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C
|
Pamela, a Love Story
(2023)
|
Matt Pais
|
When a person’s career has been defined by surface-level sensationalism, you’d think that the goal here would be clarity.
Posted May 29, 2023
|
|
B-
|
Sharper
(2023)
|
Matt Pais
|
The kind of just-OK movie for which the “rent it” designation was created (when rentals existed and people went to movie theaters and cheeseburgers cost a nickel).
Posted May 22, 2023
|
|
B-
|
BlackBerry
(2023)
|
Matt Pais
|
Entertains, lacks staying power.
Posted May 15, 2023
|
|
C+
|
Alice, Darling
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Part of a necessary conversation, but only accomplishes so much on its own.
Posted May 08, 2023
|
|
B-
|
Somebody I Used To Know
(2023)
|
Matt Pais
|
At heart “Somebody I Used to Know” is about the messy reasons people do things (alone and with and to each other) and the separation between what is said, done and felt.
Posted May 01, 2023
|
|
B
|
M3GAN
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Sharper and more satisfying than we have any right to expect a movie like this to be.
Posted Apr 25, 2023
|
|
B
|
Hunger
(2023)
|
Matt Pais
|
Progressively acknowledges the reasons different people aim high and the difficulty in ever filling a need that may be inherently insatiable.
Posted Apr 17, 2023
|
|
C
|
Rye Lane
(2023)
|
Matt Pais
|
By the time the writers lean on stale notes about growing up and professional insecurity and then misunderstand their own supposedly sweet means of Yas’ characterizing the two types of people in the world, the leads’ charm barely matters.
Posted Apr 10, 2023
|
|
D+
|
Empire of Light
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Vapid, scattered and rather embarrassing.
Posted Apr 03, 2023
|
|
C-
|
Cha Cha Real Smooth
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Feels like Zach Braff trying to make "Adventureland."
Posted Mar 20, 2023
|
|
B
|
Causeway
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Understands trauma and the past's unknown forecast for the future.
Posted Mar 14, 2023
|
|
C-
|
Ticket to Paradise
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Filled with immature, unfunny foolishness with the assumption that we'll find it charming just because of who’s on screen.
Posted Mar 06, 2023
|
|
B
|
Triangle of Sadness
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Exhilarating at its best and worthy of reflection even at its most obvious and narrow.
Posted Feb 27, 2023
|
|
F
|
At Midnight
(2023)
|
Matt Pais
|
"At Midnight" doesn’t deserve a review. It demands a live-tweet into a megaphone, held to the flaming mouth of a dragon.
Posted Feb 17, 2023
|
|
C+
|
Close
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Ultimately seems more interested in creating devastating moments than investigating subtle, difficult feelings.
Posted Feb 13, 2023
|
|
B+
|
Bros
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
The funniest movie in a long time.
Posted Feb 06, 2023
|
|
B
|
Airborne
(1993)
|
Matt Pais
|
The rare teen comedy that argues for being yourself and actually wins its case.
Posted Jan 30, 2023
|
|
D
|
Everything Everywhere All at Once
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Visually restless, thematically redundant and the rare movie to be both overwhelming and underwhelming. After only a little while, you’ll desperately long to be simply whelmed.
Posted Jan 27, 2023
|
|
C+
|
Sick
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Well-made but progressively deflating, "Sick" even uses the word “psychobabble,” yet another hint that parts of the script were written in 1998.
Posted Jan 20, 2023
|
|
A-
|
She Said
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
A crackling intellectual thriller that really understands the essential, difficult work of journalists, and the courage it takes from all sides to bring truth to power.
Posted Jan 16, 2023
|
|
C
|
The Menu
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Neither fun nor scathing, funny nor insightful, the film coasts on second-rate quips and third-rate violence.
Posted Jan 09, 2023
|
|
A-
|
Babylon
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
The rare three-hour movie you could watch twice in a row.
Posted Jan 02, 2023
|
|
C
|
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
This is simply not a good story, and Johnson struggles to draw the necessary emotional component from these friends and their difficult relationships. There’s conflict but no feeling.
Posted Dec 26, 2022
|
|
A
|
Nope
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Beautiful and terrifying.
Posted Dec 21, 2022
|
|
A
|
Saint Omer
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
You will want more and not get it; the film intends to baffle and frustrate, demanding discussion and rewatching and offering no easy answers.
Posted Dec 21, 2022
|
|
B+
|
Pleasure
(2021)
|
Matt Pais
|
A film about the business of sex that is very explicit and yet determinedly non-erotic, identifying the spectrum of humanity and what it looks like when that’s lost.
Posted Dec 21, 2022
|
|
B+
|
Top Gun: Maverick
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Visually and emotionally satisfying in ways that you’d think would be the norm for big movies featuring families and explosions but very much aren’t.
Posted Dec 21, 2022
|
|
B+
|
The Fabelmans
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Spielberg's best movie in 20 years.
Posted Dec 21, 2022
|
|
B
|
The Banshees of Inisherin
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Funny, but too many jokes don’t land. Compelling and unpredictable, yet even major escalation between the former friends maintains impact that feels minor when expanded beyond them.
Posted Dec 19, 2022
|
|
D
|
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Cool to look at and miserable to watch.
Posted Dec 12, 2022
|
|
A
|
Aftersun
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Beautiful and small and enormous.
Posted Dec 05, 2022
|
|
C-
|
Tár
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
A fancy way of saying something ugly.
Posted Nov 28, 2022
|
|
C
|
Don't Worry Darling
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
A repetitive mess that never expands past its first idea.
Posted Nov 21, 2022
|
|
B
|
See How They Run
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
The type of whodunit that used to be described as a good yarn, back when you could say "simply a good time at the movies" and it wouldn’t sound cheap or unconvincing.
Posted Nov 14, 2022
|
|
C
|
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Takes the why out of Yankovic.
Posted Nov 09, 2022
|
|
C
|
Barbarian
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
A far-fetched, poorly conceived idea directed incredibly well.
Posted Nov 01, 2022
|
|
C-
|
Lamb
(2021)
|
Matt Pais
|
Nobody wants to be the, “Your half-lamb/half-human story doesn’t feel real” guy, but I’m going to be.
Posted Oct 25, 2022
|
|
C+
|
Beast
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
The escalation of terror is genuinely exciting until the movie bogs down in CGI absurdity instead of reasonably credible survival.
Posted Oct 18, 2022
|
|
C
|
Old
(2021)
|
Matt Pais
|
Quite beautiful and very stupid.
Posted Oct 12, 2022
|
|
D-
|
Last Seen Alive
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Kind of a good time for the wrong reasons.
Posted Oct 05, 2022
|
|
C+
|
Blonde
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
A woozy movie, disinterested in narrative as it prioritizes the essence of how terrible it feels to be loved by all and heard by none. That is certainly clear; what’s unclear is why capturing that feeling and telling a proper story are mutually exclusive.
Posted Sep 30, 2022
|
|
B-
|
Vengeance
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Both the funniest movie I've seen in quite a while and an example of something really good progressively falling apart.
Posted Sep 26, 2022
|
|
C-
|
Lady of the Manor
(2021)
|
Matt Pais
|
Proves that a comedy can make you laugh consistently enough and still be quite bad.
Posted Sep 20, 2022
|
|
F
|
Pinocchio
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Jiminy appears to be wearing another cricket’s face as a mask.
Posted Sep 09, 2022
|
|
D+
|
Jurassic World Dominion
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
If you didn't know better, you'd think Chris Pratt had never acted before.
Posted Sep 06, 2022
|
|
C
|
Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Thinks it's both funny and heartbreaking but awkwardly mixes the messages and winds up with nothing.
Posted Sep 04, 2022
|
|
C-
|
Me Time
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
A comedy clearly has lots of great ideas when the first six minutes include a guy getting smacked in the face by birds and slipping on tortoise poop. Twice.
Posted Aug 27, 2022
|
|
D+
|
Look Both Ways
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
Reinhart is given mush and asked to cook something with it, like “Chopped” for prisoners of bad scripts.
Posted Aug 22, 2022
|
|
B
|
The Lost City
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
A word comes to mind that isn’t often used when describing movies lately. Thinking, thinking … oh, right! The word is “fun.” “The Lost City” is fun.
Posted Aug 15, 2022
|
|
B-
|
Not Okay
(2022)
|
Matt Pais
|
A movie worth wrestling with.
Posted Aug 08, 2022
|
