Todd McCarthy
Tomatometer-approved critic
(Photo Credit: Jesse Grant/ Contributor/ WireImage /Getty Images)
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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The Machine (2023) |
The Machine is loud, gross, obnoxious and overbearing. It’s also disarming, quick-witted, fast moving and becomes increasingly funny. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted May 26, 2023
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About My Father (2023) |
So unfunny it’s embarrassing, this is an over-the-top, under-achieving generational comedy that feels like it was written in the mid- to late-1960s and has been moldering in a drawer ever since. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted May 25, 2023
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Asteroid City (2023) |
A madly quirky surprise that oozes creativity at every turn. At the same time, however, it sometimes seems to be reaching for serious creative epiphanies that aren’t forthcoming and which foster puzzlement rather than insight. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted May 23, 2023
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Fast X (2023) |
With its seemingly inexhaustible supply of madly amusing action, this high-octane extravaganza attempts, and not infrequently succeeds, in obliterating any resistance with its disarming, outrageous and self-aware injections of often-hilarious camp. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted May 17, 2023
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The Mother (2023) |
Lopez and Caro seem very much in sync as they relate the sprawling tale in a disciplined manner that maintains interest and curiosity, if not high levels of downright excitement. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted May 15, 2023
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Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World (2023) |
Eventually, if you like boxing and are willing to accept this as a sanitized and truncated version of the full story, it’s not hard to sit back and enjoy the eventful aspects of the big man’s life and his engaging personality. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Apr 27, 2023
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A Good Person (2023) |
Zach Braff’s latest feature excels at taking the measure of how people cope with personal tragedy and does so in a vital and engaging way that’s far more invigorating than depressing. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Mar 22, 2023
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Champions (2023) |
In a very modest way this goofball minor-league basketball yarn throws off enough amiable and vaguely raucous charm to keep a smile on sports fans’ faces much of time. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Mar 08, 2023
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Joan Baez I Am a Noise (2023) |
This elaborate documentary navigates adroitly through the professional and the personal aspects of a very full life. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Feb 27, 2023
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80 for Brady (2023) |
A fitfully amusing, if entirely innocuous account of a cute little sidebar to a major sporting event, and it’s the ladies who carry the day, or at least will for its intended audience. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Feb 01, 2023
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Drift (2023) |
Not only has Singapore director Anthony Chen set himself a tough task in this ambitious adaptation, he has also notably succeeded in making viewers see the world through very different eyes. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Jan 28, 2023
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The Accidental Getaway Driver (2023) |
This is a film that draws you in and offers sufficient satisfactions to attract genre aficionados and others keen to partake of some good new brew in an old bottle. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Jan 26, 2023
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Bad Behaviour (2023) |
The filmmaking itself compels attention simply from its unusual and well-designed settings, characters and thematic preoccupations; despite its shortcomings, it sticks in the mind as something fresh and personal. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Jan 23, 2023
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Cat Person (2023) |
A disarmingly creepy film with a disturbing edge that will surely trigger further discussion about contemporary dating and romantic protocols. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Jan 23, 2023
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The Starling Girl (2023) |
Parmet shows dramatic confidence as she sets up a story that serves as a reminder of how dominant religion-based societies are in significant swaths of American life. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Jan 23, 2023
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To Live and Die and Live (2023) |
Stylistically, To Live and Die and Live is cut down to the bone, with the essential action being conveyed but with a vital terseness that both frustrates and keeps you on your toes. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Jan 23, 2023
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The Pale Blue Eye (2022) |
A drama with good and particular qualities rather than one that’s genuinely exciting. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Dec 22, 2022
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Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) |
There is beauty everywhere you look, from the spectacle provided by nature’s creations, the tactile sense you get from the skin and hair of humans and other natural life, and the emotional expressions of strength and sensitivity. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Dec 13, 2022
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Spoiler Alert (2022) |
The film challenges itself to be both amusing and emotionally involving where matters of life and death are concerned. Fortunately, it manages to more or less succeed on both counts due to its ever-ready wise-crack nature and sympathetic direction. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Nov 29, 2022
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Black Adam (2022) |
Johnson is the man. Unfortunately, such arguably worthwhile matters as narrative coherence, appealing characterizations and suspense struggle to emerge here amidst a veritable logjam of intentions and tones. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Oct 18, 2022
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Luckiest Girl Alive (2022) |
As formulaic as it is, the story nonetheless confronts the persistence of guilt over past questionable behavior and how people struggle to deal with it, even long after the fact. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Oct 08, 2022
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Theater of Thought (2022) |
This is decidedly a talking-heads sort of film, but the talk and the heads are worth listening to and beholding. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Sep 22, 2022
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My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (2022) |
My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock is a frisky, free-wheeling, deeply informed salute from one very clever British chap to another who was also rather more than that, one who made his first film 97 years ago and whose work is still widely seen and known. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Sep 20, 2022
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The Corridors of Power (2022) |
The Corridors of Power provides a privileged opportunity to hear and assess the views of many of the key players from those years, as well as to examine the reasons why they acted as they did. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Sep 16, 2022
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Carmen (2022) |
From almost any perspective—dramatic, cinematic, political or musical–this is a thoroughgoing wash-out. It has no sense of cinema. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Sep 13, 2022
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The Lost King (2022) |
A modest but thoroughly captivating tale that has the look and feel of so many good British films of 25 or 30 years ago, a quality that can no doubt be significantly attributed to that reliable all-rounder Stephen Frears at the helm. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Sep 11, 2022
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The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) |
A simple and diabolical tale of a friendship’s end shot through with bristling humor and sudden moments of startling violence. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Sep 05, 2022
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Women Talking (2022) |
Immaculately made, intellectually adventurous and politically incisive... - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Sep 05, 2022
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The Wonder (2022) |
Atmospheric and intriguing up to a point, it nonetheless feels like much ado about a mildly curious situation that’s been milked for rather more than it’s worth. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Sep 05, 2022
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Athena (2022) |
Athena is a torrent, an inundation, a cascade of rage, fury and frustration over the realities of life for a particular group of French families. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Sep 02, 2022
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Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022) |
An overstated, overstuffed thing in which much of the intelligence, creative surprise and surpassing technical expertise has been drowned by a simple lack of discipline, focus and restraint. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Sep 01, 2022
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Tár (2022) |
The film represents a daring and quite comprehensive immersion in a rarified world and features a lead performance the likes of which doesn’t come along very often. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Sep 01, 2022
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Day Shift (2022) |
On the basis of the evidence here, it’s clear that [first-time director J.J.] Perry certainly knows how to shoot heavy-duty action. Unfortunately, there’s precious little sense or coherence to the storytelling. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Aug 12, 2022
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Rogue Agent (2022) |
Crucially, the script and actors make it all credible, even as the reality has been glamorized, polished up and in all ways been made more glamorous and provocative. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Aug 11, 2022
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Thirteen Lives (2022) |
It’s a fulsome film, both emotionally and as a production. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Jul 25, 2022
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Where the Crawdads Sing (2022) |
Unfortunately, this ripe-for-adaptation melodrama has been flattened, de-juiced and otherwise withered into a massively banal and flavorless porridge. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Jul 13, 2022
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Persuasion (2022) |
At the very least, there is the constant welcome presence of Johnson, who gamely soldiers through the inspired and sometimes misguided aspects of this production and keeps it more or less on track. It’s unfaithful fun. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Jul 11, 2022
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Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022) |
Minions goes down without too much discomfort, and its reasonable laugh quotient serves as a pointed reminder that comedy has been in very short supply on the big screen so far this year. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Jun 30, 2022
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Mr. Malcolm's List (2022) |
Every little thing has been fine-tuned to the nth degree, leaving nothing to chance, which makes the film both predictable and comforting in the expected manner, even as it’s still faux Austen. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted Jun 22, 2022
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Butterfly Vision (2022) |
There’s no subtlety or ambiguity in this picture, but it does offer images that haven’t been seen before and, no doubt, will be useful to inspire audiences in all relevant territories to further action and hope. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted May 26, 2022
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Broker (2022) |
The performances are uniformly alive and the characters fully inhabited, with genuine satisfaction to be had from the whole-cloth nature of the proceedings. It feels well lived in. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted May 26, 2022
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Stars at Noon (2022) |
Given the combustible subject matter and the director’s reputation, French auteur Claire Denis has made a remarkably listless and unpersuasive film in Stars at Noon. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted May 25, 2022
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Nostalgia (2022) |
The deep dive into this specific urban milieu is gratifying; you can practically inhale the smells of the open markets, the garbage, the run-down buildings, the motorbike exhaust and, once and a while, the purer air of the churches. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted May 25, 2022
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Crimes of the Future (2022) |
What could have been a grossly and even off-puttingly gruesome display of torturous experiments and corporal corruption has been treated with an unexpectedly light and even playful hand. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted May 23, 2022
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More than Ever (2022) |
It’s an entirely respectable and honorable piece about facing your own demise far before your expected time, but still the kind of thing most people would rather not think about. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted May 23, 2022
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Forever Young (2022) |
Show people, as they used to be called, are usually fun to be around, at least some of the time, but these narcissists are just a drag. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted May 22, 2022
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R.M.N. (2022) |
It’s a kind of close-up-and-personal look at contemporary issues in an area not often dramatized or in the news, which adds to the film’s fresh and urgent feel. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted May 22, 2022
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Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022) |
Great pleasure ensues from the constant presence of both Elba and Swinton, who are alert to every possibility presented by the script and then add so much more to it in the bargain; both performances are nothing short of marvelous. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted May 20, 2022
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EO (2022) |
Until it somewhat slips off the rails in the final half-hour, this is an exemplary, fresh and radiant piece of work from an 84-year-old director who has not lost his energy or own way of seeing things. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted May 20, 2022
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Tchaikovsky's Wife (2022) |
The film immerses you in a world both distant and long dead, and it welcomes you into a past that sparks a significant amount of curiosity about its components, both official and behavioral. - Deadline Hollywood Daily
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| Posted May 18, 2022
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