Slate

Tomatometer-approved publication
Rating Title/Year Author
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
John Wick: Chapter 3 -- Parabellum (2019) Sam Adams The best way to watch isn't with oohs and aahhs. It's with laughter, savoring the beauty and the absurdity of each elaborate spectacle. Each movement is a joke, and death is the ultimate punchline. EDIT
Posted May 16, 2019
The Souvenir (2019) Dana Stevens The Souvenir treats the painful events at its center with a kind of remoteness, as if handling a fragile long-lost object while wearing thick gloves. EDIT
Posted May 16, 2019
Wine Country (2019) Inkoo Kang A waste of talent that makes Wine Country even more forgettable than its jokes. EDIT
Posted May 10, 2019
Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019) Sam Adams In a world packed full of franchise-extending would-be blockbusters, there's something strangely appealing about its patchiness. EDIT
Posted May 8, 2019
Long Shot (2019) Inkoo Kang Rogen is as funny as he's ever been, but it's Theron who's the standout. EDIT
Posted May 2, 2019
Knock Down the House (2019) Sam Adams After watching Ocasio-Cortez and the other women in Knock Down the House pound the pavement and knock on doors, you can see that they're the ones working hard, and that for them, getting their hands dirty is nothing new. EDIT
Posted Apr 30, 2019
Avengers: Endgame (2019) Dana Stevens Endgame consists almost entirely of the downtime scenes that were always secretly everyone's favorite parts of these movies anyway. EDIT
Posted Apr 26, 2019
Under the Silver Lake (2018) Inkoo Kang It doesn't help that the plot is tortuous, and the resolution is an inarguable letdown. And yet! Mitchell's ambitions, observations, and moods make the picture a dippy blast... EDIT
Posted Apr 19, 2019
Guava Island (2019) Matthew Dessem Murai's "This Is America" video made Glover's music sharper and more specific; Guava Island glops up the same music with a half-baked allegory that dulls every note. Steer clear. EDIT
Posted Apr 14, 2019
The House That Jack Built (2018) Emma Stefansky Von Trier may be a provocateur, but his brand of provocation seems to be growing stale. EDIT
Posted Apr 8, 2019
The Best of Enemies (2019) Inkoo Kang It's impossible to ignore that the film is yet another Hollywood narrative of racial reconciliation centered on a white protagonist-and worse, it's one that seems much more interested in the Klan's white targets than its black ones. EDIT
Posted Apr 5, 2019
Shazam! (2019) Sam Adams Although it's technically about saving the world (again), Shazam! plays out at eye level, grounded by the belief that who people love and where they feel they belong is stakes enough. EDIT
Posted Apr 2, 2019
The Cell (2000) David Edelstein The Cell is pretty silly. But I admired its cinematic ambition until the final scenes. EDIT
Posted Mar 31, 2019
Dumbo (2019) Matthew Dessem There's a lot going on in the movie, none of it entirely coherent... EDIT
Posted Mar 28, 2019
But I'm a Cheerleader (1999) David Edelstein As it happens, I couldn't agree more with the point of view of But I'm a Cheerleader, but I couldn't like the movie less. EDIT
Posted Mar 27, 2019
Us (2019) Dana Stevens Peele is a born filmmaker who cares where the camera is placed, how a scene is lit and scored, what the props in the corner of the image suggest. EDIT
Posted Mar 20, 2019
() Sam Adams Even face to face with a bleak future, The Hottest August is steeped... delight, the kind that reminds us that there's beauty in the world, and a future that's worth fighting for. EDIT
Posted Mar 8, 2019
The Wandering Earth (2019) Inkoo Kang The characters remain archetypes, but the film eventually earns its syrupy sentimentality. EDIT
Posted Feb 21, 2019
Alita: Battle Angel (2019) Sam Adams It's goofy as hell and borderline inexcusable at times, but it's also kind of glorious. EDIT
Posted Feb 16, 2019
What Men Want (2019) Inkoo Kang What Men Want won't let viewers have it all, but what we get is more than satisfying. EDIT
Posted Feb 7, 2019
The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (2019) Sam Adams Lord and Miller have always known what they're doing, but here it feels like they need you to know it, too. EDIT
Posted Feb 7, 2019
High Flying Bird (2019) Dan Kois Like Ray, Soderbergh plays the game while also undermining it. Like Ray, High Flying Bird is a revolutionary wearing a beautiful suit. EDIT
Posted Feb 7, 2019
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019) Sam Adams [N]arratives help us sift the meaningful harbingers from the detritus of life. Extremely Wicked discards them entirely. EDIT
Posted Feb 4, 2019
Velvet Buzzsaw (2019) Inkoo Kang Its ideas are silly, but Jake Gyllenhaal delivers them with such goofy passion that who cares? EDIT
Posted Feb 1, 2019
Late Night (2019) Sam Adams Late Night's subject feels timely, and it's uncommonly crowd-pleasing, even broad. EDIT
Posted Feb 1, 2019
Brexit: The Uncivil War (2019) June Thomas 90 minutes of shocking but surprisingly entertaining political theater. EDIT
Posted Jan 22, 2019
The Upside (2018) Inkoo Kang Compared with the streamlined Intouchables, the remake feels ungainly, inexpertly suturing together the French source material with Hollywood formula. EDIT
Posted Jan 12, 2019
Glass (2019) Sam Adams On a purely practical level, Glass is drawn-out and disjointed, with disparate plot threads (some of them leading to, yes, a perfunctory rug pull) that seem dictated more by its stars' availability than narrative cohesion. EDIT
Posted Jan 9, 2019
Come Sunday (2018) Lawrence Ware Come Sunday Takes the Challenges of Faith Seriously. We Need More Movies Like It. EDIT
Posted Jan 8, 2019
BlacKkKlansman (2018) Lawrence Ware The filmmaker rips from the headlines, but the struggles remain the same. EDIT
Posted Jan 8, 2019
Stan & Ollie (2018) Matthew Dessem It's a little disappointing to see a film whose tight focus seems tailor-made to free it from the constraints of the genre color so vehemently inside the lines. Inside those lines, though, the colors are remarkable. EDIT
Posted Dec 29, 2018
Happy to Be Here (2006) Lena Wilson This is some of her most gleeful work yet, and that glee is inextricable from the pleasure of simply seeing her live her life. EDIT
Posted Dec 27, 2018
Minding the Gap (2018) Sam Adams 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. EDIT
Posted Dec 26, 2018
Aquaman (2018) Sam Adams There are parts of Aquaman that are so wonderfully strange that it's astonishing to see them in a franchise blockbuster. EDIT
Posted Dec 21, 2018
All Is True (2018) Isaac Butler Alas, rather than model itself on Shakespeare's own history plays, which carefully select and structure events with an eye toward plot and theme, All Is True is an overstuffed mess. EDIT
Posted Dec 21, 2018
Manbiki kazoku (2018) Inkoo Kang Shoplifters achieves that ultimate goal of art as expressed by the artist Robert Filliou: It's art that makes life more interesting than art. EDIT
Posted Dec 20, 2018
Welcome to Marwen (2018) Sam Adams 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. EDIT
Posted Dec 19, 2018
Adam Sandler: 100% Fresh (2018) Inkoo Kang 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. EDIT
Posted Dec 18, 2018