Rotten Tomatoes
Cancel Movies Tv shows RT App News Showtimes
Critics list

Sam C. Mac

Sam C. Mac's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at Tomatometer-approved publication(s).

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Ick (2024) 69% EDIT “Nowhere is Ick more galling than in its smug, equivocating politics. Kahn’s both-sides-are-bad stance reeks of privileged detachment, the kind that reduces actual ideological stakes to Internet cosplay” – In Review Online Aug 12, 2025 Full Review Youth (Spring) (2023) 86% 2.5/4 EDIT “Wang Bing doesn’t muster the formal strategies or the narratological scope that once allowed him (and us) to imagine broader implications for China’s future.” – Slant Magazine Sep 13, 2023 Full Review Passages (2023) 94% EDIT “Sachs’ latest presents damning evidence of a further decline in the overall distinctiveness of this once-exciting auteur’s aesthetic.” – In Review Online Feb 4, 2023 Full Review The Wandering Earth II (2023) 83% EDIT “Even at its best, though, one still has to contend with an avalanche of bad English-language dialogue... and the non-sentient, CCP-engineered biological lifeform that is 48-year-old actor Wu Jing.” – In Review Online Jan 28, 2023 Full Review The Old Town Girls (2020) 83% 2/4 EDIT “The Old Town Girls never seems to have a strong enough sense of the kind of film it wants to be to pull together its more interesting elements into a coherent whole.” – Slant Magazine Dec 14, 2022 Full Review Septet : The Story of Hong Kong (2021) EDIT “[The directors'] contributions, taken together, don’t so much render a historical narrative of Hong Kong as they do a very particular cinematographic image of it, one heavily reliant on familiarity with their oeuvres.” – In Review Online Nov 17, 2022 Full Review Eternal Spring (2022) 79% EDIT “For a film with such a forceful and felt political message, Eternal Spring could have gone into much more depth about the politics surrounding the persecution of Falun Gong.” – In Review Online Nov 1, 2022 Full Review Return to Dust (2022) 96% EDIT “Return to Dust is a visually lush film, full of beautifully composed frames and golden-hour lighting, but it also doesn’t shy away from depicting the harsh and difficult work undertaken by its central couple” – In Review Online Sep 21, 2022 Full Review The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) 96% EDIT “The Banshees of Inisherin [is] film that’s attentive to the range of ways that individuals cope with the nuances of life as part of a community, and affords McDonagh’s latest the shades of introspection that most of his other films can’t quite match.” – In Review Online Sep 21, 2022 Full Review All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022) 95% EDIT “This is a very ambitious film. Unfortunately, only portions of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed play to Poitras’s particular strengths.” – In Review Online Sep 19, 2022 Full Review The Whale (2022) 64% EDIT “The Whale [doesn't] fully commit to its miserabilism – instead, that gives way to a pretty banal denouement of tearful redemption that should earn the film undue awards consideration.” – In Review Online Sep 16, 2022 Full Review Sick (2022) 86% EDIT “Hyams unabashedly treats the action in Sick not unlike he does in his Universal Soldier films ... He does overly rely on his shaky cam and close-ups ... but the way he dynamically moves the action through the space ... consistently inventive. ” – In Review Online Sep 15, 2022 Full Review Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022) 91% EDIT “Rian Johnson’s latest stab at Wes Anderson-does-Clue has a lesser cast, a more pandering script, and a wholly phony “Eat the Rich” political angle.” – In Review Online Sep 15, 2022 Full Review The Hotel (2022) EDIT “The clear weak point here is how Wang renders characters of the younger generation specifically ... When Wang sticks to the storylines here that involve the older characters, his writing is markedly better.” – In Review Online Sep 13, 2022 Full Review The Fabelmans (2022) 92% EDIT “In The Fabelmans, there’s a catharsis in seeing Spielberg’s attempt at bringing order to his memories and relationships with family and then ultimately allowing some acceptance of the things that he can’t resolve on screen. ” – In Review Online Sep 13, 2022 Full Review No Bears (2022) 99% 2.5/4 EDIT “No Bears generally spends less time finding aesthetic articulations of its themes than it does building out an increasingly convoluted plot to support them.” – Slant Magazine Sep 13, 2022 Full Review The Exiles (2022) 86% EDIT “The Exiles is much more than just a film ... it's an indictment of the systemic geopolitical forces that have long enabled China to rewrite its own past.” – In Review Online Feb 2, 2022 Full Review Being the Ricardos (2021) 68% EDIT “[Being the Ricardos is] an appropriately scaled tribute to Lucille Ball's pragmatic, shrewd, and consummate professionalism.” – In Review Online Dec 9, 2021 Full Review Try Harder! (2021) 97% EDIT “Try Harder! registers as less a probing reflection of its sociopolitical environment than a carefully groomed product of its filmic context.” – In Review Online Nov 19, 2021 Full Review Ripples of Life (2021) EDIT “[Ripples of Life is] a vital piece of social commentary and a formidably executed feat of high-concept filmmaking.” – In Review Online Jul 20, 2021 Full Review The Boy From Medellín (2020) 75% EDIT “The Boy from Medellín's early commitment to emotional and psychological honesty is ultimately subsumed by the doc's refusal to engage on any political level.” – In Review Online Jun 6, 2021 Full Review Cliff Walkers (2021) 80% EDIT “Cliff Walkers is a visually slick and violent spy flick that avoids propaganda and imbues its proceedings with considerable emotional and existential weight.” – In Review Online Jun 6, 2021 Full Review Black Medusa (2021) 75% EDIT “The Tunisian cityscape is often eye-catching, [but] what audience wants to come to a serial killer movie to admire the scenery?” – In Review Online Jun 6, 2021 Full Review The Best Is Yet To Come (2020) 81% EDIT “Given a more streamlined screenplay ... Wong and Yu probably could have laid-out Spotlight and the plurality of similar films that have cropped up in its wake.” – In Review Online Jun 5, 2021 Full Review Better Days (2019) 97% EDIT “The cratering emotional impact of the film, though, is owed to Tsang's knife's-edge balance of broad melodrama and acute social realism.” – In Review Online Jun 5, 2021 Full Review
No Reviews Yet
Load More