Los Angeles Times

Tomatometer-approved publication
Rating Title/Year Author
Cry Macho (2021) Justin Chang If "Cry Macho" seems too slight to bear the weight of all this thematic baggage, it nonetheless feels like a picture Eastwood had to make... EDIT
Posted Sep 15, 2021
Copshop (2021) Michael Ordoña "Copshop" is an enjoyable, slow-burn action movie featuring a smart script, sharp direction, strong cast - and the emergence of a possible star. EDIT
Posted Sep 15, 2021
Gun Crazy (1950) Philip K. Scheuer Besides the extraordinary performance of [Peggy Cummins], the film serves up... some of the most sustained photographic suspense and the tightest cutting I have been privileged to encounter in an awful lot of picture-going. EDIT
Posted Sep 14, 2021
The Year of the Everlasting Storm (2021) Roxana Hadadi The film's poignancy comes from its confirmation that even in tumultuous times, our senses of wonder, love and loyalty remain integral to the human experience. EDIT
Posted Sep 11, 2021
The Capote Tapes (2020) Gary Goldstein This well-constructed film effectively highlights the key points of the Southern-born icon's singular, often troubled life and proves a vivid, enjoyable portrait of a one-of-a-kind provocateur. EDIT
Posted Sep 10, 2021
Language Lessons (2021) Carlos Aguilar A delightfully poignant and intelligently openhearted experience... EDIT
Posted Sep 10, 2021
Everybody's Talking About Jamie (2021) Kimber Myers Joy radiates from the screen with a glow usually only obtained through expensive bronzer in "Everybody's Talking About Jamie." EDIT
Posted Sep 10, 2021
Malignant (2021) Michael Ordoña Can a movie that's deficient in just about every way be redeemed by an original twist? In the case of "Malignant," the answer is ... sort of. EDIT
Posted Sep 10, 2021
Kate (2021) Michael Ordoña If you're signing up for an assassin revenge movie with Winstead entertainingly kicking ass, you're going to get one. EDIT
Posted Sep 10, 2021
The Card Counter (2020) Justin Chang The characters we meet along the way may fit archetypal slots, but they are inhabited with an intelligence and conviction that's impossible not to take seriously. EDIT
Posted Sep 9, 2021
Fauci (2021) Robert Abele Where the filmmakers' approach sets itself apart... is in juxtaposing the bookending health catastrophes of Fauci's career as an especially illuminating lens through which to examine his drive, decisions and personality. EDIT
Posted Sep 9, 2021
Come From Away (2021) Charles McNulty It turns out that the screen provides a surprisingly hospitable frame for a musical that is quite purely and unabashedly - at times even downright earnestly - a work of theater. EDIT
Posted Sep 9, 2021
Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) Kevin Thomas Not only has this movie a sound moral but also a quaint Flash Gordon charm because of its fanciful sets, Cushing, Hammer's reliable Baron Frankenstein, is properly whimsical, and Gordon Flemyng's amiable direction wisely avoids camp. EDIT
Posted Sep 8, 2021
Night of the Living Dead (1968) Kevin Thomas Night of the Living Dead is taut and uncompromising, ending on a note of bitter irony. Performances are adequate and often better, especially in the case of Jones, who clearly has what it takes to go on to bigger things. EDIT
Posted Sep 8, 2021
El Mariachi (1992) Peter Rainer It's basically a cinematic exercise that provides a shoot-out or a chase scene every few minutes. But from moment to moment it keeps you watching. EDIT
Posted Sep 8, 2021
Salomy Jane (1914) Grace Kingsley It's a great film of the old California days. EDIT
Posted Sep 7, 2021
The Presidio (1988) Michael Wilmington Too much danger and glamour may dull your senses or make it hard to appreciate intimacy. That's what happens in "The Presidio." It's an ultra-slick, ultra-flat movie that cuts like a cellophane knife. No edge, no blood. EDIT
Posted Sep 6, 2021
French Connection II (1975) Charles Champlin It is a free-standing picture, a striking and strongly entertaining work on its own terms, different in setting. EDIT
Posted Sep 4, 2021
Dune (2021) Justin Chang Villeneuve draws you into an astonishingly vivid, sometimes plausibly unnerving vision of the future. EDIT
Posted Sep 3, 2021
The Big Scary "S" Word (2020) Noel Murray All these pieces are well-polished, and some deliver fascinating factoids. EDIT
Posted Sep 3, 2021
Mogul Mowgli (2020) Carlos Aguilar A poignantly propulsive and furiously constructed story by director Bassam Tariq about inherited pain of the flesh and the soul. EDIT
Posted Sep 3, 2021
Who You Think I Am (2019) Roxana Hadadi Vacillates between high-minded and tawdry and results in an engaging mashup of psychological drama and social media thriller. EDIT
Posted Sep 3, 2021
Worth (2020) Robert Abele As "Worth" charts the messiness-averse Feinberg's gradual embrace of what he recognizes should be a humane calculation, Colangelo's restraint achieves a kind of poignance. EDIT
Posted Sep 2, 2021
The Big Fix (1978) Charles Champlin As a piece of movie making "The Big Fix" is sleek, atmospheric, sharply well spoken and very watchable, primarily because of the vigorous, disciplined and sympathetic portrayal by Richard Dreyfuss... EDIT
Posted Sep 1, 2021
Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1975) Kevin Thomas Sixty guest stars can't save "Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood" from its unrelentingly crass tone and steady stream of unfunny jokes. EDIT
Posted Aug 29, 2021
Plaza Suite (1971) Charles Champlin A bright, diverting comedy... enriched by not one but four stop-the-presses performances. EDIT
Posted Aug 29, 2021
He's All That (2021) Michael Ordoña It actually is all that, for the most part. EDIT
Posted Aug 27, 2021
Go Fish (1994) Kevin Thomas A delightful storyteller, Troche comes up with wholly unexpected and consistently effective bits of visual punctuation and she has a subtle way with sensuality and a secure touch with non-professional actors. EDIT
Posted Aug 24, 2021
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) Kevin Thomas t's all too easy to get lost... Even so, the implication and the pathos of the plight of Coyle, who is played with tragic insight and immense wounded dignity by Mitchum, rises above the surrounding confusion. EDIT
Posted Aug 24, 2021
Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed (2021) Robert Abele Part biopic, part mystery, part exposé, "Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed" is ultimately a cooled celebration, one eager to acknowledge that gurus are complicated, showbiz is treacherous, and some landscapes hide things. EDIT
Posted Aug 24, 2021
The Littlest Outlaw (1955) John L. Scott Joseph Calleia appears as the padre in whose church the lad takes refuge with his horse, and whose antics with his old automobile provide a good share of chuckles. EDIT
Posted Aug 23, 2021
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) Justin Chang A hero's origin story that tries, with some success, to rise above Marvel business-as-usual. EDIT
Posted Aug 23, 2021
Garbo Talks (1984) Sheila Benson "Garbo Talks" is so thoroughly and entirely satisfying, it's almost sinful. EDIT
Posted Aug 22, 2021
Blue Collar (1978) Charles Champlin After a season of warmly bland, if stylish and entertaining movies, Paul Schrader's "Blue Collar" arrives like a welcome jolt, a breath of fresh arrogance at the end of a polite, slightly dull party. EDIT
Posted Aug 21, 2021
The Protégé (2021) Tracy Brown There's a palpable confidence in the movie's action sequences and slick choreography that helps keep it engaging enough despite the holes in its storytelling. EDIT
Posted Aug 20, 2021
Sweet Girl (2021) Roxana Hadadi Momoa can believably howl in anguish and throw a devastating punch, but he can't carry a script this muddled. EDIT
Posted Aug 20, 2021
Cryptozoo (2021) Justin Chang Page by page, frame by frame, it seeks to cultivate your wonder and awaken your outrage, to spin a work of unbridled fantasy into a depressingly relevant critique of human callousness and greed in any era. EDIT
Posted Aug 19, 2021
Night Game (1989) Michael Wilmington "Night Game" answers the burning question: Would bad, improbably plotted slasher movies be any better if they had humor, strong characters and pungent dialogue instead of incessant car-crashes and blood-letting? The answer, surprisingly, is no. EDIT
Posted Aug 19, 2021
Flag Day (2021) Robert Abele As it stretches out, it also thins, its Malick-meets-Cassavetes ambitions never rising above clichés of technique and melodrama. EDIT
Posted Aug 19, 2021
The Night House (2020) Justin Chang Bruckner... doesn't just mindlessly apply the electrodes; even when he jars you to attention, he always seems to be drawing you into something deeper and more atmospheric. He delivers a scare you can sink into. EDIT
Posted Aug 19, 2021
On Golden Pond (1981) Sheila Benson Its themes of lifelong love, loyalty and devotion, and of lifelong hunger for what is needed from a parent, are emotional depth charges. EDIT
Posted Aug 18, 2021
PAW Patrol: The Movie (2021) Michael Ordoña The dialogue is fairly represented by the line: "Where is it? There's so many buildings. I wonder which one it is." EDIT
Posted Aug 17, 2021
Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York (1975) Charles Champlin The results are a harmless entertainment for those who are weary of sterner realities and who can accept (or even enjoy) the fairly evident sitcom contrivances and manipulations. EDIT
Posted Aug 17, 2021
Ema (2019) Katie Walsh A darkly sensual fable of motherhood and the modern family..."Ema" isn't so much a character study as it is an exercise in keeping up with an abstruse yet undeniably fascinating figure. EDIT
Posted Aug 16, 2021
Days (2020) Justin Chang What "Days" gives us is something that can't really be intellectualized or even explained: a vision of grace that collapses the boundaries between the real and the fictional, the corporeal and the spiritual. EDIT
Posted Aug 13, 2021
Respect (2021) Justin Chang "Respect" is fine, fitfully rousing, even respectable. And sometimes, it's something more. EDIT
Posted Aug 13, 2021
Don't Breathe 2 (2021) Noel Murray It's mostly successful, if never in a way that improves on what came before. EDIT
Posted Aug 13, 2021
Frozen Assets (1992) Kevin Thomas It's hopeless, a romantic comedy with a tricky premise that demands the utmost in inspiration to carry it off but instead receives only the most trite, stale development. EDIT
Posted Aug 13, 2021
Beckett (2021) Michael Ordoña Filomarino's second feature has the texture, atmosphere and attention to character of a small European film, rather than the one-liners and physics-defying action of a big-budget popcorn movie. By the way, it's also suspenseful and involving. EDIT
Posted Aug 12, 2021
CODA (2021) Glenn Whipp Have some tissues handy. EDIT
Posted Aug 12, 2021