East Bay Express - Rotten Tomatoes

East Bay Express

Tomatometer-approved publication
Rating
Title/Year
Author
1
White Boy Rick (2018)

Kelly Vance

McConaughey and Merritt work so well together that we almost lose sight of the industrious supporting players around them.
Posted Sep 19, 2018
2
Lizzie (2018)

Kelly Vance

Despite its gory denouement, Lizzie's emotional bloodlessness leaves us hanging.
Posted Sep 19, 2018
3
Kusama: Infinity (2018)

Kelly Vance

This marvelous biodoc opens the door to a unique, massively prolific talent. See it immediately.
Posted Sep 12, 2018
4
The Nun (2018)

Kelly Vance

The Nun is about as terrifying as a Cub Scout weenie roast. You've been warned.
Posted Sep 10, 2018
5
93Queen (2018)

Kelly Vance

93Queen (the title is an emergency dispatchers' tag line) is a rip-roaring "only in America" success story.
Posted Sep 4, 2018
6
The Bookshop (2018)

Kelly Vance

But it's Mortimer's obstinate, headstrong, heartbroken Florence we care about, because she's the only one in town who possesses the inner life of a dedicated bookworm.
Posted Sep 4, 2018
7
Gabriel and the Mountain (Gabriel e a montanha) (2018)

Kelly Vance

The setting seems like a place made for ghosts. And yet the lasting impression made by Gabriel and the Mountain is life-affirming and ultimately joyful.
Posted Aug 29, 2018
8
The Little Stranger (2018)

Kelly Vance

Writing problems are far scarier than restless spirits.
Posted Aug 29, 2018
9
Dark Crimes (2018)

Kelly Vance

Welcome to Dark Crimes, a movie that boldly sets itself a number of obstacles to overcome, beginning with two big ones: the writing and the directing.
Posted Aug 24, 2018
10
Juliet, Naked (2018)

Kelly Vance

Hornby's characters don't exist in a warm and fuzzy cocoon, yet we're always happy to tag along with them because we know from the outset that no one is going to suffer lasting harm.
Posted Aug 22, 2018
11
Papillon (2018)

Kelly Vance

Pretend you're watching McQueen and Hoffman.
Posted Aug 22, 2018
12
The Captain (Der Hauptmann) (2018)

Kelly Vance

Robert Schwentke's The Captain may be one of the most depressing films of the season - amid stiff competition - but it provides food for thought in its grim chronicle of a German soldier caught up in chaos at the end of World War II.
Posted Aug 15, 2018
13
Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

Kelly Vance

Still, there's no doubt Crazy Rich Asians will have an impact on some Asian American audiences, who have been craving proper representation for years. They deserve a better movie.
Posted Aug 15, 2018
14
BlacKkKlansman (2018)

Kelly Vance

BlacKkKlansman is a true-crime story with a happy ending, plus a warning that happiness is not guaranteed. It's one of Lee's finest, and decisively one of the year's best.
Posted Aug 8, 2018
15
Nico, 1988 (2018)

Kelly Vance

The story of Nico would be intriguing even without references to the Velvet Underground and Warhol, but with that ever-present backdrop, bolstered by Dyrholm's presence and her mesmerizing performances with the band, the effect is irresistible.
Posted Aug 8, 2018
16
The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

Kelly Vance

The screenplay by director Susanna Fogel and David Iserson (both TV vets) contains mountains of flab.
Posted Aug 1, 2018
17
Night Comes On (2018)

Kelly Vance

But just below the surface, Night Comes On is a careful, layered portrait of a person navigating her uncertain way through a sea of trouble, and we come to care about her and admire her spirit.
Posted Aug 1, 2018
18
Dark Money (2018)

Kelly Vance

Dark Money brings us up to speed on the issues in a hurry - in this midterm election year there is no time to lose.
Posted Jul 25, 2018
19
Generation Wealth (2018)

Kelly Vance

The doc actually makes it to the 25-minute mark before showing a glimpse of Donald Trump's face - considering the cheapness of Greenfield's approach to sociology, that has to count as admirable restraint.
Posted Jul 25, 2018
20
Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)

Kelly Vance

This Sicario may have more talking points than it can comfortably hold. It's often confusing, and its political irony is thick enough to slow the story down in spots. But it'll make you squirm.
Posted Jul 18, 2018
21
Unfriended: Dark Web (2018)

Kelly Vance

Unfriended: Dark Web is a captivating, intricate - and we might as well go ahead and say it: ingenious - summer thriller that presupposes the nagging fears of those of us who can't do without our cell phones and other little electronic pacifiers.
Posted Jul 18, 2018
22
Sorry to Bother You (2018)

Kelly Vance

Sorry to Bother You is that rarest of satires - a nimble, imaginative, non-clichéd bucket of socially aware indignation that doubles as a street-level panorama of the 21st-century urban experience, Oakland style.
Posted Jul 18, 2018
23
Blindspotting (2018)

Kelly Vance

Audiences looking for a film that expresses all the vitality - and everyday struggle - of life in contemporary Oakland, search no more. Blindspotting, one of the most important movies of the year, is the one.
Posted Jul 18, 2018
24
The Misandrists (2018)

Kelly Vance

For LaBruce fans and fearless curiosity seekers only.
Posted Jul 11, 2018
25
Whitney (2018)

Kelly Vance

Houston's fans will eat it up with a spoon, of course, but even the most skeptical viewer may come away with a better understanding of the perils of fame.
Posted Jul 5, 2018
26
The Most Unknown (2018)

Kelly Vance

In the meantime, this is the most intelligent package of cultural-scientific information of the year 2018, wherever you catch it.
Posted Jun 27, 2018
27
Damsel (2018)

Kelly Vance

Damsel is one of those nouveau westerns that looks vaguely inspired by the Coen brothers... That type of genre tinkering can be refreshing as long as the writing is sharp. Damsel's writing is not sharp.
Posted Jun 27, 2018
28
Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist (2018)

Kelly Vance

From the evidence of director Lorna Tucker's generally underwhelming profile, designer Westwood thinks the reason she's been overlooked is because she's a punk rocker, and always has been.
Posted Jun 20, 2018
29
Chung Kuo Cina (1972)

Kelly Vance

It's a magnificent piece of cinéma-vérité... The four hours pass very quickly.
Posted Jun 13, 2018
30
Superfly (2018)

Kelly Vance

But every now and then what passes for an original idea emerges from screenwriter Alex Tse (Sucker Free City) and Director X.
Posted Jun 13, 2018
31
Hereditary (2018)

Kelly Vance

Despite the electronic-belch music track and Pawel Pogorzelski's gorgeous cinematography, Hereditary is a dry husk of a story, more of an exercise in mood than an involving narrative.
Posted Jun 6, 2018
32
Filmworker (2018)

Kelly Vance

Tony Zierra's documentary Filmworker, made with the full cooperation of Vitali, is a curious but fascinating tale, as much an inside portrait of the notoriously private Kubrick as it is a profile of his devoted disciple.
Posted Jun 6, 2018
33
Mountain (2018)

Daniel Barnes

It's like bad Herzog.
Posted Jun 1, 2018
34
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

Daniel Barnes

Solo is essentially a 135-minute version of the River Phoenix sequence from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - only it looks like complete garbage and is no fun at all.
Posted Jun 1, 2018
35
The House of Tomorrow (2018)

Daniel Barnes

Put in its proper context... first-time writer-director Peter Livolsi's story of punk rock meeting R. Buckminster Fuller in small-town Minnesota feels like just another hopelessly musty and dreadfully quirk-heavy, Sundance-style mope-fest.
Posted May 23, 2018
36
Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat (2018)

Daniel Barnes

In fact, the parts of Boom for Real that most tangentially relate to Basquiat, such as the crossover between graffiti art, punk, and hip-hop, are the most developed and coherent sections, but that's not the bill of goods that this movie tries to sell.
Posted May 16, 2018
37
Tully (2018)

Kelly Vance

Tully is a serendipitous treasure.
Posted May 2, 2018
38
RBG (2018)

Kelly Vance

Ginsburg is a woman we instinctively want to know more about, and RBG gives us that chance.
Posted May 2, 2018
39
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (2018)

Kelly Vance

The doc is padded out shamelessly. Worse, when it's not dwelling on random incidents, it's worshipful to a fault.
Posted Apr 25, 2018
40
The Rider (2018)

Kelly Vance

[Director Chloe] Zhao and her films are worth discovering, and The Rider is a welcome surprise.
Posted Apr 25, 2018
41
Blumhouse's Truth or Dare (2018)

Kelly Vance

Truth or Dare stops being dumb fun somewhere around the halfway mark, and the filmmakers quickly run out of ways to prolong the action - until they run out of players.
Posted Apr 19, 2018
42
Little Pink House (2018)

Kelly Vance

In the footsteps of Silkwood and countless other underdog sagas, the unfailingly cogent and gratifyingly pertinent Little Pink House tells the true story of one woman's courageous struggle against powerful forces...
Posted Apr 19, 2018
43
Beirut (2018)

Kelly Vance

Beirut is essentially a war movie trying to re-create a 1980s frame of mind, James Bond-ian spies and all.
Posted Apr 11, 2018
44
A Bag of Marbles (Un sac de billes) (2018)

Kelly Vance

[The Joffro brothers'] story is worth seeing, especially for Holocaust-movie completists.
Posted Apr 11, 2018
45
Isle of Dogs (2018)

Kelly Vance

Isle of Dogs is absolutely irresistible.
Posted Mar 26, 2018
46
Foxtrot (2018)

Kelly Vance

Foxtrot is recommended.
Posted Mar 21, 2018
47
The Death of Stalin (2018)

Kelly Vance

The hint that he and the writers are dropping is that if we can guffaw at these monsters, we can deal with anything. See The Death of Stalin and face the future unafraid.
Posted Mar 21, 2018
48
Gringo (2018)

Kelly Vance

... Gringo is a nasty piece of sub-Breaking Bad junk.
Posted Mar 14, 2018
49
Oh Lucy! (2018)

Kelly Vance

Oh Lucy! adopts the bold strategy of taking away, as opposed to piling on, and it works.
Posted Mar 14, 2018
50
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017)

Kelly Vance

What a bombshell.
Posted Mar 7, 2018