|
3.5/5
|
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
(2026)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
...burdened by its gateway role – advancing old threads and establishing new ones – but DaCosta’s direction, Garland’s ideas, and sharp character work keep it compelling.
Posted Jan 25, 2026
Edit critic review
|
|
4.5/5
|
Marty Supreme
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Safdie transforms a sports saga into a biting portrait of ambition, class, and identity. [It’s] a relentless odyssey of purpose and survival, where every hustle feels like a defiant claim to value in a world eager to deny it.
Posted Jan 25, 2026
Edit critic review
|
|
4/5
|
Train Dreams
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Bentley renders Idaho and this way of life around the turn of the 20th century in such a mystical and mysterious way, it almost seems like science fiction.
Posted Nov 26, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
2/5
|
Wicked: For Good
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
For Good begins as a welcome improvement on part one – until a house-sized twist and a forced march to sync with the wonderful "Wizard of Oz" send the story spiraling into chaos.
Posted Nov 26, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4.5/5
|
Nouvelle Vague
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
[Linklater] channels the French New Wave’s restless energy, revealing how Godard’s audacity and artistic uncertainty spark a collision of cinema’s past, present, and future.
Posted Nov 21, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
2.5/5
|
The Running Man
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Wright juggles dystopian thrills, satire, sentiment, and slapstick, but never nails any of them. The result is a genre mashup that feels more muddled than masterful.
Posted Nov 21, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
3.5/5
|
The Mastermind
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
…a quiet evisceration of entitlement.
Posted Nov 14, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4.5/5
|
It Was Just an Accident
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
…one of the films of the year.
Posted Nov 14, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
2.5/5
|
Die My Love
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Its narrative never catches up to its elusive, occasionally unsettling imagery.
Posted Nov 14, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
2.5/5
|
Bugonia
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
That point may be that human beings are intolerable, insignificant, and unnecessary. I guess I prefer my misanthropy more clever and less insincere.
Posted Nov 14, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4/5
|
Peter Hujar's Day
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Peter Hujar’s Day doesn’t ask big questions – it creates an ephemeral, meditative space that invites them.
Posted Nov 07, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
3/5
|
Christy
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Like Christy herself, the movie’s redemption comes in the second half when the boxer’s focus turns to reclaiming her identity rather than winning in the ring.
Posted Nov 07, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
2.5/5
|
Frankenstein
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
...[del Toro's] affection for this monster is so overwhelming that it softens the edges of his vision, simplifying the complex, volatile dynamic between creator and creation that should drive the film’s emotional and dramatic core.
Posted Nov 07, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4.5/5
|
Back to the Future
(1985)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
40 years later, Future is as fun as ever, but Marty’s anxiety – and having to confront seeing himself reflected in his father – reveals a sneakily resonant story of self-doubt and self-discovery.
Posted Oct 31, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
2.5/5
|
A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
...gripping with real-world urgency and its ticking-clock premise, but struggles to justify its repetitive structure, offering diminishing returns and a frustratingly hollow ending.
Posted Oct 31, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
2.5/5
|
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
...can't evoke the magnitude of Springsteen’s interiority, straining to literalize the mysteries and anxieties that Nebraska already mined.
Posted Oct 31, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4.5/5
|
Blue Moon
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
...a lyrical showcase for Hawke, whose performance is confrontational yet tender and self-effacing.
Posted Oct 31, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
2.5/5
|
The Smashing Machine
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
The Smashing Machine mirrors the original doc so closely, it’s more reenactment than reinterpretation.
Posted Oct 10, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4/5
|
Predators
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
...a documentary that dares to question everything, including itself.
Posted Oct 03, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4.5/5
|
One Battle After Another
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
A beautifully choreographed fever dream of resistance and reckoning, blending absurdist satire with a poignant meditation on parental legacy.
Posted Oct 03, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4/5
|
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Kogonada consistently invites his characters to rediscover the familiar with fresh eyes.
Posted Sep 27, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
3.5/5
|
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
This reunion could’ve all been cringe-worthy, but Spinal Tap was never exactly about dignity, was it? Still, there are sufficient laughs and a wistful, honest reckoning with aging... It’s stupidly sincere. Or sincerely stupid. Take your pick.
Posted Sep 25, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
5/5
|
Dog Day Afternoon
(1975)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Antiheroes tend to have swagger and carry a certain mystique. Pacino dismantles that entirely in Dog Day Afternoon. His Sonny is frazzled and flailing and painfully human — not someone to idolize, and not a martyr.
Posted Aug 22, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4/5
|
It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Berg approaches Buckley’s life with the same intense empathy that Buckley himself approached his art.
Posted Aug 15, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
3.5/5
|
Weapons
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Cregger explores the way pain consumes and controls us, how it can be weaponized, and the collateral damage it causes.
Posted Aug 15, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
3/5
|
AngelHeaded Hipster: The Songs of Marc Bolan & T. Rex
(2022)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Bolan’s prolificness and eclectic spirit beg for a documentary as daring as his look and sound, but... reminds us why the rocker-poet’s influence still reverberates.
Posted Aug 10, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
5/5
|
Sunset Boulevard
(1950)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
...that staircase descent... The staging so that the police and cameramen and reporters all basically freeze, so it's like one of her oil canvases of a legendary or mythical figure come to life... [Norma] transcends space and time.
Posted Aug 10, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
3/5
|
Together
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
I never thought I’d say this about a scene involving a sawzall and human flesh, but it’s neither played for humor nor horror, yet it’s both awkwardly funny and distressing.
Posted Aug 10, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
5/5
|
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
(1975)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
[Ratched's] the one in a position of power, and she wields it to hurt, not to heal.
Posted Aug 03, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
3.5/5
|
Architecton
(2024)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
I’m not entirely convinced that returning to scenes of De Lucchi watching two men hammering stones into his lawn to form a “magic circle” offers the powerful statement Kossakovsky desires. But I appreciated the modest enterprise’s poetic implications.
Posted Aug 03, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
2.5/5
|
Superman
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
I could never quite reconcile Gunn’s glibness and goofiness with his sadistic streak.
Posted Jul 18, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4.5/5
|
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
(2024)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is a reckoning, and Nyoni proves to be a force as a filmmaker.
Posted Jul 12, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4/5
|
Black Bag
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Almost more Coward than le Carré, Black Bag favors penetrating parlor conversations over rousing car chases and exotic covert operations.
Posted Jul 12, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
5/5
|
The Apartment
(1960)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
The Apartment remains remarkably modern in both its construction and sensibility.
Posted Jul 12, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4.5/5
|
Vulcanizadora
(2024)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Vulcanizadora is, at times, discomfitingly hilarious but also deeply affecting.
Posted Jul 12, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
2.5/5
|
Jurassic World Rebirth
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Rebirth eventually tries to summon awe, but when Edwards finally 'cues the wonder', it’s too little, too late.
Posted Jul 04, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
3/5
|
Jurassic Park
(1993)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
The effects… remain movie magic, and as a cautionary tale disguised as an amusement park thrill ride, its intensity is undeniable. Though I’m more drawn to the parallels between Hammond and Spielberg as obsessed visionaries bent on creative control.
Posted Jul 04, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
3.5/5
|
Familiar Touch
(2024)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Friedland’s conceit pays off with quiet power, revealing how the body remembers even when the mind no longer holds on.
Posted Jun 27, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4/5
|
28 Years Later
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
If you feared Boyle and Garland might play it safe with their now-seemingly-precious IP, 28 Years Later sufficiently proves otherwise. There’s enough creative gristle to chew on and more than enough to stoke curiosity for what’s next.
Posted Jun 27, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4/5
|
Pavements
(2024)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Beavis & Butthead (hilariously) suggested Pavement needed to “try harder.” You certainly can’t lob that criticism at Alex Ross Perry, who crafts a mock-biopic, art installation and jukebox musical all in service of a heartfelt documentary tribute.
Posted Jun 13, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
2.5/5
|
The Phoenician Scheme
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Is there a future where I revisit Phoenician and find it significantly funnier and more profound (as was the case with Grand Budapest)? Yes, but unlike Korda’s redemption arc, mine isn’t imminent.
Posted Jun 13, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4/5
|
Clueless
(1995)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
With Fast Times and Clueless, Heckerling cements her status as one of Gen X’s preeminent chroniclers—bridging the cultural chasm between the early ’80s and mid-’90s high school experience with uncanny wit, style, and charm.
Posted Jun 10, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
3.5/5
|
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Despite the bloat that comes with laboring to wrap up the series in the most cathartic way possible, the filmmakers were wise to keep the outsized story on Hunt’s – and Cruise’s – shoulders... or, legs.
Posted May 30, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
5/5
|
Before Sunset
(2004)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
...I was perfectly content to let Jesse and Celine live on forever in my imagination. The possibility of that affair to remember future meet-up was satisfying enough. Or so I thought.
Posted May 23, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
3.5/5
|
Eephus
(2024)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Every baseball movie asks us to believe the game is a metaphor for life. Lund isn’t asking.
Posted May 02, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
2.5/5
|
Mickey 17
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
But Mickey 17 doesn’t have Okja’s same level of compassion and humanity, nor is the critique of capitalism and class inequality as acidly rich as it is in Snowpiercer or Parasite.
Posted May 02, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4.5/5
|
Sinners
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Sinners is a redemption movie, a revenge movie with elements of Blaxploitation, and certainly a red-blood-soaked horror movie; it’s also deeply romantic and has the rhythms and audaciousness of some of our boldest musicals.
Posted May 02, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4.5/5
|
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
(2005)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
Is it a great Star Wars movie? It’s certainly the greatest prequel.
Posted May 02, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4.5/5
|
Pride & Prejudice
(2005)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
"Wright’s filmmaking is elegant, vibrant and prudently ostentatious."
Posted Apr 13, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
4/5
|
Zodiac Killer Project
(2025)
|
Adam Kempenaar
|
…a deconstruction of true crime… [that] comes around to arriving at some of the same kind of epiphanies that that material, in its best form, often arrives at.
Posted Mar 03, 2025
Edit critic review
|
Continue with Google
>
