Slate

Tomatometer-approved publication
Rating Title/Year Author
The Lighthouse (2019) Dana Stevens This at first fascinating and never less than bonkers movie is eventually sunk by its own theological overreach. EDIT
Posted Oct 16, 2019
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019) Willa Paskin El Camino is a sumptuously shot, totally entertaining, somewhat needless, but sure-why-not elaboration of what has come before. EDIT
Posted Oct 11, 2019
Parasite (2019) Dana Stevens Maybe the best film Bong has yet made... EDIT
Posted Oct 10, 2019
Gemini Man (2019) Sam Adams The closer we get to the actors mouthing their clunky, mock-allegorical dialogue, the phonier they seem. EDIT
Posted Oct 9, 2019
Dolemite Is My Name (2019) Inkoo Kang Dolemite Is My Name gleefully-and thankfully-tosses the tropes of the tortured-artist biopic out the window. EDIT
Posted Oct 3, 2019
Joker (2019) Dana Stevens Joker is a bad movie, yes: It's predictable, clichéd, deeply derivative of other, better movies, and overwritten to the point of self-parody. EDIT
Posted Oct 3, 2019
The King (2019) Isaac Butler The King takes Chalamet's charisma for granted, letting him lean into a self-pity so profound that you wonder why Falstaff-or anyone else-would follow him at all. EDIT
Posted Oct 2, 2019
The Irishman (2019) Dana Stevens I'd be hard-pressed to say that the three-plus hours of The Irishman fly by, but it's also tough to think of a single individual scene I'd want to lose. EDIT
Posted Sep 30, 2019
Rambo: Last Blood (2019) Sam Adams You might not think an 89-minute movie could drag, but boy does this one. EDIT
Posted Sep 19, 2019
Ad Astra (2019) Dana Stevens A movie that, for the bulk of its two-hour-and-two-minute running time, I watched in a state of hypnotized delight. EDIT
Posted Sep 18, 2019
Hustlers (2019) Inkoo Kang An immediate entrant into the pantheon of female friendship movies, Hustlers-a pretty much perfect film-makes plain the hollowness of so many other iterations of girl power in studio projects. You can feel its heart beat. EDIT
Posted Sep 13, 2019
Camp Rock (2008) Troy Patterson A workaday professionalism that's never too slick to alienate anyone. EDIT
Posted Sep 11, 2019
Downton Abbey (2019) June Thomas The movie has two romances, and neither is particularly well developed. But that's OK. The thrill of the film lies in seeing everyone again. At least for a couple of hours. EDIT
Posted Sep 9, 2019
Jojo Rabbit (2019) Sam Adams Waititi isn't making light of Nazis; he's mocking them, denying them and their present-day analogues the dignity of taking them-as distinct from the very real threat they pose-seriously. EDIT
Posted Sep 9, 2019
It: Chapter Two (2019) Jack Hamilton Not unlike the town in which it's set, Muschietti's It only sees what it wants to. EDIT
Posted Sep 9, 2019
It: Chapter Two (2019) Jeffrey Bloomer It's obvious that the filmmakers failed to fully reckon with what they've put on the screen, and the results are grim. EDIT
Posted Sep 6, 2019
Dave Chappelle: Sticks & Stones (2019) Inkoo Kang Like dropping in on a rascally uncle who doesn't know, or doesn't care, how much he's disappointing you. EDIT
Posted Aug 27, 2019
Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019) Dana Stevens For all this movie's faults, I can't wait to take my own middle-school-aged daughter to see it; it's rare to find a movie about mothers and daughters that neither sentimentalizes nor oversimplifies that too often idealized relationship. EDIT
Posted Aug 14, 2019
Cold Case Hammarskjöld (2019) Joshua Keating Of all the new questions raised by this film, the hardest to answer may be "What was the point?" EDIT
Posted Aug 14, 2019
Blinded by the Light (2019) Inkoo Kang An old-fashioned blast in the best way: a smart crowd-pleaser that embraces both sweetness and complexity. EDIT
Posted Aug 13, 2019
One Child Nation (2019) Inkoo Kang Its directness and intimacy lend an indelibility that encyclopedic framing could never approximate. The one-child policy haunts Wang, and she wants it to haunt the viewer, too. EDIT
Posted Aug 9, 2019
The Kitchen (2019) Inkoo Kang A joyless and exhausting movie that squanders the talents of a dream trio: McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, and Elisabeth Moss. EDIT
Posted Aug 8, 2019
Ferrell Takes The Field (2015) Jeremy Stahl The HBO special has more laugh lines per joke than the mediocre-but-beloved Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, more heart than the funny-but-formulaic Blades of Glory, and more potential staying power than the crude and forgettable Semi Pro. EDIT
Posted Aug 6, 2019
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) Keith Phipps A bittersweet, complex, conversation-starting look back at the film business at the close of a tumultuous decade, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood also works as a strong argument for why it's too soon for Tarantino to pack it in. EDIT
Posted Aug 5, 2019
The Nightingale (2018) Inkoo Kang It may not always be easy to sit through, but we're nonetheless lucky to witness it. EDIT
Posted Aug 1, 2019
Amy Schumer: Live From the Apollo (2015) Willa Paskin A pretty good set that, in this Schumer-saturated year, feels disappointing: decent, funny, inessential. EDIT
Posted Jul 31, 2019
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019) Sam Adams It's a movie that does what it needs to do but rarely does more than that, like a replacement part that fits just where it's supposed to go. EDIT
Posted Jul 31, 2019
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) Dana Stevens It's dispiriting to suspect that part of why Tarantino wanted to stage a Manson-adjacent story was because the accoutrements-the period cars and costumes and neon signs, the glowering barefoot hippie girls, the acid-laced cigarettes-were just so cool. EDIT
Posted Jul 30, 2019
The Lion King (2019) Sam Adams Even if you somehow made it into the new Lion King without knowing its origins, you might start to wonder if there was another version of it that made more sense... EDIT
Posted Jul 30, 2019
Share (2019) Inkoo Kang Share's ascetic dismissal of concrete details renders the film alienating, even off-putting. EDIT
Posted Jul 29, 2019
The Unicorn Store (2017) Natalia Winkelman You can practically see the gears of Larson's earnest intentions straining to churn out an earned resolution for her heroine, but it's tainted by the botched coming-of-age lesson we all have to endure to get there. EDIT
Posted Jul 25, 2019
Crawl (2019) Keith Phipps Crawl would look pretty good in just about any season. In this one it positively glows. EDIT
Posted Jul 13, 2019
The Lion King (2019) Dana Stevens Pairing off romantically to produce a legitimate heir to the throne is nice and all, but it's getting destroyed by the minions of your own venal ambition that's the real circle of life. EDIT
Posted Jul 11, 2019
The Farewell (2019) Inkoo Kang The Farewell makes it hard to say goodbye. EDIT
Posted Jul 11, 2019
Aziz Ansari: Right Now (2019) Inkoo Kang [T]his is still the work of a comedy veteran who channels righteous fed-up-ness and critiques obliviousness with relatable flair. EDIT
Posted Jul 10, 2019
Midsommar (2019) Sam Adams You laugh at its audacity, or maybe just to keep from losing your own grip on reality. EDIT
Posted Jul 3, 2019
Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) Sam Adams There's more suspense in Peter and MJ's awkward flirtation than there is in whether Spider-Man will emerge victorious, and that's exactly as it should be. EDIT
Posted Jun 27, 2019
Anima (2019) Sam Adams Anima... turns from a pensive comment on dehumanization into something approaching a silent comedy. EDIT
Posted Jun 27, 2019
Toy Story 4 (2019) Dana Stevens It will send you out of the theater laughing, crying, and thinking all at once, an appropriate mix of responses for what I hope, out of love, will be our last minutes with a franchise that's given us so much. EDIT
Posted Jun 17, 2019
Men in Black: International (2019) Inkoo Kang It's unfair to expect the franchise-launching chemistry between Smith and Jones, but the mere adequacy of Hemsworth and Thompson disappoints nonetheless. EDIT
Posted Jun 13, 2019
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (2019) Sam Adams An ingenious hybrid of fact and fiction that embodies the vital, slipshod, thrilling, confounding essence of the Rolling Thunder Revue itself. EDIT
Posted Jun 13, 2019
Dark Phoenix (2019) Stephanie Burt The movie's weaknesses make more glaring the movie's hollowness where the storyline's feminism once was. EDIT
Posted Jun 11, 2019
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019) Inkoo Kang This magnificent debut often feels like something utterly new. EDIT
Posted Jun 4, 2019
Rocketman (2019) Jeffrey Bloomer Rocketman never quite finds the wild momentum its characters seem to chase around in all those musical numbers. EDIT
Posted May 31, 2019
Deadwood: The Movie (2019) Sam Adams Deadwood ends too quickly, and not just because I was reluctant to leave its world behind once more. Watching it, I could imagine a universe in which the show ran for years more, enough to more fully explore characters... EDIT
Posted May 31, 2019
Always Be My Maybe (2019) Inkoo Kang Moving, thoughtful, tender, and hysterical. EDIT
Posted May 30, 2019
Ma (2019) Sam Adams Ma isn't a bad movie, and it's sure as hell not trying to be a good one, but it scratches a particular itch that neither noble failures nor cranked-out hackwork can touch. EDIT
Posted May 29, 2019
This One's for the Ladies (2018) Nichole Perkins You'll go into the film ready to see some shiny, rippling flesh, and you will not be disappointed, but you'll leave thinking about community and justice. EDIT
Posted May 28, 2019
Booksmart (2019) Dana Stevens Booksmart is a teen sex romp well suited for the summer of 2019: feminist but not preachy, raunchy but not nasty, emotionally intelligent but not sentimental. EDIT
Posted May 24, 2019
Aladdin (2019) Inkoo Kang The new Aladdin doesn't quite add up to a whole new world, but the update derives some small wisdom from having been more places. EDIT
Posted May 23, 2019