Slate

Tomatometer-approved publication
Rating Title/Year Author
Locked Down (2021) Dana Stevens Though this experiment isn't a total success, I appreciated its stubborn insistence on engaging with the current moment, this unsettled and complexly miserable moment in time. EDIT
Posted Jan 13, 2021
Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) Dana Stevens Jenkins and Gadot have gone and done it: They've gotten me invested in the emotional well-being of a franchise superhero. EDIT
Posted Dec 25, 2020
Soul (2020) Dan Kois Soul feels, in the end, like a worthwhile Pixar experiment. EDIT
Posted Dec 14, 2020
Songbird (2020) Rebecca Onion Songbird isn't very good, which you might expect for something thrown together so quickly. EDIT
Posted Dec 13, 2020
Let Them All Talk (2020) Karen Han It's a meditation on life and a touching ensemble picture, smuggled in by Streep's star power and Soderbergh's constant quest for innovation. EDIT
Posted Dec 10, 2020
A New York Christmas Wedding (2020) Christina Cauterucci It's offensively bad, and yet I must advise that if you watch one thing this December, make it this piece-of-trash holiday movie. I don't know about you, but I needed the laugh. EDIT
Posted Dec 5, 2020
Nomadland (2020) Dana Stevens Nomadland is a meditation on the meaning and value of the concept of home: Does it reside in a building? A vehicle? A family? A sense of security and belonging? EDIT
Posted Dec 2, 2020
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020) Karen Han The reason to run to this movie is the titanic performances of its leads: Davis and, in his final performance, the late Chadwick Boseman. EDIT
Posted Nov 20, 2020
Happiest Season (2020) Christina Cauterucci Just when I was ready to dismiss Harper and her entire milieu completely, Happiest Season surprised me with back-to-back yanks on my heartstrings... EDIT
Posted Nov 19, 2020
Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (2020) Karen Han It's the filmic equivalent of the high that comes from eating way too many candy canes and drinking way too much hot chocolate. EDIT
Posted Nov 19, 2020
LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special (2020) Marissa Martinelli The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special may just be a goof, but it hints at the possibility of exploring other underdeveloped aspects of The Rise of Skywalker. EDIT
Posted Nov 18, 2020
Wolfwalkers (2020) Sam Adams Wolfwalkers casts a spell that will linger for a long, long time. EDIT
Posted Nov 13, 2020
Mank (2020) Dana Stevens Mank finds its heart when both of its best-drawn characters are on screen: Oldman's ruined, rueful Mankiewicz and Amanda Seyfried's tartly funny Marion Davies... EDIT
Posted Nov 12, 2020
Freaky (2020) Karen Han As strange as it may sound, Freaky is one of the 2020 movies that comes closest to being truly feel-good. EDIT
Posted Nov 12, 2020
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020) Sam Adams The Borat sequel's best moments are when it turns from mockumentary to straight-up doc, finding Americans who look past Borat's bushy mustache and try to connect with the human behind it. EDIT
Posted Oct 21, 2020
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) Dana Stevens Barn-burning speeches are a lot more rousing when the barn in question is rotted enough to require immediate burning to the ground. EDIT
Posted Oct 14, 2020
The Glorias (2020) Laura Miller There are a thousand ways to thoroughly enjoy a not-especially-good film, and Julie Taymor's The Glorias offers up one of them. EDIT
Posted Oct 1, 2020
Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020) Dan Kois Dick Johnson Is Dead is a testament to the power of talking forthrightly about death with those you love. It shows how death may never lose its power, exactly, but you can make yourselves partners in the process, not victims of it. EDIT
Posted Sep 30, 2020
Tenet (2020) Sam Adams Tenet's gears turn smoothly, but it's like a factory with no raw material to process. EDIT
Posted Aug 27, 2020
Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) Dana Stevens Missteps and all, this movie's heart remains in the right place. EDIT
Posted Aug 27, 2020
Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Candace Against the Universe (2020) Dan Kois Behold, the show's Interesting Character-inator: When killjoy Candace gets to be the center of a story, she's just as brave, resourceful, and funny as her little brothers have always been. EDIT
Posted Aug 25, 2020
Boys State (2020) Madeline Ducharme For much of the film, Moss and McBaine have viewers on the edge of their seats over which of the boys will ascend to the program's highest, and most coveted, position. EDIT
Posted Aug 14, 2020
The Girl (2012) Troy Patterson Clean and smart and dull. EDIT
Posted Aug 4, 2020
She Dies Tomorrow (2020) Sam Adams Both raw and oblique, in a way that suggests something torn from life, fashioned into something new but with the seams left bare. EDIT
Posted Jul 29, 2020
Be Water (2020) Jack Hamilton A nimble, nuanced, and at times even poetic documentary about martial arts legend Bruce Lee. EDIT
Posted Jun 22, 2020
Irresistible (2020) Sam Adams Irresistible might be a movie for the moment before or the moment after, but it feels entirely out of step with the one it's in. EDIT
Posted Jun 22, 2020
Da 5 Bloods (2020) Sam Adams Lindo's character, and his performance, are for the ages. EDIT
Posted Jun 11, 2020
The King of Staten Island (2020) Sam Adams You're in the passenger seat, and it's a nice ride as long as you don't care where you're going. At least, this time, Apatow opted for a change of scenery. EDIT
Posted Jun 8, 2020
Mother (1996) David Edelstein Brooks' minimalism can be amazingly jampacked, but Mother is perilously slack. EDIT
Posted Jun 5, 2020
Cinema Verite (2011) Troy Patterson The relationship between Gilbert and Pat is the strange, sexy mechanism that makes Cinema Verite work... And the movie is nicely ambiguous about what Gilbert wrought as the inventor of the reality-TV show. EDIT
Posted Jun 3, 2020
Shirley (2020) Laura Miller For all its inaccuracies and elisions, Shirley really does get at its namesake's ambivalence about domesticity and marriage. EDIT
Posted Jun 2, 2020
Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012) Troy Patterson Hemingway & Gellhorn's daft romanticization of its subjects proves central to its overwrought sense of self. This is the kind of film where the protagonists consummate their affair while Fascists are shelling their hotel. EDIT
Posted May 28, 2020
The Vast of Night (2019) Matthew Dessem Every scene has been staged and shot with intelligence, intent, inventiveness, and a sense of play. To watch it is to get excited about the billions of different ways you can combine sound and moving images to tell a story. EDIT
Posted May 26, 2020
The Lovebirds (2020) Sam Adams The way The Lovebirds executes this old template is largely unremarkable, so the fact that it works anyway is a testament to its leads' star power, especially Rae's. EDIT
Posted May 22, 2020
Hardball (2001) Matthew Feeney [Keanu] Reeves is often mocked for his blankness, but that quality is an asset here. EDIT
Posted May 13, 2020
Sincerely Louis C.K. (2020) Matthew Dessem I find it so depressing and boring-the special, Louis' new fans, Louis himself-that I don't ever want to give any of it my time or attention again. EDIT
Posted Apr 28, 2020
Beastie Boys Story (2020) Jack Hamilton In typical Jonze fashion, the film is loose and anarchic yet deceptively well-controlled, its fourth wall always in varying states of permeability. EDIT
Posted Apr 20, 2020
Trolls World Tour (2020) Sam Adams Reader, I wept. EDIT
Posted Apr 13, 2020
Idiocracy (2006) Reihan Salam Idiocracy is easily the most potent political film of the year, and the most stirring defense of traditional values since Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. EDIT
Posted Apr 9, 2020
The Hunt (2020) Sam Adams No one will see themselves in The Hunt, and only those inclined to ignorant caricature will fancy they recognize the others. EDIT
Posted Mar 11, 2020
Selena (1997) Sarah Kerr It tries to satisfy too many different groups at once and ends up watering down the art so much it satisfies no one. EDIT
Posted Feb 27, 2020
Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band (2019) Jack Hamilton With its tone of score-settling, Once Were Brothers inadvertently ends up selling the Band, and even Robertson himself, short. EDIT
Posted Feb 20, 2020
Downhill (2020) Sam Adams Downhill too often plays like a cringe comedy that's all cringe. It's not just uncomfortable; it's unpleasant. EDIT
Posted Feb 14, 2020
To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You (2020) Heather Schwedel P.S. I ... don't know if I'm still into this? EDIT
Posted Feb 12, 2020
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020) Sam Adams For a movie that touts its protagonist's emancipation, Birds of Prey still feels very much in chains. EDIT
Posted Feb 6, 2020
On the Record (2020) Sam Adams Drawing on interviews with cultural commentators, academics, and activists, the movie addresses head-on the place, or lack of one, that women of color-especially black women assaulted by black men-have been accorded in the #MeToo movement. EDIT
Posted Jan 25, 2020
Weathering With You (2019) Dan Kois I loved Your Name, even as I recognized I was not the ideal target audience for it, and that's why I watched Weathering With You with that ideal target audience: a gaggle of teens. EDIT
Posted Jan 16, 2020
Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea (2004) Rebecca Onion Plagues and Pleasures has a different style for a reason: It's a movie about the environment that isn't content with the good-bad dynamic of your average gloomy enviropic. EDIT
Posted Dec 19, 2019
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) Sam Adams Rather than making a movie some people might love, Abrams tried to make a movie no one would hate, and as a result, you don't feel much of anything at all. EDIT
Posted Dec 18, 2019
Just Mercy (2019) Inkoo Kang The clear-cut morality of the plot necessitates dramatic tension or righteous fury, and Cretton delivers neither. EDIT
Posted Dec 11, 2019