Midwest Film Journal - Rotten Tomatoes

Midwest Film Journal

Midwest Film Journal is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Nick Rogers
Rating
Title/Year
Author
1
3/5
CAM (2018)

Nick Rogers

The screenplay for "Cam" understands that our path from outlet to obsession and perhaps obliteration can be as quick as the speeds we're pulling down. Forget the attempts at explanatory horror. These moments are the ones worth tipping with your time.
Posted Nov 14, 2018
2
3.5/5
Overlord (2018)

Nick Rogers

A blitzkrieg bop of blood and bullets, "Overlord" is the best kind of movie monstrosity - scratching and clawing a new airway whenever its current scenario starts to suffocate, all the way to a rip-snorter ending that's hungry like the Wolfenstein.
Posted Nov 10, 2018
3
2.5/5
The Happy Prince (2018)

Nick Rogers

Rupert Everett's mostly handsome movie never quite shifts out of a languorous dies irae for a depleted soul. It hits a gear and stays there. To describe it using one of Wilde's quotes: "The world becomes a picture you can look at but never touch."
Posted Nov 8, 2018
4
2/5
Outlaw King (2018)

Nick Rogers

Aiming for something more primal and less prestigious than "Braveheart" while hoping to retain the power, "Outlaw King" winds up merely passable. Score one for Netflix's algorithm, though, to pop up something original after a "Braveheart" search.
Posted Nov 8, 2018
5
3.5/5
Boy Erased (2018)

Nick Rogers

A tad too safe and sanitary. But it's still a generously acted story of faith, identity and the survival instincts inherent to both - and one reinforcing the power of respectful honesty to recognize some transgressions are simply not ours to bear.
Posted Nov 7, 2018
6
4.5/5
The Beyond (...E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldilà) (1981)

Nick Rogers

The very thesis here is that viewing life as more than a linear path from birth to death - no matter how joyous or sad - is just a more comfortable form of entropy. And what happens when even that system is erased? This is pure horror brilliance.
Posted Oct 29, 2018
7
3/5
The Night Comes For Us (2018)

Nick Rogers

However energetic, most set pieces blend together like a daisy chain of entrails. Brawls in a butcher shop and paddy wagon stand out. Only a final fight gets at a more grandiloquent Guignol. More testicular trauma than its forerunners, less cojones.
Posted Oct 20, 2018
8
3.5/5
Apostle (2018)

Nick Rogers

Gareth Evans' pivot from martial arts understands cult fervor has its own fighting stance and frantic energy. Action bursts here feel both like concession and inevitability, their pleasures plenty but perhaps less immediate in their initial burst.
Posted Oct 13, 2018
9
2.5/5
Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

Nick Rogers

A pretentious piece of pulp that simply tries to ponder too much, a crime story full of motive and means but short on opportunity, and what it would look like if you tried to smush together "Forrest Gump" and "Pulp Fiction" into 141 unwieldy minutes.
Posted Oct 12, 2018
10
1.5/5
Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (2018)

Nick Rogers

A scene mimicking the original's meta momentum also illustrates overconfidence with which vendors flood markets with stuff that's glanced at, passed up and eventually priced to move - true in costume aisles on Halloween night and now your multiplex.
Posted Oct 12, 2018
11
4/5
A Star Is Born (2018)

Nick Rogers

Songs age, too, into eulogies for euphoria or suicide notes for security. They die. They're reborn. Over and over. That sense of decay and renewal boldly rests deep in the bones, performances and storytelling of one of the year's best films.
Posted Oct 5, 2018
12
1.5/5
Hell Fest (2018)

Nick Rogers

What do you call six writers thrown together to create a horror movie? Here's the groaner of a punchline, whose use of "Pop Goes the Weasel" as a leitmotif lays bare that its scare tactics are akin to watching a jack-in the-box for 87 minutes.
Posted Sep 27, 2018
13
1/5
Peppermint (2018)

Nick Rogers

It's somehow hilarious and depressing that one patron vocally thought it was not rated R. Then again, the violence is not entirely the quibble here. It's the substantially quantitative body count just adding up to a big, fat qualitative goose egg.
Posted Sep 6, 2018
14
2/5
Kin (2018)

Nick Rogers

If the best films from which to steal boast a recognizable vibrancy, consider "Kin" the lifeless dolt sleeping it off in a back alley. It won't wake up in the event that future filmmakers riffle its pockets, but they'll find only a frayed, worn hole.
Posted Aug 31, 2018
15
3.5/5
Searching (2018)

Nick Rogers

Stumbles through explanatory zigzags and switchbacks, and definitely overexerts itself for a sense of justice rarely, if ever, found online. At least it's more interested in an introspective interrogation of identity rather than fingering suspects.
Posted Aug 31, 2018
16
4.5/5
Leave No Trace (2018)

Nick Rogers

A kind-hearted drama whose consistent quiet and composure leaves you all the more floored by its low-volume, high-stakes conclusion, "Leave No Trace" continues 2018's welcome trend of confident, compassionate stories about those on society's margins.
Posted Jul 11, 2018
17
3/5
Uncle Drew (2018)

Nick Rogers

It's fair that so many characters don throwback jerseys. The entire endeavor celebrates the old school - from its conceit of senior citizens schooling young'uns to the congenial, casual and chummy '90s sports comedy vibe it so effortlessly conjures.
Posted Jul 4, 2018
18
2/5
The First Purge (2018)

Nick Rogers

Maybe the upcoming "Purge" TV series advertised in an end-credits interruption will return to the franchise's exploration of how our analogous anxieties continue to evolve. But "The First Purge" disappointingly settles for pure economic expedience.
Posted Jul 4, 2018
19
1.5/5
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Nick Rogers

Perhaps this franchise is simply at the stage of breeding where the pedigree starts to fade, you know the pets are going to get debilitating hip dysplasia after a few years, and yet you just press on anyway because you simply cannot do anything else.
Posted Jun 26, 2018
20
2.5/5
Superfly (2018)

Nick Rogers

Always tryin' to get over. Never quite does.
Posted Jun 13, 2018
21
1.5/5
Hotel Artemis (2018)

Nick Rogers

A so-so idea and a good cast squandered on an eight-figure scramble of the movies and books of which writer-director Drew Pearce is fond. It's depressing to see so little of Jodie Foster anymore. Why does she keep making dunderheaded dystopian duds?
Posted Jun 8, 2018
22
0/5
Action Point (2018)

Nick Rogers

There is just one laugh, from an alcoholic bear tipping back a can of Schlitz in its snout. This happens in the first two minutes. Johnny Knoxville and company know it's funny, too, because they repeat it 75,283 times -one time for each minute left.
Posted Jun 1, 2018
23
2.5/5
Adrift (2018)

Nick Rogers

A more emotionally engaging bit of misery business next to the cheeky exploitation of "47 Meters Down" or "The Shallows." But its bombast weighs down a buoyant romance and its structure increasingly intrudes on any momentum the performers build.
Posted Jun 1, 2018
24
2.5/5
Upgrade (2018)

Nick Rogers

Seems headed toward glory days of David Cronenberg or Paul Verhoeven before settling for intermittently amusing ways to separate heads from bodies. When it comes to separating money from wallets, there has been better, and worse, sci-fi goofiness.
Posted Jun 1, 2018
25
3/5
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

Nick Rogers

The first act is glacial, the extended universe connections weak and the entire concept and execution of L3 abysmal. But Ron Howard's cliffhanger confidence in the action and the smoky, alluring cinematography from Bradford Young carry it through.
Posted May 29, 2018
26
3/5
Bad Samaritan (2018)

Nick Rogers

Often stump-dumb. Its own title doesn't make much sense. More interesting than good, as you'll see if you stumble onto it on a streaming service in a few months. After all, it's not always about the image you're seeing, but the light behind it.
Posted May 7, 2018
27
4.5/5
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Nick Rogers

Only now could the MCU arrive at a place where bluffs can be irrefutably called and gauntlets, real or metaphorical, can be thrown down. With audacity and thoughtfulness, "Infinity War" upends the comparative breeziness of all that came before it.
Posted Apr 25, 2018
28
4/5
A Quiet Place (2018)

Nick Rogers

A tension machine with a tender mien. If all you care about is creature design, imagine all of your sharp-edged anxieties given teeth, pincers and an abnormal sense for finding you no matter how well you hide. Scary enough for you? It should be.
Posted Apr 6, 2018
29
4/5
Blockers (2018)

Nick Rogers

A raucously funny, thoughtfully reflective sex comedy that demystifies teen intercourse, pokes holes in gender-based double standards of lost virginity, and encourages kindness and empathy among everyone at the story's center.
Posted Apr 3, 2018
30
5/5
Seven (Se7en) (1995)

Nick Rogers

It's about magnitudes of corruptibility and fallibility, how we all fall prey to them and yet, so we hope, press on. Watching as a teenager in 1995, I felt the fear of what could test me. Today, I watch and fear that I've not yet really been tested.
Posted Apr 1, 2018
31
3.5/5
Unsane (2018)

Nick Rogers

Steven Soderbergh again splits a difference between genre mess-around and meaningfully mining modern anxieties. And while he's hardly the first to make a film on an iPhone, his visuals feel dangerous -familiar yet foreign, like smuggled contraband.
Posted Mar 23, 2018
32
1/5
Pacific Rim Uprising (2018)

Nick Rogers

An odd subtitle for a movie with all the insurgent energy of a senior dog splayed in the sun. Yet another fiscally and creatively timid sequel returning only the affordable actors and pandering to China by casting its national stars in nothing roles.
Posted Mar 22, 2018
33
3/5
The Strangers: Prey At Night (2018)

Nick Rogers

Director Johannes Roberts employs a brutal smash-and-grab burgling of comfort - percussive, not concussive. He leans into a John Carpenter aesthetic and leans on synthesizers and fog machines. The film leaves scars without merely scorching the earth.
Posted Mar 11, 2018
34
3.5/5
The Hurricane Heist (2018)

Nick Rogers

The most persuasive movie jail parole hearing in years, Rob Cohen's latest is genially goofy action reliant on both strong stunt work and cheerily second-rate visual effects. Whatever pun title you throw its way ("Dante's Leak"?) is out of affection.
Posted Mar 11, 2018
35
4/5
A Fantastic Woman (Una mujer fantástica) (2018)

Nick Rogers

At every turn, "A Fantastic Woman" chooses a bolder path of realization over revelation and intimacy over inclusion - one on which Marina learns that her journey is, at least for right now, one in which any comforts found must be solitary.
Posted Mar 9, 2018
36
1/5
The 15:17 to Paris (2018)

Nick Rogers

Here is Eastwood's latest warm-milk paean to embattled American heroism, hanging a hat on God-and-guns homilies rather than challenging truths about human violence, military service, religious fervor or moral quandary that he mined just 12 years ago.
Posted Feb 8, 2018
37
1/5
The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)

Nick Rogers

It feints at a parable for paranoia in an age of weaponized information. Instead, it's a reminder that what we love can be quickly ripped from us. After all, who knew when they woke up Sunday that the Cloverfield franchise would be dead hours later?
Posted Feb 5, 2018
38
2.5/5
A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2017)

Nick Rogers

However fitting that a film about a man at existential odds with himself is itself at odds with its essential components, "A Futile and Stupid Gesture" could still have benefited from a bit more punch-up.
Posted Jan 26, 2018
39
3/4
The Aviator (2004)

Nick Rogers

Solidly entertaining and visually lush, but this is uncharacteristically safe territory for a filmmaker who relishes risk and grittiness.
Posted Jan 25, 2018
40
1/5
Den of Thieves (2018)

Nick Rogers

Enduring the 140 immediately and unswervingly painful minutes inexplicably afforded to "Den of Thieves" is like watching a thrill-seeking liquor-store robber get a "Born to Lose" chest tattoo in real time.
Posted Jan 20, 2018
41
1/5
The Commuter (2018)

Nick Rogers

The Neesploitation genre shifts from arthritic debilitation to senile incontinence with an action film so dumb it mainly gets you thinking about how many mysteries set on a train are preferable. The answer? All of them.
Posted Jan 13, 2018
42
1/5
Proud Mary (2018)

Nick Rogers

Indeed, the only thing swifter than vengeance here is the revelation of how rotten it is. At least you'll never lose one minute of sleeping worrying about the way things might have been. But you may wish to test-drive a Maserati after it's over.
Posted Jan 13, 2018
43
4.5/5
I, Tonya (2018)

Nick Rogers

Traces a line from mid-'90s scandal to the scum-encrusted sociopolitical hellscape in which we find ourselves. With head-butt aggression, "I, Tonya" addresses insidious issues of class, gender and willful delusion that curdle contemporary culture.
Posted Jan 3, 2018
44
4/5
Molly's Game (2018)

Nick Rogers

Yet another wildly effective Aaron Sorkin script, as illuminating as it is informative about shocking legal wiggle room in play here while it splashes around in semantic delights. And for the most part, his first-time direction matches the momentum.
Posted Dec 22, 2017
45
1.5/5
Downsizing (2017)

Nick Rogers

By the end, Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor have essentially abandoned altogether the idea of a world where shrinking is commonplace - unimaginatively, and at punitive length, decimating their visionary idea into "Honey, I Shrunk the Midlife Crisis."
Posted Dec 20, 2017
46
2/5
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

Nick Rogers

A game cast labors to blow the dust off what's more "recognizable IP" than "beloved classic." But its pulmonary powers peter out at an updated premise. The jokes are obvious, the messaging bland and the computer-abetted nonsense not at all thrilling.
Posted Dec 18, 2017
47
5/5
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

Nick Rogers

A thing of beauty and work of art about which the loudest grumblers likely expected the most conventional developments - lost in Reddit rabbit holes and clickbait in which creatives graciously fielded insistent questions about parents or provenances.
Posted Dec 18, 2017
48
3.5/5
Mudbound (2017)

Nick Rogers

A solid Southern story deserving of a far more epic canvas. Its oddly truncated shortcuts do not rob its memorable complexity and strong performances- suggesting seeds of positive change and productive compassion sometimes take root only fleetingly.
Posted Nov 21, 2017
49
4/5
Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017)

Nick Rogers

Vince Vaughn raucously and radically inverts a motormouth comic persona as a man of persuasive silent intimidation. S. Craig Zahler's schlock satire imagines him as a Frankenstein's monster fashioned from an equally futile source of modern male rage.
Posted Oct 29, 2017
50
1/5
The Snowman (2017)

Nick Rogers

Do you want a thrill-less "Snowmaaaaaan"? This movie seems to last all dayyyyy. Rare are mainstream screw-ups like this anymore. Profoundly poor. What's this story trying to sayyyyy? An odious, offensive objet d'art with a depressing Val Kilmer turn.
Posted Oct 21, 2017