Nashville Scene

Tomatometer-approved publication
Rating Title/Year Author
() Jim Ridley Thoughtful and even-handed... EDIT
Posted Feb 10, 2020
1917 (2019) Joe Nolan 1917 spends a lot of time focused on the crushing monotony of war, but it marries the boring repetition of marching, running and crawling with an urgent plot, and the resulting tension is gripping. EDIT
Posted Jan 17, 2020
Just Mercy (2019) Craig D. Lindsey There is something downright righteous about watching Killmonger and Captain Marvel join forces to go after some bigoted white trash. EDIT
Posted Jan 17, 2020
Varda by Agnès (2019) Sadaf Ahsan The film is more a lesson on craft and doing things your own way than anything, and Varda gets fascinatingly specific. EDIT
Posted Jan 17, 2020
Invisible Life (2019) Nathan Smith Invisible Life lives or dies on Louvart's images, and it's her sensitivity for color and composition that elevates the film from a rather straightforward arthouse melodrama into something more effusive and mysterious. EDIT
Posted Jan 17, 2020
63 Up (2019) Steve Erickson 63 Up moves from brief profiles of one subject to the next, drawing on imagery from their entire lives in chronological order to contrast it with their present selves. EDIT
Posted Jan 3, 2020
Doctor Sleep (2019) Cory Woodroof This one might leave you a bit more energized and hopeful than the Kubrick film. Kubrick had no problem showing us what happens when the Shine goes out. Flanagan seeks to do the opposite: Maybe, the film argues, we'll all Shine on. EDIT
Posted Dec 23, 2019
Little Women (2019) Erica Ciccarone Art confers meaning, and meaning creates empathy and kinship. When women are reflected in cinema, we all benefit. Little Women is a masterpiece of filmmaking that we will watch for generations. EDIT
Posted Dec 23, 2019
Uncut Gems (2019) Nathan Smith Uncut Gems works as a perfectly pitched period piece about a bygone gilded age, halfway through the Obama years, the sheen of Hope and Change slightly dulled... EDIT
Posted Dec 19, 2019
Bombshell (2019) Erica Ciccarone Is Bombshell the #MeToo depiction we've been waiting for? Probably not. But it's still a hell of a ride. EDIT
Posted Dec 19, 2019
Richard Jewell (2019) Craig D. Lindsey To be honest, this is a story in which nearly everybody involved - including Jewell - comes off looking like an incompetent fool. EDIT
Posted Dec 19, 2019
Light From Light (2019) Cory Woodroof Light From Light finds and dissects the pangs that plague the lonely and the lost, for whom it offers a prayer of restoration. EDIT
Posted Dec 19, 2019
A Hidden Life (2019) D. Patrick Rodgers Malick creates series of vignettes, many of them featuring long stretches of silence, allowing his actors to play off one another as well as their surroundings. EDIT
Posted Dec 18, 2019
Dark Waters (2019) Joe Nolan Dark Waters delivers with deeply confident filmmaking, giving us a contemporary classic of elite corruption, and a return to form for the courtroom drama. EDIT
Posted Dec 10, 2019
Honey Boy (2019) Cory Woodroof Even though LaBeouf's script is rightly focused on an introspection, Har'el's direction forces us to find ourselves in the film, however we can. EDIT
Posted Dec 10, 2019
Queen & Slim (2019) Erica Ciccarone I wouldn't call the film tedious - Matsoukas' aesthetic choices are too sharp for that - but on the whole, Queen & Slim has more style than substance. EDIT
Posted Dec 10, 2019
Daniel Isn't Real (2019) Jason Shawhan This is a kindhearted but emotionally rigorous journey to the precipice of madness that isn't afraid to go Screaming Mad George when the time comes to spread the splatter. EDIT
Posted Dec 10, 2019
Waves (2019) Craig D. Lindsey There are two movies going on in Waves. Unfortunately, you may want to deal with only one of them. EDIT
Posted Nov 26, 2019
Knives Out (2019) Erica Ciccarone Rian Johnson's Knives Out is an ingenious whodunit that lets us laugh at rich assholes - in this case, those of House Thrombey - and root for a protagonist who is authentically delightful. EDIT
Posted Nov 26, 2019
Synonyms (2018) Nathan Smith As our world is inflicted by intensifying nationalism, Synonyms is an especially relevant film. EDIT
Posted Nov 21, 2019
The Irishman (2019) D. Patrick Rodgers Scorsese here shows us in vivid detail the lasting fallout of destruction and violence, and he does so using a murderers' row of world-class performers. EDIT
Posted Nov 21, 2019
Dolor y gloria (2019) Nathan Smith In classic Almodóvar fashion, Pain and Glory is suffused with a deep love of all kinds of art . EDIT
Posted Nov 7, 2019
Jojo Rabbit (2019) Nathan Smith This is Waititi's main line of critique: Nazism as a kind of especially pernicious stan culture, its infantile practitioners the original teenyboppers. EDIT
Posted Nov 7, 2019
Motherless Brooklyn (2019) Steve Erickson It spends a lazy 144 minutes in a cozy noir fantasia, with little regard for forward momentum. EDIT
Posted Nov 1, 2019
Lucy in the Sky (2019) Sadaf Ahsan "While the film does grant its story some emotional gravitas, it gets lost in the existential crisis of it all." EDIT
Posted Oct 25, 2019
Parasite (2019) Sadaf Ahsan A masterful commentary on class, Parasite issues a new guideline for contemporary horror. EDIT
Posted Oct 25, 2019
The Lighthouse (2019) Jason Shawhan This film features the darkest tendencies of masculine impulses arising to redefine the world as we know it, consuming everything in a reaction of blunt-force violence. EDIT
Posted Oct 25, 2019
Gemini Man (2019) Cory Woodroof The script has been chopped and screwed and rewritten for more than two decades, and this feels like something Jean-Claude Van Damme would've done in between projects just to help pay for that extra vacation house. EDIT
Posted Oct 11, 2019
Mister America (2019) Nathan Smith Mister America does provide the most succinct summation thus far of the On Cinema mythology, even if it can't quite approximate the experience of the show itself. EDIT
Posted Oct 10, 2019
Judy (2019) Rachel Wells The beating heart at the center of Judy is the onstage performances. EDIT
Posted Oct 10, 2019
Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (2019) Brittney McKenna The Sound of My Voice is a must-watch for fans of Ronstadt, as well as lovers of folk music and those fascinated by the iconic Los Angeles music scene of the '60s and '70s. EDIT
Posted Oct 10, 2019
Working Man (2019) Joe Nolan This is a movie about the dignity of work. It's never pedantic or preachy, and it doesn't glorify manual labor while ignoring the grit. EDIT
Posted Oct 10, 2019
() Joe Nolan Rewind is an important movie because of its crucial social message. But it's a great film because it's a hero's tale about an incredibly brave little kid from an exceptional family. EDIT
Posted Oct 10, 2019
() Erica Ciccarone Clementine is a portrait of the often-shifting relationship between female friends that is so rarely conveyed honestly in film. EDIT
Posted Oct 10, 2019
De lo mio (2019) Erica Ciccarone The setup is ripe for conflict, but Peralta's script is restrained, and what is not said among the siblings amps up the tension in this beautifully shot film. EDIT
Posted Oct 10, 2019
Joker (2019) Cory Woodroof Despite moments that feel like they're sincerely trying to warn us to about a world that creates Arthur Flecks, Joker often feels unchecked and unkempt in its unforgiving soapboxing and nihilistic, ugly tendencies. EDIT
Posted Oct 10, 2019
The Dead Center (2018) Jason Shawhan "There's an unknowable boundary around the human experience, and if you pass beyond that boundary, you are quite simply fucked." EDIT
Posted Oct 10, 2019
Marriage Story (2019) Cory Woodroof Baumbach plays the material with the same levity-in-a-tornado wit and wisdom that hallmarks the best works of James L. Brooks, and gets powerhouse performances out of Driver and Johansson. EDIT
Posted Oct 10, 2019
Greener Grass (2019) Erica Ciccarone ... somehow, this bizarre reflection of suburban married life just works. EDIT
Posted Oct 10, 2019
Burning Cane (2019) Cory Woodroof Although this film could've benefitted from a less observational and more engaged narrative, the imagery is stark and unforgiving, highlighting the disarrayed lives of Youmans' characters. EDIT
Posted Oct 10, 2019
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (2019) Ron Wynn There's ample dramatic character flourishes and reflections to let both hardcore fans and newcomers recognize both Davis' brilliance and his hair-trigger temper. EDIT
Posted Sep 20, 2019
The Flower (La flor) (2016) Jason Shawhan It's such a varied, shifting experience that by the time everything is done, you feel like you've been in a whirlwind affair with cinema itself. EDIT
Posted Sep 20, 2019
Kamera o tomeru na! (2017) Jason Shawhan One Cut of the Dead is a scrappy, sincere take on the zombie film, and perhaps the only pure and decent thing to be found at the box office. EDIT
Posted Sep 12, 2019
In Fabric (2018) Jason Shawhan This dress comes with a body count, and though it doesn't send folks into stabby fits of rage, haute tragedy is all the rage this season. EDIT
Posted Sep 12, 2019
Cold Case Hammarskjöld (2019) Steve Erickson The things the film suggests may be speculative, but the genocidal racism behind the conspiracy it describes is instantly believable. EDIT
Posted Sep 11, 2019
It: Chapter Two (2019) Cory Woodroof It's designed to feel like a rancid reunion, a painstaking re-creation to conjure the same chills it elicited the first time you went to Derry, Maine. EDIT
Posted Sep 11, 2019
The Nightingale (2018) Nathan Smith The Nightingale is at its best when it ceases to be a horror movie or a period piece and instead becomes a buddy comedy about two people bonding over how much the English have ruined their lives. EDIT
Posted Sep 11, 2019
Blinded by the Light (2019) Craig D. Lindsey Despite some moments of cloying earnestness that seem like overkill, Blinded by the Light is a pleasant enough throwback voyage of self-discovery. EDIT
Posted Aug 23, 2019
Angel Has Fallen (2019) Jason Shawhan There is a vicious efficiency to this sequence that cobbles together the exact right combination of sci-fi awe and visceral, exploding horror. EDIT
Posted Aug 23, 2019
The Kitchen (2019) Cory Woodroof Everything about The Kitchen's script feels sanded down and traced over, though Berloff still shows plenty of potential as a director. EDIT
Posted Aug 9, 2019