Sean Fennessey
Sean Fennessey's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
The Ringer
Grantland
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Dune (2021) |
In Dune, Villeneuve dreams big and boldly. - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 21, 2021
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Licorice Pizza (2021) |
Licorice Pizza is a showbiz movie about all the reckless, dangerous ghouls who haunted the industry, and also a pie-eyed picture of kids just trying to make something of themselves. - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 21, 2021
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Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021) |
No movies this year took more pleasure in the architecture and engineering of narrative. - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 21, 2021
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The Worst Person in the World (2021) |
This movie knocked me over. Everyone should see it. - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 21, 2021
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The Card Counter (2020) |
I can count on one hand the number of filmmakers who are capable of ripping out the insulation of our daily lives and dragging it into view for everyone to wince at. - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 21, 2021
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Bergman Island (2021) |
Bergman Island is not a movie with thunderous conclusions. But it has something that few examples of autofiction can claim: humility. - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 21, 2021
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The Velvet Underground (2021) |
It adopts the ecstatic visual style of an Andy Warhol picture and the spelunking delight of an academic deep in his thesis to render a story about one of the more iconic, if not chronicled, bands of the 20th century... - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 21, 2021
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Red Rocket (2021) |
...while Baker doesn't judge his characters, even when they're monstrous, he's manifested a unique confrontation for audiences, and perhaps the dreaded discourse, too... - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 21, 2021
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Drive My Car (2021) |
Its mystery propels it forward to a feeling of autonavigation, the sense that life keeps hurtling toward you even if you want to run from it. Better to have seen it without the distractions of a life at home and a second screen in reach. - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 21, 2021
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The Lost Daughter (2021) |
In Maggie Gyllenhaal's often unsettling adaptation of Elena Ferrante's novel, she crafts a portrait of mothers at the end of their wits that is perceptive and relatable and fearless. - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 21, 2021
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C'mon C'mon (2021) |
Shot in gorgeously creamy black and white across L.A., New York, and New Orleans, it's a movie not without scares or drama, but ultimately warm and refreshingly free of guile. - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 21, 2021
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A Quiet Place Part II (2021) |
It's an interesting thread for A Quiet Place to pull on, but also in many ways a necessary one: You can watch the heroes quietly evade hypersensitive aliens only so many times before the "don't make a sound" novelty wears thin. - The Ringer
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| Posted Jun 01, 2021
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28 Days Later (2002) |
The vanished London society that Cillian Murphy wakes up to at the start of this movie is one of the most brilliantly staged horror movie openings ever, and the survivalist battle that closes it caps a powerful story of disease paranoia. - The Ringer
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| Posted Mar 22, 2021
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The Host (2006) |
The Host filled a crucial hole in our horror life: a big, hulking, unstoppable force that we accidentally created and can't control. - The Ringer
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| Posted Mar 22, 2021
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Soul (2020) |
As per the Pixar mandate, there are laughs and plucked heartstrings, but Soul is after something deeper-an unusually curious examination of why we are the way we are... - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 27, 2021
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Nomadland (2020) |
Nomadland, with its nods to Terrence Malick, transcendental masters, and the overwhelming splendor of the natural world, feels like a movie out of time and right on time. - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 27, 2021
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Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020) |
Portraits of youthful confusion and fear. Eliza Hittman, who specializes in an intimate, almost procedural approach to emotional disorientation, made a road movie about a young Pennsylvania woman - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 27, 2021
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Boys State (2020) |
Their casting is remarkable, editing energizing, and conclusions authentically scary. - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 27, 2021
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Palm Springs (2020) |
Watch [Palm Springs] when you're down and need to climb back up - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 27, 2021
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David Byrne's American Utopia (2020) |
Lee captures Byrne and his team of musicians, dancers, and vocalists as they bend, wobble, and declaim collectively. - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 27, 2021
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City Hall (2020) |
Wiseman's patient epic (run time: 272 minutes) of local government shows nearly every nook and cranny of the Boston political machine-including the dullest and most mundane aspects in all of their banality. - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 27, 2021
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Tenet (2020) |
Tenet asks for patience as it winds forward and backward through its narrative accordion structure...savor, even [its] flaws. - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 27, 2021
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Mank (2020) |
It's his most modest yet ambitious work in years-not so much an ode to classic moviemakers as it is a lye burn on its black-and-white majesty, and a political screed to boot. - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 27, 2021
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The Hunt (2020) |
There's a movie about how divided we are out there somewhere, without the fear of reprisal and the bothsidesism that softens The Hunt's brute force, less interested in self-scolding than in making something authentically brazen. - The Ringer
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| Posted Mar 20, 2020
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The Irishman (2019) |
This is a new and perhaps final journey for Scorsese, about not just mortality but the enormity of regret. - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 09, 2019
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Parasite (2019) |
This movie is scary and funny and utterly beguiling. If you haven't seen it, you must. - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 09, 2019
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Marriage Story (2019) |
...there's something more elusive here-the faint feeling of almost that lingers as the credits roll. It's a ... sweetness, not angry or vindictive. - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 09, 2019
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Little Women (2019) |
The film's lushness-in its costumes, camera work, and rambunctious physicality-confirms Gerwig as one of the most exciting filmmakers of her generation. - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 09, 2019
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Knives Out (2019) |
Rian Johnson's formalist homage-deconstruction of Agatha Christie whodunits has a tone unlike anything I've seen lately: wry, zesty, and relentless. - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 09, 2019
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Midsommar (2019) |
But beyond the high-gore kills and self-hating political circumspection, Midsommar is a movie about ignoring what's right in front of you... - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 09, 2019
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Waves (2019) |
Waves is the kind of movie that punches you in the gut, and then slashes your Achilles as you reach for your stomach. Then, as you fall, it catches you in its arms. It is relentless but never exploitative. - The Ringer
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| Posted Sep 03, 2019
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The Descent (2005) |
An all-female cast, a claustrophobic cave setting draped in red light, and an anarchic, vicious fight to the death...need I say more about one of the most physically taxing movies of the century? - The Ringer
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| Posted Aug 16, 2019
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Avengers: Endgame (2019) |
At its outset, Endgame is a dour bit of rockism-a testament to the power of earnest storytelling. - The Ringer
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| Posted Apr 26, 2019
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Magnolia (1999) |
The sprawling, messy, brilliant, exhausting, miraculous Magnolia-Paul Thomas Anderson's third film-is a mosaic of Los Angeles at the turn of the century. - The Ringer
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| Posted Mar 26, 2019
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Eyes Wide Shut (1999) |
Eyes Wide Shut reveals new truths with each viewing. - The Ringer
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| Posted Mar 26, 2019
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South Park: The Movie (1999) |
Bigger, Longer & Uncut looks crude but is magnificently constructed, a true homage to Vincente Minnelli and Robert Wise's finest work. - The Ringer
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| Posted Mar 26, 2019
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The Fly (1986) |
Jeff Goldblum as the titular Brundlefly supplies Cronenberg's insectoid creature with madness, vulnerability, and intelligence. Together, they make a monster masterpiece. - The Ringer
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| Posted Mar 04, 2019
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Videodrome (1983) |
It's hard to overstate how premonitory David Cronenberg's masterpiece turned out to be. - The Ringer
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| Posted Mar 04, 2019
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Funny Games (1997) |
Haneke's films are famously pessimistic, blackhearted affairs that peel back the thin veneer of politesse hiding human monstrosity. This isn't his best movie, but it is his most viscerally frightening. - The Ringer
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| Posted Mar 04, 2019
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Poltergeist (1982) |
A slick, entertaining ghost story and a stomach-turning gore-fest in equal measure, the balance of Spielberg and Hooper's creative impulses blending together. - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 29, 2019
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The Shining (1980) |
It is technically magnificent and eerily tense, like waiting for an ocean of blood to pour from an elevator shaft. The Krzysztof Penderecki score is deeply unnerving. - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 29, 2019
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Cronos (1993) |
Cronos, the crafty debut of a young Mexican filmmaker named Guillermo del Toro, emerged as a warning shot. His tale of vampirism and immortality is half horror, half historical fable-like all the best del Toro work to come. - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 29, 2019
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Switchblade Romance (2003) |
High Tension is all kinds of wrong-narratively, corporeally, politically. But it also knows what it's doing-it's an arterial spray of expression, a celluloid dare to take it to the next level. - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 29, 2019
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Misery (1990) |
There's no evil, no zombies, no cursed MacGuffins, no serial killers-just a deranged lonely person and a self-regarding jerk. Together, they make terror. - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 29, 2019
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Saw (2004) |
Never terribly clever, but always intestinally challenging, this successful and discomfiting collection of films shows art in extremis-a real-time effort to take mainstream entertainment to its most brutal end point. - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 29, 2019
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The Ring (1998) |
Nakata's patient, slithering movie has many imitators, but no equals. - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 29, 2019
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Seven (1995) |
The stormy, sooty, blackened unnamed city in David Fincher's murder mystery feels a little like hell-infested with cretins, sinners, and pretty boys with a death wish-and that sure makes me think Se7en is one of the foremost horror movies of modern times. - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 29, 2019
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Evil Dead 2 (1987) |
Evil Dead II is one of the strangest, funniest movies ever made-a Donald Duck cartoon set in a haunted cabin. - The Ringer
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| Posted Jan 29, 2019
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The 15:17 to Paris (2018) |
...one of the most unwatchable movies from a major studio this decade. - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 17, 2018
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The Mule (2018) |
Eastwood himself is winning in The Mule, smiling a lot more than usual, his trademark scowl registering at a minimum; he's rascally almost. He doesn't transform, but he's different. - The Ringer
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| Posted Dec 17, 2018
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