Independent (UK)
Tomatometer-approved publication
Rating
Title/Year
Author
1
4/5
Beloved (1998)
Heartfelt acting and a vibrant visual sense paper over all manner of cracks.
Posted Feb 2, 2022
2
4/5
It's chaotic, at times, but it's pure. Doesn't that describe so much of who Almodóvar is as a filmmaker?
Posted Jan 27, 2022
3
3/5
Sing 2 (2021)
In Sing 2's defence, the film is at least enthusiastic about its own overabundance, and the new celebrity voice additions fit nicely into the mix.
Posted Jan 27, 2022
4
5/5
Nightmare Alley (2021)
It's hard to think of a noir story that would be better suited to del Toro as a director -- the arch-fabulist who fears men more than he does monsters.
Posted Jan 24, 2022
5
The Watermelon Woman (1997)
Sadly, it intrigues only through its inventive manipulation of documentary techniques -- which is to say that what the form promises, the content falls far short of delivering.
Posted Jan 21, 2022
6
3/5
Belfast (2021)
A twinkly-eyed childhood memoir - and rigorously fashioned to be an Oscar frontrunner.
Posted Jan 20, 2022
7
4/5
Memoria (2021)
If anything, it's a living deja vu. Or the closest cinema can get to that disquieting sensation of meeting someone you're convinced you've encountered before.
Posted Jan 14, 2022
8
4/5
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
9
4/5
Cow (2022)
Cow never wields morality as a weapon... feel however you may feel about industrial farming, but now the cow stares back.
Posted Jan 14, 2022
10
4/5
Scream (2022)
11
4/5
Titane (2021)
It's a body horror that's really a family drama; that's really a sly comedy about the discomfort of being trapped inside all this vulnerable, imperfect flesh.
Posted Jan 7, 2022
12
4/5
Boiling Point (2021)
Boiling Point does a thorough job of parachuting you into the sweaty, unforgiving confines of a restaurant kitchen.
Posted Jan 7, 2022
13
2/5
The 355 (2022)
Perhaps that's true equality in action - an international, diverse cast of actresses can now make a mediocre spy film...
Posted Jan 6, 2022
14
4/5
Millions of young fans dreamt of being part of Harry Potter's world; Return to Hogwarts is possibly the closest you'll ever feel to achieving it.
Posted Jan 3, 2022
15
4/5
The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
It happily revisits and remixes all the familiar elements in ways that seem more attuned to the needs of characters than to the demands of spectacle.
Posted Dec 21, 2021
16
3/5
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
It reaches a point at which the division between sincerity and cynicism doesn't seem to matter much anymore - it will work for the right people. And that is an art in itself.
Posted Dec 17, 2021
17
3/5
Swan Song (2021)
18
4/5
The Lost Daughter (2021)
Olivia Colman makes even the most pedestrian emotions seem poetic.
Posted Dec 17, 2021
19
2/5
The King's Man (2021)
The Kingsman franchise is really a test of what audiences are willing to put up with in exchange for a handful of cool action scenes.
Posted Dec 14, 2021
20
4/5
Don't Look Up (2021)
There's something oddly satisfying about the way McKay's film lets us laugh at our own doom.
Posted Dec 10, 2021
21
3/5
Being the Ricardos (2021)
22
4/5
23
3/5
Boxing Day (2021)
It's a rare achievement contained within an even rarer type of film.
Posted Dec 6, 2021
24
3/5
Silent Night (2021)
25
5/5
C'mon C'mon (2021)
C'mon C'mon is a great big bear hug wrapped in celluloid.
Posted Dec 6, 2021
26
3/5
West Side Story (2021)
How can a film look this good, feel so moving, and still come up lacking?
Posted Dec 2, 2021
27
4/5
House of Gucci (2021)
House of Gucci is a titillating, ridiculous and utterly engrossing soap opera.
Posted Nov 28, 2021
28
4/5
Robin Robin (2021)
Despite its cosy, familiar tale of finding home within an adoptive family, Robin Robin marks a major break from tradition for Aardman Animations.
Posted Nov 28, 2021
29
4/5
A Boy Called Christmas (2021)
Kenan has done a better job here of mining the comforts of childhood nostalgia than he did on the recent Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which he co-wrote.
Posted Nov 28, 2021
30
4/5
King Richard (2021)
31
2/5
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is simply the things you already knew and liked, but repeated with unearned gravitas.
Posted Nov 19, 2021
32
4/5
Encanto (2021)
Think of it as everything we expect from the studio - beauty, warmth, humour, emotion - just with a little bit more.
Posted Nov 19, 2021
33
1/5
Home Sweet Home Alone (2021)
34
3/5
Mothering Sunday (2022)
While so much of Mothering Sunday focuses on how grief, or the lack of grief, shapes its characters, it comes to an oddly inconclusive end.
Posted Nov 12, 2021
35
4/5
tick, tick...Boom! (2021)
36
3/5
Eternals (2021)
37
4/5
Passing (2021)
Passing is as richly felt as it is carefully conceived.
Posted Oct 29, 2021
38
2/5
Antlers (2021)
It becomes a muddled collection of ideas, about both inherited trauma and environmental disaster, and increasingly disconnected from the creature at its core.
Posted Oct 29, 2021
39
2/5
Army of Thieves (2021)
The film ends up feeling largely devoid of personality.
Posted Oct 29, 2021
40
5/5
The French Dispatch (2021)
41
2/5
Dear Evan Hansen (2021)
The film becomes one giant gamble that's quite disastrously failed to pay off.
Posted Oct 21, 2021
42
4/5
The Harder They Fall (2021)
43
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
44
L.A. Confidential (1997)
45
2/5
The Trick (2021)
If the people in your show are less interesting than tree rings and thermometer readings, something's gone awry.
Posted Oct 19, 2021
46
3/5
The Last Duel (2021)
The Last Duel is perfectly engrossing as a slice of historical intrigue, a clash of iron wills and iron swords, all muddied on the battlefields of medieval France.
Posted Oct 15, 2021
47
4/5
Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
A love story written in blood, sweat and the slime of half-eaten brains.
Posted Oct 15, 2021
48
4/5
Ron's Gone Wrong (2021)
Ron's Gone Wrong has attempted a far more nuanced take on the subject than the paranoid technophobia of Black Mirror and its many successors.
Posted Oct 15, 2021
49
2/5
Halloween Kills (2021)
50
3/5
John and the Hole (2021)