Slate
Tomatometer-approved publication
Rating
Title/Year
Author
1
Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
It's goofy as hell and borderline inexcusable at times, but it's also kind of glorious.
Posted Feb 16, 2019
2
What Men Want (2019)
What Men Want won't let viewers have it all, but what we get is more than satisfying.
Posted Feb 7, 2019
3
Lord and Miller have always known what they're doing, but here it feels like they need you to know it, too.
Posted Feb 7, 2019
4
High Flying Bird (2019)
Like Ray, Soderbergh plays the game while also undermining it. Like Ray, High Flying Bird is a revolutionary wearing a beautiful suit.
Posted Feb 7, 2019
5
[N]arratives help us sift the meaningful harbingers from the detritus of life. Extremely Wicked discards them entirely.
Posted Feb 4, 2019
6
Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)
Its ideas are silly, but Jake Gyllenhaal delivers them with such goofy passion that who cares?
Posted Feb 1, 2019
7
Late Night (2019)
Late Night's subject feels timely, and it's uncommonly crowd-pleasing, even broad.
Posted Feb 1, 2019
8
Brexit (2019)
90 minutes of shocking but surprisingly entertaining political theater.
Posted Jan 22, 2019
9
The Upside (2019)
Compared with the streamlined Intouchables, the remake feels ungainly, inexpertly suturing together the French source material with Hollywood formula.
Posted Jan 12, 2019
10
Glass (2019)
11
Come Sunday (2018)
Come Sunday Takes the Challenges of Faith Seriously. We Need More Movies Like It.
Posted Jan 8, 2019
12
BlacKkKlansman (2018)
The filmmaker rips from the headlines, but the struggles remain the same.
Posted Jan 8, 2019
13
Stan & Ollie (2019)
14
Tig Notaro: Happy to Be Here (2018)
This is some of her most gleeful work yet, and that glee is inextricable from the pleasure of simply seeing her live her life.
Posted Dec 27, 2018
15
Minding the Gap (2018)
Minding the Gap becomes less a story about the ad hoc fraternity of skateboarders and more about the fractured home life that sends them looking for a surrogate family.
Posted Dec 26, 2018
16
Aquaman (2018)
There are parts of Aquaman that are so wonderfully strange that it's astonishing to see them in a franchise blockbuster.
Posted Dec 21, 2018
17
All Is True (2018)
18
Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku) (2018)
Shoplifters achieves that ultimate goal of art as expressed by the artist Robert Filliou: It's art that makes life more interesting than art.
Posted Dec 20, 2018
19
Welcome to Marwen (2018)
Marwen is the work of a filmmaker who's never been more sure of his craft, and never less connected to anything resembling actual human experience.
Posted Dec 19, 2018
20
Adam Sandler: 100% Fresh (2018)
While the material in 100% Fresh may technically be new, it's hardly original. Most of it is just a litany of petty complaints that arrive practically cobwebbed.
Posted Dec 18, 2018
21
Vice (2018)
It isn't clear what McKay is trying to accomplish. What are we supposed to take away from the movie that we didn't bring in?
Posted Dec 17, 2018
22
Vice (2018)
Vice is so weighed down with narrative embellishments that its many simpler virtues... get lost in the rococo encrustations.
Posted Dec 17, 2018
23
The Mule (2018)
A spry, funny, moving film that never heads in the direction in which it looks like it's about to head, kind of like its protagonist.
Posted Dec 13, 2018
24
Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
This Mary Poppins may not be strictly necessary, but it's more than sufficient.
Posted Dec 12, 2018
25
Dumplin' (2018)
A movie so lifeless you'd have more fun guessing the Netflix niche group that the production is supposed to satisfy.
Posted Dec 7, 2018
26
After a solid decade of Marvel movies modeled on the same template, it's a thrill to watch one that's allowed to find its own rhythms, to play with form and content...
Posted Dec 5, 2018
27
Mary Queen of Scots (2018)
28
The Greatest Showman (2017)
Like Barnum himself, it's an elegant fraud, nice enough to look at as long as you don't look too close.
Posted Dec 4, 2018
29
30
If Beale Street Could Talk (2019)
In the movies, love is cheap. It's everywhere and nowhere, too often reduced to a formula or a reward. Beale Street knows better.
Posted Dec 3, 2018
31
The Favourite (2018)
Even when the movie's self-love gets to be a bit much, there are stylistic touches to enjoy.
Posted Nov 20, 2018
32
Roma (2018)
Roma is hypnotic and transporting and sublime, everything a movie seen on the big screen ought to be.
Posted Nov 19, 2018
33
Creed II (2018)
34
CAM (2018)
If the first half of Cam is pleasantly episodic and purringly tense, the latter half-in which Alice searches for her hacker-is clever, inventive, and wonderfully evocative.
Posted Nov 15, 2018
35
Congratulations to Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald for being the first flat-out terrible product of the Harry Potter expanded universe.
Posted Nov 15, 2018
36
Widows (2018)
McQueen has created a tense and satisfying action drama with a decidedly feminist bent.
Posted Nov 14, 2018
37
Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)
You don't need to be a Disney connoisseur or an '80s buff to get it. The world it's set in is entirely, and sometimes frighteningly, of the current moment.
Posted Nov 14, 2018
38
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973)
39
The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018)
It's "new" in the way New Coke was new, familiar enough so you can tell what it's aiming for, but it's subtly, and sometimes not-so-subtly, off.
Posted Nov 8, 2018
40
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
41
Tyrel (2018)
[Mitchell] lets you feel every humiliation and subsequent redemption while he's trapped in this dynamic.
Posted Nov 5, 2018
42
Boy Erased (2018)
Boy Erased feels mostly honorable and fit for its mantle.
Posted Nov 1, 2018
43
Suspiria (2018)
Suspiria is a meditation on the dangers of pedagogy and the perils of placing your art above all else, but it never quite fights its way to the surface.
Posted Oct 26, 2018
44
Burning (Beoning) (2018)
45
Mid90s (2018)
Mid90s just looks like a poser.
Posted Oct 18, 2018
46
Wildlife (2018)
A confident and compassionate first film.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
47
Beautiful Boy (2018)
48
First Man (2018)
A movie that's as fascinated by the remote inner landscape of its hero as he is by the unexplored surface of the moon.
Posted Oct 11, 2018
49
The Hate U Give (2018)
It's a message movie, but it never forgets the human dimension.
Posted Oct 5, 2018
50
A Star Is Born (2018)