies.” What’s gripping is that you watch it and think, “If I were in this movie, what would I do?” - Variety
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| Posted Nov 12, 2023
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The Stones and Brian Jones (2023) |
What struck me, by the end, is how powerfully sad his story was. - Variety
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| Posted Nov 10, 2023
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The Marvels (2023) |
There’s a place in the MCU for wackjob silliness. But in “The Marvels,” the bits of absurd comedy tend to feel strained, because they clash with the movie’s mostly utilitarian tone. - Variety
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| Posted Nov 08, 2023
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After Death (2023) |
When faith feels compelled to sell itself by pretending it’s something else, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s propaganda. - Variety
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| Posted Nov 01, 2023
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The Origin of Evil (2022) |
Based on “The Origin of Evil,” I’d call Sébastien Marnier a filmmaker to watch. - Variety
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| Posted Oct 28, 2023
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Another Body (2023) |
A groundbreaking, creepy, fascinating, and important documentary about a phenomenon that's only going to grow in significance: the deepfaking of pornography. - Variety
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| Posted Oct 25, 2023
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Soul Mates (2023) |
As directed by Mark Gantt, “Soul Mates” is watchable semi-extreme trash. It’s not as good as the best “Saw” films, but it’s better than the worst of them. - Variety
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| Posted Oct 19, 2023
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Fast Charlie (2023) |
“Fast Charlie” is a modest genre movie, and that’s what’s good about it. - Variety
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| Posted Oct 14, 2023
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Elis & Tom: It Had to Be You (2022) |
The album is great. Jobim and Regina are great. And the archival footage in “Elis & Tom” offers a handful of invaluable behind-the-scenes, inside-the-recording-studio moments. Yet given all that, it’s amazing how little the movie adds up to. - Variety
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| Posted Oct 13, 2023
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The Exorcist: Believer (2023) |
The devil may take many forms, but perhaps we can all agree that he should never be a rerun. - Variety
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| Posted Oct 04, 2023
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Foe (2023) |
The trouble with the movie is that once you’re confronted with the surprise, and you think back over what you’ve been watching, it makes even less sense. - Variety
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| Posted Oct 01, 2023
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Saw X (2023) |
There’s more talking and less torturing; I personally approve of that ratio, though I’m not sure it will pay off at the box office. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 28, 2023
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Reptile (2023) |
“Reptile” tugs you along with a competent and accessible intrigue. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 27, 2023
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Together 99 (2023) |
What’s strange about “Together 99” is that it looks like a Lukas Moodysson film, it moves like a Lukas Moodysson film, but it’s blanketed with a sodden forlorn Swedish bourgeois cynicism that makes you think Moodysson needs to get out more. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 25, 2023
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Expend4bles (2023) |
This may be the first “Expendables” movie that doesn’t feel linked to the old Cannon Films spirit of trash taken to the extreme. This is true 21st-century trash: a movie in which the action itself is expendable. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 21, 2023
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Poolman (2023) |
Not only the worst film I saw during the fall festival season but would likely be one of the worst films in any year it came out. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 21, 2023
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Sly (2023) |
Talking into the camera, Stallone tells great stories, and he makes his own journey irresistible. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 17, 2023
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Radical Wolfe (2023) |
“Radical Wolfe” is only 76 minutes long, but as directed by Richard Dewey, it’s a highly entertaining movie that manages to pack in more or less every important thing you’d want to know about Tom Wolfe. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 15, 2023
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In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon (2023) |
he film is mostly marvelous: a documentary that every Paul Simon fan on earth should want to see and experience. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 14, 2023
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Knox Goes Away (2023) |
The script, by Gregory Poirier, is tautly clever and original, and Keaton directs it with a cunning and skill that are quietly hypnotic. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 12, 2023
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His Three Daughters (2023) |
Jacobs has taken the leap I always wanted him to make and become a filmmaker of effortless and moving assurance. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 11, 2023
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Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero (2023) |
He comes on as exactly who he is: the latest star to remake the pop universe, and by the time the film is over it’s hard to imagine the universe without him. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 11, 2023
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Dumb Money (2023) |
The ultimate lesson of the “GameStop” saga, as presented in “Dumb Money,” is that things will always look flush at the top of the pyramid. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 09, 2023
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The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (2023) |
“The Caine Mutiny,” for all the tinkering, remains a warhorse of a play. And that’s both a good and a limited thing. The way Friedkin has directed it, it certainly plays. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 06, 2023
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Hit Man (2023) |
“Hit Man” is studded with delicious moments, but as amusing as the movie is it has a plot that sprawls forward in a rather ungainly fashion, and it goes on for too long. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 05, 2023
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Coup de Chance (2023) |
As a culture, I wouldn’t be too surprised if we found ourselves debating whether the time has come to give Woody Allen, as a filmmaker, another coup de chance. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 04, 2023
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Priscilla (2023) |
The film ushers us right into Graceland (you really feel like you’re there), showing us what happened, just as it happened, without sweetener or frills. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 04, 2023
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The Killer (2023) |
It’s not that he’s anything less than great at it, but [Fincher] may think there’s more shading, more revelation in how he has staged “The Killer” than there actually is. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 03, 2023
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The Palace (2023) |
I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard a giant theater this deadly silent for a movie that’s working this strenuously to amuse you. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 02, 2023
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Maestro (2023) |
A stunning portrait of the artist as a charismatic narcissist in thrall to a marriage he believes in yet can’t completely live up to. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 02, 2023
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Food, Inc. 2 (2023) |
“Food, Inc. 2” has some vital if very familiar things to say about the crisis state of the American food system, but it’s a far less sure-footed and authoritative documentary than “Food, Inc.” was. - Variety
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| Posted Sep 02, 2023
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Ferrari (2023) |
Ferrari really is like a ’70s movie. It has that intensity of grip, that layered human fascination, that cathartic honesty about what life is really about. - Variety
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| Posted Aug 31, 2023
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Thank You Very Much (2023) |
“Thank You Very Much” is a documentary about Andy Kaufman that does just what you want it to do. - Variety
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| Posted Aug 31, 2023
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Comandante (2023) |
The family-of-man message of “Comandante,” while noble and upstanding, isn’t enough to make it an exciting movie. - Variety
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| Posted Aug 30, 2023
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Retribution (2023) |
The film’s 90 minutes whiz by. - Variety
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| Posted Aug 23, 2023
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Moscow on the Hudson (1984) |
Moscow on the Hudson is a magical little balancing act. - Boston Phoenix
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| Posted Aug 17, 2023
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Blue Beetle (2023) |
The brisk, cheeky, unabashed gizmo-happy triviality of “Blue Beetle,” a superhero origin story from the DC side of the tracks, is enough to make the film feel like a breath of fresh pulp. - Variety
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| Posted Aug 16, 2023
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Heart of Stone (2023) |
What makes “Heart of Stone” such an enervating experience isn’t that it’s incompetent but that nothing in it matters. - Variety
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| Posted Aug 11, 2023
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The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) |
“Dracula,” in its deathly way, is a fairy tale. But “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” is strictly prose, and rather plodding prose at that. - Variety
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| Posted Aug 10, 2023
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Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story (2023) |
It’s made with a spontaneous humanistic grace, and the racing sequences, which dominate the movie because they’re truly the story it’s telling, are dazzlingly directed and edited. - Variety
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| Posted Aug 08, 2023
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Jules (2023) |
Simply put, there isn’t enough going on in “Jules.” It’s a sweet but sodden trifle that’s overly pleased with itself... - Variety
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| Posted Aug 06, 2023
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Meg 2: The Trench (2023) |
If you want to know what a movie would sound like were it written entirely by AI, look no further than “The Meg 2.” - Variety
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| Posted Aug 03, 2023
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They Cloned Tyrone (2023) |
Simply put, “They Cloned Tyrone” has a good set-up, but the film is too sketchy and conceptual to work as a bad-dream thriller. Yet it establishes Jule Taylor as a director of craft and a certain audacious nerve. - Variety
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| Posted Jul 22, 2023
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