Cinemayward

Cinemayward is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Joel Mayward
Rating Title/Year Author
3/5 Emanuel (2019) Joel Mayward A good, if simple, reminder that grace truly is amazing, especially when we've walked in the shadow of death. EDIT
Posted Oct 16, 2019
2.5/5 Joker (2019) Joel Mayward It's an appropriate film for its eponymous antagonist...repellent in its wanton depravity, it's still maddeningly captivating, and sure to spark strong reactions. EDIT
Posted Oct 6, 2019
4/5 High Life (2018) Joel Mayward High Life is willing to stare into the hopeless void and discern a particle of optimism. EDIT
Posted Sep 22, 2019
3.5/5 Ad Astra (2019) Joel Mayward We may look to the stars for answers, but Ad Astra suggests that they, too, are only human. EDIT
Posted Sep 18, 2019
2/5 Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) Joel Mayward Like much of the Cult of Tarantino that eager audiences worship, "Once Upon a Time" might be meaningful and/or shocking if it weren't so barbaric, predictable, and vapid. EDIT
Posted Aug 26, 2019
2/5 Her Smell (2018) Joel Mayward Like its lead character, Alex Ross Perry's Her Smell is a chaotic, draining mess, an emotional rollercoaster where they forgot to buckle the safety belts. EDIT
Posted Aug 24, 2019
3.5/5 Wild Rose (2018) Joel Mayward With Jessie Buckley's performance in Wild Rose, a star is born. EDIT
Posted Aug 2, 2019
3/5 Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) Joel Mayward 'Far From Home' may not be the *best* Spider-Man film...but it's perhaps the one most fitting for our media- and CGI-saturated era. EDIT
Posted Jul 3, 2019
3/5 Toy Story 4 (2019) Joel Mayward Toy Story 4 is wholly superfluous, albeit often funny and nice to look at. EDIT
Posted Jun 21, 2019
4/5 Transit (2018) Joel Mayward Sartre declared that hell is other people; Christian Petzold's 'Transit' suggests that hell is waiting for other people. EDIT
Posted Jun 10, 2019
3/5 Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) Joel Mayward This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to Godzilla. EDIT
Posted Jun 6, 2019
2/5 The Biggest Little Farm (2018) Joel Mayward For all its focus on being organic and authentic, there is something distinctly artificial and performative about the film's polished aesthetic and narrative. It's like a Thomas Kinkade painting as brought to you by the Hallmark Channel EDIT
Posted May 30, 2019
5/5 Amazing Grace (2018) Joel Mayward Without exaggeration, one of the greatest concert films I have ever seen. The raw authenticity of the edited footage perfectly accompanies Franklin's transcendent vocals. EDIT
Posted May 25, 2019
4.5/5 Parasite (2019) Joel Mayward Imagine the premise and empathy of Hirokazu Koreeda's Shoplifters, but with the genre-defying tone and brash ambition of Jordan Peele's Us. Such is Parasite, a work of maniacal cinematic genius. EDIT
Posted May 22, 2019
3.5/5 Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) Joel Mayward This is simply a beautiful film to behold, with exquisite attention to detail and lighting. EDIT
Posted May 22, 2019
4.5/5 Young Ahmed (2019) Joel Mayward Young Ahmed is...certain to be the Dardenne brothers' most divisive film in its empathetic-yet-opaque exploration of Islamic extremism . EDIT
Posted May 21, 2019
4/5 Little Joe (2019) Joel Mayward Jessica Hausner's odd and ominous Little Joe feels like a film-length episode of Black Mirror with an IKEA aesthetic. EDIT
Posted May 21, 2019
4.5/5 The Lighthouse (2019) Joel Mayward Eggers' vision here transcends conventional categorization-it is a historico-psychological-existential thriller; a bewildering, boozy bloody bromance; a sea-soaked single-location supernatural suspense story. It is, in short, A Lot To Take In. EDIT
Posted May 19, 2019
5/5 A Hidden Life (2019) Joel Mayward A Hidden Life is both the most Christian and the most political of Terrence Malick's films. EDIT
Posted May 19, 2019
4.5/5 The Climb (2017) Joel Mayward Both tender and rib-tickling, The Climb is a terrific comedy which is deadly serious about cinematography and mise-en-scène. EDIT
Posted May 18, 2019
3/5 () Joel Mayward The cinematography is often strikingly beautiful still frames or slow zooms on Prudhomme's face, her visage both captivating and confrontational. EDIT
Posted May 18, 2019
2.5/5 Sorry We Missed You (2019) Joel Mayward After 50 years of making movies, English director Ken Loach just keeps making the same film. EDIT
Posted May 17, 2019
4/5 Atlantics (2019) Joel Mayward Diop is the first black woman to have a film in competition at Cannes, and her debut feature is the work of a confident, perceptive filmmaker [...] Diop is like a building wave of creativity rushing forward towards a bright future. EDIT
Posted May 17, 2019
3/5 The Dead Don't Die (2019) Joel Mayward Dead is an homage to B-movies and better times shot through with signature Jarmusch deadpan goofiness. EDIT
Posted May 16, 2019
3.5/5 The Unknown Saint (2019) Joel Mayward Though ostensibly a drama, The Unknown Saint has a droll, whimsical sense of humor about it. EDIT
Posted May 16, 2019
4/5 Bull (2019) Joel Mayward Bull is a haptic film, focusing on the care and abuse of bodies, both human and animal-it is a realm of bruises, both historical and personal. EDIT
Posted May 16, 2019
3.5/5 Knock Down the House (2019) Joel Mayward Even knowing the outcome of these campaigns, the film is nevertheless thrilling and inspirational, imbued with the verve and vision of the candidates. EDIT
Posted May 3, 2019
3/5 Avengers: Endgame (2019) Joel Mayward The Superhero film has truly become our Western. EDIT
Posted Apr 26, 2019
2.5/5 Us (2019) Joel Mayward Jordan Peele's follow up to his excellent Oscar-winning debut Get Out is a go-for-broke ambitious mess of a film. EDIT
Posted Apr 24, 2019
3/5 Triple Frontier (2019) Joel Mayward The idea to cast Hedlund and Hunnam as brothers is downright brilliant - if Boyd Holbrook were in this film, it'd be like looking at triplets. EDIT
Posted Mar 13, 2019
3.5/5 Captain Marvel (2019) Joel Mayward It's marvelous. EDIT
Posted Mar 10, 2019
3.5/5 The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (2019) Joel Mayward Not a sophomore slump, but certainly nowhere near as transcendently awesome as the original, The LEGO Movie 2 is like the electro-remix of your favorite pop song, relying heavily on your love for the first film EDIT
Posted Feb 24, 2019
4/5 High Flying Bird (2019) Joel Mayward Those expecting a traditional sports film will be disappointed ... this is an Ocean's 11-esque caper driven more by dialogue than dunks, verbal maneuvering than athletic prowess. EDIT
Posted Feb 16, 2019
3/5 How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019) Joel Mayward The detail in the animation is the strongest I've seen in these films. Swarms (flocks? herds?) of dragons in flight outlined against the sky never cease to amaze. EDIT
Posted Feb 3, 2019
2/5 Velvet Buzzsaw (2019) Joel Mayward Not thrilling enough as a thriller and not outrageous enough as satire, Velvet Buzzsaw is merely a Netflix-level Nocturnal Animals . EDIT
Posted Feb 2, 2019
5/5 World of Tomorrow (2015) Joel Mayward When a film can be prophetic, humorous, elegant, simple, quirky, and ambitious all at once, without ever devolving into incoherence, that's something worth viewing. EDIT
Posted Jan 9, 2019
2.5/5 The Big Short (2015) Joel Mayward Is this film supposed to be funny? Dramatic? Condemning? Satirical? Heartbreaking? A documentary? Oscar-bait? It aims to be all of the above, which makes it ultimately feel inert and draining. EDIT
Posted Jan 9, 2019
4/5 Creed (2015) Joel Mayward In short, it's a knockout. EDIT
Posted Jan 9, 2019
2.5/5 The Revenant (2015) Joel Mayward ...it's a drawn out exercise in excruciation. EDIT
Posted Jan 9, 2019
4/5 Mustang (2015) Joel Mayward In a cinematic year filled with excellent stories about young women growing up...Mustang is the best coming-of-age film in 2015. EDIT
Posted Jan 9, 2019
3/5 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016) Joel Mayward With [Krasinski's] winsome presence as the central character, 13 Hours has far more pathos and charm than I anticipated from a Bay military spectacle. EDIT
Posted Jan 9, 2019
2.5/5 Cartel Land (2015) Joel Mayward Raw, brutal, and ambitious, Cartel Land may be a real life story, but its limited scope in truly exploring the ideas it raised left me wanting more. EDIT
Posted Jan 9, 2019
3/5 Hail, Caesar! (2016) Joel Mayward Catholics, Communists, and classic Hollywood are all equally celebrated and caricatured in the Coen Brothers' latest comedy caper. After all, it's a Christ tale. And a musical. EDIT
Posted Jan 9, 2019
5/5 Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (2014) Joel Mayward Gett is holistic in its emotional captivation-it's funny, heart-warming, painful, saddening, tense, contemplative, and cathartic. EDIT
Posted Jan 9, 2019
3/5 The Favourite (2018) Joel Mayward The Favourite is like Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve meets Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, blurring the lines between pastiche and parody of period-piece chamber dramas. EDIT
Posted Jan 7, 2019
1.5/5 Green Book (2018) Joel Mayward ...the film merely skims the surface of systemic American racism, choosing to forgo depth for formulaic feel-good tropes. EDIT
Posted Jan 7, 2019
4/5 The Witch (2015) Joel Mayward The Witch isn't just a great horror film; it's a great film, period. EDIT
Posted Dec 31, 2018
3.5/5 Bridge of Spies (2015) Joel Mayward A muted, steady spy story, Spies feels classic in both form and content, a throwback to a previous era in its style and storytelling. EDIT
Posted Dec 31, 2018
3.5/5 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) Joel Mayward It's thrilling and unique, perfectly holding the line between action/thriller and a cerebral chamber drama. When the film does finally reveal all its cards, it's a satisfying adrenaline rush. EDIT
Posted Dec 31, 2018
2.5/5 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) Joel Mayward ...akin to a Philosophy 101 thesis read aloud while you're being punched repeatedly in the face. EDIT
Posted Dec 31, 2018