Rotten Tomatoes
Cancel Movies Tv shows RT App News Showtimes
Critics list

Phuong Le

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Phuong Le is a Vietnamese film critic. Her writing can be found in Sight & Sound, The Guardian, and other publications. She’s also a frequent contributor to the Free Thinking programme on BBC Radio 3.

Publications:

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Seeds (2025) 97% 4/5 EDIT “Echoing the cycle of crop cultivation, Shyne’s film inhabits the seasons of life, bookended by images of a funeral and the open sky. This vanishing way of life is imbued with a dose of melancholy, yet hope still remains for a better harvest in the future.” – Guardian Jan 20, 2026 Full Review A French Youth (2024) 3/5 EDIT “Battaglia’s poignant film is more than a tribute to the talents of these extraordinary men: it also lays bare how integration is rarely a two-way process, with the burden of assimilation largely placed on the shoulders of the marginalised.” – Guardian Dec 30, 2025 Full Review Baby (2024) 100% 3/5 EDIT “Baby is most powerful as an astute portrait of the lost people who have fallen through the cracks of the system. The streets might be fraught with peril, yet they are where they can find their own family, too.” – Guardian Dec 8, 2025 Full Review Onlookers (2023) 77% 3/5 EDIT “Onlookers does provoke some interesting questions about the relationship between tourism and cinema, even if it has little new or profound insight into either topic.” – Guardian Dec 2, 2025 Full Review The Zola Experience (2023) 3/5 EDIT “While the varied locations offer a sense of spontaneity, the film occasionally feels too beholden to its art-versus-life thesis, which makes moments of catharsis come off as mannered and calculated. ” – Guardian Nov 26, 2025 Full Review Gold Songs (2024) 3/5 EDIT “Costa certainly has a keen eye for the landscape and the working-class milieu of Mozambique, but his purely observational style reduces Gold Songs to a detached ethnographic portrait rather than a properly absorbing drama.” – Guardian Nov 26, 2025 Full Review My Worst Enemy (2024) 3/5 EDIT “The tense two-day session between Tamadon and Ebrahimi bristles with a taut energy and Tamadon commendably builds the bulk of the film on these critiques, turning My Worst Enemy into an act of self-interrogation.” – Guardian Nov 26, 2025 Full Review Rule Breakers (2025) 81% 3/5 EDIT “While spirited in parts, the journey taken by this extraordinary robotics team deserves a more layered storytelling approach than that of a feelgood movie.” – Guardian Nov 17, 2025 Full Review 100 Meters (2025) 100% 3/5 EDIT “What 100 Meters lacks in narrative subtlety and pacing, it makes up for in dazzling visuals. Using rotoscoping, in which animation is traced over live-action footage, the film creates stunningly detailed running sequences. ” – Guardian Nov 10, 2025 Full Review There Was, There Was Not (2024) 100% 3/5 EDIT “Though their professions vary, they are all committed to bettering the community, a testament to the strong cultural bonds that exist here. Captured with dynamism and intimacy, their individual stories collide when war breaks out in 2020. ” – Guardian Nov 4, 2025 Full Review Writing Hawa (2024) 3/5 EDIT “Throughout this touching film, moments of progress and setbacks often collide. ” – Guardian Oct 29, 2025 Full Review Wilfred Buck (2024) 3/5 EDIT “Moving between the sky and the Earth, from the personal to the collective, Jackson’s sweeping documentary conjures a universe of experiences with striking style and insights.” – Guardian Oct 20, 2025 Full Review Knit's Island (2023) 3/5 EDIT “When the film-makers pose overly rhetorical or philosophical questions to other players, it only leads to uninspired answers. When we are simply allowed to be in the game, however, something truly magical happens. ” – Guardian Sep 29, 2025 Full Review A Night Like This (2025) 2/5 EDIT “The lack of depth in the writing is reflected in the flat lighting as well, rendering indoor compositions oddly uncinematic.” – Guardian Sep 24, 2025 Full Review Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle (2025) 98% 4/5 EDIT “While ardent fans might wish to see more of Muzan, this wonderful instalment gives a splendid taste of what is surely soon to come.” – Guardian Sep 8, 2025 Full Review The Tree of Authenticity (2025) 3/5 EDIT “Though perhaps leaning too heavily into an academic visual experiment, The Tree of Authenticity offers a fascinating look at how extraction can take many forms, even within the context of sustainability.” – Guardian Jul 7, 2025 Full Review Avant-Drag! (2024) 4/5 EDIT “The queer defiance of Fil Ieropoulos’s kaleidoscopic documentary manifests not only through its subject, but also through its form.” – Guardian Jun 16, 2025 Full Review A Golden Life (2023) 3/5 EDIT “This collision of childlike yearning and hard labour is particularly heartbreaking.” – Guardian Jun 2, 2025 Full Review The Road to Patagonia (2024) 3/5 EDIT “Matty Hannon’s feature debut embraces the possibility of the open road with full-hearted passion.” – Guardian May 27, 2025 Full Review An Army of Women (2024) 100% 3/5 EDIT “The impact of Lillesæter’s film lies not only in its critique of legal biases and failings, but also in how it conveys the powerful bond between the plaintiffs.” – Guardian Apr 24, 2025 Full Review Neirud (2023) 3/5 EDIT “Though beginning in a place of uncertainty, Faya’s film impresses as a homage not only to a larger-than-life figure, but also to the beauty of alternative family models.” – Guardian Apr 21, 2025 Full Review Jimmy (2024) 3/5 EDIT “While Jimmy’s approach risks veering into the ahistorical, there’s a certain emotional resonance in observing Baldwin not as a larger-than-life figure, but as a young soul liberated by fresh desires and experiences.” – Guardian Mar 19, 2025 Full Review Rosinha and Other Wild Animals (2023) 2/5 EDIT “The final result is not so much a reckoning with Portugal’s racist past but a rather inert, and at times tedious, projection of white guilt.” – Guardian Mar 17, 2025 Full Review Jōhatsu: Into Thin Air (2024) 3/5 EDIT “The reasons for a disappearance are not always clear-cut, and the film not only lends an ear to the “evaporated” but is also sympathetic to the abandoned, who are left with gnawing questions and no answers.” – Guardian Feb 24, 2025 Full Review The Colors Within (2024) 92% 4/5 EDIT “As sensitive as ever to teenagers’ growing pains, animator and director Naoko Yamada paints an exquisite rainbow of adolescent blues.” – Guardian Jan 27, 2025 Full Review
No Reviews Yet
Load More