Battleship Pretension - Rotten Tomatoes

Battleship Pretension

Tomatometer-approved publication
Rating
Title/Year
Author
1
Our Time (Nuestro tiempo) (2018)

Scott Nye

Like all other Reygadas films, Our Time is beautiful, and his newfound focus on life's pleasures rather than strictly its agonies makes for a unique texture.
Posted Nov 18, 2018
2
At Eternity's Gate (2018)

Scott Nye

The film is uniquely incurious about Van Gogh himself beyond the myth of what he represents, which is the last quality we need in a Van Gogh film anymore.
Posted Nov 16, 2018
3
Widows (2018)

Tyler Smith

A thriller in name only... strong acting and character work, but unfocused and overly mired in theme.
Posted Nov 16, 2018
4
Cold War (Zimna wojna) (2018)

David Bax

For Wiktor and Zula, their devotion to each other is the one thing in their world not built on sand.
Posted Nov 15, 2018
5
The Favourite (2018)

David Bax

If you're going to say something trite, you could do worse than to say it with as much magnificent panache as Lanthimos has.
Posted Nov 15, 2018
6
Maya (2018)

Scott Nye

Even after the great films Hansen-Løve has turned out, this is strikingly mature territory, inherently contradictory and confident enough to not going around making a big show of it.
Posted Nov 15, 2018
7
Styx (2018)

David Bax

Styx is not just a movie about refugees but about our current political moment in which intelligent, rational people look at an increasingly narrow-minded, greedy world and despair at the seeming insurmountability of the problems.
Posted Nov 14, 2018
8
Bird Box (2018)

David Bax

Bier has crafted a horror thriller sturdy enough to keep from being a failure but not one distinct or courageous enough to stand out from the pack.
Posted Nov 14, 2018
9
The Weekend (2018)

David Bax

The Weekend gets off to a decidedly rough start that eventually becomes just another part of the movie's shaggy dog lovability by which I was, at least partially, won over.
Posted Nov 13, 2018
10
Lemonade (2018)

Scott Nye

Ioana Uricaru's Lemonade finds some of the Romanian spirit lost in translation, but makes for a striking first feature centered on the desperation of the immigrant experience.
Posted Nov 13, 2018
11
Hotel by the River (2018)

Scott Nye

It can be tempting, even from the outset, to read this hotel, this winter, these people, as a sort of purgatory. But wherever they are, these five have managed to remind themselves of love.
Posted Nov 12, 2018
12
Never Look Away (2018)

David Bax

It's almost impressive how hypocritical von Donnersmarck is in his dishonesty amidst a movie ostensibly about the importance of truth.
Posted Nov 12, 2018
13
Green Book (2018)

David Bax

Green Book would rather bury its head in a past that never was than to be relevant to a present it finds too unpleasant to address.
Posted Nov 12, 2018
14
El Angel (El ángel) (2018)

Rita Cannon

Casts an effective spell, inviting viewers to try their best to extract a character study out of a figure who never even seemed very interested in studying himself.
Posted Nov 8, 2018
15
The Front Runner (2018)

Scott Nye

Like Hart himself, The Front Runner had a lot of potential that it mostly squanders. Unlike Hart, it can't stake a strong position on anything.
Posted Nov 6, 2018
16
The Seventh Sign (1988)

David Bax

The Seventh Sign takes the end of the world and turns it into some sort of Revelation-themed escape room.
Posted Nov 5, 2018
17
Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)

David Bax

Tucker, the character, embellishes and enchants with his mile a minute mouth (hilarious blowing past malapropisms like opening "Aunt Dora's box") while Tucker, the film, does the same in its rose-colored view of an imaginary heyday of U.S. manufacturing.
Posted Nov 5, 2018
18
The Unborn (1991)

David Bax

The Unborn is a culty midnight movie that, like far more such films than we tend to credit, has a brain whose synapses are constantly firing away just beneath all the gore.
Posted Nov 2, 2018
19
Greaser's Palace (1972)

David Bax

Robert Downey Sr. eventually reveals that he's made a comedic satire that's hilarious, ugly and beguiling.
Posted Nov 2, 2018
20
Bodied (2018)

Scott Nye

Anything but subtle but miles from didactic, Bodied is smart enough to know that having a point of view doesn't remove the onus of artistic exploration.
Posted Nov 2, 2018
21
They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018)

David Bax

At its best, They'll Love Me When I'm Dead is a "great man" biography with the emphasis on the man.
Posted Nov 1, 2018
22
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

David Bax

Queen made great albums; Bohemian Rhapsody is just a playlist.
Posted Oct 31, 2018
23
The Other Side of the Wind (2018)

Scott Nye

Orson Welles has made another great film. Long live Orson Welles.
Posted Oct 31, 2018
24
Boy Erased (2018)

David Bax

Boy Erased is not designed to be punishing or even uncomfortable to sit through. On the contrary, it seeks to flatter the audience at every turn, inviting you to join it in shaking your head in righteous faux-concern.
Posted Oct 31, 2018
25
Edward II (1992)

David Bax

Edward II is a fierce and passionate work of art, as timeless as it is of its time.
Posted Oct 30, 2018
26
Night of the Lepus (1972)

David Bax

It's not bad enough to be funny but it's ridiculous enough in its very existence that maybe it would have been better if it had actually tried to be comedic. Which serves as a reminder, should you need it, that Tremors is pretty much a perfect movie.
Posted Oct 29, 2018
27
The Great Silence (Il grande silenzio) (1968)

David Bax

With the help of a typically stellar score from Ennio Morricone, The Great Silence is one of the prettiest, most thoughtful movies you'll ever see with a body count in the dozens.
Posted Oct 29, 2018
28
And Then I Go (2018)

David Bax

One of the most welcome but surprising things about And Then I Go is its consistent dosage of effective, humanistic comedy.
Posted Oct 27, 2018
29
Shirkers (2018)

David Bax

Tan's joy in cinema is apparent in Shirkers' sometimes collage-like construction. Strips of home movies, found footage and clips from the movie that never was run across the screen, sometimes backwards and upside down.
Posted Oct 26, 2018
30
Jonathan (2018)

David Bax

It's so ruthlessly competent in its construction and execution that an inexperienced viewer may initially mistake its aptitude for quality. But you don't need to have seen all that many movies to soon grasp how inexcusably thin and dumb it is.
Posted Oct 25, 2018
31
We the Coyotes (2018)

David Bax

We the Coyotes did what movies are good at; it made me feel like I was a part of something bigger.
Posted Oct 25, 2018
32
Deep Murder (2018)

David Bax

Is it possible that this crazy, bloody, smutty, hilarious movie is also an argument for the ability of fiction to help us make sense of the world? Or is it just an excuse to have someone wield a dildo as a murder weapon?
Posted Oct 25, 2018
33
Burning (Beoning) (2018)

Scott Nye

Jealousy, class divisions, sex, arson, and spying all work their way into Lee Chang-Dong's Burning, a terrific new thriller that seizes the anxieties of our present extraordinarily well, forging from them the meat of our entrenched, existential troubles.
Posted Oct 25, 2018
34
What They Had (2018)

David Bax

What They Had, light as a sunbeam and heavy as snowfall, grips our hand through the transition from memory to reality and lets us know it's going to be hard but it's going to be all right.
Posted Oct 25, 2018
35
The Oath (2018)

David Bax

With his eye keenly trained on the various ways ideology manifests as personality, Barinholtz wrings both hilarity and dread out of the chaotic moment before hope is lost.
Posted Oct 25, 2018
36
A Bread Factory, Part Two: Walk with Me a While (2018)

Scott Nye

Experiences such as this, that offer such a wealth of intellect and warmth so persistently, are few and far between.
Posted Oct 24, 2018
37
A Bread Factory, Part One: For the Sake of Gold (2018)

Scott Nye

Experiences such as this, that offer such a wealth of intellect and warmth so persistently, are few and far between.
Posted Oct 24, 2018
38
Suspiria (2018)

Scott Nye

Guadagnino's conception of evil more or less keeps pace with his desire to explicate, until eventually the evil overtakes this crutch and once again consumes the film nearly whole.
Posted Oct 24, 2018
39
The Guilty (Den skyldige) (2018)

Scott Nye

It provokes ... questions without resolving itself too much, though the ending seeks a sort of comfort the rest of the film doesn't suggest is even possible.
Posted Oct 24, 2018
40
Galveston (2018)

Scott Nye

The story's essential masculinity, this notion that violence is justified and cleansing and whatever else, is never quite brought to bear; it's too romanticized, too "mythic", too in awe of its awesomeness.
Posted Oct 24, 2018
41
Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

Scott Nye

At 140 minutes, it's anything but slim and hardly dull. Goddard recognizes that the pleasure of this sort of story is in the not knowing, in having time to wander through the corridors of this odd motel and muse about its past and its inhabitants' present
Posted Oct 11, 2018
42
Apostle (2018)

Rita Cannon

Much like the cult it depicts, Apostle has a lot of powerful forces at its disposal, but can't seem to marshal those forces well enough to define its goals, much less achieve them.
Posted Oct 11, 2018
43
Softness of Bodies (2018)

David Bax

Blady and Nekrasova refuse any temptation to hint at some heart of gold lying under Charlie's stony facade. Love her or hate her, she probably doesn't care either way, as long as you're unhappy.
Posted Oct 11, 2018
44
The Wedding Guest (2018)

David Bax

Each next turn is so thoroughly telegraphed that it wasn't until the end that it dawned on me I was supposed to be wondering if one of the leads was playing the other and, if so, which one.
Posted Oct 10, 2018
45
Climax (2018)

David Bax

Gaspar Noé's Climax is a Gaspar Noé movie, by which I mean that it delights in thrilling you as much it does in shocking and upsetting you.
Posted Oct 10, 2018
46
First Man (2018)

David Bax

Even when Chazelle's not using literal point-of-view shots, he still favors close-ups and elevates the sounds of ragged or labored breathing. Before First Man is a narrative film, it is an essentially experiential one.
Posted Oct 10, 2018
47
Her Smell (2018)

David Bax

It's captivating but Perry rightly takes his time cluing you in to what it's all for. Be assured that the debauchery and the tantrums and the cruelty and the irresponsibility are pointing toward something.
Posted Oct 9, 2018
48
Burning (Beoning) (2018)

David Bax

Burning is many things-a thriller, a mystery, a comedy, a tale of unrequited love-but all of it builds toward a crushing, existential masterpiece.
Posted Oct 9, 2018
49
22 July (2018)

David Bax

Greengrass' other films in this tradition are interested in how human beings react in the face of unimaginable horror. 22 July is only interested in itself and all of its verite draping can't obscure its underlying, speechifying hokum.
Posted Oct 9, 2018
50
Raising Cain (1992)

Tyler Smith

While film fans might enjoy DePalma's stylistic homages to Hitchcock, and John Lithgow's total commitment to concept and character, there is little else to recommend about Raising Cain.
Posted Oct 8, 2018